Crossing Over by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel

Author:Elizabeth Cody Kimmel [KIMMEL, ELIZABETH CODY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316126823
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2010-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Tim the Motor Coach Operator was fast asleep in the front seat with a huge cup of coffee balanced between his knees. We had to stand in the rain banging on the door for about a minute before we could wake him, by which time we were soaking wet. Tim opened the door and closed it after us, took a slurpy sip of his coffee, and immediately went back to sleep. He seemed completely unconcerned with what we were doing there, and that was fine with me.

“Come back here,” I told Ben, leading the way down the aisle. “To where your seat is.”

When I got to Ben’s row, Britches stared up at me expectantly.

“Hochelaga?” he asked.

Beige Girl gave me a brief glance, then resumed staring out the window.

“Okay,” I said, stepping to the side to make room for Ben and gesturing toward the spirit seats. “Do you see anything there?”

Ben looked carefully.

“No,” he said. “Is there something there?”

“Two people,” I said. “Spirits. The first one, I call her Beige Girl because, well, her skin and her sweater and her hair are all kind of that color. She got on the bus at Notre-Dame. Hasn’t said a word. There’s a big guy sitting next to her, who looks about eighteen or nineteen and is wearing sort of old-fashioned beat-up clothes. He started tagging along at Mont-Royal and then followed us down to the bus from there. I call him Britches.”

Britches looked up when I said that.

“Hochelaga?” he asked. Britches looked like even he was getting tired of hearing that word come out of his mouth.

“He keeps saying the same word, and I don’t know what the word means,” I said. “Sometimes he says other stuff, but it’s in French, I think. I can’t really make it out.”

“I didn’t hear it,” Ben said. He looked genuinely disappointed.

“I guess it’s because these two are purely spectral,” I said. “There’s nothing physical from that time period that you could touch now to connect with them.”

“So you can see them, and they can see you. Can they see each other?” Ben asked.

“From what I can tell, no,” I said. “Either they don’t see each other at all, or they register each other sort of lumped in with the rest of the people on this bus, the ones who can’t see them. They seem to divide the world into two types: regular people, and mediums. Well, not just mediums. People with abilities. Like you. They’re aware of you too—they seem to know you are picking them up somehow.

“Britches showed up at Mont Royal when you were touching a rock up on the overlook. I heard other voices there too, also speaking in French. But these two are apparitions—they don’t have anything physical with them. But they seem drawn to you, Ben. I mean both of them have come and sat near you. How long have you known you were clairaudient?”

“All my life,” Ben told me. “My mother called the voices my ‘imaginary friends’ when I was little.

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