Lin took a deep breath, looking down at her hands. Corrie felt bad for her, with the five of them staring at her as though she were about to do some kind of performance, but there wasn’t really any other way to do this.
Finally, Lin spoke. “Roe assured me that all of you can keep secrets, so I’m trusting you to keep mine. The reason I’m at Chatoyant College is because I’m a natural medium and I needed to learn some control over my ability.”
Corrie gasped, her thoughts already running ahead. Lin must be able to help them communicate with the ghost where nothing else would work.
“I’ve learned a lot,” she continued, “but since I haven’t been able to take lessons with an actual medium—it’s a very rare power—I am still missing some control. And, well, Roe told me that you’re having a ghost problem. I’ve avoided Mary Thomas the entire time I’ve been here because I heard about the ghost, but I guess this is the time to face my fears.” She brought her hands up to rub her eyes with the heels of them, then finally looked up. “So if you want, I’m here to help you talk to the ghost.”
“That would be amazing,” Annie said quickly, leaning so far forward she was nearly toppling off of Corrie’s bed. “Is there anything you need?”
“I don’t ever want to be alone with the ghost,” Lin said, turning to Annie. “And I may need other people there to help the communication along.”
“We’ll go with you,” Corrie said. “As many of us as you want. Is all of us too many?”
“No.” Lin looked around the room. “We’ll just all need to fit into the room.”
“We can all squeeze in,” Annie said.
Corrie could see Lin’s shoulders relaxing and gave her an encouraging smile. She obviously hated telling people she was a medium, though Corrie couldn’t understand why. Maybe she’d had some bad experiences before coming to Chatoyant College. “We’re really grateful for your help.”
Dawn nodded. “We’ve tried to communicate with the ghost, but it didn’t go very well.”
Lin nodded. “I’ve heard stories. But if she can use me to speak… oh, that reminds me, you should bring notebooks so you can write things down. Sometime ghosts say things that don’t make sense until later.”
“Got it,” Edie said, getting off her bed and opening her desk drawer.
Lin looked around at them. “So none of you are going to beg me to look for your great-grandmother or try to get in touch with the ghost of Albert Einstein?”
Edie snorted, straightening up with two notebooks in her hands. “Pretty sure you couldn’t get in touch with my great-grandmother.”
Corrie laughed. Edie’s great-grandmother—at least one of them—was allegedly still alive, since she was a faerie living somewhere in a mountain lake. “I guess I’m not really interested in getting in touch with dead people unless they’re making my life difficult.”
“Is that why you don’t like telling people that you’re a medium?” Dawn asked.
Lin nodded. “That’s part of it, people wanting me to get in touch with a particular ghost, and they don’t like it when I explain that it doesn’t work that way—I mean, it should with the Mary Thomas ghost, but if I can’t go to a location that a ghost is haunting, I can’t really connect to that specific ghost.”
“I think we’re all pretty focused on you connecting to that one specific ghost,” Annie said. “Are you ready tonight or do you need some time?”
Lin stood up. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Let’s all make sure we have our stuff and head over to Annie’s room, then,” Corrie said, standing up as well.
“I need to talk to Rico, but I’ll meet you there,” Dawn said.
“I’ll show you where it is, Lin,” Annie said, leading Lin out of the room.
Clare K. R. Miller 