Chapter 12: We Made Studying Fun

Faith and I had a new member on our team. She was even easy to hide from our aunt and uncle. We made it back to the house and slept soundly until morning. We were becoming quite the escape artists, not that that was something I would usually be proud of.

Faith and I slept, and Katie was left to roam the house. I felt bad for her along with all of the other spirits out there. Supposing that they did not sleep, I wondered if that left them tired all of the time. Even if not, never sleeping would mean staying up twenty-four hours a day. That must have been torture. At least since it was her first night visiting with us, she had plenty to explore.

First thing the next morning, I asked Faith to find her and make sure she was safe. She was able to round her up quickly because she was sitting on the porch like I was usually do.

"How did she do?" I asked.

"She seems to be fine; she knows the property well now, and she didn't run into any other spirits."

"Excellent."

We had a hard time at breakfast. Keeping Aunt Carol and Uncle Chuck from being suspicious was not the easiest mission ever. We were more tired that ever before so we had to hide the dark circles around our eyes. Although we looked like trash, we must have been decent actors. Neither of them questioned us.

Aunt Carol caught my attention when she did ask a question, "What are your plans for today, dear?"

Good question. I had not really thought about it. All I knew was Faith and I were going to help Katie find her family, and she was going to help us get used to our new life. Not that we would ever be used to it.

"I'm not sure, but we will find something to do," I answered, trying to hide the shakiness in my voice.

We left the table completely relieved and went back upstairs to contemplate the question that I had left myself with.

"What are we going to do today?" I asked Faith. I was hoping that she had it mapped out already in her head. That was the Faith thing to do.

I jinxed myself. She gave me one of those that's your job looks. The one time that I needed her to be the boss and tell me what to do, she decided to be lazy.

"The way I see it is," she began in her drama-queen tone, "we will have to do one of the two things on our agenda. I say we help Katie first. We can give her some peace within herself."

"But what if she disappears into the afterlife without being able to help us first?" I pointed out.

"We may have to take that chance…" before she could continue, Faith looked over her shoulder and began a conversation with the subject herself. They talked for a moment before Faith clued me in on what they decided.

"What did she say?" I asked when they were finished.

"She recommends helping us first. It's your fault, Christian. She likes you so she is trying to do what she thinks you want her to do."

"It isn't my fault. I didn't make her do anything."

She rolled her eyes at me. Sometimes that girl could really get on my nerves.

"I could really care less if our friend has a crush on you, but she should really be more careful when choosing role models."

Katie told her that the best place to start if we wanted to become more familiar with spirits would be the library. I know, right. You would never think to look there, but it made sense when I wrapped my mind around it. The internet seemed a better solution, but Katie was a book fanatic so we decided that a road trip would not hurt anyone.

It was interesting to find out that Katie liked books. She seemed a little young to be a reader until I remembered that she was a spirit. She had been wandering alone for a long time. That obviously gave her plenty of time to visit a library. The other thing to question would be her method of reading books. I had Faith ask her.

She enlightened me with a straight answer. Katie was a listener. She liked to sit and listen to others reading stories. This gave her something of an education as well. She picked up a level of knowledge higher than other girls her age just from listening to people for years. It made me think about the nature of spirits in general. They were not only menacing forces that haunted empty buildings but had a life of their own.

I told Aunt Carol where we were headed, and she soaked it up like a sponge. It was not a lie, yet I felt bad about going behind her back. If I told her that Faith and I had a spirit in tact with us, she would have had a cow. A simple trip to the library was all that she needed to be aware of.

Katie was a great backseat driver. She did not make any of the out of the way comments that I was used to. Still, I was not able to avoid comments. I had another passenger entertaining me.

"Is this as fast as you go? Mom used to drive fifty on these old roads. No one is going to see you anyway," my comrade was "helping me."

I ignored her. The library was a short fifteen minute ride anyway so I knew I would not have to put up with it for very long. I listened to the radio, and time flew like the beautiful birds outside the car window.

I had not been to the old library since I was about seven years old. The internet was more convenient for a twenty-three year old, college-bound person. Go figure. On the bright side, it was a nice library for our small town set-up.

The yard was decorated with vines and flowers and even a bird fountain. The parking lot was even homely - for a parking lot. Steps led up to the front doors which sat on a slope. Come to notice, the entire building was on a slope. It did not look solid from that angle, but something told me that it would not topple over. Besides, it had been there since mom was young.

I felt good about researching in a quiet place surrounded by books. Libraries are as traditional as public places come in today's time. I had to remind myself how the Dewey Decimal System worked because I had not used it for some time. I decided to trek the aisles instead of looking anything up on the computer. Faith began on one end while I began on the other. One of us would find something helpful.

According to Faith, Katie wandered off. She probably went to one of the back rooms to listen to one of the storytellers. That was what she had to live for. Hopefully this trip was going to solve that problem. We could fulfill her and allow her to move on with her life.

Most of the books that I saw were biographies and encyclopedias. That told me I was in the wrong section. If Faith found something useful before I did, I would never have heard the end of it. Still, I would rather one of us find something than neither of us.

I passed by a younger man while I was searching the seemingly endless shelves of books. He had his nose stuck in one already but looked up to give me a grin. He was younger than me. He made me feel old as a matter of fact. Little things got to me back then before I found out that I was different from others. It was not very securing to know even that fact, but I was getting used to it. Mom would have verified it for me if I was not accepting it already. She was good like that.

I ran into Faith again about halfway through. She had picked up a few books and handed them to me.

"Here you go," she said with a smile. "I am going to go find Katie while you check into those."

"Thanks for all of the help," I said sarcastically.

I sat down with the three that she gave me and scanned the titles, hoping to find one that looked especially helpful. There was Spirits and You, The Life After Life, and Understanding the Invisible. I went for the last one first because it seemed the least cliché of the three.

While Faith ventured to the back to search for our buddy, I sat at the computer table and took a peek into my chosen novel. I found pictures - which helped - because I was not into reading very much at the time. I did not know that reading would grow on me so much. The chapters were written to tell a story together. It was more of a story about convincing than anything else. I was not impressed. I switched to Spirits and You.

The second one was much better. It was written from a more unbiased viewpoint. The author told the things that they had experienced and illustrated them with stories. I could get into stories more easily when I could make my own opinion on the topic.

Still, I was not learning anything new. We were getting more out of our experiences than from the books. I could tell that I had not read anything from an actual spiritualist.

"Boo!" Faith whispered in my ear.

Even in a whisper, the urgency in her voice and because she did it from behind startled me.

"Don't do that in a library," I scolded her. "Did you find Katie?"

"Yes, I did," she answered proudly yet still in a whisper, "and not only her, but I found someone else too."

I looked to her side but saw no one. I knew where this was going. Talented little Faith had done it again and found a spirit.

"Spirit?"

"Yup," she answered in an unconcerned voice. "Oh, and guess what - this one has blood on his face."

I gulped. Spirits looked the same way as the last time they were while alive so this guy must have been roughed up before he was killed.

"Ha ha! Are you afraid? You are turning green," Faith teased.

I looked at my reflection on the computer screen. It was impossible to make out a green color, but I definitely did not feel great.

"Don't worry," Faith began again, "we don't have to do anything to this one. He is just passing through. He is a residual spirit."

"And that means…?" I replied in question.

"It means that he haunts the same place all of the time. He has no choice but to take the path that he is on over and over again."

I figured out where he was when his "energy" appeared. It was a different color from the ones that I had noticed before. It was a green color. Green for residual I assumed. Having a name for that "energy" would have been helpful, but I was happy just to be able to understand it better.

"Don't mind him," said Faith, "are you going to check any of those out?"

"I am going to get this one." I showed her the book.

"Nice," she said as she flipped her hair off of her shoulders.

I did not ask about her, but Katie must have been with her again or she would not have been ready to go.

The librarian at the front desk looked familiar. After a moment I recognized her. She had been the librarian when I was younger. Her name was Amelia. That stuck out for me because she had always let me call her by that. I was a likable kid, unlike someone else that came from the same branch of the tree. I eyed Faith while Miss Amelia was scanning my check-out into the computer.

I liked progress; and progress, we were making. I felt as if knowledge was presenting itself to us in the most auspicious ways. Katie had done her part, and it was our turn. Oddly enough, our next destination was predetermined by a spirit younger than ten.