Azul said some sort of incantation and bowed her head, so we all did the same. “I’ll need something of Sarah’s, something she wore or kept close to her,” Azul said, raising her head. Mom glanced over at me, thinking.
“I can get something,” I said, and pushed back my chair to go upstairs. I turned the knob of Sarah’s door slowly, reaching in to flip the switch while my feet were still firmly in the hallway. Something about having a psychic downstairs had me spooked—like I would look into the mirror and see Sarah looking back at me, her hair dripping with seaweed. But her room was the same, quiet and pink, unchanged. I looked around and grabbed the first thing I saw—a little white teddy bear that sat on her bed. The bear was wearing a black beret and had been a gift from when Gram went to Paris years ago. I had one too, but my bear’s beret was yellow.
I went downstairs, handing the bear to Azul as if it were made of glass. She turned it over in her hands, her clunky rings banging against the wooden table. Finally, she held it to her chest, her bracelets clanging down her arm, and started humming. Dad caught my eye, raising his brows. Mom was looking only at Azul, her eyes huge.
“I have a message,” Azul said, putting the white bear down on the table. I looked at it, with its stupid beret. What were we doing?
“Your daughter has left this plane of existence,” Azul went on. I felt a rushing sound in my ears as Mom let out a gasp and swallowed back a sob. Dad moved closer to her, putting an arm around her back.
“What do you mean?” Mom asked. “You said you saw her by a lake, some peaceful vision.”
Azul nodded, reaching over to take Mom’s hand. “Yes, she is at peace. I still see trees, so many trees, and water. . . .”
Mom pulled her hand back from Azul. “Where is she?” she demanded.
“It’s a place she knows, she’s been there many times before. She loves this place, it’s peaceful to her.” Azul spoke with her eyes closed.
“The park—the reservoir?” Dad finally asked. He hadn’t been there for Azul’s first visit, where I figured out her scam. But he looked like he was starting to get it now.
“Is it the park?” Mom asked. I felt a cold sweat racing over my scalp with a thousand prickles.
“I’m not sure where it is,” Azul answered. “But . . . someone knows, someone close to her. There is someone who isn’t telling you everything.”
Oh really, I thought. But looking at Mom, I could see her leaning in, holding on to Azul’s hand now. “Who knows?” she asked.
Azul’s eyes opened and she looked around the table. “It’s someone you would never expect.” She rubbed her hands together and her bracelets clanged in an annoyingly loud way in the quiet room.
“Is that all?” Dad asked. I could tell from his tone he was over this whole thing.
Azul sighed dramatically and closed her eyes. She started humming again. Then suddenly, she stopped. I could hear myself breathing, waiting for what she might say. “That’s all my spirits are showing me right now,” she said, shaking her head.
Later, after she was gone, I heard Mom and Dad in the kitchen, arguing. Well, mostly Dad arguing. “So we had to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for her to tell us nothing—because that’s what her ‘spirits’ had for us?” he yelled. Mom was talking more quietly, and I tried to hear, but whatever she said to him calmed him down. Still, when they came up to bed I heard him say, “For another five hundred, maybe she can tell us what Sarah was wearing in those photos on the Missing poster!”
Mom knocked quietly on my door and came into my room, knowing that I would still be up. “Kind of lame, huh?” I smiled, trying to make light of the visit from Azul. She sat down on my bed, moving over the notebooks near my feet.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” She sighed. “I thought she might really have had a vision, or something.” She looked down at my bedspread, picking off a piece of lint. “I’m sorry to put you and your father through that.”
I shrugged. “You had to try, right?” I asked. I hoped that she would just forget about the whole thing and say good night, but instead she glanced up at me, looking hard into my eyes.
“What do you think she meant—that someone knows something they aren’t saying?”
I felt my throat tighten, but I managed a casual shrug. “What I’d like to know is what her real name was, before she changed it to a color.” I tried for a light laugh, opening my history book.
She smiled. “Oh, is that what Azul means? Blue, right? I guess I didn’t put that together.” I saw her shoulders slump and she shook her head, as if trying to forget the whole night. She stood up and walked to my dresser, picking up Sarah’s bear that I had left there.
“I was going to put it back,” I started to say, hearing my voice take on a defensive tone. And I had meant to. I just didn’t want to go into Sarah’s room, in the dark—not after what Azul had said.