Prom Night in Purgatory(39)

“Roger started calling me Dizzy Lizzie about six months ago when I fainted at a party for Irene’s birthday.”

Lizzie pressed her face into Maggie’s shoulder, and her whisper was no longer audible.

“Lizzie? I can’t hear you....”

“...It had been following Roger around all night...”

“Who had been following Roger around?” Maggie was only getting bits and pieces of the story at this point. Lizzie was pressed against her so tightly that Maggie feared she would fall off the bed if she moved an inch.

“It wasn’t like other ghosts. It saw everything, watched everyone, but mostly it watched Roger. It stayed very close to him. I was afraid. I didn’t want to say anything to Reney or Daddy because I didn’t want to get in trouble.”

“There was a ghost hanging around Roger?” Now Maggie’s voice had dropped to the barest whisper.

“It wasn’t a ghost. It was more like a...shadow....with eyes.”

“What happened, Lizzie?” Maggie didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She didn’t worry about slipping back to the future any longer, but she worried about what their words would invite into Lizzie’s bedroom. A room occupied by not one but two girls who shared a gift for seeing what others could not....and what others would rather not.

“I was so afraid, I forgot to breathe. I fainted right into my dinner. Nana came and helped me clean up, but I was still dizzy and felt sick, so I stayed up in my room for the rest of the night.”

Maggie breathed out, slightly relieved that the story had ended rather anticlimactically. She had just started to relax when Lizzie spoke again.

“I think that shadow thing is inside Roger.”

***

Morning came and with it the sunlight that cast the terrors of the night into a more manageable light. Lizzie hadn’t wanted to talk anymore about the “shadow” inside Roger. She had clammed up and pretended to fall asleep when Maggie tried to coax her to explain what she meant. Maggie had lain in the dark for a long time after that, afraid that she was stuck in a whirlwind of events that she could only be harmed by, and uncertain as to where to proceed if given the chance for one more day in Johnny’s world.

Lizzie had introduced her to Nana, claiming she was a cousin from McClintock, about two hours south, who had come to visit for the day while her mother spent time with a sick friend. Nana, who had the very unoriginal name of Mary Smith, said a polite hello but seemed very uninterested in Maggie or who she was, which was fortunate because she let the girls be. She was like an efficient shadow, cleaning and polishing, providing lunch and putting away laundry, never saying much, her neat self fitting into the neat corner the family had placed her in. She was unobtrusive to the point of being almost robotic, and Maggie wondered that Lizzie spent so much time in the company of someone who seemed so void of personality. It hadn’t put a damper on Lizzie’s personality, however. The girl was brimming with intelligence and life, and Maggie genuinely enjoyed being in her company. She had peppered Maggie with questions, and Maggie had tried her best to answer them, stopping altogether when she felt that strange tugging sensation inside that indicated she was nearing a line that should not or could not be broached.

The fatigue that had so consumed her the night before had left her, and Maggie wondered if it wasn’t some form of cosmic jet lag that had left her system reeling rather then a signal she would soon be going home. With her returned energy, Maggie considered the idea of attending the prom after all. Johnny would be there as would so many others she had heard him talk about. She had even seen pictures. She could do it, couldn’t she? Johnny would be there with Peggy, who was being pursued hotly by Carter, leaving Johnny somewhat free for a “chance encounter.” She would have to go alone, but the more she thought about it, the more the idea appealed to her.

She bathed in the pink tiled bathroom with the perfectly square tub, brushing her teeth at the pink pedestal sink with handles to turn the water off and on rather than knobs. This bathroom had been redone sometime in the last fifty years. The pink was long gone in 2011.

She let her hair air dry, and then she and Lizzie rolled it into giant scratchy rollers with pink pins that stuck out every which way, making her look like a porcupine with pink quills. Lizzie thought they should go downtown and get her hair cut in the latest style, but Maggie declined. She was willing to go only so far to play the part of a ‘50s teenager. It was while they were rolling her hair in curlers that Lizzie made a horrifying discovery.

“You have holes in your ears!” Lizzie cried, her voice equal parts awe and horror.

“So?” Maggie raised her eyebrows, laughing at the shock on the little girl’s face.

“Nobody has their ears pierced! Irene told me only girls who aren’t very nice pierce their ears.”

Maggie didn’t know what to say. She stared at Lizzie for a moment, wondering if that were true of everyone in the fifties or just the Honeycutts.

“No one wears earrings?”

“Girls wear earrings. See?” Lizzie grabbed a ornate jewelry box sitting atop the vanity table and riffled through it, pulling out two glittering bobs with screw like attachments on the back. She stared at the little loops in Maggie’s ears, as if they were spiders hanging from her lobes.

“How do you get them off?” she whispered, poking at one of the loops.