She decided not to go up to check. She’d seen enough ghosts already that day.
The next morning, Helen went to see Dr. Cunningham. After a few minutes of flashing a penlight in her eyes and thumping her on the chest, Dr. Cunningham told her father that there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage done. Then he yelled at Helen and told her she was far too fair to be walking around without a hat on. She didn’t know how it had happened, but after one trip to the doctor her meltdown had been brushed off as nothing more than the carelessness of not keeping her head covered. At least the checkup got her out of school for the day.
When she got home, Helen opened her computer and spent a few frustrating hours online trying to find some information on the three women who were plaguing her. Every search she did overwhelmed her with so many possibilities that her task seemed hopeless, and she couldn’t narrow it down because she didn’t have any real context for what it was she had seen. Were they ghosts? Demons? Or just her own personal manifestations of crazy? It was entirely possible that she had hallucinated the whole thing, and now that she didn’t feel so enraged she was almost starting to think maybe she had had heatstroke. Almost.
Claire came over in the afternoon to deliver some bad news. “The whole school thinks you’re on your way to an institution as we speak,” she said as soon as they sat down in the family room. “You should’ve come in today.”
“Why?” Helen asked with a grimace. “It doesn’t matter when I come back, no one’s ever going to forget this.”
“True. It was pretty bad,” Claire said. She paused for a moment before speaking in a rush. “You scared the crap out of me, you know.”
“Sorry,” Helen apologized with a weak smile. “So, was he in school today?” For some reason she felt like she just had to know, but she couldn’t bring herself to say his name out loud.
“Yeah. He asked me about you. Well, he didn’t actually talk to me, but Jason did. He’s a jackass, by the way.” Claire started talking with increasing heat. “Get this. So he comes up to me at lunch, right? And he starts asking me all these questions about you. Like, how long have I known you, where are you from, did I ever meet your mom before she skipped town . . .”
“My mom? That’s weird,” Helen interrupted.
“And I start answering him with my usual flair for clever repartee,” Claire said, a bit too innocently.
“Translation: you insulted him.”
“Whatever. Then that chump had the huevos to call me ‘little girl’! Can you believe it?”
“Imagine. You, described as ‘little,’” Helen said in a droll voice. “So what did you tell him?”
“The truth. That we’ve been friends since birth and neither of us really remembers your mom, and that she didn’t leave any pictures or anything, but that your dad’s always going on about how she was this incredible beauty and how she was so smart and talented and everything, and blah-blah-blah. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that your mom had to be hot. I mean, look at your dad and then look at you,” Claire said with a knowing glint in her eyes.
Helen winced at the compliment. “Is that it? Lucas didn’t say anything else?” Helen’s hands were curled up into fists. She found it hard to so much as say his name without wanting to punch someone in the head. Obviously, she either still had heatstroke or she really was going out of her mind.
“Hasn’t said a thing. But I did hear a rumor that Zach was talking trash about you and Lucas shut him down hard.”
“Really?” Helen said, perking up. “Shut him down in what way?”
“He wouldn’t let anyone say anything bad about you, is all. You know how Zach and Gretchen are. But Lucas wouldn’t hear it. He kept saying you felt like you had a really bad fever when he . . . did that thing that he did. What would you call that, anyway? A back-assed bear hug?”
Helen groaned and buried her face in her hands.
“It’s all right,” Claire said, patting her back consolingly. “He’s not going around telling everyone you’re monkey-butt crazy, so at least you brutalized a seriously sweet guy.” Helen groaned louder and tried to crawl into the sofa while Claire had a nice, long laugh at