Crossing Over Read Online Free Page A

could have worn like fifty years ago, and khaki-colored pants.
    Maybe she’d gotten separated from her own group and had accidentally gotten on our bus.
    I decided to do a good deed.
    “Back in a sec,” I told Jac, who responded with a “Mmph” while she continued to do damage control on her soda spill.
    I got up, stretched, then moved into the empty row of seats in front of Beige Girl. I stuck my face into the gap between the
window seat and the window. I could see her profile, but her face was masked by a hand pressed against the glass.
    “Hey,” I said quietly. “How’s it going?”
    I thought she might have moved a little, almost like a flinch of surprise, but she made no indication she’d heard me.
    “Hey,” I said again. “You’re not from our school, are you?”
    Nothing.
    I put my hands on the back of the seat, rose on my knees, and peered directly down at her.
    “Hey,” I repeated, much louder.
    This time she looked at me, dropping her hand away from the glass.
    She was very delicate looking, with porcelain skin and huge, pale blue eyes. There was a buzz of energy around her.
    She was, to put it bluntly, very dead.
    When, when, when was I going to stop confusing the living with the dead? It was so totally uncool.
    “I can see you,” I said very quietly. I could not remember the French word for
see
. “
Je
… um…
see-ez vous
.”
    She looked at me with mild interest and no readable expression, then turned back to the window, obscuring her face from mine.
    I was getting ready to ask her if she needed help, or maybe find an extremely tactful English-French phrase for “Do you know
that you’re dead?” when I happened to glance across the aisle.
    Ben Greenblott was looking at me.
    Ben Greenblott, more accurately, was watching me have a conversation with an empty seat.
    There are no words to describe the mortification I felt.
    Without saying goodbye or even sneaking another look at Beige Girl, I faced forward and slumped down in the seat. I closed
my eyes, trying to make myself disappear. Then I felt rather than saw someone standing over me. Living? Dead? I kept my eyes
squeezed shut. All the possibilities seemed equally agonizing at this moment.
    “Kat? Are you okay?”
    I opened my eyes.
    “Mom.”
    I felt an initial tide of relief sweep over me. She probably realized somethingembarrassing had just happened to me. My mom
could almost always fix things. If not fix them, improve them a great deal. I almost patted the seat beside me, ready to whisper
secrets about Ben Greenblott and how Brooklyn called me Spooky and the disembodied French voice in the Basilique Notre-Dame.
    Then I saw my mother glance very quickly at the seat behind me.
    She was a medium. Naturally, she saw Beige Girl, too. And suddenly I was overwhelmed with frustration. She had come back here
to check out the ghost, not probe my feelings on the subject of the perfect boy.
    Was it not enough that I had the gift of second sight dumped on me without any say in the matter whatsoever? Was it not enough
that there were times a virtual village of dead people followed me around, trying to get myattention? Was it not enough that
if there was a demon within a five-mile radius, it would sense my presence and come at me?
    I just wanted to be normal. Not forever. Just, say, for the Montreal trip. Just while Ben Greenblott was sitting a few feet
away. Just for the moment. I did not want to talk about ghosts.
    “I’m fine,” I mumbled.
    “Are you sure?” she pressed. She tucked a strand of baby-fine blond hair behind one ear and stared at me, her forehead creased.
I have my father’s coloring—jet-black hair and green eyes. For a split second, my mother looked like a complete stranger.
    “I just need some space,” I said. I could have said it more nicely. But Ben Greenblott was sitting right there. I had been
talking to air. He had seen it.
    It was not okay.
    My mother nodded, like she understood about the ghost situation without my