Meg Cabot: Shadowland

I tried to sit up. It was really hard. Every muscle in my body felt as if it had been pounded on. I pushed some hair out of my eyes and blinked at him. "You didn't have to," I said. "Stay home on my account, I mean."

Andy shrugged. "It's no big deal. I've barely had a chance to talk to you since you got here, so I thought we could catch up. You want some lunch?"

The minute he said it, my stomach growled. I was starving.

He heard it, and grinned. "No problem. Get dressed and come on downstairs. We'll have lunch on the deck. It's really beautiful out today."

I dragged myself out of bed with an effort. I had my pj's on. I didn't feel very much like getting dressed. So I just pulled on some socks and a bathrobe, brushed my teeth, and stood for a minute by the bay windows, looking out as I tried to work the snarls out of my hair. The red dome of the Mission church glowed in the sunlight. I could see the ocean winking behind it. You couldn't tell from up here that it had been the scene last night of so much destruction.

It wasn't long before an extremely appetizing aroma rose up from the kitchen, and lured me down the stairs. Andy was making Reuben sandwiches. He waved me out of the kitchen, though, toward the huge deck he'd built onto the back of the house. The sun was pouring down there, and I stretched out on one of the padded chaise longues, and pretended like I was a movie star for a while. Then Andy came out with the sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade, and I moved to the table with the big green umbrella over it, and dug in. For a non-New Yorker, Andy grilled a mean Reuben.

And that wasn't all he grilled. He spent a half hour grilling me pretty thoroughly... but not about what had happened the night before. To my astonishment, Sleepy and Doc had kept their mouths shut. Andy was perfectly in the dark about what had happened. All he wanted to know was whether I liked my new school, if I was happy, blah, blah, blah....

Except for one thing. He did say to me, as he was asking me how I liked California, and was it really so very different from New York – uh, duh – "So, I guess you slept straight through your first earthquake."

I nearly choked on a chip. "What?"

"Your first quake. There was one last night, around two in the morning. Not a big one, really – round about a four pointer – but it woke me up. No damage, except down at the Mission, evidently. Breezeway collapsed. But then, that should come as no surprise to them. I've been warning them for years about that timber. It's nearly as old as the Mission itself. Can't be expected to last forever."

I chewed more carefully. Wow. Heather's goodbye bang must have really packed a wallop if people all over the Valley, and even up in the hills, had felt it.

But that still didn't explain how David had known to look for me down at the school.

I'd moved upstairs, and was sitting on the window seat in my room flipping through a mindless fashion magazine, wondering where Jesse had gone off to, and how long I was going to have to wait before he showed up to give me another one of his lectures, and if there was any chance he might call me querida again, when the boys got home from school. Dopey stomped right past my room – he still blamed me for getting him grounded – but Sleepy poked his head in, looked at me, saw that I was all right, then went away, shaking his head. Only David knocked, and when I called for him to come in, did so, shyly.

"Um," he said. "I brought you your homework. Mr. Walden gave it to me to give to you. He said he hoped you were feeling better."

"Oh," I said. "Thanks, David. Just put it down there on the bed."

David did so, but he didn't go. He just stood there staring at the bedpost. I figured he needed to talk, so I decided to let him by not saying anything myself.

"Cee Cee says hi," he said. "And that other kid. Adam McTavish."

"That's nice of them," I said.

I waited. David did not disappoint.

"Everybody's talking about it, you know," he said.

"Talking about what?"

"You know. The quake. That the Mission must be over some fault no one ever knew about before, since the epicenter seemed to be ... seemed to be right next to Mr. Walden's classroom."

I said, "Huh," and turned the page of my magazine.

"So," David said. "You're never going to tell me, are you?"

I didn't look at him. "Tell you what?"

"What's going on. Why you were down at the school in the middle of the night. How that breezeway came down. Any of it."

"It's better that you don't know," I said, flipping the page. "Trust me."

"But it doesn't have to do with... with what Jake said. With a gang. Does it?"

"No," I said.

I looked at him then. The sun, pouring through my windows, brought out the pink highlights in his skin. This boy – this red-headed boy with the sticky-outy ears – had saved my life. I owed him an explanation, at the very least.

"I saw it, you know," David said.

"Saw what?"

"It. The ghost."

He was staring at me, white faced and intent. He looked way too serious for a twelve year old.

"What ghost?" I asked.

"The one who lives here. In this room." He glanced around, as if expecting to see Jesse looming in one of the corners of my bright, sunny room. "It came to me, last night," he said. "I swear it. It woke me up. It told me about you. That's how I knew. That's how I knew you were in trouble."

I stared at him with my mouth hanging open. Jesse? Jesse had told him? Jesse had woken him up?

"It wouldn't let me alone," David said, his voice trembling. "It kept on... touching me. My shoulder. It was cold and it glowed. It was just a cold, glowing thing, and inside my head there was this voice telling me I had to get down to the school and help you. I'm not lying, Suze. I swear it really happened."

"I know it did, David," I said, closing the magazine. "I believe you."

He'd opened his mouth to swear it was true some more, but when I told him I believed him, his jaw clicked shut. He only opened it again to say wonderingly, "You do ?"

"I do," I said. "I didn't get a chance last night to say it, so I'll say it now. Thank you, David. You and Jake saved my life."

He was shaking. He had to sit down on my bed, or he probably would have fallen down.

"So... " he said. "So it's true. It really was... the ghost?"

"It really was."

He digested that. "And why were you down at the school?"

"It's a long story," I said. "But I promise you, it doesn't have anything to do with gangs."

He blinked at me. "Does it have to do with ... the ghost?"

"Not the one who visited you. But yes, it had to do with a ghost."

David's lips moved, but I don't think he was really aware he was speaking. What came out of his mouth was an astonished, "There's more than one?"

"Oh, there's way more than one," I said.

He stared at me some more. "And you ... you can see them?"

"David," I said. "This isn't really something I'm all that comfortable discussing – "

"Have you seen the one from last night? The one who woke me up?"

"Yes, David. I've seen him."

"Do you know who he is? How he died, I mean?"

I shook my head. "No. Remember? You were going to look it up for me."

David brightened. "Oh, yeah! I forgot. I checked some books out yesterday – stay here a minute. Don't go anywhere."

He ran from the room, all of his recent shock forgotten. I stayed where I was, exactly as he'd told me to. I wondered if Jesse was somewhere nearby, listening. I figured it would serve him right if he were.

David was back in a flash, bringing with him a large pile of dusty, oversize books. They looked really ancient, and when he sat down beside me and eagerly began leafing through them, I saw that they were every bit as old as they looked. None of them had been published after nineteen ten. The oldest had been published in eighteen forty-nine.