Chapter 8

The second she saw her parents on the porch swing, Jessie knew she was in for it. Bad enough they'd prejudged Tanner, but she was also nearly an hour later than she'd told them she'd be. They were sure to think the worst, and there was little she could do to change that. She wasn't even sure she wanted to try.

"Where have you been?" her mother demanded the moment Jessie's foot hit the bottom step. What could she say? Gee, Mom, I went to see a fortuneteller who told me I needed to go back in time again to see why I'm needed? What do I mean by again? Well, apparently I've been there before, but am too stupid to remember.

Yeah. That'd do it. The men in little white suits would come. Well, it wouldn't be the first time they'd shipped her off for repairs. The rehab center she'd been assigned to after the World's Biggest Drug Bust, though not employing white suit wearers, was, nonetheless, the same sort of prison. After two weeks there, if she hadn't mental issues to begin with, she could easily have picked up some. Those kids were whacked. Loonie Tunes. Nutjobs. She had managed to convince her parents to take her out two weeks early, and her Dad had made some arrangement with the judge that let her leave the state.

Well, part of the truth was preferable to none of it, so Jessie sat on the top stair and faced the firing squad. "Tanner introduced me to the town psychic and I was visiting her. Sorry I'm so late, but she's really cool, and not at all like everyone thinks. She knows a lot."

Either she had momentarily stunned them into silence, or they weren't really up to an explanation in the first place. Jessie could hear the rifles load.

"Honestly, Jess, did you intentionally seek out the exact kind of boy who got you into all your drug troubles in the first place?"

Jessie stared at her father. He hadn't heard a word she'd said. "I wasn't with Tanner, Dad. I was hanging with Madame Ceara, the psychic."

Reena motioned for Jessie to move closer. Jessie rose, knowing what was coming-another smelling test. God, would they ever tire of hanging on so tightly to their distrust and suspicions?

Reena rose and put her face into Jessie's hair. Backing away as if struck, she looked at Rick with so much pain and disappointment, Jessie thought she was going to cry.

"Oh, Jessie."

"What? I didn't do anything!"

Rick rose. When he smelled his daughter's head, he crumpled back into the swing, shaking his head and sighing. "We'd really rather you told us the truth, honey."

Oh yeah, now there was a great idea.

Reena added, "Remember what the therapist said."

Jessie winced inside. Dr. Dolsby had more loose nuts than a Ford Pinto. "Think what you want. You will anyway. I didn't do anything wrong except visit some people you don't like the looks of. Is that a crime?"

"Honey, we can smell the incense in your hair, on your clothes. As much as you think we are, we're not stupid. We know why people use incense."

Jessie backed away from her mother, but remained standing. "Oh, that's right. Dopers have completely cornered the market on incense burning. Don't you think psychics use them all the time?"

Reena held her hand out to Rick to help him out of the swing. "We're so very disappointed in you, honey. We so wanted Oregon to be a fresh start-"

"But by the looks of it, you've fallen back into the same old patterns of lies and hanging out with-"

"You don't know them and have no right to judge them." Jessie folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. "So not fair."

"We're not judging anyone, honey, but we're not going to turn a blind eye to your actions, either. We have a responsibility to both you and your brother, and it would be irresponsible of us to ignore the obvious. We thought you were going to start with a clean slate."

"I'm trying! But what am I supposed to do when you judge my friends before you even get to know them?" Jessie kept shaking her head. "I can't win here."

"We met your friend, Jessie, and he is obviously not the kind of kid we want you hanging around."

"If you send me to another rehab, I swear to God, you will never see me again."

Rick looked as if she'd slapped him, so Jessie pressed her advantage. "Why can't you believe me? Because Tanner wears black leather and has a piercing, you automatically think he's a stoner? And by talking to him, you think I've fallen back into my old, evil ways? Why can't you just believe me for once? Would that be so hard?"

"Jess, you have to admit, your story is pretty weak."

"Then ask her! Ask Madame Ceara tomorrow if I was with her and if she was burning incense! She'll tell you the truth. Maybe you'll believe her."

Rick and Reena looked at each other and shrugged. Disappointment and frustration hung in the air like smog. "Don't bluff if there's nothing behind it, Jessie, because it will only make matters worse. You know how we feel about lying."

Jessie wanted to pull her hair out. "I'm not bluffing. Ask her."

"We'll do that. In the meantime, you're not to leave the grounds. If you think, for one second, that your father and I up and moved our lives so you could bring ruin back into it, you are sadly mistaken."

"I'm clean, Mom. I have been for a really long time. I'll even take a drug test if you want."

Reena folded her arms. "We just might do that. Now, your brother's been waiting and-"

Shaking her head, Jessie opened the front door, leaving the rest of her mother's words to hang limply and unheard in the air. Yes, she'd broken their trust months ago, but she'd spent a lot of time trying to heal those wounds and gain it back again.

Grabbing a pint of ice cream and two spoons, Jessie headed for Daniel's room, where he sat reading a giant Harry Potter tome. "Hey, sport."

Daniel did not smile when he looked up from his book. "Mom and Dad are really mad."

Jessie sat on his bed and handed him a spoon. "I know."

"They're worried."

"Are you?"

Daniel shrugged, not looking at her. "Only if you're doing drugs again." Now, he looked up at her. "Are you?"

Jessie squatted down now so she could be eye to eye with him. "No, Daniel, I am not."

"Swear?"

Jessie held up the hand with the spoon in it. "I swear. I'm done with drugs forever, Daniel. At least, the illegal kind."

"But where were you then?"

"I was hanging out with this lady who tells people's fortunes."

"What's she like?"

"Well...she's very wise. She knows a lot of things about people and places. Oh, and she lives on a boat. We sat and chatted, and because she was burning incense, Mom and Dad think I was smoking dope."

"What do incense have to do with marijuana?"

Jessie took a big spoonful herself and closed her eyes as she savored it. "Not important."

Daniel shrugged. "My friends say everyone in town calls the inn the Haunted Money Pit.

"I've heard. Does that bother you?"

"Sort of. I mean, not the money part, but the haunted part. They said if I didn't believe them, I could go to some historical society or something. I forgot. I guess there've been things written about this house because she's a painted lady or something. They say this house has been cursed forever."

"Well, we're here and we need to make the best of it, whether the house is cursed, haunted, or just a stupid old money pit."

Daniel grinned, a drop of ice cream stuck to his chin. "Does that mean you're going to stay? I wake up every morning wondering if you're going to still be here. The whole time you were in that place, Mom and Dad treated me weird. It was a bummer."

That place had always been what Daniel had called the rehab center. He saw it as some sort of evil entity that took his sister away for a couple of weeks. "Well, there's no rehab for me, and I'm not going anywhere until after school gets out. By that time, you'll have so many new friends, you won't even know I'm gone."

Daniel looked at her and shook his head. "I'd always know."

Jessie dug into the now half-empty pint of ice cream. "You know, this place is beginning to grow on me, so don't you worry any more about whether I'm going to stay, okay?"

Daniel scraped the bottom of the ice cream pint. "Okay. But I think you're wrong about those noises I hear. Do you believe in ghosts?"

Jessie sighed. "I'm not sure what I believe in anymore." As she started out the door, Jessie could only think about that gray-eyed woman somewhere across time. "Daniel, what would you do if the voices you hear were asking for your help?"

Daniel swung his feet onto the bed and leaned against the wall. "You mean, if I could understand them and they needed me to do something for them?"

"Yeah. What would you do?"

Daniel thought about it a moment before shrugging. "I'd help them out, I guess."

"Why?"

"Because it'd be cool to talk to ghosts and because I think we should help people who need us. Don't you?"

It was at that moment, at the urging of an innocent little boy, that Jessie committed herself to doing whatever it was that needed to be done. She would go back through the portal, and this time, when she returned, she would remember.