"You should try putting a poultice of gum flower leaves on them," he interrupted.
"Oh, okay," I said, managing not to sound too sarcastic.
He frowned at me. "Little yellow flowers," he said. "They grow wild. They have healing properties in them, you know. There are some growing on that hill out behind the house."
"Oh," I said. "You mean that hill where all the poison oak is?"
"They say gunpowder works, too."
"Oh," I said. "You know, Jesse, you might be surprised to learn that medicine has advanced beyond flower poultices and gunpowder in the past century and a half."
"Fine," he said, dropping my hands. "It was only a suggestion."
"Well," I said. "Thanks. But I'll put my faith in hydrocortisone."
He looked at me for a little while. I guess he was probably thinking what a freak I am. I was thinking how weird it was, the fact that this guy had held my scaly, poison-oaky hands. Nobody else would touch them, not even my mother. But Jesse hadn't minded.
Then again, it wasn't as if he could catch it from me.
"Susannah," he said, finally.
"What?"
"Go carefully," he said, "with this woman. The woman who was here."
I shrugged. "Okay."
"I mean it," Jesse said. "She isn't - she isn't who you think she is."
"I know who she is," I said.
He looked surprised. So surprised it was kind of insulting, actually. "You know? She told you?"
"Well, not exactly," I said. "But you don't have to worry. I've got things under control."
"No," he said. He got up off the bed. "You don't, Susannah. You should be careful. You should listen to your father this time."
"Oh, okay," I said, very sarcastically. "Thanks. Do you think maybe you could be creepier about it? Like could you drool blood, or something, too?"
I guess maybe I'd been a little too sarcastic, because instead of replying he just disappeared.
Ghosts. They just can't take a joke.
CHAPTER 6
"You want me to what?"
"Just drop me off," I said. "On your way to work. It's not out of your way."
Sleepy eyed me as if I'd suggested he eat glass or something. "I don't know," he said slowly as he stood in the doorway, the keys to the Rambler in his hand. "How are you going to get home?"
"A friend is coming to pick me up," I said, brightly.
A total lie, of course. I had no way of getting home. But I figured in a pinch, I could always call Adam. He'd just gotten his license as well as a new VW bug. He was so hot to drive, he'd have picked me up from Albuquerque if I'd called him from there. I didn't think he'd mind too much if I called him from Thaddeus Beaumont's mansion on Seventeen Mile Drive.
Sleepy still looked uncertain. "I don't know...." he said, slowly.
I could tell he thought I was headed for a gang meeting, or something. Sleepy has never seemed all that thrilled about me, especially after our parents' wedding when he caught me smoking outside the reception hall. Which is so totally unfair since I've never touched a cigarette since.
But I guess the fact that he'd recently been forced to rescue me in the middle of the night when this ghost made a building collapse on me didn't exactly help form any warm bond of trust between us. Especially since I couldn't tell him the ghost part. I think he believes I'm just the type of girl buildings fall on top of all the time.
No wonder he doesn't want me in his car.
"Come on," I said, opening up my camel-colored calf-length coat. "How much trouble could I get up to in this outfit?"
Sleepy looked me over. Even he had to admit I was the epitome of innocence in my white cable knit sweater, red plaid skirt, and penny loafers. I had even put on this gold cross necklace I had been awarded as a prize for winning this essay contest on the War of 1812 in Mr. Walden's class. I figured this was the kind of outfit an old guy like Mr. Beaumont would appreciate: you know, the sassy schoolgirl thing.
"Besides," I said. "It's for school."
"All right," Sleepy said at last, looking like he really wished he were someplace else. "Get in the car."
I hightailed it out to the Rambler before he had a chance to change his mind.
Sleepy got in a minute later, looking drowsy, as usual. His job, for a pizza stint, seemed awfully demanding. Either that or he just put in a lot of extra shifts. You would think by now he'd have saved enough for that Camaro. I mentioned that as we pulled out of the driveway.
"Yeah," Sleepy said. "But I want to really cherry her out, you know? Alpine stereo, Bose speakers. The works."
I have this thing about boys who refer to their cars as "she" but I didn't figure it would pay to alienate my ride. Instead, I said, "Wow. Neat."
We live in the hills of Carmel, overlooking the valley and the bay. It's a beautiful place, but since it was dark out all I could see were the insides of the houses we were driving by. People in California have these really big windows to let in all the sun, and at nighttime when their lights are on you can see practically everything they're doing, just like in Brooklyn, where nobody ever pulled down their blinds. It's kind of homey, actually.
"What class is this for, anyway?" Sleepy asked, making me jump. He so rarely spoke, especially when he was doing something he liked, like eating or driving, that I had sort of forgotten he was there.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"This paper you're doing." He took his eyes off the road a second and looked at me. "You did say this was for school, didn't you?"
"Oh," I said. "Sure. Uh-huh. It's, um, a story I'm doing for the school paper. My friend Cee Cee, she's the editor. She assigned it to me."
Oh my God, I am such a liar. And I can't leave at just one lie, either. Oh, no. I have to pile it on. I am sick, I tell you. Sick.
"Cee Cee," Sleepy said. "That's that albino chick you hang out with at lunch, right?"
Cee Cee would have had an embolism if she'd heard anyone refer to her as a chick, but since, technically, the rest of his sentence was correct, I said, "Uh-huh."
Sleepy grunted and didn't say anything else for a while. We drove in silence, the big houses with their light-filled windows flashing by. Seventeen Mile Drive is this stretch of highway that's supposed to be like the most beautiful road in the world, or something. The famous Pebble Beach Golf course is on Seventeen Mile Drive, along with about five other golf courses and a bunch of scenic points, like the Lone Cypress, which is some kind of tree growing out of a boulder, and Seal Rock, on which there are, you guessed it, a lot of seals.
Seventeen Mile Drive is also where you can check out the colliding currents of what they call the Restless Sea, the ocean along this part of the coast being too filled with riptides and undertows for anyone to swim in. It's all giant crashing waves and tiny stretches of sand between great big boulders on which sea gulls are always dropping mussels and stuff, hoping to split the shells open. Sometimes surfers get split open there, too, if they're stupid enough to think they can ride the waves.
And if you want, you can buy a really big mansion on a cliff overlooking all this natural beauty, for a mere, oh, zillion dollars or so.
Which was apparently what Thaddeus "Red" Beaumont had done. He had snatched up one of those mansions, a really, really big one, I saw, when Sleepy finally pulled up in front of it. Such a big one, in fact, that it had a little guard's house by the enormous spiky gate in front of its long, long driveway, with a guard in it watching TV.
Sleepy, looking at the gate, went, "Are you sure this is the place?"
I swallowed. I knew from what Cee Cee had said that Mr. Beaumont was rich. But I hadn't thought he was this rich.
And just think, his kid had asked me to slow dance!