Teen Spirit Read online

  “What are you feeling now? What’s this about?” I asked in my best imitation of the therapist I had seen as a kid. But he hadn’t been very helpful and neither was I.

  Grant shook his head. “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what is it like, Grant? Please try to explain it to me. Could it be that Clark missed you so much that he started thinking he was you?” I was still trying some amateur psychology without knowing what the hell I was doing.

  “I miss him too,” Grant said. His voice was low and his eyes downcast.

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “When you used the board thing. I came back. Somehow. There was something about the two of you using it together that made it work.”

  My skin crawled on my bones like it belonged to someone else.

  “The Ouija board?”

  “Yeah, whatever it’s called. I thought those were just kids’ toys, but I guess not.”

  G-R-A-N. I remembered what the board had spelled. I had thought it was going to spell grandma. But maybe Clark had made it spell Grant because he subconsciously wanted his brother to come back? Or maybe his brother really did?

  I felt as if I was a plastic doll whose limbs were being arranged by a devious child. I needed some time and space to think.

  I went to the door and opened it, pointing. “I need you to leave now,” I told him in a way I would never speak to Clark.

  “Julie,” he said. “You’re sure about that? I don’t entirely understand this either, but I think I can help you. With your grandmother. There are a lot of things I know.”

  “Get out,” I said, though I wondered what he knew. If he was really a ghost—not that I believed it, but if—he would know about death. Maybe he knew how I could reach my grandma.

  I heard him, whoever he was, go out the front door and when I looked through the window, I saw him running down the street, so fast and sure-footed, not like Clark at all. The streetlights shone red, reflected in a puddle of dirty water.

  I pressed my forehead against the cool, water-spotted glass, wishing I knew what to do. I obviously couldn’t ask Clark. My mom was in Lukeland. My grandmother, the one I needed most, was the most gone of all.

  So I went to my computer and sat down at the screen. I didn’t want to know the answer, but there really wasn’t a choice.

  GRANT, I typed in. MORRISON. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

  And there he was:

  Grant Morrison, seventeen, an honor student and star player on the Hancock Bulldogs basketball team, was killed in a hit-and-run incident this Saturday, January 2. He died on the scene at 12:03 a.m. Police are still searching for a 1999 red Honda Accord. Grant is survived by his parents, Lisa and Hal Morrison, and his twin brother, Clark Morrison. Funeral services will be held this coming Sunday.

  Now I was levitating again, but for a different reason. Leaving my body with fear. I had dreamed about Grant’s death in a car crash the night I had met him. I wasn’t only afraid of ghosts now. I was afraid of myself.

  AT DAWN I WOKE, after a night of restless sleep, and tiptoed to my mom’s door. It was open and when I looked into her bedroom I saw that Luke wasn’t there—thank God. He usually left really early in the morning.

  “Mom?” I whispered, stepping into the room.

  She stirred and I put my hand on her back. Her body felt warm and soft with sleep. I wished she could hold me like I was a baby.

  “Sweetie?” She reached out and took my hand. “Did you have a dream?”

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. I wanted to tell her everything. The colors, the sounds, the Ouija board, trying to reach my grandmother, what was happening to Clark. And especially about Grant.

  She sat up and put on the light. “Oh, baby. I haven’t been sleeping well. Can we talk later?”

  “Never mind.” I backed away, afraid that in my stressed state I would say something really harsh about her dating disgusting men.

  “You know you can always talk to me.”

  “No, I can’t. You’re always either sleeping or with Luke or both.” It was the kindest I could manage.

  “And you have Clark now,” she said. Touché.

  “I don’t have Clark. He’s not my boyfriend or anything. I told you!”

  “But he’s a good friend to you, right? I like him.” She moved to the side and opened her arms so I could climb into bed with her the way I used to, before Luke came. “Come here. Let’s just rest awhile.” I was tempted. But when I got too close, it smelled nauseatingly like him. My skin suddenly itched.

  “I’m going to shower,” I said. “It’s almost morning.”

  But it didn’t feel that way. It felt darker than ever.

  I KNEW I HAD to talk to someone. For a moment I considered Ms. Merritt, but I couldn’t let her think I was crazy. She was the only person besides Clark who seemed to care about my college applications.

  I wanted to talk to Clark, the real Clark. Even if it upset him, I felt he had to know.

  I was so relieved when I saw him at school the next day, wearing a fez. Part of me thought he wouldn’t come or that he would come as the wrong brother, but the hat reassured me. What I didn’t know was if he would be angry with me for everything that had happened. He might not know about the kiss, even though his body had participated, but he knew that I’d hidden my meetings with Grant from him.

  I walked up tentatively. “Nice fez.”

  “Hi.” He had dark half-circles under his eyes.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. We went and sat on our bench. I picked a dead leaf from one of the large potted plants and crushed it in my hand; it made a crackling sound. “How do you feel? What do you remember about last night?”

  He shrugged. “I remember talking to you about my brother and then just blanking out, and when I woke up, it was morning, but I felt like I hadn’t slept at all.” He squinted up at me. “Do you think I’m schizophrenic?”

  I started to touch him and then pulled my hand away, wondering if that might trigger Grant, although it didn’t seem like Grant would want to show up at boring high school. Except for a brief basketball game, it seemed he preferred parties and girls’ bedrooms. Or maybe the touch would just trigger me. Touching Clark was so different from touching his brother, but in fact it might be exactly the same, and yet not. My head thumped with the thoughts. “I don’t think so. But the alternative isn’t really comforting.”

  He looked at me narrowly. “What’s the alternative?”

  I didn’t want to tell him that Grant had come back and explained about the possession, but I had to let him know that it was a possibility, however far-fetched. “That Grant took over your body in some way. That his spirit came through when we used the Ouija board.”

  I tensed for his reaction, but he only looked up at me sadly. What must it have been like to grow up with a twin, someone who had formed into a person beside you in the same womb, walked at your side for seventeen years, looked exactly like you? Someone who was stronger, faster, better at sports, more confident than you were. Someone you wanted to be and resented all at the same time. And then they were gone and you wished you had never felt anything except gratitude to have your double, your second heart.

  “If it’s true, what should we do about it?” he asked me.

  “What people do in books and on TV when this type of shit happens.”

  He waited.

  “Think Buffy,” I said.

  “Research.”

  WE WENT TO CLARK’S house because I didn’t feel like seeing my mom. Clark had said his parents weren’t too into him having company, which is why we hadn’t gone there before, but he thought it would be okay under the circumstances.

  He lived in one of the small stucco houses south of Wilshire, some carefully tended roses lining the front path, a neat green lawn. A basketball net hung on the garage door, and I thought of Clark saying he sucked at basketball, and of the article about Grant. Star player. No wonder Clark said he hated the sport.

 
; Inside, the light was dim and it smelled stuffy, as if the windows weren’t opened often. I wondered if there were pictures of Grant on the mantelpiece, but we went straight upstairs to Clark’s bedroom. No pictures of his brother there. The room was very sparsely furnished and the walls were bare. His books and hats were scattered around. I wondered why he hadn’t brought more with him when he moved from Chicago. Maybe it was another way to forget.

  I sat next to him on the bed, but not too close, and I showed him an occult website I had Googled the night before.

  “‘Spirits can become activated and released by Ouija boards and enter through a portal,’” Clark read in a whisper from the screen. “‘They are especially likely to come when the board is handled by psychics or sensitives. Spirits to whom a living person has a strong attachment are more likely to come through, as are those with unfinished business.’” He glanced up at me, then looked quickly away and continued reading. “‘In some cases, malevolent spirits will attach themselves to others, coming through relatively unnoticed. All spirits may manifest through household appliances, creating shaking, bumping, hammering, and other auditory disturbances. Some of these behaviors are capricious, others much more dangerous. Both evil and well-meaning spirits may also attach themselves to the body of a vulnerable human ‘host.’ This is otherwise known as possession.’”

  I shivered so that even my hair follicles tingled, cold. Clark’s face looked paler than usual and his Adam’s apple more prominent. Behind him, I noticed, plugged in beside his bed, a small night-light. We weren’t kids anymore, but we both still needed reassurance in the dark.

  “This is so fucked up, either way,” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Get him the hell out of my head!” Clark muttered, but when he looked up at me his eyes were bigger and softer than I had ever seen them and I thought he might cry again.

  He pulled off his hat and leaned forward so his elbows were on his knees, his head down. “Everyone loved him. It was so weird because we looked so much alike, but that had nothing to do with it.”

  I nodded, trying to think of something to say, but I couldn’t imagine what the right words would be.

  “We were so close but we were different. He was good at everything—sports, school, people; everyone was crazy about him. I get good grades but I have to work. Everything was easy for him. If I’m honest, there were times I wished he wasn’t, we weren’t . . .”

  He winced when he said this and I found myself wincing, too.

  “But I never wanted him dead!” Clark turned to me and I could see the tension rising in his body. I was almost afraid he’d run away again, like he did when we’d used the Ouija board—run off down the street and leave me alone in his bedroom.

  “I know,” I said. I reached out and touched the back of his hand where the veins looked thick with blood. “Of course not, Clark.”

  “What about you?” he said, and although his tone was mostly sad, there was an accusation hidden way down beneath that. “Do you want to get rid of him?”

  “Clark . . .”

  “Never mind.” He stood up. “Forget it. What the hell am I saying? Get rid of him? I sound insane. Like I believe I could get rid of a . . . someone who isn’t even alive.”

  There was a pause and I heard a car alarm scream outside. And then, in a deeper voice, my friend said, “Yeah. That sounds pretty insane.”

  I looked up and I knew it was Grant sitting there. But the weird thing was, I didn’t want to run.

  He pressed his forehead to mine and I closed my eyes; there was so much heat where we touched and a red color shining behind my eyelids. His long fingers wrapped my wrist with room to spare and he lifted my arm that way and then flattened his palm against mine. His palms were calloused and warm, and his hands made mine look tiny.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  I glanced up for a second, then down again.

  “Is it hard for you to look at me?” His voice was so different from Clark’s. Either this was real or Clark was a gifted actor who should have applied to the Actors Studio instead of MIT.

  “I don’t know who you are.”

  “Do you know who you are?”

  I had no idea what he meant. It was like he was the one practicing psychology on me now.

  “If you really know who you are, then it doesn’t matter as much who I am. You will know you can trust me if you trust yourself.”

  What kind of line was that? A pretty good one; it made my brain feel like a kaleidoscope he was playing with.

  “You’re not Clark,” I said.

  He nodded and I made myself look into his eyes. They were Clark’s eyes, but Grant hovered behind them, and I realized how much I wanted both brothers in that moment.

  “It sucks being dead,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I would imagine.” I didn’t want to be sarcastic but I wasn’t sure how to respond. To take the edge off, I asked him what it was like. If this was for real (and I guess I was at least partially hoping it was real), I wanted to know. I wanted to understand what my grandmother had felt.

  “It’s cold. Not like what you call cold. Maybe like hospital-metal, morgue, frozen-meat cold. Obviously you never get to do shit. I was going to be an emergency room doctor. How ironic, right? You never get to fall in love. And it’s weird, watching you all walk around, acting as if it’s never going to happen to any of you; even if you’ve lost someone, you act like it won’t ever happen to you and you take all the things you get to do for granted. It’s weird for me because there’s this person who looks just like me, who has my same genetics, walking around and alive. And getting to be with you.” He seemed to come out of a brief trance and stared at me as if he could see through my skin. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to know about it? Your grandmother?”

  I nodded. That was all I could manage without tears.

  He moved even closer. I could swear he smelled different from Clark. How could that be? “You really want to communicate with her, right?”

  I didn’t say a word, didn’t even nod this time, as if I could protect myself this way.

  “I can help you,” he told me. “If you let me.”

  “How can you help me?”

  Grant tapped his knuckles against his palm. “You need to go to your old house. Where her spirit is. She’s not around here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “Then how did you come back? The accident was in Illinois.”

  “Because of you.” He leaned in and brushed my hair from my face. “I want to be close to you,” he whispered. “And luckily Clark found you. But I don’t have much time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Never mind. I just mean I need you.”

  “Why me?” I pushed on his chest to make him look me in the eyes now. He smiled, his face so close I could count every eyelash, see the faint glimmer of sweat on his temples.

  “You helped me come back,” he said. “Without you I couldn’t have come.”

  I tried to remember to breathe; my head was a carousel of spinning lights.

  “You have a gift, to bring back the . . . you brought me back. I’m indebted to you. You understand.”

  “I don’t understand anything. I wanted my grandmother, but I’ve lost my best friend.”

  “Lost him? You haven’t lost Clark. You have us both now.”

  “He’s losing his mind.”

  Grant shook his head. “No, he’s not. This is real.”

  I wanted to push him away again. But the thing was, I was starting to believe him. “And I still don’t know why you chose me.”

  “Without you I couldn’t have come. You’re powerful, Julie. You don’t know it yet, but you are. Gifted. Alive and powerful.”

  “I am not,” I said. “I can’t even bring my grandmother back, even in a dream!”

  “And beautiful,�
� Grant said, ignoring me.

  I shook my head and he grasped my shoulders in his hands and made me look at him. “Stop hiding.” He moved a stray hair out of my eyes. “You’re beautiful. My brother is in love with you.”

  I tensed as he put his lips lightly to mine, and then I pulled away. “That’s not really a reason for me to let you kiss me,” I said.

  He paused, as if trying to hypnotize me with his eyes, and then leaned in again and this time I let him. And like before, the world rushed away, like going into outer space and watching the Earth from far, far off, stars exploding inside my body while the little planet got smaller and smaller. I felt, rather than heard, music I couldn’t describe, vibrating in my solar plexus, making my rib cage shake. My mouth burned like spicy sugar candy. I gasped for breath.

  When I heard the knock on the door, it took a moment to register.

  Then a woman’s voice said, “Clark?”

  And the spells were all broken. He fell away, staring at me like I was a stranger. Grant was gone.

  “Hang on, Mom.” He jumped up and glared at me. Went to the door. “I have company.” They talked some more, too softly for me to hear, and then he came back inside and locked the door behind him.

  “What the hell is going on? What were we doing?”

  “Kissing,” I said. I couldn’t look at him. But it was for a different reason than why I hadn’t been able to look at Grant.

  “Kissing? You were kissing him?”

  I shook my head. “No. Yes. I was kissing you.”

  “I wasn’t here.”

  It amazed me, still, how different he looked when Grant was gone. He seemed so much more agitated, awkward. Even his body appeared thinner, smaller. I held out my hand to him and he shook his head. “You were here at first. . . .”

  He stared at the carpet, shaking his head. “You better go.”

  “Clark?”

  “You better go,” he said again.

  I went through the back door, not wanting to face his mother or the photos that might be on the mantelpiece.