The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl, #2)(2)
“No,” I say, digging in my bag for the car keys. “I have to do it by myself.” Part of me does want Nolan to come with me, though. He could grab the steering wheel if I suddenly have to help a spirit move on. But I don’t tell him that. I have to learn to be a luiseach and a functioning normal person at the same time. I unlock the door and toss my purple patch-covered backpack onto the backseat, then lean against our silver sedan beside Nolan. “I can do this. I can drive all the way to the hospital alone.”
Mom cringed when she handed me the keys this morning. I’ve had my license for months; I passed the test before we moved here from Austin, Texas, in August. But I haven’t been doing much driving. Before we moved, with my shiny new license burning a hole in my pocket, I thought I’d be begging Mom for time behind the wheel in our new hometown. But nothing’s been anything like I thought it would be since we moved here.
Mom works long hours, and I’m kind of trapped in the house when she’s not there. She finally offered to let me take the car to get myself to and from school—it’s a long walk, and January in Ridgemont, Washington, is flippin’ cold—but I had to promise to pick her up from the hospital whenever she needs a ride home. I’m happy to do it. I mean, it’s only fair, right? But the ride to the hospital isn’t exactly a nice straight line from point A to point B. I have to get on the freeway, and then I have to drive on the twisty road around the mountain that towers above our town. You’d think they’d have made the road to the hospital easier—I mean, ambulances have to get there at top speeds, right?
The truth is, it’s not really the twisty roads that have me worried; it’s the fact that my mentor/father, whose name I now know is Aidan, keeps sending lost spirits my way to remind me he’s waiting to talk to me. I wrap my arms around myself.
“Another spirit?” Nolan asks, lowering his voice to a whisper.
I nod, unable to speak because my teeth are chattering. I can’t see the spirit yet, but I know it’s near. Luckily, with Nolan standing close, I’m not too cold because being near him keeps me a little bit warmer. Still, I pull the too-long sleeves of my navy blue cardigan over my wrists because apparently when spirits touch me, my temperature plummets and my heart races. Which has happened way too many times in the forty-eight hours since I met Aidan. Well, met might be a bit of an overstatement. Met implies we shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, that kind of thing.
“You can’t avoid him forever, Sunshine,” Nolan says, leaning on the car beside me. He’s wearing a bluish-gray hooded sweatshirt with a scarf, gloves, and a rather silly-looking bright yellow snowcap with a red ball on the top. I’m still not entirely used to seeing him without his grandfather’s leather jacket. I’m not sure he even owns another coat. But on New Year’s Eve he gave me the jacket he loves so much and insisted I keep it even after all the craziness happened. It’s hanging in my closet at home now, still not entirely dry. “You should talk to him.”
“That would be a lot easier if I had the slightest idea of what I wanted to say to him.”
Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true. There are about a million things I want to say to him. Well, a million things I want to ask him: Why did you abandon me? How could you endanger my mother? Who is my birth mother? Where have you been all these years? Why haven’t you come forward until now? What made you think this was the right way to introduce yourself: Hi, I stood by silently while your mother almost died so I could test you while you figured out you weren’t the person you thought you’d been your entire life—that, in fact, you weren’t technically a person at all?
But when he showed up in my driveway on New Year’s Day, I found myself completely tongue-tied. When he held out his hand and told me his name, explained who he was—my birth father, as if his milky-green cat eyes identical to mine didn’t do the talking for him—I could barely even control my muscles enough to make my own hand shake his. I opened my mouth, but the only sounds I could manage were pathetic little mumbles of Whydidyou howcouldyou whendidyou before I finally realized it was all too much. I shook my head and ran inside, leaving Nolan all alone on the porch with him.
The guy may have been my birth father, but he was also the person who put my mom—my adopted mom, but my real mom nonetheless—in danger so he could test my newly activated supernatural skills. I’d believed that when I finally saw him I’d give him—as Mom would say—a piece of my mind. But instead, my mind went totally, miserably, shockingly blank.
“He told me he needed to talk to you,” Nolan says for what’s probably the twelfth time.
“I know,” I answer. “But I’m not ready to talk to him yet.”
“I understand that.” Nolan nods slowly. “And I get where you’re coming from. But you’re going to have to talk to him eventually, so why not get it over with?”
Finally I spot the spirit that’s been making my teeth chatter. It’s a man in his midtwenties. Immediately I know his name was Ryan Palmer. His face is pale blue, his lips purple, and his eyes are blood shot. He drowned, and it looks like a terrible way to go. I step to the side of Nolan to reach the man and touch him on the shoulder. I close my eyes and help him move on. It feels as natural as breathing. I can’t tell if helping this amount of spirits is normal or if Aidan really is sending every single local spirit in my direction. It feels like he thinks I need a reminder that he’s waiting. Like there’s even the slimmest, smallest chance I might forget he’s here.