Exorcize This, Julie Steimle [best books to read in life txt] 📗

over. “How was dance?”

She glared at me, dragging her feet across the carpet to the computer where we were now watching a kid throw his iPad as if it hadn’t cost his parents a decent paycheck worth of work and stomp on it. “Coach Sheehan said that if Mom becomes a Mormon, she’s not hosting me for private lessons anymore.”

My eyes widened on her. That lousy, selfish prick. That was prejudice. What would she have said if my mother had decided to be Jewish? Or Muslim?

“You were seen with those missionaries again,” Dawn said sulkily, nearly blaming me.

I shrugged. “They stopped by Deidre’s house.”

Deidre broke into a hysterical laugh. Tears came to her eyes as she nearly cried that laugh. Both Dawn and I watched. Dawn didn’t get what was funny, though I smirked at it.

Dawn pulled up a chair and stared at the computer screen, muttering, “She was mean to you anyway. Who wants to be her Billy Elliot? She just wants to take all the credit.”

When Dad got home, I revealed to him and Dawn that I had invited the missionaries over for dinner, besides Deidre of course. Surprisingly, they did not react as I had expected.

“Alright,” Dawn huffed as she walked up to her room. “It’s too late to retract the invitation now anyway.”

Dad lifted his eyebrows at me. Once Dawn was gone, he whispered to me, “I have a feeling you have a story to tell connected to this, am I right?”

I love my dad. He was goofy sometimes, but in others he is spot on perfect. I nodded to him.

“I can’t wait to hear it,” he said, and he went to his room to remove his tie and coat.

I watched him go, wondering if he was up for a good ghost story.

*

What can I say about the rest? When the missionaries arrived for dinner, they did what we expected them to do. They ate with us, talked about God, and invited us to church. And we reacted the way I expected us to. Dad thanked them for their time (after they were full), rather politely, said he would think about it (he thought about things for a very long time before acting on anything), and eventually showed them the door. Mom handed them cookies to take with them and promised that she would come to church as soon as she could—which I didn’t know what that meant. As soon as she could? When was that? When she got sick of Pastor MacDougal’s snide remarks about me? How long would that take? She was a very forgiving woman after all. Dawn merely waved when they walked away, saying nothing.

But I wondered as I got Deidre set up in Travis’s room with new sheets for the night: What if their church was really God’s church? The devil himself would work hard to prove to everyone that it wasn’t. How could I be sure?

Thing was, before bed with mugs of hot cocoa in hand, Mom finally confessed to Dad that she had been taking in the sister missionaries and listening to them. He was surprised, but not by much. And I found out why.

“So… because Will converted to Mormonism out at Stanford, you wanted to find out about it yourself,” Dad said as all of us were in out pajamas around the kitchen table. “To make certain they weren’t a cult.”

My mother nodded.

“Wait,” I interjected. “Will did what?”

Dawn whistled. “Well, that explains why Jane is interested.”

And Deidre, who had been watching us, laughed. Her laughter sounded genuinely happy, and relieved. I don’t know why it struck me so, but it did.

 

Last Bit

Halloween was the following day. Tuesday.

Deidre spent it with us, explaining to me that the spirits of the dead did roam the earth and were seen my mortal eyes on that day more than other days. It was the other reason she wanted to stay with me Monday and Tuesday night. She told me this while we walked to school that morning. In return, I revealed that imps also roamed in full human size on Halloween, causing mayhem the entire day. It was the third Halloween since I first could see them, I explained.

School was fun. Some of the teachers came dressed up. So did some of the students. Mr. Caoilfhionn read the Legend of Sleepy Hollow to us while dressed in a kilt, a blue long-sleeved shirt with fake tattoos drawn in black permanent marker, and a blue painted face. We asked him what he was and he joked he was a Nac Mac Feegle—or a Pict—and we could take our pick. Señora Alvera had on Day-of-the-Dead makeup, and played a few songs for us in Spanish class. And Mr. McDillan told us monster stories—of which I believed were most likely true.

That evening, Mom and Dad manned the candy bowl while watching Arsenic and Old Lace in the living room. Deidre, Dawn, and I went with Jane to a youth activity at Sarah’s church where they had a PG-level Halloween party with ‘Trunk or treat’ in the parking lot and a chili cook-off inside the building. I came as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz while we gave Deidre my last year’s Guinevere costume to wear and braided up her hair. Dawn came as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, carrying a stuffed bunny with her. Jane was dressed as Gomorrah from Guardians of the Galaxy. She pulled it off beautifully.

Brigitte greeted us in the church foyer dressed as Scarlett Witch alongside Sarah who was as Raggedy Anne doll in a red yarn wig, and Tiffany who had come dressed as a yellow Minion in overalls.

It was the first time I had ever been in that building, and the chili smelled good. I just hoped there was one without garlic in it. 

*

Ok, I wish I could say that was the end of the ghost episode, but life does not really have clean cut beginnings or endings. Deidre and her father stayed in town to finish sorting out the bones of the dead, but they moved out of the Bale’s house November first as they were no longer needed there. Once it was ghost (and evil spirit) free, Mrs. Bale finally got the place sold.

Funnily enough, a family of Chinese Buddhists moved in, and they changed the entire house and landscape. Totally remodeled it. They were the first Chinese in our town too. Everyone stared at the kids when they transferred in, until Sarah jogged up to them and introduced herself.

That month Dawn was promoted to flag captain, and Tabby McMahone was off the team. Rumor around the school was that she was pregnant and had decided to keep the kid. She and Bobby were unofficially engaged, though I wondered how long that would last.

By Dawn’s birthday, when the final ghost was laid to rest and the last of the vampire victims was identified, Deidre and her father packed up their car and moved out of town. I had begged her not to go with him. I had tried and tried to get her to contact her relations in New York who would be a great deal better to her than her father was, but all she had to say to me was: “No. It will kill my dad if I leave him. He needs me.”

I groaned inside, as it was the last day she would be at school with us. It was no longer cold around her. Nobody called her creepy anymore. She was just Deidre Johnson.

“He’s using you,” I said wearily.

She scowled at me, huffing.

“A good father would put the needs of his child first over his own. That’s what my dad does. And my vampire father cared enough about me to leave me with my family here,” I explained. “He saved my life. Your dad is—”

“A human being with faults, as am I,” Deidre said. She smirked at me now. “But I don’t want to leave him now. Not at least until I am eighteen. Then things will change.”

I inwardly groaned. That still did not sound right to me. I doubted he would let her leave him. She really needed to contact her relatives.

“Look,” she said. “The world isn’t full of perfect people. We all make mistakes. One day your dad might fall off his pedestal.”

I rolled my eyes. I did not hold my dad on a pedestal. I could hear his daily temptations. I knew he was as human as anyone. But I also saw how much he resisted, and I admired that about him. His little flaws didn’t matter to me so much. I just could not say the same for Deidre’s father. He was a selfish man at the core. He still hated me. Nothing had changed. And he was extremely annoyed that I had introduced his daughter to the ‘Mormons’. Deidre had taken one of their books that night at our dinner, and I knew she was reading it. Who knows? Maybe she will find some truth in it.

But she left.

And it was now November.

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Publication Date: 11-12-2018

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