The Time Has Come…

…for another installment of my work-in-progress.

Before we blast off, though, I hereby beg the writing gods to pick up the pace on this manuscript. I mean, I’m not Methuselah here. Time’s a-tickin’.

That said, I hope you enjoy.

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

chapter 4 (First Draft)

Opal Madden lives in a converted church (formerly Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian) with her golf-pro stepfather and fragile (often intoxicated) mother, a washed-up soap opera actress.

“You’re lucky it’s Monday,” I tell Haley as we coast to a stop in Mom’s Prius, my lack of a driver’s license endowing me with a paranoid eye-twitch, “and the restaurant’s closed.” I pop the shifter into park. “If we get caught,” I add, channeling a last-minute surge of adrenaline, “your head’s on the chopping block, not mine.”

Haley wiggles a hand under her cape (on top of everything else, she’s in Dracula mode) and withdraws a small bottle of clear liquid. I don’t recognize it until she spins it around, revealing the half-peeled bourbon label. “Here you go,” she says, tossing the holy water into my lap. “I thought this might help.”

I power the car down. “How did you…?”

She smirks. “I have powers too, you know.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Remember when you used that stuff on Dad?” she asks with a twirl of her dye-damaged split ends. “And he thought the coffee maker was on the fritz?”

I fight a smile. “That was pretty funny,” I say. “But it got him in for a physical, didn’t it? And once his lab work came back, Mom stopped moping around about the possibility of him dying. So it was a win-win.”

“That’s true,” Haley allows, her gaze locked on the inconspicuous front door of Madden’s House of Worship.

I sense something moving inside and –sure enough—Opal’s svelte, pale face appears, framed in a stained glass-bordered window as if she’s a religious icon or one of the living portraits from Harry Potter.

“Action!” I spout, a performance on the horizon (at least on the part of Opal’s mother).

Haley unbuckles, and I stifle a laugh; my sister is a knot of contradictions: head-banger music and death gear, safety belts and white-light altruism.

We traipse up to the church’s entrance, Opal’s knobby arm—followed by her slim-to-nonexistent profile—slipping out to greet us. “Sorry,” she begins, her eyes sandpapered- and puffy-looking, “but I didn’t know who else to call.” She gives a faint snort-sniffle.

“Where is she?” I inquire, as if I’m an old-timey doctor making a house call, which I sort of am.

“The bathtub,” she says with a resigned shake of her head.

“Anyone else home?”

“Nope.”

“What’re you gonna do?” wonders Haley.

“Fix her,” I say, surprised by the certainty in my voice.

Opal kicks the base of the door to nudge it open. “Come on in.”

The interior of the Madden house is the demented love child of a souvenir shop, a disco, and a bag of cotton candy (think psychedelic pastel colors, swarms of fringe and beads, and herds of ceramic elephants, poised to stampede).

I step over a pile of tattered People magazines and trail Opal and Haley into the bathroom, a voluminous space with two stalls (left over from the Saint Andrew’s days) and, behind a translucent screen, a Jacuzzi tub. “Mom?” Opal says softly as we approach. “You up?”

A garbled string of nonsense fills the air, the best translation of which, by my ear, is: What do you want? Just go away.

“I brought someone to see you,” coos Opal. She gives Haley and me the stop sign with her palm, then slinks behind the screen.

More gurgled syllables: Get out of here. I hate you.

I clear my throat. “Mrs. Madden? It’s me, Cassandra McCoy. Can I come in? I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

Opal’s mother and I (and George, too) worked on an Easter production of Alice in Wonderland at the Milford Community Theater three years ago. George did set design and construction; I was in the wardrobe department; Mrs. Madden played the Queen of Hearts (I even sewed the skirt for one of her costumes!) “Stupid people, always botherin’ me,” her slurred voice snipes.

Geez, and I thought she’d taken a shine to me.

“Mom,” whines Opal, her voice veering into panicked territory, “you don’t feel good. Cassie’s going to help you.”

I elbow Haley and mouth: Is she naked?

My sister shrugs, wrinkles her face in disgust: I don’t know.

I clutch her shoulders and deliver an encouraging little shove. “Check for me.”

She skids to a stop, shoots me a glare and whispers, “Jerk.”

“Just do it,” I reply, even softer. I flick my wrist to shoo her off.

She shakes her head and sighs, twists around the edge of the screen with her eyelids pinched to slits. Her torso freezes, as if she’s stopped breathing.

“So…?” I murmur.

“Ick.”

“Is it that bad?” I ask, tiptoeing up behind her.

“See for yourself.” She whips backwards and heads for one of the stalls. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

I don’t really have much of a choice. As my head rounds the screen, a noxious whiff of…decay overwhelms me. “What’s that smell?” I can’t help muttering, even though the question is ultra-rude.

Before anyone answers, I glimpse the source of the stench for myself: three days’ worth (give or take) of rotten, half-eaten snack foods—melted cookie-dough ice cream, oozing out of a bloated container; a bouquet of disposable cups, each holding an inch of spoiled milk and the remains of a nibbled peanut butter cup or peppermint patty; a brick of Swiss cheese, hacked off at weird angles and balanced—exposed—on the edge of the tub, gobs of dried body wash (or shampoo) acting as support beams.

Inside the tub—which is dry, thank God—Mrs. Madden is scrunched in a ball, her mouth gaping and a muffled snore pulsing through her airways.

Opal recognizes the disgust on my face and, once again, says, “Sorry.”

I pat her arm and smile. “Don’t worry about it. The Moondancer looks like this every night.” (Not really, but it does get pretty messy sometimes. And if it makes Opal feel better…)

“Wake up,” Opals says, poking delicately at her mother’s shoulder.

Mrs. Madden’s lips clamp together and she bolts upright, a dazed look clouding her eyes. “Erm..ur…grrm…”

In the distance, a sloppy spitting sound is followed by the whooshing flush of a toilet. I chance two small steps toward the Jacuzzi, where I hover a few feet over Mrs. Madden’s head and observe her aura, which is a striking combination of black and gold—and the black is winning, a fact that doesn’t surprise me given the state of this bathroom (not to mention Mrs. Madden’s hair, which is snarled into such a bleached-blond nest that a family of sparrows could take up permanent residence). “Hey there,” I say in a smooth, breathy voice.

She hangs both arms sloppily over the side of the tub. “What do you want?”

“Mom!” squeals Opal. “Cut it out!”

My vision is dazzled by a machine-gun spray of gold in Mrs. Madden’s darkening aura. I blink away ghostly spots from behind my eyelids and fix my gaze on her papery-looking fingers, which are cracked and red, raw to the point of bleeding. “I heard you were sad,” I say, the statement a lie only in the strictest sense, “and that you needed someone to talk to.”

“He left me!” she declares in her on-camera Hollywood voice. “And he ain’t never comin’ back!”

Opal gives a dismissive shake of her head. “It’s a fight, that’s all. Happens once a week.”

I argued with George too, I think. The brother-sister kind of needling. What I wouldn’t give to have a real grown-up fight with him right now.

“Would you guys mind, uh, leaving us alone?” I ask Haley (who’s a little shaky post-retch) and Opal.

Mrs. Madden grimaces. “I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do. I made your costumes for Alice in Wonderland.”

From the corner of my eye, I notice Haley grabbing Opal’s forearm and tugging her out the door. Under her breath, my sister mutters, “Luck o’ the Irish to ya.”

I squat beside the tub, my feet sinking into a mound of damp, musty towels. For maybe a whole minute, I don’t say a word. Instead, I study the worry lines—deep, sorry furrows—that crack Mrs. Madden’s face like faults through an earthquake zone. “How long have you been in here?” I ask eventually, my gaze stuck on the flowy arms of her sheer housedress, which resembles a cross between a genie’s costume and an angel’s robe.

She shifts to a kneeling position and drops back against the tub surround, a tendril of stray hair matted to her lipstick-caked mouth. “What time is it?” she asks with a squint.

I search the walls for a clock but come up empty. “Three-thirty?”

“Saturday?”

“Uh-uh.” I give a nonchalant shrug. “Monday.”

“Oh.” She peels the hair away from her mouth. “So what do I have to do to get rid of you?”

I flash my cheerleader smile (though, sadly, I’ve never shaken a pom-pom in my life). “Come out of there,” I say, extending a hand to help her over the side of the tub.

Clumsily, she latches on to me, her bony fingertips (thank God her nails are stubby and ragged, or I’d be donating blood) poking into my bicep. “Good,” I say, once she’s steadied on her feet beside me.

She loosens her grip on my arm but doesn’t let go. “You’re Cassandra McCoy,” she says, studying me with violet eyes that have suddenly gone clear.

I baby-step to the scalloped mother-of-pearl sink. “The one and only.”

An encore of the cheerleader grin.

“He feels bad about it, you know,” she tells me, a mystic, far-off tone to her otherwise scratchy voice.

I locate a plastic cup that’s as close to clean as we’re going to get, rinse it under the tap and fill it with cool water. “Where did he go?” I ask, trying to take an interest in Mr. Madden’s Houdini act.

“The astral plane.”

“Huh?” I hold the cup out, to suggest she should take a drink, but she stares right through it.

“Limbo,” she says. “The space between.”

Why am I here again? Oh, yeah. “Okay…uh, do you have a phone number? Maybe I can call him and…?”

She releases my arm, takes the cup and sets it back on the sink, amongst the spent toilet paper rolls, crumpled tissues and tipped-over bottles of makeup. Below a whisper, she intones, “Guilt is toxic.”

I finger the bourbon bottle in my pocket, work out how I’m going to get the holy water into that cup—and then into her. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”

She jerks out a wild cackle. “Forgive me?”

“I just mean that…well, everyone makes mistakes. You shouldn’t feel bad. It’ll probably blow over by tomorrow.” I sneak the nip bottle into my palm and carefully uncap it. When she’s not looking: drip, drip, drip—right into the cup.

“There’s no such thing as time in the astral plane.” A dizzy, fuzzy look comes over her.

I give the cup another try. “Aren’t you thirsty?”

She lets me slip the cup into her hand, then takes a long, slow gulp. “Suppose I was.”

I have no proof of this, but holy water seems to mellow people out, smooth their rough edges (at least that’s what it did for my dad). “Drink it all,” I prod. “In case you’re dehydrated.”

“He loves you,” she tells me, as the cup swings back toward her garishly outlined lips.

“Mr. Madden?”

“Of course not.” She shakes her head, he gaze floating toward the ceiling. “It’s the boy,” she mumbles. “George.”

“You’re gonna have to drive,” I tell Haley as we hustle to the Prius after an unsettling tea party with Opal and her mother. I toss the keys in my sister’s direction, but she lets them drop into the street, where they clatter across a manhole cover and skid under the car.

She looks at me like I’ve suggested sacrificing a goat. “Are you crazy?”

I hold my arms out, zombie-style. “You trust me?” I ask, watching my chipped blue fingernails tremble.

She crouches for the keys, fishes them out and gives them a doubtful stare-down. “Why don’t we just call Dad?”

It’s not a bad idea, since our father is the understanding—and forgiving—type. If Mom finds out we’ve kidnapped her baby (I swear sometimes that she loves this eco-friendly cruiser more than she does us) we’ll be headed for the guillotine. I check my cell phone for the time. “I doubt they’re back,” I say, referencing our parents’ weekly jaunt to Boston to nab supplies for the restaurant.

“Well, I’m not getting behind the wheel,” declares Haley, “and you can’t make me.”

Did she really just say that, or was it an echo from 2002? I wrench the keys from her hand. “Fine. If you’re going to be so…immature.”

Neither of us bothers speaking until the Prius hums into our garage at home, the ride an empty blur (which proves I had no business warming the driver’s seat in the first place). “Does this look right?” I ask as we exit the car, a wave of panic washing over me.

Haley studies the way I’ve parked, checks the concrete for chalk marks we’ve left behind as a guide. “You’re off by six inches,” she tells me flatly.

“Should I fix it?” I spin back toward the car. “I should fix it.”

“Lighten up,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “You’ll never get it perfect.” She snatches a whisk broom from a utility bench, where our father has stashed a jug of motor oil in hopes of becoming a do-it-yourself mechanic. “There,” she says, brushing away the first mark. “Good as new.” She taps me on the shoulder with the broom.

“She knew about George,” I mutter as I whisk the next chalk line out of existence. “Weird things. Personal things. Things she had no way of…”

“Is that why you’re acting so freaky?”

I guess she assumed I was rattled from the intervention, which went off swimmingly, all things considered. “Why won’t he talk to me?” I ask, not expecting an answer. “I was…” I finish the cover-up and return the broom to its slot. “We were…”

“You should have told him.”

A dagger to my heart. “Now you’re a relationship guru? How many boyfriends have you had?”

She grins. “Maybe I don’t like boys. Maybe I have a different preference.”

“Touché.” I give her a snappy nod. “Do you? Like boys, I mean?”

“They’re all right. Some of ‘em, anyway.”

“There’s none like George,” I say. “Not that I’ve seen.”

Haley shakes her head, a look of pity coloring her face. “Don’t you think it’s time,” she says gently, “to let it go?”

I am so sick of this conversation. For two years, I’ve heard nothing but: It’s not your fault, Cassie. George wouldn’t blame you. Remember the good times. Celebrate his life by living yours.

Ad nauseam.

It’s not like I don’t want to move on; I do. But I can’t. Not without George. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say. “Message received. Again.” I duck into the Prius for my English books (we’re simultaneously reading 1984 and Brave New World—sort of a compare and contrast assignment), which have been absorbing space in the backseat all weekend. As I wiggle the Orwell text—which has somehow become lodged in the seat crevice—to liberation, a startling sight catches my eye. “Haley, come here!” I shout, my voice shrill with alarm as it rebounds off my eardrums. She’s not moving fast enough. “Haley! Help!”

I sense her behind me. “What?”

All I can do is point.

“Oh…my…God,” she drawls, three measly syllables stretching the length of the alphabet song. She pushes in front of me and stares at the seat cushion, where, tied into a compact little knot, lies an empty Funyuns bag. “Omigod, omigod, omigod,” she spouts, shifting to staccato rhythm.

I poke absently at her spine. “When did Mom get this car?”

She shrugs.

“Think!” I demand. She goes for the chip bag, which, to any normal person, would look like trash. But we know better. “Don’t,” I warn. “Don’t touch it.” Disturbing this relic would be akin to defacing George’s grave.

Haley shimmies back out of the car, her face ashen. “It can’t be…” she says warily. “Can it?”

“When did Mom get this car?” I repeat, doing some mental math—although it’s all but impossible that the Funyuns bag has been kicking around the Prius since before George died.

Haley nibbles her lip. “July, I think. Or Maybe August.” She stares me dead in the eyes. “But it was definitely after seventh grade. I remember, because Mom and Dad had the station wagon when they took us to Six Flags.”

My sister is right, which leaves only one explanation: the hungry ghost of George Alfred Brooks has been noshing on delicious onion-flavored snacks, twisting the empty wrappers into his trademark bowtie knots (when he was alive, he claimed the packaging took up less space in landfills this way), and planting the evidence for me to find.

I want to say something, but my jaw just drops and hangs there, slack and dopey-looking.

“What’re you gonna do?” asks Haley.

There is no protocol for how to act when the dead best friend you secretly loved suddenly resurfaces—or at least his garbage does. “I don’t know.”