Chapter Eight

Detective work is thrilling, but when you really need to know something, there’s no substitute for watching it happen.

And now Gus knew that to watch the car in the woods—and to watch the tractor—all he had to do was look without looking. Granted, he wasn’t completely sure what that meant, but he’d done it accidentally four times, so he assumed he’d figure it out soon enough.

After Deb left to take Meghan home, Gus rushed to his room (with a quick “good night” to Mom) and opened his laptop.

His image in the mirror couldn’t have been more different than it had been only two days before. His blue-green eyes sparkled, no longer swallowed up in purple sockets. His shoulders, which had been slumped, now hummed with the energy that pulsed through his whole body.

Though Gus had scoffed when Meghan mentioned Googling, it would be silly not to at least try. But how to phrase his search? He wanted to know if anyone else out there knew how to look without looking—after all, he didn’t need to reinvent the wheel if there was an International Looking Without Looking Society based in Bozeman, Montana, or wherever. Searching for “looking without looking” brought up results on Inattentional Blindness, which was interesting, but not relevant. Every other phrase that crossed his mind seemed more likely to bring up ghost hunter nonsense than the results he was looking for.

Gus leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. A few moments passed, then a few more. Gus’s breathing deepened, slowed, evened out.

By 8:55, the boy in the mirror—leaned back in his chair—was fast asleep.

Gus woke ten hours later, immediately back to his high-energy state from the night before—partly because he hadn’t slept so well or so long in weeks, but mostly because he realized his bus would be there in less than ten minutes. Even so, he was not going to school without a shower. It took him twelve seconds to bound to the bathroom, strip off his clothes, twist the faucet on, and hop into the shower.

His shower was thirty seconds of cold water followed by twenty-five seconds of warm water, and all fifty-five seconds involved water and suds being flung every which way. Toweling off was a waste of precious time, so he dripped dry while he brushed his teeth, gargled, applied deodorant, spritzed (a little too much) cologne, Q-tipped his ears, and combed his hair.

(Gus’s view that toweling off was a waste of time was not shared by his mom, who had to hang the sopping bath mat out to dry later that morning.)

Gus bolted out the front door just as the bus rounded the bend along the near side of the pasture. It never crossed his mind that, if Dad were still alive, his mother would never have let Gus oversleep that long. Mom was still sleeping herself, though. These last few weeks, she hadn’t been much of a morning person.

Gus scoured Soul Car Woods (though he didn’t know Meghan had named it that until she filled him in later that day) from the moment Sophia boarded the bus until the bus passed the 50/119 intersection.

The car refused to appear for him. He tried looking away quickly. He tried staring at the area while doing complicated math in his head. He tried looking straight toward the front of the bus while eyeing the Soul Car’s path peripherally. But nothing worked. And he thought he knew why. Despite his new Looking without Looking technique, Gus was facing a “don’t think about a white elephant” problem: it isn’t easy to not-think about something. He was “looking” for sure, but the “without looking” part wasn’t easy when you knew that’s what you were trying to do.

That realization dampened Gus’s spirits. He had seen the car twice the day before; not seeing it today marked a setback. Still, he had one thing to look forward to: Mrs. Miller would help him fill in the gaps in his understanding after class today.

“No, my dear Gus, there’s not a chance in the world I’m keeping you from another day’s trigonometry lesson!”

Gus and Meghan had lingered after class until everyone else was gone.

“But Mrs. Miller!” Gus whined—so much so that he even annoyed himself.

“I won’t hear of it,” Mrs. Miller replied.

Meghan interjected. “I think Gus is really onto something and needs your help.”

Mrs. Miller eyed Meghan, then looked back to Gus. “So, I take it you’ve shared everything with Meghan?”

Sensing a veiled rebuke, Gus nodded sheepishly.

“No need for chagrin,” Mrs. Miller went on. “It was to be expected. These burdens are nearly impossible to bear alone. That you confided in the young lady who happens to be your brother’s girlfriend is an interesting choice, but no matter.”

“But I have to ask you about—“ Gus started, but Mrs. Miller interrupted.

“No, you do not have to ask me anything, and I will not be responsible for your failing your math class.”

Gus went all in. “I saw the car again. In the woods. And the tractor too, a little. And I know about looking without looking.”

Mrs. Miller hmmphed to herself, clearly torn. Gus took that as an invitation to go on. “How do you see souls?”

Mrs. Miller addressed Meghan. “What class do you have this period?”

“French.”

“Is there an exam today?”

“No,” Meghan answered. “And if there’s a quiz or something, it’s okay. Mrs. Carruthers loves me. I’ll just say I had something to do in the office or whatever. She won’t mind.”

Resigned, Mrs. Miller walked to the door and shut it. “How do I see souls? Or how does one see them in general?”

“Both? I guess?” Gus started, and then recounted how he and Meghan hypothesized about looking without looking, and explained how he had seen the car twice fairly easily but then couldn’t this morning. And of course how the tractor appeared again, but it was sitting still rather than moving.

When Gus finished, Mrs. Miller nodded for a moment, then reached into her purse and pulled out a small key. Using the key, she unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk. From the drawer she produced a thick spiral-bound notebook and a thin orange paperback.

The notebook was Mead brand and had once been bright red, but time and use had faded it. Little flecks of paper trapped in the spirals told of pages long since torn out. It was a 250-page notebook, though, so it was still quite dense despite the removed pages. Various sticky tabs jutted from the notebook’s edges.

Neither Gus nor Meghan got a good look at the orange paperback, which Mrs. Miller placed behind her purse.

“This journal has followed me for twenty years,” Mrs. Miller explained. “I carry it with me always. When I arrive at school, it is immediately locked safely away from prying eyes, but I have it nearby should I need it.”

Mrs. Miller scanned the edge of her notebook and took hold of a blue tab, but then released it. “It would be dangerously remiss of me not to share one more warning with you.”

As she often did, Mrs. Miller took a moment to organize her thoughts. Meghan and Gus, though, would have none of that.

“What warning?” Meghan asked / “Tell us!” Gus demanded—in unison.

Mrs. Miller grunted, annoyed at their impatience. “My obsession with time-trapped souls”—what the hell does time-trapped mean, Gus wondered—“altered my life in myriad ways, mostly unpleasant ones. These are deep waters we’re about to tread, and I would very much like it if neither of you drowned.”

“We’ll be careful, Mrs. Miller,” Meghan assured her.

Mrs. Miller sighed. “If we are to be co-conspirators in this matter then Meghan and Gus, you really must call me Judy.”

Judy watched Gus and Meghan’s eager nods. This was wildly inappropriate, in so many ways. For heaven’s sake, she just requested that two of her students refer to her by her first name. What was wrong with her?

Putting aside fraternizing with pupils, hadn’t she moved from Elkins to avoid contact with souls? At least as much as she possibly could?

Isn’t that why she’d built a brand new home, far enough from Elkins that she could manage her obsession?

Hadn’t she left Elkins to leave him behind?

Judy Miller knew better than anyone that you didn’t have to be dead for your soul to be trapped. Obsession with her husband’s soul had captured hers.

What was it about this boy that caused her to behave his way? Did she sympathize with him? Was she fascinated by his precocious progress? A decent person, she knew, would steer Gus away from this path, not guide him along it. But here she was, asking to be called Judy, putting her career in jeopardy, all to help him see souls.

She wanted to help Gus find peace. That much was true. But there was a deeper reason here, and she knew it. Obsession is a drug. She had kicked her soul addiction cold turkey when she moved here from Elkins, and she’d been clean—so to speak—for years. Now her obsession was luring her back.

But then, this was someone else’s obsession. That couldn’t hurt. Right?

Judy opened the notebook.

“There are several factors which figure into a soul’s visibility,” Judy began.

It was so formal that Gus and Meghan instinctively pulled out their own notebooks. Judy paused to let them start writing.

“I can’t explain the physics of it,” Judy continued, “but certain souls are time-trapped.”

Gus interjected. “What does that mean?”

“They are reliving the final moments of their lives repeatedly. That reliving—that repetition—seems to ‘wear time thin,’ for want of a more sophisticated term.”

“Why are they reliving it?” Meghan asked.

“‘Why’ and ‘how’ are complicated questions,” Judy explained, “with unclear answers. The particular reasons are, I believe, largely unique to each soul’s case. But the short answer is this: Time-trapped souls are obsessed.”

“Obsessed,” Gus repeated reflexively. When Judy eyed him quizzically, Gus went on. “It’s why you know what the kids in class are thinking about. Like you said yesterday.”

“Let’s not overstate it,” Judy cautioned. “I can read my students’ obsession as well as most of my colleagues read books—with approximately thirty percent comprehension.”

Despite the gravity of their discussion, Gus and Meghan laughed at Judy’s jab at her fellow high school faculty.

“But yes, observing time-trapped souls is how I honed that particular skill.”

Meghan jumped in. “What are souls obsessed with?”

“Death,” Judy answered, and before Meghan could ask for more information, Judy qualified her answer. “Recall, though, that the only souls I have observed are those who are dying. I don’t know if this is the only obsession that can trap a soul, but it’s all I’ve seen. They are trapped either by the intensity of their emotion in the moment of their death, or by their obsession with why or how they died. Indeed, I believe it is a combination of these two factors that produces the souls that are most easily observed.”

“How many souls have you seen?” Gus asked, a bit too eagerly.

“Too many, and too much of one in particular,” Judy replied, but didn’t elaborate, and her tone stopped both Gus and Meghan from asking for more details about her One Soul In Particular.

“Why can’t I see souls at all?” Meghan asked.

“You can’t see because you haven’t obsessed over someone’s death yet,” Judy responded, bluntly. “Gus has, unwittingly—and quite rapidly, I might add—honed his obsession so finely that he has opened time windows.”

Gus was blown away by this, and not entirely in a good way. That sounded pretty freaking terrifying.

Judy continued. “You can see through time windows, even hear and smell,”—Gus wasn’t sure about this yet but he took her word for it—“but the interaction ends there. You can watch someone from a different time stream, as they exist immediately prior to their final breath. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, but that will suffice. If you wish to see souls, Meghan, start obsessing over someone’s death, though I must say I do not recommend that.”

Meghan thought again about her mother’s advice not to obsess over her death and almost regretted following it. Almost. She wanted to see the souls, that was certain, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the agony required to get there.

“Why does it only work sometimes for me?” Gus asked.

“In truth,” Judy said as she flipped to another page of her notebook—despite having it open, she hadn’t referred to it yet—”looking without looking is an apt descriptor. I couldn’t have, and haven’t, put it better myself. You are sensing beyond sensing, watching beyond watching, empathizing beyond empathy. It only works sometimes because it is difficult and you haven’t yet mastered it.”

“Why is the car more intense than the tractor?” Gus asked. “I would think my feelings for dad are more powerful than my feelings for some stranger who died fifty years ago.”

Judy closed her notebook. “I cannot explain that with certainty, but I have my theory, because I experienced it myself. The object of my own obsession remained elusive for a long time after I could see other souls all over the place. Some are easier to access than others, and I suspect in your case and mine, our nearness to the souls in question made it nearly impossible to ‘look without looking.’ We simply want to see them too badly.”

This sounded right to Gus. He didn’t care as much about the car, so being distracted around it was easier. Doing the same with the tractor—with Dad—was exponentially more difficult.

“So how do I do that? Look without looking?” Gus asked.

Judy resisted the urge to shout You’re asking me? You did in three weeks what I did in three years! She tempered her response. “You have an aptitude for it, more powerful than my own was at your stage, I believe. It’s much like finding your balance atop a bicycle. It doesn’t make sense until all of a sudden it does. I can’t explain the way I balance on a bicycle. Can you?”

Gus and Meghan shook their heads.

“I can’t explain how I see souls, either,” Judy went on, “but you’ve opened the windows already. Soon enough, your brain will learn to balance looking with not looking.”

“If it’s a bike, what are my training wheels?” Gus pleaded. “What can I do to get better?”

After a pause, Judy said, “Allow me to state once more that this is a terrible idea.”

Gus wasn’t worried about her disclaimer. In fact, he was reasonably certain she wasn’t even talking to him and Meghan. She was talking to herself.

“But were it I,” Judy continued, “I would study the car in the woods. You have seen it twice, and you’ve seen the accident in its entirety. That’s a perfect opportunity to develop your skill.”

“We can start tonight!” Gus shouted. “Meghan can drive me to the woods, and—“

“Quick question,” Meghan interjected. “Will cheerleading practice also be in the woods?“

“You can’t drive me?! How am I supposed to get there?”

Judy couldn’t help but smirk. In her experience, men of all ages—fifteen, fifty, whatever—had a hard time grasping that the world didn’t revolve around them.

Meghan shrugged. “You can wait, I guess? I’ll be done around five.”

“What am I gonna do here for two hours? Am I even allowed to be here?”

It flashed across Gus’s mind that he could ask Mrs. Miller—that is, Judy—for a ride. But as desperate as he was, that was too weird to consider. And besides, she probably wouldn’t be willing to just drop him off in the woods by the road.

“You could ride the bus and tell Mr. Jones to let you off,” Meghan suggested, “and I can join you later and take you home.”

“The man already thinks I’m off my gourd,” Gus protested. “You think he’s going to let me wander into the woods?“

Meghan shrugged again. “I can’t miss practice.” Gus started to speak but Meghan cut him off and continued, “Wait for me. Maybe we’ll get done early—she won’t want to tire us out before the game tomorrow, and we’ve been doing good.”

A slight pause while Gus considered gave Judy a chance to add her two cents. “Though I hesitate to intervene, it will likely be best to have Meghan with you. I can share from my experience that it is exceptionally challenging to distract yourself. ‘Looking without looking,’ as you put it, will be far simpler if she’s there to help. Though still difficult, of course.”

Gus sighed. “Okay fine. I’ll text Mom I’m doing chess club or something—“

“—do we have a chess club?” Meghan asked.

Gus shook his head. “No idea. But it sounds like something I would do.”

The classroom door closed behind Gus and Meghan. Judy had, once again, written Hank Peters a note to explain Gus’s tardiness. Meghan refused a note—“Believe me, Mrs. Carruthers will not care”—and Judy decided it was best not to create a paper trail anyway. No one needed to know she had held two students thirty minutes past the end of class.

It occurred to her that thinking about a “paper trail” at all was a red flag. If she didn’t consider what she was doing inappropriate, a record of it would be no concern.

Judy held her face in her hands for two solid minutes, then rubbed her cheeks and exhaled loudly.

In her mind’s eye, she watched her husband shoot himself. It was the most horrific scene she had ever watched, but she’d watched it many times before, and in person. Watching it again, even only in her mind, was sipping whiskey after ten years sober. Bitter—here we go again—but sweet too, embracing a long-lost old friend. She relished the vision.

She watched it again. Watched him turn the handgun toward his temple. Watched him pull the trigger.

After all, what’s one more sip?