Haunted Lesbian Young Adult Fiction

Sylvie and the Christmas Ghost-2

ERINVILLE DIDN’T HAVE a bus depot, just a pole by the side of the road with a picture of a bus on it. There were only two people waiting by the pole, and one smiled brightly when he saw me. I hadn’t seen a smile like that on my dad’s face since way before the separation.

He offered me his hand as I got off the bus and said, “Be careful with the step. Are you okay getting down? Are you wearing your brace?”

“You sound just like Mom.” Normally I didn’t let anybody help me, but I put my gloved hand in my father’s. The step was way higher than it needed to be.

“How’s my middle child?” he asked eagerly. “How was the trip? How was traffic? How were the roads?”

I smiled so hard my jaw hurt. I hadn’t seen my dad since he’d started his renovation project, and it felt like a million years ago.

“Roads were fine. Traffic was fine. Trip was fine.” I stepped away from the door so the lady standing at the bus stop could board, but she just stood there grinning at me. “Mom said to tell you Merry Christmas.”

My father’s smile faltered for a moment, then he cleared his throat. “That’s nice.”

The driver opened the luggage compartment. “Is this your suitcase? The one with the flowers?”

“Yeah, that’s mine.”

“Say thank you, Sylvie,” my father said, quietly.

“Thanks,” I grumbled, not because I had anything against the driver but because I felt like my dad was treating me like a little kid. That always bugged me.

The driver wished us a Merry Christmas and then climbed into the bus, rubbing her arms. She was only wearing short sleeves and no coat, and she closed the doors right away. For a second I thought maybe I should knock because the lady waiting at the stop still hadn’t gotten on. When the bus drove off and the smiling lady didn’t say anything, I got a bit confused.

“I like your coat,” my dad said. “Didn’t that used to be Naomi’s?”

“Obviously.” I wasn’t sure why I was being rude to him. I didn’t mean to be. “All my clothes used to be Naomi’s.”

The strange lady nodded, and not just her head. She nodded her whole body, almost like she was bowing. “Big family. I get it. I have a lot of brothers and sisters, just like you. I think the whole reason I’m so into fashion now is because I never got new clothes until I had my first part-time job.”

I hadn’t looked at the lady in detail before she started talking to me. She had that sort of face where I couldn’t tell if she was young or old. Was she twenty? Was she forty? Her outfit didn’t help. Her coat was more like a cloak, like the kind women wore in the olden days. She had unnaturally red hair, which was cut in a bob, and she wore a Blossom hat, which was too summery for winter. Her boots were pointy, like witch shoes, but they were red, just like her wool skirt, so at least she matched.

“Sylvie,” my dad said. “I forgot to introduce you. This is Amy. She’s the architect who’s redesigning my house.”

Instead of saying, “Hi! Nice to meet you!” like a normal person, I looked at my dad and said, “I thought your house was already built and you were just renovating it. What’s an architect for?”

He chuckled nervously and glanced at Amy. “Well, it’s a very old house. Neglected houses tend to fall into disrepair. It nearly needed to be gutted, and—”

“That’s when it’s useful to have an architect plan out the space,” Amy added. Holding out a shiny gold gift bag, she said, “I almost forgot, I bought you a little Welcome to Erinville present. Hope you like it.”

Why was my father’s architect buying me gifts? Weird. I pushed the tissue paper aside and pulled out a pair of knee-highs with reindeer all over them.

Looking at Amy the Architect, I asked, “Christmas socks?”

“Yeah,” she replied, seeming eager to please. “Do you like them? I thought they were sort of fun. And your dad told me about your... disability, so I thought I’d—”

“Draw attention to it?”

“Sylvie!” my father scolded. “Say thank you to Amy right this second.” Looking at his architect, he said, “Christmas socks were a very thoughtful gift.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was being mean to her. She’d given me a gift for no reason. I should have been grateful. “I do like Christmas socks, and I don’t have any with reindeer on them.”

“There you go,” my dad said, tapping me gently on the shoulder. “This is good. We’re all getting along.”

He seemed to really want me to like this architect woman, so I conceded. “It’s cool that they’re knee socks. They’ll be warm for winter.”

My father said, “When I told Amy about your brace, she was concerned the plastic might cut into your skin. That’s why she bought you the high ones. Wasn’t that thoughtful?”

“Yeah.” It actually was really thoughtful, and my brace did cut into my leg if I wore short socks... if I wore the brace at all, which I tried not to as much as possible. It still bugged me that my dad talked to some stranger about my leg, which is why I didn’t say anything more.

After a moment of awkward silence, my dad said, “Amy’s offered to drive us back to the house so we won’t have to lug your suitcase through the snow. Wasn’t that nice of her?”

“I guess.”

She pointed to her car, which was parked across the street. It was bright red, just like her boots, and a lot newer and nicer than my dad’s sedan or my mom’s station wagon. Still, it seemed weird that this random lady was driving us home.

I asked my dad, “Where’s your car?”

“Oh. Your mom didn’t tell you?” He seemed flustered, and he loosened his scarf. I’d never seen my dad in a scarf before, come to think of it.

“Mom didn’t tell me what?”

He looked at Amy the Architect as we crossed the street. Then he said, “I sold the car. It was old anyway. I’ll buy a new one when the renovations are done. Then I’ll be able to visit you in the city. That’ll be good, huh?”

Amy opened the trunk so my dad could put my suitcase inside. I stood by the back door, not really knowing what to say. I probably shouldn’t have asked, “Are you poor now?”

Dad closed the trunk, chuckling in that way he did when he didn’t want to talk about something. “No, no. Money’s just tied up in the house.”

Amy leaned in close to my dad and whispered, “Not to mention alimony and child support.”

She obviously didn’t mean for me to hear that, but it made me feel awful. Did my dad have to sell his car because of us?

Unlocking the passenger side, Amy said, “Here, Sylvie. You can sit up front with me. It’ll be easier on your leg.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my leg,” I snapped, like I couldn’t control myself. “I’ll sit in the back.”

“Sylvie!” Dad said. “Apologize.”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“It’s okay.” Amy reached around to unlock the back door. “It’s my fault. I’m being insensitive.”

“No you’re not,” my father told her. “My daughter is being rude.”

I felt guilty but also angry and I didn’t know why. When I looked down at the shiny gift bag, the guilt took over. I was acting like a little kid.

Amy walked around to the driver’s side. She must have noticed me standing there, because she whispered across the car, “Does she need help getting in?”

Did she think I couldn’t hear her?

“I don’t need help doing anything,” I said, and threw myself into her car.

Amy the Architect apologized, even though my dad told her not to. He told her I was being deliberately disrespectful, which I really couldn’t be mad about. It was true. I was.

The back seat of Amy’s car was much cleaner than our station wagon. There was an emergency kit under the driver’s seat and a leather briefcase on the seat, but no gum stuck to the upholstery or tissues crammed anywhere or chip bags or chocolate wrappers. Obviously Amy the Architect didn’t have five kids. She probably didn’t even have one.

“Are you married?” I asked her, even though I knew it was a rude question.

She stuck the key in the ignition and held it there, like she was afraid it would fall out.

“Sylvie,” Dad growled.

Amy the Architect didn’t answer my question, which made me feel like I’d won some weird kind of battle.

Nobody said much for a while. Erinville seemed vaguely familiar, like the kind of place you’ve seen in a dream. My father grew up in this town. When I was a really little kid we used to visit my great-aunt in a retirement home. That’s one reason my dad decided to move here: to be closer to her.

Dad pointed out how busy the main street was. Busy with city slickers, Amy said, because the weather was mild. Erinville had a*****e that sold only Christmas stuff. It was open year-round, but it was especially popular in December.

All the lampposts along the main street looked like they came from the olden days. They weren’t giant wooden poles like we had in the city. These ones were fancy and black and not too tall, and the lights on them looked like old-timey lanterns.

Everything was strung up with pine boughs and red velvet ribbons, and all the stores and houses had their Christmas lights on even though it was only two in the afternoon. It was like driving through a Christmas village.

When we passed a place with a Cut Your Own Tree sign, I asked my dad, “Is that where we used to get our trees when I was little?”

My dad turned around and smiled. “You remember that? You must have been only... oh, I don’t know. Four? Five?”

“I remember.” It was like a winter wonderland, something you couldn’t experience in the city.

“If you want to cut down a tree we certainly can, but we’ll get it from our own property. This new house has a huge back lot.”

“A forest,” Amy said, speaking up for the first time since I’d been mean to her earlier. “It’s beautiful. It’s gigantic.”

I wondered how my father could afford a beautiful, gigantic property when he couldn’t afford a car, but I’d heard houses were a lot less expensive in small towns than in the city. Maybe he got the place for cheap.

That’s what I thought until Amy pulled up in front of a mansion and said, “Home sweet home!”

“Whose home-sweet-home?”

“Your dad’s,” Amy told me.

I couldn’t believe it. The place was like something from a movie—one of those movies where a regular family inherits their rich relative’s every earthly possession if they stay overnight in a haunted house.

But the house itself wasn’t the weirdest thing about the property. The weirdest thing was the people sitting in lawn chairs outside the house. It reminded me of a movie director and film crew. All they needed was one of those giant cameras.

What they had instead was a garbage can with a fire burning in it. And a barbeque.

“Are there gonna be fireworks or something?” I asked as my dad opened his door. “What’s with the crowd?”

My dad and Amy the Architect both breathed in and breathed out simultaneously. Then my dad turned halfway and said, “Erinville is a small town and people in small towns are very... curious... about newcomers. They’re just watching to see what we’re doing with the house.”

“That’s weird,” I said. “Why do they care so much?”

Amy answered this time. “The integrity of the town’s architecture is important to them.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Dad said, “It means they don’t want to see anything too modern.”

“How is it any of their business? It’s your house, not theirs.”

“But it’s their town.”

“It’s yours too,” I said. “You were born here.”

“So was I,” Amy said. “I only left long enough to earn a degree and get a little work experience, and they still call me City Girl.”

I shook my head. “Small towns are weird.”

“That they are,” Amy agreed. Then she pointed to the gift bag and said, “Don’t forget your socks, Sylvie. It was very nice meeting you. I’m sure we’ll get to see a lot of each other while you’re staying with your dad.”

“Oh. Okay.” I slipped out of her car wondering why I would be seeing a lot of my father’s architect. I didn’t know architects were so hands-on with their clients. But when she popped the trunk and I walked around the gravelly driveway to grab my suitcase, I forgot all about Amy.

I forgot about her because there were two dozen pairs of eyes on me.

Was I supposed to wave? Why were the townspeople staring like that? Even the bearded man by the barbeque stopped turning hot dogs long enough to gawk. It made me really self-conscious to have so many men and women, young and old, all looking at me. There were children running around, from toddlers to kids my age. A few dogs on leashes. And—was I seeing that right? One young boy had a ferret peeking out the sleeve of his coat. Even the ferret was looking at me.

“Let me grab that for you.” My dad took my suitcase even though I was still holding the handle. “Come on, Sylvie.” He tugged me toward the house, but I wasn’t ready for it. My bad foot caught in the gravel and I did a face-plant in front of all those people.

Amy the Architect rushed to my side, saying, “Sylvie! Are you okay? Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” I growled, pushing myself up with one hand.

“Sylvie!” Dad said. “You should be thanking Amy for her concern, not acting like a toddler having a temper tantrum.”

At least he didn’t ask if I was wearing my brace.

“Oh, you’ve got dirt all down the front of your jacket,” Amy said, brushing it off with her hand.

I hollered, “Don’t touch me!” and pushed her hand away from my chest.

She jumped back and said, “I’m so sorry, Sylvie. You’re right. I’ll see you both later.”

There were tears in Amy’s eyes as she turned away, and I noticed she didn’t start up her car the second she got in. First she pulled a folded tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes.

I made Amy the Architect cry!

Good. I felt like she deserved it, even if I didn’t know why.

When my father led me to the front steps, I took a good look at his new house. The three wooden stairs leading up to the porch were cracked in the middle. The handrails weren’t straight up and down like they were supposed to be. They were both diagonal, so they looked like a V. The porch wasn’t in a much better state. The blue paint had peeled off almost completely, and the lumber underneath was grey with cracks throughout.

“Careful going up,” my dad said. “Don’t want you falling through.”

I laughed even though I was pretty sure he wasn’t joking. As I swung my right foot onto the porch, I noticed the crumbling bricks and rotting windowsills. I couldn’t look at my father. I was too disappointed. This would be my first Christmas away from my mom and my siblings, and I had to spend it in a house that probably had mice in the walls?

Great. Just great.

I could only hope that when he opened the front door, the inside would be a whole lot nicer than the outside...

Chapter Three

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