“Kelly Prescott married Lance Arthur Walters, of Wal-Con Aeronautics, last summer,” CeeCee said, licking a bit of foam off the top of her chai latte. “Hey, wasn’t Debbie a bridesmaid in that wedding, or something? I thought you got invited.”
“Yeah,” I said, still feeling a little numb from my shock back at the school. “I blew it off.”
Because I’m not a fan of weddings. Or of Kelly.
But if I hadn’t been such a fool and gone, I’d have met Becca there, seen her tiny ghost companion, and maybe been able to prevent what had happened earlier that day.
I was a loser who pretty much deserved all the terrible things that were happening to me. I also needed a drink. But it was my friend CeeCee’s turn to choose the place we were stopping for after-work libations, and cocktails didn’t appear to be on the menu.
“Well, Lance Arthur Walters is one of the richest men in America, and twenty-five years our senior,” CeeCee went on as we slid into seats at a table at the Happy Medium, her aunt’s coffee-slash-holistic-healing shop. “Obviously, it’s a love match.”
“Man, Kelly’s taken gold digging to a whole new level.” I sighed. “She’s basically gone pro.”
“It’s antifeminist to judge another woman for her choices, no matter how crappy they might be. And if you’d bother to read my online alumni newsletters, you’d already know all this.”
“Hey,” I protested. “You’re one of my best friends. You’re supposed to tell me this stuff, not wait for me to read about it in some newsletter.”
“That I write.” CeeCee shook her head, her asymmetrically chopped white bob—CeeCee is an albino—bouncing. “Honestly, Suze, you’re the worst. Do you ever even go online?”
“Of course. To buy things.” I thought wistfully of my boots. “Not always successfully.”
“I meant to connect with people socially.”
“Why should I, when all the people I want to socialize with are right here in town?” Then I remembered my youngest stepbrother, who’d just started his junior year at Harvard. “Oh, except David, of course. But we make it a point to talk on the phone every Sunday.”
“You’re so weird,” CeeCee said. She flipped open her laptop. “But don’t worry. I’m setting up you and Jesse with a nice Web page for when you open your practice. Drs. Hector J. and Susannah S. de Silva, Carmel Pediatrics Center, specializing in your child’s complete health. Licensed to diagnose and treat the physical, emotional, and developmental needs of children. No gold diggers allowed.”
“God, I was kidding about that, okay? I don’t think Kelly literally married for money. Although considering what her stepdaughter told me about her views on engagement rings, one could argue the fact.”
CeeCee ignored me. “What do you think of this?” She spun her laptop around to face me. “I’ve been playing around with your last names as a logo. See how the two S’s curl around the staff like the snakes in the symbol for medicine? Well, technically the caduceus is the symbol for commerce, but enough people have misused it over the years that I figured no one realizes it anymore. And of course, even if you don’t end up taking Jesse’s name when you two tie the knot, we don’t have to change it. The two S’s still work. Dr. Susannah Simon, or Dr. Susannah de Silva, either is—”
I thought it best to cut her off. The topic of Jesse and me marrying was becoming painful. Nothing ruins a wedding faster than the groom going on a murderous demonic rampage and killing the bride, then her family. Boy, did I need a cocktail.
“So what else has Kelly been up to since graduation?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “I see Debbie with Brad once in a while at family functions, and we talk, and sometimes she mentions Kelly, but I seem to have missed the fact that she’s a stepmom.”
CeeCee glanced worriedly around the nearly empty coffee shop. “Shhh. Not so loud. Kelly’s more the yacht club type, but you never know. She might pop in here once in a while.”
I smiled. Once called the Coffee Clutch, the shop had been our hangout all through high school, until a well-known corporate coffee chain had attempted to purchase it from the previous owners.
This did not sit well with the Carmel-by-the-Sea town council, which had managed successfully to ban all chain restaurants, big-box stores, and even traffic lights and parking meters since the town was incorporated in 1916. The goal was to maintain Carmel’s position as Travel + Leisure magazine’s Most Romantic City in America (it was currently number three in the world, after Paris and Venice), and keep it looking like the same charming beach village (atop a cliff overlooking a white sandy beach) it had been for a century.
The council—with the help of people like CeeCee’s aunt, who’d stepped in and bought the Clutch herself, in order to prevent it from going corporate—had resolutely met that goal year after year, to the point of not allowing homeowners even to chop down trees.
So how had Paul Slater gotten permission to tear down my old house?
I didn’t know, but he had it, all right. I’d seen the forms attached to his e-mail, since the ghost girl’s paraspectacular aftershocks hadn’t scrambled them from my computer (Sean Park, one of Becca’s classmates, had managed to rescue my hard drive, though not in time for me to keep Maximillian28 from winning my boots, and for well under what I’d have been willing to pay. I hoped he or she enjoyed them . . . in hell).
Not only were all of Paul’s plans for the destruction of 99 Pine Crest Road—and most of the homes on the rest of my old block—in order, but he hadn’t been lying about the Curse of the Dead. With the help of the Internet, I’d been able to find a translation of it posted on the blog of some Egyptology student specializing in the study of ancient languages.
What the blog didn’t tell me—either because it wasn’t part of the student’s assignment or because it wasn’t written on the papyrus—was whether or not there was a way to break the curse.
I’d fired off an e-mail to the blog’s owner—Shahbaz Effendi—and crossed my fingers that he’d believe my little white lie that I was a fellow Egyptology enthusiast.
I know how pesky those papyruses (papyri?) can be. Sometimes they break off midsentence. (Did they? I wasn’t even sure what papyrus was.)
Really, though, if there’s any chance at all that there’s more to the curse, I’d love to know. It would be very helpful to my current research.
God, this guy was going to think I was insane. Or twelve. But until I heard back from him, Jesse and I were screwed.
“Well,” CeeCee was saying, “after she graduated from the Mission Academy, Kelly went on to get a degree in fashion merchandising.”
I looked up from the cup of coffee I’d been scowling into. “Wait, are you shitting me? Fashion merchandising? Like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde?”
“I heard that,” called my other best friend (and current roommate), Gina, from behind the counter. CeeCee’s aunt had hired her to work the four-to-midnight shift, Monday through Friday. Gina ominously tapped a large glass jar with a pen. “Dollar to the swear jar. Two dollars, actually, because I overheard you call Kelly a ho earlier.”
“That’s a tip jar, not a swear jar,” I said, but reached into my messenger bag for my wallet anyway. I didn’t want to be a bad sport. “And I said pro, not ho. You guys are oppressing my right to free speech.”
“You should be thanking us,” Gina said as I approached the counter. “A future doctor should be classy, not trashy. Not to mention a future doctor’s wife.”
“Jesse says he loves me the way I am.” I shoved two dollars into the already stuffed tip jar. “And shouldn’t you be working instead of eavesdropping on my private conversation?”
“Yeah,” Gina said, waving a hand at the whimsically painted café tables. Aunt Pru was big on whimsy. “Because it’s so packed in here.”
“It’ll pick up after six,” CeeCee said. “The after-work caffeine hounds.”
“Getting back to Kelly?” I nudged.
“Oh,” CeeCee said. “Right.” She glanced back down at the laptop screen. “Apparently things didn’t work out with the degree, since she moved home with Mom last year.”
“Whoa. Debbie never mentioned that.” I slid back into my seat. “Probably Kelly never posted about it on Instagram.”
“You guys suck,” Gina said. “What’s wrong with fashion merchandising? And do I need to point out that both of you are college graduates who moved back to your hometown? You shouldn’t be making fun of this poor Kelly girl for doing the same thing.”
“Um, first of all,” I said, “if I were to make fun of her, it wouldn’t be for her choice of degree or for moving back home, it would be because Kelly is a really mean, terrible person. Did you know she used to refer to CeeCee as ‘the freak’? To her face.”
Gina threw CeeCee a quick glance—quick enough to catch the way CeeCee’s scalp, plainly visible beneath the white strands of her hair, turned a deeper shade of pink with embarrassment at the reminder.
“Oh, CeeCee,” Gina said, laying a brown-skinned hand across CeeCee’s almost translucently pale one. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” CeeCee reached for her latte and took a big gulp. “It’s cool to be a freak now. Even if I do still live at home.”
Gina bit her lip. “I’m sorry I said that, too. And you’re not a freak. It’s just . . . I can relate to Kelly’s not being able to hack it in the big city. That’s why I’m here, sleeping on Suze’s couch.”
“That’s totally different,” I pointed out quickly. “You’re from New York, like me. You’re used to public transportation. Navigating all those freeways in LA had to suck. And you’re only taking a break from the Hollywood thing until you have some money saved up and your shit together—”
Both CeeCee and Gina pointed at the “swear” jar, which I’d intended for them to do. I’d sworn on purpose, to lighten the mood. Whenever Gina began to dwell on why she’d taken a detour from her dream of movie stardom, and ended up in my apartment in Carmel, her voice caught, and her eyes filled. She’d been crashing at my place for several months, though none of us—not even Jesse, who was the most soothing of souls—had learned why, except that life in Hollywood had been harder than she’d expected.
“For now,” Jesse had advised, after one late-night chat by the backyard fire pit at the house he and my stepbrother Jake shared had left her looking particularly pensive, “leave it alone. She’ll tell you what happened when she’s ready. Just let her heal.”
So Gina was healing on my futon couch and earning minimum wage, plus tips, at the Happy Medium.
Getting up to stuff another dollar in the “swear” jar, I went on, “I don’t think Kelly’s changed much since high school.”
Becca’s new stepmother had barely glanced at Sister Ernestine as she’d explained why she’d called.
“So it was just another one of Becca’s accidents?” Kelly had asked. “She’s so clumsy.” Her tone suggested, So why do you people keep calling me?
The fact that Becca had had more than one of these kinds of “accidents” alarmed me—this family seemed to dwell a lot on the word accident.
But before I could say anything, Sister Ernestine butted in.
“Well, yes, Mrs. Walters, but this time you may want to take Becca to see her pediatrician. Miss Simon and I aren’t trained medical professionals, and as you can see by Becca’s uniform, there was quite a lot of blood—”
“Becca, you keep a spare shirt in your locker for PE, don’t you?” Kelly asked.
Becca nodded, looking cowed by her glamazon of a stepmother.
“Great,” Kelly said. “No need for me to take her home then.” She’d given us one of her patented Kelly Prescott Look-at-me, I’m-a-real-California-blonde, capped-teeth-and-all smiles. “Well, thanks for calling, Sister. Suze, it was, uh, good to see you again. Buh-bye.”
“Not so fast, Kelly,” I’d called just as she’d spun around on a red-soled Louboutin, her long, honey-gold curls leaving behind the delicate odor of burnt hair that had spent too long in a curling iron. “I’d definitely have a doctor look at your stepdaughter. In fact, I’d take her over to the emergency room at St. Francis in Monterey right now and ask for a Dr. Jesse de Silva. He’s excellent. Here, let me write it down for you.”
I’d scrounged around for a pen and notepad, which hadn’t looked too professional, since all the pens and notepads had been flung to the floor by Becca’s still-absent guardian angel.
“The ER?” Kelly had pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead. “You can’t be serious. It was just a cut. She says she’s got an extra shirt. She’s fine.”
“Yeah.” Becca had nodded vigorously. “I’m fine.”
“She’s not fine, Kelly.” I’d shoved Jesse’s name and number into Kelly’s manicured hand. “Take her to see him. She needs to get that cut looked at, and by a professional. Do you understand what I’m saying, Kelly?” I’d wanted to add, You dumb cow, but of course I couldn’t.
Kelly looked down at the hastily scrawled note in her hands.
“Jesse de Silva,” she read aloud. “Why is that name familiar to me?” Then a lightbulb seemed to go off in her dim, beautiful head. “Oh, my God, isn’t that your boyfriend? Wait, yes. It is! I read in the online alumni newsletter you two got engaged. Marrying your high-school sweetheart. Isn’t that cute?”
I’d felt myself turning red.
“Yes,” I’d said. “Jesse is my fiancé. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a terrific pediatrician—”
Kelly had crumpled the note in her fist, then thrown it to the floor with all the other detritus. It was apparent her Isn’t that cute? had been sarcastic.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she’d said, her perfectly made-up eyes flashing. “Using your job here to drum up business for your boyfriend. I know things are bad in the medical industry, but honestly, Suze. I’d think you of all people would know better. Funny how I used to think you were sort of smart, coming from New York City, and all. I remember some of us in school even looked up to you, once upon a time, and thought you were going to go places. Well, that was a long time ago, obviously.”
She’d smirked, then stepped over a collapsed Venetian blind and added, “Sister Ernestine, you might want to rethink hiring this person. My husband is a major donor to the academy, you know. I doubt you’d want to do anything to upset him.”
Then she’d tossed her hair and left, her high heels ringing on the mission paving stones.