What Maisie Knew: 34. Something With An M

Mom gave me a tight hug and said, "My gosh, Marcie! Now I'm having adventures, just like you!"

I rolled my eyes, and she burst out laughing.

What Maisie Knew: A Marcie Donner Story, by Kaleigh Way

 
34. Something With An M

 

"How do you get to school?" Mom asked Misty. "Do you walk, or fly, or...?"

Misty giggled. "Fly? No! I just think about Marcie in a certain way, and then I end up wherever she is."

"Really?" I asked. "Can you do that with anybody?"

"Anybody I know, I guess," she said. "Sometimes it doesn't work, but usually it does."

A light went on in my head. "Can you go to Susan's house and try to appear to her?" I asked. "She'd really like to see you."

"Okay," Misty said brightly. "I'll be right back." With that, she faded out.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Marcie?" my mother asked. "Susan could get a nasty fright."

"Believe me, nothing rattles Susan. If you put a bomb next to her she would look it over and try to find the OFF switch."

Mom drew a deep breath and smiled. Then she gave me a tight hug and said, "My gosh, Marcie! Now I'm having adventures, just like you!"

I rolled my eyes, and she burst out laughing.


Misty didn't come back right away. It wasn't until almost an hour later, when Mom called to me from the kitchen. "She's back!"

I ran down the stairs. Misty was so excited that her hands were waving and she was jumping like a little girl. "She could see me! She could see me! And she knew who I was! She recognized me right away!"

"Was she frightened?" Mom asked.

"No! Not at all! She just looked up and said, 'You must be Misty Sabatino' – as if she was expecting me!"

"Yeah, Susan is super calm," I said. "Nothing surprises her."

"You know what she said?" Misty asked. "She said that she should change her name to something that starts with an M."

"Why?" I asked, frowning.

"Because there's Marcie, Maisie, Misty, ...., and Susan."

"Oh, I see," I said. How weird. Usually Suze didn't say anything that dumb.


"Duh!" Susan said at lunch on Thursday. "Of course I don't! The point is, I proved that it happened!"

"How?" I asked.

"I sent you a message," Susan explained patiently. "Something you couldn't expect me to say, and something you couldn't receive any other way."

"Huh." She was right. "Did you think of it just then? in that moment?"

"No," she said, as if it were obvious. "I was ready, in case it happened. Now we know that none of us imagined her."

"Wow, Suze. You really are smart."

Susan stifled a yawn.

"Why are you so tired?"

"Because after you fell asleep, Misty came to my house and woke me up. She talked my head off. It was like she swallowed a radio. My eyes were rolling in my head, I was so tired."

"Why didn't you tell her to let you sleep?"

"Well, I did in the end, but it was so interesting talking to her! I've never met a ghost before. Oh, and I gave her that letter."

"What letter?"

"The one from the newspaper, about how she died. I don't know if it was a good idea, but it got her to go back home and let me fall asleep."

She groaned. "I could fall asleep right now." With that, she lay her head on the table.

Maisie came bounding up at the point and dropped her tray with a crash. Susan winced, but kept her head down. Miraculously, nothing spilled, but Maisie's soup splashed and narrowly missed my books.

"Hey, watch it!" I cried.

"Oooh, sorry, Princess," she cooed.

"What is it with you?" I asked. "You're acting more and more like a boy!"

"That's strange, coming from you," she countered.

I eyed her suspiciously. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She started eating, again chewing with her mouth open. "What do you think it means?" she asked.

"It means that you think that teasing me is funny," I said.

"Oh, sorry," she said in an exaggerated way. "I just thought you might miss your old days in Tarhent, back when you were Mark."

"Oh, brother," I said crossly. If she kept this up, I was going to go to the library.

Suddenly I got a wiff of cigarette smoke from her direction. Susan's head came up at the same moment, and she looked directly at Maisie. She must have smelled it too.

"Maisie," I asked, "Are you smoking more than usual?"

"Yeah, so?"

"No offense," Susan offered, "but you reek of it."

That brought Maisie down to earth. She closed her mouth as she chewed. She seemed to be mulling it over. Then she asked in a quiet voice, "Do you think your mother will smell it?"

"Yeah!" Suze and I said with one voice.

I looked at her and considered for a moment. My mother was the only adult with whom Maisie had a positive relationship. And it meant a lot to her. "Just air out your uniform tonight," I told her. "If it still smells of smoke tomorrow, we can try switching clothes before you go with my mother... though I'm not sure I could fit into your things."

Maisie smiled, and for once I thought she was going to say something nice. Instead she said, "Thanks, Marky, but I don't wear boy's clothes."

© 2007 Kaleigh Way



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