The Girl in Acid Park (10 page)

Hiroki and I were not the type to encourage someone to seek out God for comfort. Actually, the two of us were sort of crap at the whole comfort thing in general.

Which, now I thought of it, might be Brother What-a-waste's point.

"What do you mean, having a hard time?" Hiroki said. "He's still doing alright in school, and I know he hasn't been in JUG."

JUG was what Millroad Academy called detention, and Hiroki--despite having one of the highest GPAs in school--constantly ended up there for smoking between classes.

Brother What-a-waste shook his head. "His academic performance is not the issue, and if anything, his classroom behavior has improved. It's his private behavior that has both myself and his parents worried."

I pressed my lips and looked down at my hands. "The...the pot was because we were trying to see-"

"I know why
you
did it, Miss Collins. And I know Mr. Grant had it for the same reason. That doesn't make it right. God did not see fit to give either of you Mr. Satou's Sight--did you not stop to think perhaps He knew you couldn't bear that burden?"

I shook my head, at last finding myself too annoyed. "I can handle being a stairway to heaven, but not seeing who's using me to get there? Jamie has to go back to his room every single day and look at a stripped-down mattress where his murdered best friend used to sleep. He's just trying to cope."

"Miss Collins, I know you care about Mr. Grant. Have you not noticed his behavior growing more and more reckless? He's never been above breaking some rules, now, but...I've been given permission to tell you that his psychiatrist diagnosed him with acute depression. He's displaying symptoms of PTSD, and his behavior has become increasingly reckless. Speeding tickets. Skipping meals. Some evidence of self-harm."

I jerked upright, my fingers closing around my wrist.

"Ask yourself--is it healthy for him to dwell on death? If not, how can the two of you support him?"

It was hard to breathe. Beside me, Hiroki watched Brother What-a-waste over crossed arms, his head cocked.

"I don't think it's healthy for anyone," Hiroki said. Brother What-a-waste's neck flexed. "Sometimes, we don't get a choice."

"Then you know how much he needs to be relieved of that burden right now."

I swallowed again, thumb rubbing along the scar on my wrist. Old, thin, still somehow a little painful. If Jamie was starting to show symptoms... No. We couldn't let him keep going. Not if he was going to hurt himself.

"Okay," I said. "We'll...we'll do our best to support him. I'm sorry I didn't--I mean, I knew he was sad--obviously, but I didn't think he was..."

"Miss Collins, I'm not asking you two to support him." Brother What-a-waste said. "You've already proved you can't do that. We're asking you to leave him alone."

CHAPTER NINE

Good Vibrations

By the time Jamie returned that night, there were news vans parked across from the school's driveway. A perimeter of reporters kept us on lockdown, but law enforcement didn't get involved until Benny Eagle found a photographer in the deer stand. Apparently, it's totally within the law to photograph minors as long as no trespassing is involved, but one toe over the line and you get chauffeured from the premises in the back of a patrol car.

Jamie found us at Higher Grounds. The place gets pretty loud in the evening, even more so because we've been cooped up all weekend, avoiding reporters, so Hiroki and I didn't notice him coming until a backpack dropped by my shoe. Jamie hurled himself into the chair between us.

Hiroki and I both jumped, looked at each other, then swiftly around for any sign of Brother What-a-waste. We hadn't talked much after the meeting that morning, but we'd both agreed that staying away from Jamie seemed like a great way to make him feel worse. On the other hand, if what Brother What-a-waste had said was true, it also wouldn't be responsible to bring him along on our trip back to Acid Park.

"Twenty minutes," Jamie said. His voice was sharp, the haughtiness I remembered from our first meeting slicing his consonants to utter precision. "Twenty minutes to get into the damn driveway. Please tell me it's open season on reporters."

I gave him what I hoped looked like a bland smile. "I can't really complain, since I want to be one of them."

"You're not
that
kind of reporter," Jamie snapped. I lifted an eyebrow, but didn't point out that I was only in so much trouble right now because, until my story on Aaron, I'd been exactly that kind of reporter. Jamie's forehead bunched as he dragged a book roughly from his bag. The circles under his eyes were the color of storm clouds.

Hiroki slid his chair back a few inches. "Dude, are you okay?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" Jamie's voice was loud enough to get the attention of two sophomores at a nearby table. He glared until they turned back around.

It occurred to me why Hiroki might be uncomfortable; the unhappier someone was, the more likely they were to stay behind after death. He could feel when someone would stay behind. That made it hard for Hiroki to be around people who were in a lot of pain. No wonder he'd had such a hard time being around me lately--I've been a rampaging ball of frustration and fear.

"Hey," I said, poking Jamie in the arm with my pencil eraser. "You've got plenty of reason not to be okay right now."

He gave me a tight shake of the head. "I can't afford that. I have applications, essays, tests..."

"And forcing yourself to be okay when you're not isn't going to help you do any better on them."

"You know what I don't need?" he said. "A therapist."

I leaned back, but didn't say anything. I mean, I'd had a therapist after sixth grade, and I would recommend it to anyone who needed to get their mental and emotional shit together. Jamie was private, but being pushed away after I'd told him all about my problems? It hurt. Even though I knew the need to push people away.

I bit my lip and looked down at my notebook. A moment of awkward silence stretched between us before Jamie finally sighed and spread his hands on the table.

"My parents want me to see a shrink," he said. It sounded like he was forcing the words out. "I don't want to talk about Aaron. If I could pop a couple pills and they'd make me forget until exams are done, that would be one thing."

My chest gave a sympathetic clench. "It doesn't work like that."

"My parents seem to think it does." He glared at his hands, which were clasped before him on the table.

I met Hiroki's eyes. He shook his head, lips tight. Neither of us knew what to do. Jamie had never sought us out, hadn't really talked to us about Aaron or his feelings. The best thing I could think of to comfort him was exactly what would comfort me: the truth.

"I don't know if you even want me to say anything, so you can stop me if you just wanted to vent." He opened one of his clasped hands, a gesture that seemed to say 'go ahead'. I swallowed. "There's no medical fix for losing your best friend. It's not like there's something wrong with your brain chemistry, like with chronic depression." My hand went to the bangles on my wrist, and I twisted them around. I never really knew how much to reveal about my past. "When I was depressed," I said carefully, "the only things that fixed it were time and distraction."

Muscles moved in Jamie's jaw and temple. I glanced at Hiroki for help. He'd been watching me play with my bangles, probably wondering if I would disclose the history that had saddled me with my own strange talent.

Hiroki blinked at me, then glanced around as if I might be looking at someone else. Words of comfort weren't my best friend's strong suit.

"While you're distracting yourself, can we borrow your truck?"

Jamie looked up and I lifted a hand to my eyes. There really were no words for Hiroki sometimes.

"You're not planning on going back to Acid Park, are you?" Jamie said.

I grimaced. "Can you stop being perceptive for, like, five minutes?"

"Dude, look," Hiroki said, reaching across to tap the table in front of Jamie. "I'm pretty much singlehandedly responsible for getting the two of you into that situation. If I'd gone with the police the first time, I could have confirmed or denied the ghost's existence and saved us a whole lot of trouble."

"It's not all your fault, Hiro," I said. "I'm not exactly inculpable."

"In-ka-what?"

"Blameless. I should have known better than to try to go on my own. Better yet, if I had just taken down the stupid website full of school skeletons, I could have avoided feeling like I even needed to-"

"While we're all blaming ourselves," Jamie interrupted. "Why don't we go way back to the beginning and regret being born."

Hiroki shook his head. "If we can just interview the girl for the police, maybe they'll listen to me. We just need to borrow your truck. Just for an hour or so."

Jamie looked at him a moment, scalpel gray eyes cutting across my best friend's dark brown. Privately, I didn't mind the silent battle of wills. It was a very attractive moment of staring. Then Jamie sliced his gaze toward me.

"You're writing something about it?"

I swallowed, a blush creeping up my cheeks. "I mean, I'm probably not going to put it up on the Toilet Paper..."

He nodded. "Good. You need your own website anyway. That said, I will only allow my truck off the property under one condition."

I was still too surprised by the idea of my own website to respond, but Hiroki obliged with a raised eyebrow.

"And that is?"

"I'm driving."

I met Hiroki's gaze and read the same fear I felt. We couldn't let Jamie come with us. We'd promised not to let him take stupid risks, and this definitely counted as a stupid risk. There could be more police out there, or gang members. Heck, even ghostly April Weir might not be a great thing for him to be around.

"I can already see the hesitation," he said bitterly. "I take it that means my parents talked to the school, and the school talked to you?"

Hiroki's face stayed blank, but I must have flinched. Jamie sighed, slapping both hands on the table. He leaned back, turning his face toward the skylight above, and its mass of black and gray sky.

"For fuck's sake, I'm not going to hurt myself," he said. "My mom saw cuts on my hands from when I was redoing Aaron's prayer beads and thought I'd...you know." He righted himself, meeting my eyes directly. His voice dropped lower, both in volume and in pitch, so Hiroki and I had to lean in to hear him.

"I need to feel useful," he said. "I couldn't stop what happened to Aaron. I couldn't even do anything about it--that was all you guys. I'm still processing it, still dealing with it. I mean, my best friend was
murdered
." His fingers curled into fists on the tabletop. "There's only one thing I can think of that will make me feel better without resorting to punching every single fuck-weasel on the lacrosse team. I need to help other people like him. Other ghosts. Even if it's just being a chauffeur, I want to be helping you help them."

His face was completely serious, eyes intent on me behind his glasses. Maybe it was stupid to ignore what the adults said, but Jamie was one of the smartest people I knew, and one of the steadiest. If he said he wasn't going to hurt himself, I believed him.

I also believed what he said about taking action. That sentiment, at least, I could understand. Nothing made me feel better faster than feeling like I was working toward solving a problem, or at least preventing the problem from happening again.

It was probably the stupidest thing I'd said since agreeing to go with the police sans Hiroki, but with Jamie's eyes on me like that and the memory of his empty half of his dormitory swimming up unbidden, there was really only one thing I could say.

"Okay."

#

Five hours later, we met in the parking lot. Hiroki had brought his trusty messenger bag, Jamie a black ski hat to conceal his blond hair, and I'd considerately packed a big thermos of coffee. I mean, it was a school night, and if I couldn't get any beauty sleep, I needed my anti-zombie serum.

We climbed into Jamie's recovered truck. Hiroki, as the smallest, sat in the middle. That was probably for the best because, had I been between Hiroki and Jamie for any length of time, I might not have had the self-control to behave. The fantasy was strong with me.

Instead, I climbed into the passenger's side, cupped my hands against the chill window, and peered out into the darkness. We rolled silently to the soccer field without the benefit of headlights. A service road led out behind the school, and Hiroki's reconnaissance had turned up far fewer press members lurking back there. Sure enough, I only saw the outline of one vehicle through the trees. I got out to open the back gate, but paused with my hand still on the door.

"Jamie," I whispered across Hiroki. "What was the scripture this week?"

He made a face, but I saw his eyes tick up as he thought about it.

"Er, Matthew 19:24-25, why?"

I slapped the dashboard and flashed a grin. "The things you overhear when waiting outside the teachers' lounge..."

Hiroki raised his fingers in air quotes. "'Waiting,'" he repeated.

Jamie gave him a significant look and they both nodded.

"Slander," I said, and stepped up to the gate. According to the meeting note I'd overheard last year, the gate combination was always the month number and the weekly scripture. It was the same combination for everything at school, and I'd tested it several times, knowing it would come in handy. Of course, I'd been imagining it coming in handy if I needed a secret location for some one-on-one time with Brother What-a-waste, but I could deal with this too. I bent toward the keypad and typed in 10-19-24, and sure enough, the light flashed green.

"Hail Mary," I said. I pushed open the gate and waved the boys through, climbing in beside them. Through the trees, the news van's working light came on, smothered quickly by a hand as someone exited the vehicle. "I just hope they don't have their cameras ready," I said, buckling in.

"Mhmm," Jamie intoned. "Have I mentioned I hate reporters?"