Chapter 6

I awoke the next morning with an awful headache. The aftereffects of the tequila were definitely there and I wished I hadn’t been so stupid. I should have suggested we go bowling instead. Then last night wouldn’t have happened and I wouldn’t still feel guilty.

Staying in sounded like a better idea than going to school. It wasn’t like I would miss anything important. There would be a review in Philosophy, and corned beef for lunch. I could afford to play hooky for one day. If I skipped out, I would be less tempted to go back to the cemetery. That way I could recover over the weekend and start fresh on Monday.

I was getting resettled under my covers when the door opened and someone came in. The person plopped down next to me and I turned to see who it was. It was Nicola. I stared at her to see if she was for real since the night before I was sure she wanted to punch me in the face for reasons I didn’t know. What was even weirder was that she was only wearing underwear and a camisole.

“Good morning,” she said.

“What are you doing?”

“Hopefully you, sexy thing.”

She rested her head on the pillow and started running her fingers through my hair and I couldn’t deny it felt good. This was the same girl who had given me my first kiss when I was only eight and the girl whom I’d been crazy about from sophomore year until my freshman year of college. It was hard getting over her but having her back made me wonder if I ever really did.

“Mona already left for school and told me to let you rest,” she continued. “That means we have the place to ourselves.”

I blinked. She was the most confusing woman I’d ever met. One second she acted like she didn’t want to be bothered by me, and now she was hinting that we fool around. Had she pretended to hate me because she really liked me?

My eyes unintentionally wandered over her body. Despite how frail she looked, she was still attractive. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been about ten pounds heavier, though she wasn’t overweight. She’d been healthy and now she looked sick. I also noticed a scar above her underwear band that was at least six inches long. She noticed that I saw it and she pulled her camisole down to cover it up.

“Can I…eat first?” I asked, not really knowing what else to say. “I’m kind of hungry.”

She started laughing and I frowned, even more confused than ever.

“Yeah, you wish. I’m not getting with another Wright brother.” She got up from the bed and started to walk out but stopped at the door. “By the way, Mona is still here. She asked me to let you know that breakfast is ready.”

I forced myself to sit up and crawl out of bed. I wasn’t lying when I’d said I was hungry. I’d barely touched my dinner the night before and needed something in my stomach. I could smell the eggs and sausage from down the hall and I couldn’t get to the kitchen fast enough.

“Morning, Luke,” Mona said. “Crazy night, huh?”

“Yes. Never again will I get drunk. It’s not as fun as people make it sound.”

I stood next to her by the stove and scrambled the eggs while she began cooking the sausage. I glanced over at her from the corner of my eye and admired her in my shirt.

“Are you wearing anything under that?” I asked, yanking up the shirt. She shrieked and moved away from me.

“Lucas Wright!”

“Uh oh. You used my entire name. That’s a bad thing.”

“Yes it is! You can’t just do that to people. Particularly taken people.”

She reached over and before I could stop her, she pulled down my sweats, taking my boxers with them. I was shocked and quickly pulled them back up while she laughed.

 “Did you just pants me? What are we, twelve?”

“Yes! Serves you right!”

She started laughing harder and I couldn’t help but laugh too. We were very mature when we were apart, but whenever we got together, we turned into a couple of kids. She always brought out the best in me.

We finally composed ourselves enough to finish cooking, letting out an occasional chuckle. She made me forget all about my illness. I was feeling great too. The aspirin took care of my muscle aches and my lungs no longer burned.

“It’s kind of cute,” Mona said after a while.

“What’s cute?”

She cast her eyes down then looked away, biting her lip and I figured out what she was talking about. “You looked?”

“I didn’t mean to!”

When I didn’t reply, she set her spatula down and hugged me around my waist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean to. Truce?”

“Your sausage is burning.”

She glanced at the pan then giggled. “Speaking of sausage.”

“Mona!”

“I’m kidding! Besides, what does it matter? I’ve seen you before and you’ve seen me.”

“We were six. That hardly counts.”

 She let go of me and returned to her side of the stove. The past five minutes basically summed up our friendship. We were extremely comfortable around each other. Maybe too comfortable, but I didn’t want that to change. Even now that we were both twenty-two, I wanted to keep everything the way it had been since we were six.

 “About last night…are we going to do something about it?” I asked.

“No. We were drunk. We don’t know what went down last night.”

I would have said the same thing if I hadn’t had several nightmares about what we’d seen and I knew it would plague my thoughts all day. That was why I wanted to stay home instead of trying to pay attention at school.

“What happened, did you have unprotected sex?” Nicola asked when she came into the kitchen. “Does Micah know?”

Mona and I groaned then we ate our breakfast. We got dressed and I looked for my school stuff when I remembered I’d left it at my parents’ house. I wasn’t planning on going there anytime soon, but I needed it for my finals. I decided to have Micah drop it off at my apartment later on.

“Okay, we should go,” Mona said. “Nicky, go get dressed and we’ll wait in the car.”

Mona grabbed her bag and I slung mine over my shoulder with a sausage in my hand. We sat in the same seats as we had the night before and I started the car so I could turn on the air conditioning.

 “Why is Nicola so…uptight?” I asked. “After five years, she can’t still be hung up on Henry.”

“She just needs to get laid.”

I laughed loudly and she laughed with me. Mona was surprising me more and more lately. She was usually more reserved than that. She didn’t like to swear or call people names, though she didn’t hold back when it came to speaking her mind. This was a new side to her.

 “And how would you know that?” I thought for a moment. “Oh. Wait, are you and Micah…”

“No, we’re not. I told you, I want to be out of college before I have that kind of relationship. I love him, but I want to wait.”

We stopped talking when Nicola got in the car and I felt bad for talking about her behind her back. But as we drove by the cemetery, my thoughts quickly turned to something else. I’d expected there to be police everywhere or news reporters. Someone was bound to find the empty grave at some point.

We pulled up to the school and Mona tossed me a pair of sunglass before putting on a pair of her own and we got out.

“Love you Nicky,” Mona said. “Try to be nice today.”

“Try to take the stick out of your butt today.”

She drove off and Mona rolled her eyes before adjusting her sunglasses. I wore my black baseball hat as well to help block out even more light. People were going to know we were either high or hungover. It wasn’t particularly sunny, nor were there any big windows in the school.

For the first time in all of our years at Artemus, we were late to our class I could see people staring at Mona and me, so I kept my eyes on the ground until I sat down. My head was pounding and even with glasses, the light hurt my eyes. I’d become the kind of person I used to look down upon.

I was so out of it that I didn’t even notice Finn had come in and taken a seat next to me. I still hadn’t put the money into my account and his presence somehow reminded me that I was supposed to pay for my car repair that day.

“You look…terrible,” Finn said. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

“Why, because I have great hair?” I joked. “You would look bad too if you got drunk and then watched a zombie crawl out of its grave.”

 Finn frowned. “Wait, what…zombie?”

 I told him everything that had happened the day before, from my being banned from my parents’ house to my horrible idea of getting drunk and Mona’s suggestion that we do a séance. The details of what happened after we’d lit the candles were kind of hazy, but I remembered clearly the rumbling sound from the ground and the little girl’s sobs.

When I finished, Finn looked as concerned as I felt. Why did this little girl have such an effect on me? If it had been some anonymous man that came out of the ground, I would have left in a heartbeat, but she was just a child. A child that Mona’s family knew personally.

“What was the girl’s name?” Finn asked, his tone suddenly very serious.

“Robin Sharmentino I think.”

He pursed his lips then turned away from me. He didn’t speak for the rest of class and I thought it was weird, though he wasn’t super chatty. I made a sorry attempt at listening to Mr. Shepherd talk about the The government in Germany during World War Two, but I doubted Finn was listening either. He kept staring out the window, like he was expecting so see something pop up. I felt the same way. I was afraid that Robin Sharmentino would come looking for me.

Class ended and I walked out with Mona, but I noticed Finn wasn’t trying to keep up with us, unlike the day before. He then touched my shoulder and I stayed behind while Mona headed to her next class.

“We should find her,” he said.

“Seriously? But…why?”

He shrugged. “Curiosity. Besides, you still need to get your car fixed, do you not?”

 I had to admit that this was a tempting idea. Mona had made it clear that they were going to pretend they never saw anything, but if Finn was on board, then I might just take him up on his idea. I didn’t want to be at school anyway.

“Okay, let’s go!” I said.

Finn started walking towards the exit and I followed him without hesitation. I grew nervous when I passed by the teacher of my next class, but waved when she saw me and didn’t even ask where I was going. I always had a strange feeling that she had a crush on me. She was always greeting me personally when I showed up and sometimes made small talk. She didn’t talk to anyone else and was very hard on anyone who either skipped or was late for her class. Except for me.

Finn stopped at the blue Lamborghini that still had a dent on the front. I thought he would have gotten that taken care of since he was so adamant about fixing mine. He was probably richer than I’d assumed. He was somewhat dressed up as well. He had on black slacks and a cream-colored long-sleeved shirt with a tie. I never got that dressed up unless it was Christmas.

“You said you last saw her at the cemetery?” he asked.

“Yeah…I doubt she’s still there, though.”

He started the car then shifted his eyes in thought.

“If you were a little girl and you had just come back from the dead, where would you go?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking out loud or if he was asking for my input.

“Well, if it were me, I would probably go home.”

“Excellent. I hope you aren’t superstitious because we’re going to the Sharmentino house.”

My urgency to find the girl was stronger than my fear of the supposedly haunted house. Deep down, I knew better. The house wasn’t haunted at all. It was just a place where a tragic crime went down. No one had actually seen a ghost there, and right now I needed to push aside any superstition and think of more important things.

Finn pulled up to the house and I suddenly lost my nerve. I’d been all tough and ready to do this while I was thinking about it, but now that we were actually there, I was letting my imagination get carried away with me. I decided to buck up and get out of the car. Though I had a sudden burst of courage, I still wanted Finn to walk in front of me instead of beside me. This way, I couldn’t insist he go in first without coming off as a wimp.

The house looked exactly as it always did. Dead grass, broken windows, and graffiti everywhere. The brown siding was faded from sun exposure and lack of repair and the porch swing creaked as a light breeze moved it. The door was closed, but the doorknob was lying on the porch and by the damage, it looked like it had been yanked out. Whoever did it had to be strong. I didn’t know anyone who could do that without tools.

 “Someone is here,” Finn said.

“How do you know? Can you hear something?”

He didn’t answer but slowly pulled the door open. I did a three-sixty turn to make sure no one was watching us then I followed him inside. It was dark, so I used the flashlight on my phone to illuminate everything. The staircase to the left of the door was dusty and there were some boards missing. The living room was void of any furniture and the carpet was so dirty I couldn’t tell what color it used to be.

“Robin?” Finn called. He went up a few steps then stopped. “You can come out. We will not hurt you.”

 I couldn’t hear anything, save for the beat of my heart and it was beating quickly. I was also feeling somewhat ill. It wasn’t because I was scared. Three months of my illness progressing was starting to take its toll. I wasn’t in any condition to be out partying and running around town searching for resurrected children.

I was about to suggest we look some more when I saw movement at the top of the stairs. I shone my flashlight in its direction and the figure crouched down, hiding behind the stair rail. I then moved the light so that it wasn’t shining directly on her, but nearby so I could see her.

“Robin, are you all right?” Finn asked in a soft voice.

 “Yeah, I’m terrific,” I said in a high voice. “I just dug myself out of my own grave. Really? Of course she’s not okay!”

Finn chuckled. “All right, you try your own approach.”

I was eating my own words. I had squat and I couldn’t think of anything better to say. We weren’t psychologists, how were we supposed to get this girl to trust us? I wouldn’t trust two strange men either.

 “Please don’t hurt me!” she said.

When she started crying again, I felt moved to speak up. My empathy for her was strange and I’d never felt this way toward anyone before. Sure, I pitied those in bad situations, but I didn’t feel called to fix people’s problems. It was always Mona who led the group and I was the follower. Until last night. I’d been the one who suggested we get crazy and now I was paying for it. I should have known with my luck.

“Hey, don’t be sad,” I said. I thought for a second. If she was anything like Colton, she would be hungry after taking a long nap. She’d been asleep for almost twenty-three years, so she should be starving. “Are you hungry? We could get you something to eat. Like…McDonalds or something.”

The little girl stood straight up and stared right at me. She then started walking down the stairs and I got a better look at her. She was wearing a tattered, green dress that came mid-thigh and her blonde hair was long and curly. But something was off. I’d clearly remembered seeing a five year-old girl the night before. The one here was at least eleven. Twelve at the most. No wonder her dress was so small.

She stopped walking and stood in front of me, standing really close. She began studying my face while I waited for her to start trying to eat my flesh or something violent like that. She didn’t look like a zombie. Just dirty and frightened.

“Gallard!” she said. She then threw her arms around my waist, hugging me tightly, just like Mona always did. “I knew you’d come for me.”

It was the weirdest name I’d ever heard, yet it was vaguely familiar. I’d had this same weird vibe when I’d translated the French phrase on my ring without any prior knowledge of the language. What struck me as even weirder was that she thought I was someone else.

“Gallard you’re not hugging me very well,” she said. “You used to give better hugs.”

Finn laughed and I could only chuckle to hide that I was feeling in over my head. What should I do, pretend to be this person she thought me to be or be honest and risk scaring her away? I decided to do neither and go along with my original idea.

“Let’s get you some food,” I said. “And…probably some better clothes. That dress looks too small for you.”