Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,48

percent of cases find for the father.”

“Did Daddy tell you that?” I put down my book bag and came to her side. “He lies.”

“But people believe him.” She started to cry, and I put my arm around her waist. I expected her to hold me, but she only held her eyes with one hand and a bank statement in the other. “I don’t want to be alone,” she sobbed. “They’ll take you to church in San Diego and people will think she’s your mother.”

“I’m not going with him,” I told her. “You’re my only mom.”

But as soon as I went to my room, I heard her go into the garage. I heard her drag the stepladder to the high shelves and the hollow scrape of her sliding down the big suitcases.

In my room I sat on the bed—I wanted someone to talk to but there was no one. Then I wondered about Helen. I scanned the room slowly in case she was nearby. If she could send me messages in church, words, and visions of a flood, I thought, she might be in this room right now. But I didn’t know what to look for. She might look like a shadow or a mist or an orb of light. Or she might be completely invisible.

I jumped up and took my Bible from the dressing table. I stood in the middle of the room and held out the book. “Okay, Helen,” I said aloud. “Talk to me.” I dropped the Bible and it fell open. I picked it up without looking at the page and closed my eyes, slammed my finger down, but when I looked it had landed in the white space between columns.

I thought she might need to warm up. “Guide me,” I said. I let my finger move all around both pages. I didn’t feel any push or pull on my hand. I finally stopped and saw that my finger was pointing at a blank space again, this time between two chapters.

Maybe she was taking a vacation from me. Or maybe she didn’t like to be ordered around. Or maybe she was done with earth and had moved on. I shut the Bible and set it aside.

Or maybe I had only imagined us having a conversation. I could have dreamed the flood because I was overwhelmed by everything. I was a bad soap opera.

I sat again on my bed. “Or maybe I’m just crazy,” I said aloud. No ghost contradicted me.

But it felt like the mattress rocked very gently. Something light was sitting by my side.

CHAPTER 20

Jenny

THIS TIME BILLY WAS ALREADY WAITING for me just inside the library doors. Every time I saw him again I felt instantly happy: I didn’t imagine him—he is real.

“Where are we going today?” I asked him as we walked to the bus stop. We’d already found the places his ghost had drawn—tree, phone booth, backstage in the auditorium, all but the inside of the school library.

“My house.” He held my hand as if he was leading the way.

“Why?” I realized after I said the word that it sounded stupid.

“We know the ghosts went there together,” said Billy. “In that picture of us, they were in my bed.”

I was nervous—I liked him, more than he knew, but I didn’t know what to expect. Did boys go around having sex with girls they hardly knew? Not the ones at church. At least I didn’t think so. And we didn’t remember being lovers. We were just getting to know each other.

We took the bus west, then transferred and went south a few blocks past the high school. On foot it only took a couple of minutes. Billy’s house was small and old, with a scrawny tree in the front lawn. There were no cars parked outside, but still, after Billy took a key from the lip of the door frame and unlocked the house, he called, “Mitch?” And then, “Anybody?”

It seemed we were alone.

He motioned to me, put the key back, then closed the door, locking us in. I was startled by the living room. The furniture was beat-up and stained, magazines everywhere, a basket of unfolded laundry in front of the TV. It smelled like pine cleaner and wet newspapers.

When Billy swung the door of his room closed behind us, I couldn’t help noticing the gash in it, as if someone had struck it with a baseball bat.

Maybe the photo of us proved that I had been here, but it didn’t seem familiar. The