Ghost Flower by Michele Jaffe Read Free Book Online Page B

phone?
    “Gotta go,” the voice on the television says, and I realize something about it is familiar. My pulse begins to race, and an alarm goes off in my head. I grasp desperately for the phone, and my fingertips graze it. The receiver flies off and falls to the floor, and as I reach and catch it in my hand, my mind flashes
Watch out!
and I turn and see—
    Bain was standing by the side of the bed when I opened my eyes.
    “Did you know you talk in your sleep?” he said.
    I was breathing fast, and my heart was pounding. “What are you doing here?” I got up on one elbow and glanced at the clock next to the bed. It read eight A.M . “It’s the crack of dawn,” I complained as though for years I hadn’t been used to getting up hours earlier. Then I noticed his white shorts and white shirt. “Why are you dressed like a hospital orderly?”
    “Tennis,” he said, tossing the red-and-white-handled racquet I’d seen in the photo on the piano in the air and catching it. “Bridgette thinks it’s important that you at least know the basics of tennis even if you say you won’t play. The caretakers at the big house go to church Sunday mornings, so we have a few hours when they’re not around. Come on.”
    I pulled the covers up to my chin. “I don’t know what to wear.”
    “I put some of Bridgette’s tennis stuff on the couch,” he said. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”
    I was still slightly rattled as I jimmied myself into Bridgette’s clothes, picked up the tennis racket, and stumbled downstairs. I hadn’t heard Bridgette arrive, but she was sitting at the counter with one leg tucked up under her, sipping her fake-sweetened coffee, touching a piece of toast as though she might eat it, and reading the paper. She gave me a quick look, said, “Bain is already down on the court,” and went back to her breakfast.
    No coffee for me, I gathered.
    Between the lack of caffeine and the fact that Bridgette’s shoes were two sizes too big, I wasn’t my most graceful as I went down the tower stairs to the front door, but as soon as I stepped out into the morning air I felt energized. The guest house was beautiful, but to avoid being seen, I’d been inside for the entire past week. I felt free, like I’d been liberated from some kind of prison. The kind with the eight-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
    The tennis courts were between the main house and the guest house. You could see them from the French windows so I knew where I was going, but on the ground they were shielded behind a series of tall hedges. Even before I caught sight of them, I could hear the satisfying
thwop thwop thwop
of tennis balls being hit by a racket as a ball machine spewed balls at Bain. When I reached the fence, I stopped to watch him play. He moved with the kind of confidence and ease that come from natural skill, not practice. Which didn’t surprise me—it was hard to imagine Bain practicing anything. He was the kind of person who did what he wanted but didn’t work very hard at it.
    He saw me standing there, hit a remote control, and the ball machine went quiet. “Just warming up.”
    “I think you meant showing off.”
    “Trust me, you’ll know when I’m showing off. Let’s see what you can do.”
    The next ninety minutes were an endless study in what I
couldn’t
do. Which included: hold the racket properly, hit the ball forehand, hit the ball backhand, hit the ball over the net, serve, volley, and keep score.
    At one point I saw Bain glance in the direction of the guest house hopefully, but apparently whatever he was looking for was absent. So he returned his attention, dejectedly, to me.
    It was excruciating, him lobbing balls to me, me somehow managing to always be in exactly the wrong place and missing them. Once when I wasn’t paying attention, I accidentally hit a ball, and Bain’s face lit up. After that I tried harder, which guaranteed it wouldn’t happen again. The times I did manage to connect the