Parrish Read online

  “Why?” she asked, as if she even needed to.

  “Are you kidding? This isn’t rocket science, Brighton. Jefferson is like Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes is sexy,” she said, sounding much more like the popular girl she looked like and less like the agoraphobe she was.

  “I mean, Jefferson’s all about the work. I don’t think he even likes girls.”

  “Well, he doesn’t like boys.”

  “I don’t think he likes anyone who’s alive,” I said. “He likes ghosts. And that’s beside the point.”

  “What is the point, then?” she asked, looking like she was enjoying this conversation way too much.

  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. It wasn’t like it was a big secret how little Jefferson and I liked each other.

  “I can’t stand him because he’s weird and creepy, and he thinks I’m only good for dressing up in stupid costumes to lure the ghosts out.” I wasn’t sure why we were even having this conversation. All I was trying to do was make Brighton admit she had a thing for Deacon. “And I’m pretty sure his idea of being romantic is getting a lock of my hair and turning it into a diamond necklace.”

  “What?” Brighton asked.

  “Yeah. He actually asked if I had any qualms about giving him my hair because he, and I quote, ‘knows a guy’ who can turn it into a diamond.”

  “Gross.”

  “That’s what I said. So no,” I insisted. “There’s nothing going on between us.”

  “Whatever you say, chief,” she said with a knowing smile.

  “Did you get permission from the people at the Queen Mary to do an investigation for the next two nights?” I asked, changing the subject from the awkward turn it had just taken.

  “Yeah, I thought they’d say no since I’m sure they get lots of investigators down there, but they actually gave us a discount on our rooms.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  Jefferson had managed to borrow some money from his mom, but we were still extremely tight on cash. The gas required for the old, less-than-economical 1989 Jeep Wagoneer was enough to drain our money without even considering the hotels we’d need to stay in.

  “I mean, they had guidelines of where we could and couldn’t go, but they were actually really nice about the whole thing,” she said happily, much too awake for how long we’d been driving. “Since we saved so much money on the rooms, I got four separate ones in different parts of the ship. I figured we could cover more ground if we weren’t all right next to each other.”

  Even though I knew she was right, my stomach sank at the thought of sleeping on the Queen Mary by myself for two nights. I wasn’t all that scared of ghosts during investigations, but trying to sleep alone in a haunted place was a whole different story.

  “I guess we should set up cameras in our rooms while we’re sleeping,” I said, swallowing hard. “Just in case?”

  “Yeah, I’ll basically be sleeping with my inhaler the whole time,” she said, somewhere between panic and excitement. “But how amazing is it that we actually get to investigate the Queen Mary?”

  “It’s a dream come true,” I admitted. “Although I still wish there was some way to find out who sent those letters. Are we nuts for going on this trip just because we got random letters from some random person?”

  “Honestly?” she said. “I think we just needed an excuse to do a massive investigation. If the letters hadn’t come, we would have found some other reason. This way we have a fun mystery to solve on top of the investigation.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  Brighton’s levity didn’t silence my fears, but it did stop me from brainstorming with her over where the letters could have possibly come from and how we were supposed to get the rest of our clues.

  “We should probably paint our Jeep green and blue,” she said randomly, after a long silence that left me suddenly feeling tired.

  “Not funny,” I responded, any further arguments about making us more like Mystery Inc. cut off by a massive yawn.

  Brighton nudged me with her elbow. “Why don’t you pull over and I’ll drive the rest of the way.”

  “I’m fine,” I lied, my eyes burning from exhaustion.

  “Well, then stop at this gas station, because I have to pee.”

  I knew she was lying, but I obliged, knowing she could whine very convincingly when she wanted something.

  “You should grab a soda or something while I’m in the bathroom,” she said, her voice sounding unnatural.

  I laughed. “I can tell why they leave the acting to me on these investigations. You can drive. I won’t fight you.”

  “Oh good, we’re switching things up,” Deacon suddenly said from the backseat. He got out of the car and waited by the passenger’s side door.

  When had he woken up?

  I looked over at Brighton with an exasperated exhale before realizing that if she was driving and Deacon was in the front seat, I’d be in the back with the long-limbed Jefferson, unlikely to get any leg room to myself. He looked like a spider all crumpled up in the tiny back seat.

  “I take it back. I want to keep driving,” I said quickly.

  The look Brighton was giving me told me that my protests were futile.

  I sighed deeply and resigned myself to my fate, taking my place in the back seat and sitting as close to the window as I could. Jefferson had somehow managed to sleep through our entire stop, and his head was now slowly drooping closer and closer to my shoulder. I’d wake him up before I let that happen.

  Smashed against the window with my chin resting in my palm, I wondered how I’d gotten suckered into this entire trip and hoped it wouldn’t prove to be a huge waste of time.

  We’d seriously need to step up our game if we wanted to find what we were looking for.

  ~

  “We’re here!” Brighton and Deacon shouted in unison, waking me with a jolt.

  My eyes snapped open and it took a minute for me to remember where I was; the darkened Jeep proved to be more disorienting than I would have thought.

  “I don’t make a very good pillow,” Jefferson said right beside me, and I instantly realized—much to my mortification—that I had been sleeping on his shoulder.

  At least he was nicer than me, I guess.

  “You know . . . being so boney and all?” he elaborated. “Not that I minded.”

  I sat up quickly and rubbed the side of my face, feeling the indent of his sleeve seam there.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  At least in the dark he wouldn’t be able to see how red my face was.

  “Look at it,” Brighton said excitedly, pointing out the front window at the large ship in front of us.

  The Queen Mary was about ten times bigger than I had imagined it, and ten times more oddly placed. Wedged in downtown Long Beach, it seemed uncomfortable with the restaurants just across the bay and the city all around us. Everything in Long Beach was too modern to house this historic ship.

  A string of lights illuminated the top of the smokestacks and ran down to the tip of the ship, silhouetting our first amazing location in a magical way. I could feel my heart picking up the pace a bit, and suddenly I wasn’t worried that I’d be too tired to do some investigating tonight. I couldn’t wait to see what mysteries were lurking inside.

  “I guess we’ll check in and then start setting up?” I asked excitedly, my exhaustion completely gone.

  “We’re investigating tonight?” Brighton asked, her voice taking on the whiny quality that had threatened to escape earlier.

  “Of course we are,” Jefferson said, looking over at me with an expression of disbelief.

  It was always scary when I agreed with one of the Parrish boys. Still, if doing so meant I got to investigate on the Queen Mary tonight, I’d take it.

  “If we don’t do it tonight, we’ll only have one night left,” I said, not understanding how Brighton could even t
hink of sleep right now.

  “Being so tired, would it even be worth it to set up tonight? We might miss important evidence if we’re sleepy,” Deacon said, glancing at Brighton and obviously hoping to score some brownie points with the not-so-secret love of his life.

  Just telling both of them that they liked each other would save me a lot of fights like this where Deacon would side with Brighton to impress her and make my life infinitely more difficult.

  “We might miss evidence if we’re tired while investigating tonight,” Jefferson began, and sadly enough, I knew exactly where he was going.

  “But we’ll definitely miss evidence if we don’t investigate at all.” I wanted to gag over the fact that I had just completed his sentence.

  Now Brighton really wouldn’t let up on my non-existent crush.

  She squinted her eyes and nodded her head a few times, probably trying to find some way out of this investigation and into a warm bed. In the end, her excitement over our mystery must have won out because she said, “I’ll give you two hours.”

  Chapter 5

  “Do these lights have to be on?” I asked the empty hallway, feeling underwhelmed by the lack of creepiness in this coveted location.

  “It’s still a hotel, Sadie. They have to keep the hallway lights on all the time,” Brighton said in my earpiece, stationed safely in her hotel room with a pile of computers linked to our cameras.

  The lack of fear I felt might have also had something to do with the fact that I knew Brighton was seeing a live feed of the camera I held. Nothing too bad could happen to me while I had someone else with me virtually.

  The long hallways of the ship, while too well-lit for my taste, were impressive to see. From my position at the back of the ship, I could see all the way to the front, the hallway bowing down in the middle, then gradually rising back up to form a cupped shape. The maroon carpet muffled my footfalls as I walked toward a staircase, glad that the ship was so empty on a weekday; it wouldn’t have been fun to try to explain my old-fashioned attire to one of the hotel guests.

  At least vintage was back in style, right?

  And with the vast amount of space we needed to cover on the ship, it was nice that Jefferson, Deacon, and I could all investigate simultaneously. In most cases, we were investigating a small home or building, and more than one person at a time inside would mean too many footsteps, voices, and unidentified noises that we’d have to throw out as tainted evidence. But in large locations like the Queen Mary, we could have all three of us out at once, connected to each other via earpieces.

  It was fantastic.

  Holding my handheld camera steady in one hand and clutching my flashlight (that I sadly didn’t need) in the other, I walked down the staircase, hoping the lower I went on the ship, the more I’d find.

  “This is Sadie, on the Queen Mary. It’s about 2:30 in the morning on September third. I’m just entering the C deck,” I said, tagging the camera footage so we’d have some sort of reference when we went back to review.

  “R deck,” Jefferson corrected in my earpiece.

  “What?” I wondered how he knew where I was, and why he seemed to think R came after B in the alphabet.

  “It’s not called C deck anymore. It’s R deck now,” he said.

  I would have argued with him but it was pointless to argue with a Parrish. Even if they were wrong, they wouldn’t let up until you gave in to their opinion.

  I could hear Brighton typing away on her computer from her room that I’d already forgotten how to get back to.

  “He’s right,” she said.

  Traitor.

  “Fine,” I said. “This is Sadie, on the R deck. Making my way toward the front of the ship.”

  “The bow,” Jefferson corrected.

  “Actually I prefer stem,” Deacon said.

  “You mean stern?” Brighton asked.

  “No, I mean stem.”

  “Okay, you guys seriously need to shut it. I can’t concentrate with so many people talking in my ear,” I said, shaking my head to clear the voices.

  “Go ahead Sadie, take the earpiece out if it bothers you,” Jefferson challenged and I could hear the grin in his voice.

  The boys would never let me live down the only time I’d taken my earpiece out because I was frustrated with their banter. I’d ended up getting lost in the old schoolhouse we were investigating and was too scared to find my way back. It took an hour for Jefferson to come find me, though I suspected it was because he hadn’t really been looking.

  “I’ll refrain this time,” I said. “But only because this place is like a maze.”

  Brighton snorted but didn’t comment. It was easy for her to be all smug when she was safe in her room. Somehow I didn’t think she’d fare quite as well if she was forced to walk the halls of the Queen Mary by herself.

  “Don’t you have some Beethoven to be listening to, Jefferson?” I asked, hoping I could silence him.

  “Already done,” he answered shortly.

  Jefferson insisted on listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major before every investigation to get him pumped. Personally, I didn’t see how that song could pump anyone up, but who was I to argue?

  “Pity,” I said as I continued to descend deeper within the ship.

  At the bottom of the staircase, I was met by two beautiful gold-clad double doors. The swirling designs looked like vines, growing right up the entrance, with pictures in the middle of each swirl.

  Clutching my camera and flashlight in the same hand, I let my free hand trace the pictures gently, the cold metal reminding me of just how real this place was, and how amazing it was that I was actually investigating the Queen Mary. My fingers wandered down the gold curves until they curled around the long door handle.

  “This is Sadie, about to enter the pool area,” I said almost reverently. The pool was the most active spot on the ship, where hundreds of people had claimed to hear children playing.

  “Uh, Sadie,” Brighton began, but I ignored her, pulling the heavy door with force.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t even budge.

  Thinking I must have tried to open it the wrong way, I pushed my weight against it, hoping it would move this time. It didn’t so much as shift.

  “I can’t get in,” I said.

  “That’s what I was going to tell you,” Brighton said. “The pool is one of the off-limits places.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked, not understanding that logic at all. “How are we supposed to do a paranormal investigation if we can’t even investigate the most active spot on the ship?”

  I turned away from the doors and looked around for another way in.

  “It’s a liability,” Brighton said. “The pool doesn’t have any water in it. They can’t have random people tromping around it in the dark. What if you fell in and broke your neck?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said, not willing to have my plans thwarted by a few legal technicalities like possible death or dismemberment. “I’m finding a way in.”

  “Here we go,” Deacon said, the exasperation thick in his voice.

  I very blatantly ignored him and made my way around the misnamed “R Deck,” searching for any way in. There was no way I’d come all this way only to miss an opportunity to explore the one space I’d always dreamed of seeing.

  “This is Jefferson on B deck. September third, at about a quarter to three.”

  It always took a bit of getting used to, suddenly hearing someone talking in your ear when you were completely alone in a scary space. In a way, it made the experience less frightening. Knowing one of the Parrish boys could begin speaking at any moment meant I was less startled by any unexpected sounds I encountered during our investigations.

  Trying to ignore Jefferson, I continued to search for a way in to the one location I simply had to see.

  It didn’t seem to matter how determined I was though, no matter where I looked, every door that led to
the pool area was locked.

  “I think I found something,” Jefferson said suddenly, sounding much more enthusiastic than I had ever heard him.

  “What?” we all asked from our various locations around the ship.

  “Voices,” he said.

  I instantly forgot about my previous mission. “I’ll be right there.”

  ~

  Because of the labyrinthine nature of the ship, it took me a good ten minutes to make my way back to Brighton’s room where we were all meeting. I was the last one to enter the small cabin and when I did, I forgot all about looking at Jefferson’s evidence.

  “You have a window?” I asked.

  I had been gypped on the room selection. It was a small porthole that could barely count as a window. Still, it was much better than the tiny, windowless cabin in the middle of the ship that I was staying in. A room with no windows brought out the closet claustrophobic in me.

  “That’s nothing,” she said with a smug grin. “You should see my bathroom.”

  I let out an indignant sound as I turned on my heel and walked the two steps it took me to get to her bathroom in the minute cabin.

  “Bloody women,” Jefferson muttered. He was hunched over one of the computers with his headphones on, trying to find whatever voices he’d heard earlier.

  “This is so much nicer than my room,” I said. “You have an option for salt water in your shower?”

  “Those don’t work anymore,” she answered with a giggle. “They just keep those old knobs on there for looks. Besides, I wouldn’t want to shower in whatever salt water is surrounding this boat.”

  “Can you imagine?” Deacon asked, perched on the bed beside Brighton. “All that water sitting stagnant under the ship for who knows how long? You’d probably get botulism showering in that.”

  He gave a little shudder at the thought, even though I wasn’t so sure you could get botulism from a shower.

  “Even if the salt water knobs don’t work, your room is way fancier than mine,” I said, taking in the original woodwork and gold embossed details of the cabin.

  “Shouldn’t have made me pick the rooms,” she said, throwing me a quick wink. “I made sure mine was in the most structurally sound part of the ship. No one’s falling through this floor.”