The Invited(82)

A spirit may come to pass along a message you may not wish to hear or even to warn you of something.

Sometimes they return to exact revenge.





INSULATION AND DRYWALL





CHAPTER 25



Olive





AUGUST 18, 2015

“I still can’t believe you actually went into Dicky’s,” Mike said, shaking his head. Olive hadn’t seen him since then—his mom had been keeping him busy, and between that and Olive still being pretty pissed at him for abandoning her, they hadn’t managed to find time to hang out. As soon as he met up with her, he asked her to tell him the whole story, every detail of what had happened once she went up those old stairs at the hotel. So she’d told it, but in a vague, rough-outline kind of way.

“And I can’t believe you ditched me. You are such a wimp,” she said. “You could have waited for me. I actually looked around for you when I came out. I thought maybe you’d at least stand guard or something.”

He said nothing, just looked down at his dirty sneakers.

They were out in the bog, near Hattie’s old house. Bullfrogs sang in a strange angry-sounding chorus, voices raised, like they were shouting over each other.

It was quiet up at Helen and Nate’s. Olive had spent the morning helping them fill the walls with rolls of pink fiberglass insulation. Even with gloves, long sleeves, and her jeans tucked into her boots, bits of fiberglass found their way to her skin and made her itchy, just like when she’d helped her dad with insulation. She’d kinda hoped Nate would use hay bales or milkweed fluff or recycled Patagonia fleece to insulate—no such luck. Probably too expensive. She went home, took a shower, and met up with Mike. Helen and Nate were hoping to finish the insulation today and start hanging drywall.

“What if someone had seen you going in?” Mike asked, reaching down, picking a handful of sedge grass. “What if your dad had found out you went there? He’d be pissed.”

    “Well, he didn’t, right? My dad isn’t exactly paying a whole lot of attention to where I go and what I do these days.”

Mike scowled, picked apart the grass in his hand, ripping it into tiny pieces. “Maybe he should. I mean, that guy Dicky is a legit weirdo. The dude lives with ghosts and carries a loaded gun everywhere! And don’t tell me you didn’t think that old hotel was creepy as hell.”

Olive had told Mike only what Dicky had told her: that her mom hadn’t been there. She’d decided to keep the phone call she’d heard to herself. And right now, she was realizing what a smart move that had been. No way was she going to tell Mike that she planned to go back next month, that there was some connection between her mom and Dicky and his ghost club.

“Did he have his gun when you saw him?”

“Sure,” Olive said.

“Oh man, oh man!” He dropped the grass, looked at her in wide-eyed amazement that soon morphed into this stupid, furrowed-brow reprimanding-parent kind of look. “Olive, do you get how dangerous that was?” There was spittle on his lower lip.

“Like he was going to shoot me for coming to his store in the middle of the day. Quit trying to act like you’re my dad,” Olive said.

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Mike shot back.

“Oh, really? ’Cause that’s what it seems like.”

“I don’t want to be your dad,” he said.

“Well, what is it you’re trying to be? A boyfriend, maybe? Because I so do not need a boyfriend.”

His cheeks turned lobster red and he stood up, glaring at her. “I am trying to be your friend, Olive.” He was wheezing a little, giving his words a whistling sound, like a freaking talking prairie dog with big sad eyes. “I’m, like, your only friend. If you’re too dense to get that, then maybe we shouldn’t be friends at all.”

He looked at her, waiting. Blood rushed in her ears. “Maybe not,” she said, glaring at him.

He turned his back and walked away.

She sat on the edge of the old stone foundation, her metal detector beside her, eyes on Mike’s back as he made his way along the edge of the bog to the path up through the woods.

“Scaredy-cat asshole!” she yelled after him when he was almost out of sight. “Think you’re so smart, but you don’t know shit!”

    She got up and started working the grid in a halfhearted, half-assed way.

She didn’t need Mike. She didn’t need anyone.

She rubbed away tears with a balled fist, let the metal detector fall to the ground.

She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for anymore.

The treasure, sure.

But more than that, she wanted answers.

What had her mother been up to? What had she found in Lewisburg? Something about Jane? Something that led Mama to find the treasure? Something that got her in trouble? And what had she been up to with Dicky and his friends at the old hotel? What did the chalked drawing of Mama’s necklace mean?

She felt like the pieces were all there in front of her like loose beads waiting to be strung in a pattern that made sense. Maybe if she’d told Mike everything, he could have helped her figure it out.

Too late now. He would’ve just gone running to her dad anyway, blabbed everything.