Ghost Flower by Michele Jaffe Read Free Book Online Page A

said, half-babbling to cover my excitement.
    “That’s why you really only need to get an idea of who her classmates are, in case they come up in conversation.” Bain gulped the beer down fast. “They’re graduating on June 14, and most of them will be taking off for the summer right after. So if you don’t come to Tucson until a week later, you won’t run into them.”
    “Clever. Bridgette’s idea?”
    I saw him start to frown then stop. “You just made a joke.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “And another one. No more meat for you.”
    I don’t know what I expected, but when I found Aurora’s class picture, it wasn’t like looking in the mirror or meeting an old friend. It was generic, long dark hair parted on the side, headband, cardigan. She was smiling but not really, her expression as blank and hollow as a tribal mask.
    Bain took the yearbook from me, flipped a few pages to a spread of candid photos titled “Community Activities” and pushed it back in my direction. His finger tapped a picture of two girls with bikes, side by side under a banner that said, “Be a Hero Bikeathon.”
    One of them was dressed as Catwoman in an all-black bodysuit with cat ears, a cat collar, and a looped tail dangling off the back of her bike seat. The other was dressed as Wonder Woman in blue boy shorts with a white trim, a red T-shirt that had two yellow sequin W’s glued on, and a yellow headband. She’d wrapped the hand gripsof her bike in yellow tape to go with the Wonder Woman theme, and there was a red crystal star glued between handlebars.
    “Aurora,” Bain said, his finger resting on the one dressed like Catwoman. It was almost a shock to see her here. She looked so different from the sedate class photo. Here her hair was wild under the cat ears. She wore thick black eyeliner and was smiling in a confident, almost mocking way that was echoed in her posture, as though the costume fit not just her body but also her personality like a glove.
    With all that confidence, the challenging smile, I would have expected her to be looking at the camera, but instead she was gazing at the girl next to her. That girl was lovely, with a golden mass of hair that framed her face like a corona, porcelain skin, and huge blue eyes. She seemed mild, and, unlike Aurora, her costume didn’t seem to suit her at all. She looked like a doll someone had dressed up in another doll’s outfit, but her smile was friendly and candid. I could imagine having lunch with her, talking for hours, lying on a picnic blanket and staring up at clouds and cracking stupid jokes. “That’s Liza,” Bain said, and I couldn’t quite tell from his tone what he thought of her. “The one who committed suicide.”
    I stared at the photo for a long time, but the more I looked, the more it seemed to disassemble before my eyes. Liza came into sharper focus—sweet, funny, nice, pretty, kind—while Aurora became more of a blur. For the first time I began to see Aurora’s resemblance to me. But it wasn’t in her face; it was her eyes. I recognized the expression there from my own—the expression of someone who is keeping a secret.
    Who are you?
I asked myself.
What happened to you?
    I didn’t realize, then, that I had been staring at half the answer since I arrived.

CHAPTER 10
    T here is noise coming from somewhere, like a television, a man’s voice saying, “Come on.” I’m standing in an unfamiliar room.
    My heart begins to pound, and I hear a ring-a-linging in my ears. Then I realize it’s the phone in the room.
You have to answer it,
I think
. It’s life and death.
    “It’s time,” the voice on the TV says, getting louder, like it’s trying to distract me from the ring-a-linging. I back toward the night table (“Let’s go!” says the voice), toward the phone, groping behind me to answer it. I keep thinking I’m nearly there, but it keeps receding. Glancing down, I see a notepad with the name TOM YAW written across the top. Is that who is on the