Ghost Island by Bonnie Hearn Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

curses and her voice. Yes. I was really here, breathing in the scent of rain and listening to the steady downpour.
    Getting my bearings took a moment. I was on my back as if I had been dropped there, fully clothed in my jeans and jacket. My arms rested on my chest, wrapped around some kind of wadded-up blanket. I sat up in bed and realized it wasn’t a blanket at all. No, it was the fringed black scarf, still damp from the rain. Grace’s scarf.
    The blond ghost girl—all of those disembodied shapes—they weren’t dreams. That was only the way I connected with them. Although I had seen ghosts since I was a little girl, starting with my Grandma Marie’s, I had never feared them. If anything, being able to see something nobody else saw made me feel special. Now, as I sat on the side of my bed in the sane light of day, I was terrified of the entities in the theater and even more so by what they wanted. They did want something, too, from me, from Grace, maybe from all of us. They were far from passive souls attempting to pass over from this world into whatever lay ahead. I could no longer pretend otherwise. The proof was right there in my hands.
    That morning at breakfast, Grace sat at the end of the long, wooden table. She looked worse than she had the day before, distracted and unfriendly, and she didn’t even seem to notice Emily flirting with Charles at the other end.
    “Look what I found.” I handed her the scarf.
    “Thanks.” Without changing her expression, she took it from me and placed it on her lap.
    “Don’t you want to know where I got it?” I asked her.
    “I said thanks. What else do you want?”
    “She might want to know why you’re being so bitchy, Grace.” Johnny pulled up a chair on the other side of her.
    He wore the navy hoodie that had become his uniform. His eyes were too glassy, too dull, and he smelled like a hangover.
    “Don’t give her a bad time,” I told him. “She doesn’t need it today.”
    “Stop defending me.” Grace c
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tched her coffee mug so fiercely I was afraid she was about to throw it at us. “Just leave me alone.”
    “Why didn’t I think of that?” Johnny moved closer to me. “Come on, Livia .”
    “Grace, please,” I said. “I need to know what’s going on. It’s important.”
    “Important to you maybe. Don’t you get that you’ve ruined everything?” Her eyes brimmed with tears.
    “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “What have I ruined?”
    “You know.” She took the scarf from her lap, slammed it on the table, and nodded toward Johnny. “Go with him. Get out of here. There’s nothing you can do to fix what you screwed up last night.”
    “What I screwed up?” Now I was angry. “In case you haven’t figured it out, Grace, what I did was try to save you from whatever is trying to...” I realized Johnny was taking in every word of this and I forced myself to smile at him. “I’m sorry, but, as you can see, she and I really need to work this out. In private.”
    “That’s for sure,” he said. “I’ll leave, all right, but before I do, let me make something clear.” For the first time since he’d played eye-contact games with me in Los Angeles, he ditched the role of the friendly cool guy. “You girls are both a little off, okay? I’m not the only one to notice it, either.”
    “How insightful,” I shot back at him. “Who else shares your brilliant observations?”
    “Emily, for one.”
    I laughed. “Well, maybe you should go hang out with her then.”
    “Now there’s an idea.” He took off across the room.
    Emily glanced up from her cozy little conversation with Charles and flashed Johnny her version of a sexy smile.
    “Enjoy,” I said.
    “ Livia , please.”
    Great! I was busted. Ms. Gates stood beside me. When had she slipped into the room? Her thick, dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. Even though she still wore cute jeans and was basically dressed like us, for the first time since we had started this