Scarecrow’s Dream Read Online Free Page B

you’re near me. I don’t get why I’m haunting you, or if I’m even supposed to be haunting you. Or anyone. I need purpose. I need answers.”
    I looked up at the ceiling. “I also need a job. I’d imagine haunting is not exactly a lucrative career unless you can get a gig on one of those TV shows where people investigate ghosts and spooky old houses. Which are way too much fun to watch, by the way. It’s an interesting world in the twenty-first century.”
    “I believe it’s required to be a mean, nasty ghost to be featured on TV and you’re still very sweet. Now then—a job? Why?”
    “Addie, I’m living here and taking one full bedroom and eating your food and I’m not contributing. As I previously noted, I can’t exactly walk Boo-Boo for you. I feel guilty. My father brought me up better than to be a mooch. I paid rent from the time I graduated high school because we agreed I needed to learn independence even though I was living at home. I may not remember much but I’m sure Dad did not allow me to hang out at home and do nothing.”
    She smiled. “I get it. You’re independent-minded and responsible. You are woman. I hear you roaring. So. Job. Hmm. I could try to film you and write about you on my blog, although ghostly relations aren’t considered entertainment news. Plus, you’re normal, apart from being invisible, and folks would believe all the movement was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Useless for a resume.”
    “Well, I’d try wandering into an employment agency but I’d have to explain why I’m invisible—not to mention failing to produce any paperwork. Not to mention, technically dead and all that jazz. But, there’s got to be a way for me to make some money to help out. I can’t believe how the prices in Manhattan have quadrupled over the last forty years. Obscene.”
    “Hush. Nothing to be done about Manhattan real estate and this apartment has been rent-controlled and stabilized forever so we live cheap. But I understand your need to feel useful. What did you do in the early seventies? We know you were studying at NYU. You were only twenty but already working on some ridiculous master’s degree in some field guaranteed for perpetual unemployment. Journalism or theatre?” She chuckled.
    “Theatre or English lit comes to mind but don’t take my word for it.”
    “Well, you were one smart and ambitious lady. Paul once said you were taking about twenty-one hours each semester and summer sessions and working somewhere. Ooh! You helped your dad paint apartments after people moved or when renovations were due. Although I’m not sure an invisible painter is going to fly with the unions. Okay, let’s go back to our lives in 1973. I was off in Paris. You and I were both still protesting the war. We didn’t quite trust Nixon to end it. We were furious about the wreckage of the planet by big businesses dumping waste materials everywhere and we also were involved in various other movements. You were big, big, and big into animal rights and civil rights. Racial equality—or lack thereof.”
    I willed some memory, any memory, to float my way. “I have this vague feeling I had a partial scholarship and worked part-time as well. I did have a fellowship for grad school.” A memory hit. “Wow! News flash. This just in. I taught some freshman grammar classes. It was horrible. I was the same age as half the students and I believe there was much resentment over my passing out low grades for their lack of understanding regarding how not to split an infinitive or dangle a participle.”
    Addie snorted. “Do not get me started on grammar. Every time my editor wants me to mentor some kid at the Chronicle I end up moaning about how texting is destroying the world of language.”
    “Texting?”
    “Later. We’re on a roll here. Go on.”
    “Addie, I wanted to be a writer. I’m sure of it. Something exotic, like a foreign correspondent or an investigative journalist. Expose Nixon as a