Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,5

the covers down—I could see it from the corner of my eye. It passed behind me, reflected as a pale apparition I would not focus on. The door swung open and my father said, “Good night, Puppy. Say your prayers.”

“Good night, Daddy,” said my body.

I hunched down, too afraid to even run away. It was like a scene from one of those old flying saucer movies they showed every Halloween. There was nothing creepier than the child who weeps as he tells the policeman, “Those aren’t my parents—they look like them, but they’re not my mommy and daddy, I tell you! You’ve got to believe me!” But the policeman never does.

And I was the alien.

That’s not me anymore, I told myself. I stood up. I’m riding a sea serpent.

And I was back in the museum’s Pre-Raphaelite room. But nothing was the same after that. I didn’t want to go back to my old life, but my life out-of-body was becoming unsettling. When I went to the dance studio, no boy could be my partner and lift me in a pas de deux, but now I realized that living as a spirit meant no boy would ever take me in his arms.

CHAPTER 3

Jenny

I DIDN’T KNOW WHY I FOUND myself in front of that store window with a display of tie-dye kaftans and hemp shirts, but maybe I’d wished for the opposite of my old life. The shop was called Reflections; their logo, made into a stained-glass window in the front door, was a tree of life with a rainbow behind it. My mother refused to go into this or any other New Age store because she was afraid they were fronts for satanic cults.

I slipped right through the door without jingling the tiny string of brass bells that warned the cashier when customers entered. The room was filled with books up to the ceiling, and displays of candles, incense, crystals, massage oils, yoga mats, CDs with monks and angels on the covers, DVDs of Tai Chi masters and pregnant women meditating. Even statues of the Virgin Mary, Saint Francis, Buddha, and a goddess with six arms. There were two customers, an elderly man with glasses pushed low on his nose, and a young woman in overalls who had a sleeping baby strapped to her belly. She chatted with the cashier, a young man wearing black eyeliner and his long hair in a braid.

Even though I felt out of place in this world, the soundtrack that was playing—flute over the sounds of a babbling brook—calmed me. I was attracted to laughter from somewhere beyond the main room of the shop. I drifted back through a grass mat doorway and found a group of seven people sitting in a circle with their eyes closed and their hands in their laps, palms up.

The woman who was speaking seemed the same age as my mother, but she wore her hair in dreadlocks pulled back, and had a single silver stud in one nostril and a tattoo of a flying bird on one wrist. No shoes, no makeup. Like my mom’s polar opposite.

“Lift up this picture of your desires to God,” she said. “Don’t try to figure out how you will receive this gift. Just know that you already have received it and feel the joy. You don’t have to know how this blessing will come to be. You only need to be grateful.”

Then the woman, who was apparently the leader of the group, stopped and turned her face, eyes still closed, toward me. “Someone’s here.” She smiled. She opened her eyes for a moment, looked through me, then closed them again. “A spirit has come into the room.”

I scanned the room for a strange light or some other sign of the supernatural.

“Is it my father?” one of the others asked. “He died last month.” They all stayed still, eyes shut.

I didn’t want to see a ghost, so I stopped looking around.

“No,” said the leader. “I don’t think this person is dead.”

I froze. She means me. If I moved or breathed she might catch me somehow.

“What?” one of the others whispered. “What did she say?”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said the leader. “This soul means no harm. She’s just visiting.”

“Does she have a message for us?” someone asked.

“Do you have a message for us?” said the leader, looking right at me with her eyes shut.

I said nothing. But I thought, Please don’t talk to me.

“She’s shy,” said the leader. “I think she’s a little lost.”

Childishly I