THE DOOR SLAMMED IN ARIANNE’S FACE, nearly clipping the tip of her nose. The invisible bouncers that rushed her out of Niko’s house plopped her onto the porch without ceremony or comfort. She moaned in a fetal position from the pain brought on by her posterior making out with the wood planking.
The fear of seeing all those souls had her shaking like she’d stepped out into the middle of winter and she’d forgotten to wear a jacket. She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Breathing hard, she gathered herself up into a seated position, grimacing at the continued ache. Panic elbowed her fear, lobbying for a space in her already crowded chest. She pushed herself off the floor and proceeded to pound on Niko’s front door with an open palm. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.
“Niko!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. She didn’t care if the neighbors heard. “Niko! Please, someone open up! Niko!”
She kept slapping the wood until her hand ached. Worry spilled over her panic. Even if she didn’t understand what went on in Niko’s house, she still needed to know if he was all right. She moved away from the door, down the porch steps, and around the house, peeking into every window and checking if she could shimmy them open. All locked. All securely refusing her access.
By the time she’d reached the front porch again, the ache on Arianne’s palm dimmed. She stared up at the house, hands on her hips; the inside didn’t match the outside. A typical American Foursquare shouldn’t have a foyer bigger than the actual floor plan. The long hallway they passed to get to the basement belied the fact that there were more rooms than just four on each floor. And that basement. Arianne shivered at the memory. She couldn’t get herself to forget about all those dead people swaying like there was trance music playing in the background.
“Niko,” she whispered, then frowned.
Seeing no other recourse, and as darkness laid claim over the rest of the daylight, Arianne picked up the school bag she’d dropped when she and Niko had arrived, turned around, and trudged home. And you thought you were the weird one for being obsessed with His Delicious Highness.
She wasn’t sure when she’d started running, but the second her feet picked up their pace, she didn’t stop until she’d reached the front door of her house. She dropped her pack and fished out her keys from her pocket with uncooperative fingers. After three frustrated tries without any success of meeting key with hole, Arianne did a one-eighty and slid down to the floor with her back against the door. She thumped her head a couple of times on the wood and closed her eyes. The door opened, sending her sprawling with a squeak.
“Ari?” her father said. His face hovered a few feet above hers.
“Hey, Dad.” Arianne gave him the tiniest wave.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look okay. And why are you lying there?”
“Leaning, actually.”
He reached out a hand and hauled her up. “How about some lasagna? I have it in the oven already.”
“There’s a load in the wash, too.” She dusted off her jeans to keep from looking at her father for too long, afraid to betray the emotions that continued to whirl inside her. Niko. Niko. Niko. Every beat of her heart said his name. Should she have left? Could she have stayed? What would have happened if she did?
“Already in the drier,” her father said. He grabbed her pack and walked deeper into the house.
Arianne stared at his shoulders, still standing just outside the door. The ding of the oven pulled her inside.
Gasping awake, Arianne searched the gloom for the specters which had danced like kelp in her dreams a moment ago. A cold sweat rose from her skin as she lay in bed, gripping her sheets like a lifeline. Reality tiptoed into her room. What she’d seen defied anything she’d known to be true. Niko had been hoarding souls in his basement. His ghost butler told her to bring him there, but for what reason? And why did the butler not want to touch him? He said something strange like being drained. What could be drained out of a ghost?
She sat up, drinking air in gulps. Too fast. Too hard. All at once. She’d arrived at Hyperventilation City, population: one. Her lungs burned. Her heart attempted to punch a hole through her heaving chest. She snaked her fingers into the tangle of her hair.
She continued to worry, no matter what she’d witnessed. He’d literally faded before her eyes, limb by limb. When she exited St. Joseph’s, the last thing she’d expected was Niko sitting on a bench across the street in an expensive suit. Her first thought: God, he’s so sexy. Her second: What’s he doing here? Alarm infused her third: Why does his skin look gray? She ran to him without thinking twice, crossing traffic as if cars couldn’t kill her.
“It’s just not possible,” she said to her empty room, moonlight her only visitor.
With sleep a forgotten dream, she got out of bed, grabbed her robe, and left, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could. Her father’s snores down the hall made her pause.
Awkward had joined the two of them for dinner. They’d eaten in silence until her father spoke up.
“You look like you’re either about to cry or run out of the house, honey.” He sprinkled more parmesan onto his lasagna.
“I’m just tired, Dad, that’s all,” came the lie. “School’s been a total pain lately.”
He stared at her. “Is it about Carrie?”
“Carrie? No!” She checked herself. “She’s fine. I left her all smiles.”
“Then what’s really bothering you? And don’t insist it’s school.”
Arianne stared at the ceiling before meeting her father’s steady gaze. “Have you ever been worried about someone?”
His fork hovered above his plate. “Someone?”
She squirmed. “This boy—”
“A boy you like?”
She checked her dinner for habanero peppers. Her neck felt too hot for just lasagna. “No!”
“Honey, it’s fine to like someone. You’re at that age.” He resumed eating, all worry gone from his features. “So, tell me about this boy.”
“No, Dad, it’s not about that. A friend looked sick and I’m worried about him. That’s all.”
“My Ari, always caring for the welfare of others.”
The goofy grin on her father’s face earned a flying chunk of garlic bread that hit him on the chest. Her initial salvo triggered a food fight that had them cleaning the kitchen for the rest of the evening.
Back to the present, her father’s soft snores reminded her of what she needed to do. She hurried down the stairs, shrugging on her robe as she went. After tying the belt tightly around her waist, she slipped into her sneakers and escaped via the back door.
Arianne stared up at the creepy Queen Ann house Ben called home. She’d forgotten to check the time when the impulse to go see him hit her.
Underneath the moonbeams, Ben’s house looked more ominous than it seemed during the day with its turrets and large chimneys. She stood there for a moment longer, debating between going home or climbing up the ladder leaning on the side of the house under Ben’s window.
He won’t be happy, her conscience said.
Who cares? I really need to talk to him.
In the end, her restlessness had her making the climb. She’d been in Ben’s room a thousand times, had witnessed its evolution from toy trucks and comic book superheroes to a baseball fan’s shrine. He had Atlanta Braves posters all over his walls. A bat signed by Dale Murphy lay on a stand at the top shelf of his bookcase. And his most prized possession—a baseball signed by Phil Niekro—sat on his bedside table next to his tomahawk lamp.
Ben slept on his stomach. He’d already kicked his blanket off and his even breathing poured guilt into her gut like liquid fire. Nevertheless, like the good, inconsiderate friend she’d been all these years, she bounced into his bed. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Ben yelped, falling off his bed. “What the hell!”
“Shhh!” Arianne crawled to where he sat. “It’s me. Don’t want to wake your dad now, do we?”
“Ari?” He rubbed his eyelids with the heels of his hands. “What time is it?”
She bit her lip to keep the grin from winning. He seemed coherent enough to hear her out, even if he normally needed hours to get his brain pumping on all cylinders.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
Ben made a whimpering sound akin to a hurt puppy and climbed back into bed, not caring if he edged her to the side. “You’re going to pay for this.” He reached for a pillow and placed it over his head.
“Ben, come on.” She grabbed his shirt and shook him. “I need to talk. It’s really important.”
“What’s so important that—” He sat up so fast, Arianne almost fell off the bed herself. He grabbed her shoulders, eyes wild and hair standing on end. “Is it Carrie? Is she okay?”
“Eh?”
Her reaction deflated his immediate concern. He glanced at the baseball mitt digital clock on his desk and growled like a poked bear. “Jesus, Ari, it’s four thirty. I have to be up in an hour.”
“Coach managed to reel you into morning training?” Arianne’s eyebrows nearly joined her hairline. “That’s impressive.”
“Big game coming up. But seriously, why are you here?”
He sounded so tired that Arianne hesitated for another second.
“Come on, Ari, spit it out. You didn’t wake me up for nothing.” Ben sat cross-legged, hands clutching his ankles.
Arianne scratched her ear. “It has something to do with Niko.”
His groan almost sounded pained. “Ari, this is ridiculous. You woke me up just to gush about Niko Clark? That’s just cruel, even for you.”
“No, no. Ben, listen. When I saw him at St. Joseph’s today—”
“He was at the hospital?” Ben interrupted.
Arianne waved her hands between them. “No, he was sitting on a bench in a suit.”
“A suit? Ari, did you hit your head or something?”
“Something weird’s going on with him. His skin looked gray, and on the bus, he was fading, and then his basement had a horde of dead people in it.”
Ben stared at her with a blank expression. He blinked once then a second time. Then he pouted and said, “Let’s get our ducks in a row, shall we?”
Arianne nodded reluctantly.
“You saw Niko sitting on a bench outside St. Joseph’s.”
“In a suit.”
“Yes. Then you noticed his skin looked gray.”
“Like sickly gray.”
“And somehow you got on a bus with him.”
“He asked me to take him home,” she answered in all seriousness.
“And he was fading,” Ben continued.
“Yeah, like first his hand, then his arm, and leg.”
“And when you got him home, you saw that his basement has a horde of dead bodies.”
“No! Souls. You know? My kind of ‘dead people.’”
Ben sighed and closed his eyes. “Go back to bed, Ari.”
Her jaw dropped. “You don’t believe me?”
“I’m not in the mood to process right now.” Ben hugged his pillow and yawned. “Let me have my last few minutes of sleep and we’ll revisit this again at lunch. Okay?”
As soon as he lay down, Ben had fallen asleep. Arianne sat on his bed, frozen and dumbstruck.
Arianne walked into the kitchen with a tension headache following close behind. Her conversation with Ben a couple of hours ago baffled her as much as what she’d told him about Niko. It didn’t seem like Ben believed her. Or maybe he did and he was more annoyed with the fact that she’d woken him up too early. She chose to believe the former despite her conscience saying, I told you so! She dumped her bag by the table and slumped into a chair.
“Rough night?” her father asked from the stove.
“You’re cooking?” she asked back, surprise dulling the pulse in her head.
“Just some eggs.” He grinned over his shoulder. “Scrambled?”
“With cheese, please.” She reached out for the carton of orange juice and poured herself half a glass.
“Coming right up.” Her father added a fistful of cheddar into the pan before dumping a heaping hill of orange-yellow fluff on Arianne’s plate. “You have to stop partying like you do. It’s not the era of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll anymore, babe.”
“Dad,” Arianne whined before scooping eggs into her mouth. She savored the tangy, cheesy goodness.
“Why were you sneaking out so early anyway?” He sat down and dug into his own egg mountain.
Arianne paused then swallowed. She took a sip of her juice and said, “I had to talk to Ben about something.”
“I bet he didn’t like that.”
“He listened to me though. Then he sent me away without really saying much about what I told him.”
“As your father—”
“Oh God, Dad, you’re not seriously—”
He held up a hand. “As your father, I feel that it’s my manly duty to say that at your age, it’s extremely inappropriate to be climbing into a boy’s room in the middle of the night.” He pointed his fork at her. “No matter how cute said boy is.”
“I don’t know what’s more horrifying, the fact that you’re giving me a version of ‘the talk,’ which Mom already gave, by the way, or that you just said Ben is cute.”
“With your mom at the hospital most of the time, I need to step up to the plate, sweetheart.”
“I know.” Arianne’s heart turned to mush.
“So, no matter what it is, you have to wait till decent hours to talk to Ben about it.” He stirred sugar into his coffee. “And I don’t want you climbing into his room anymore. Am I making myself clear?”
“Love you too.”
“Good.” He nodded his satisfaction and returned to his breakfast. “Now eat up, you don’t want to miss the bus.”
Arianne’s stomach flipped like a tumbler in a three-ring circus. She’d briefly forgotten why she’d spoken to Ben in the first place. Will I see him today?
Tension headache gone, nervous energy prevented her from finishing breakfast. She grabbed her bag, gave her dad a quick kiss good-bye, and ran out of the house with her heart pumping a million miles a minute.