Ghost of a Chance Book 1 in Above the Grave Trilogy Read online

  Ghost of a Chance

  Book One in the

  Above the Grave Trilogy

  Kara Kirkendoll

  © 2012 Kara Kirkendoll

  3rd Edition – Edited Version

  To my family, for always believing in me.

  Ghost of a Chance

  Chapter 1: The Wheel of Fortune Chapter 2: The Fool Chapter 3: The Hermit Chapter 4: The Moon Chapter 5: Chains Chapter 6: The Lovers Chapter 7: Death Chapter 8: Judgment Chapter 9: Justice Chapter 10: The Sun Chapter 1 The Wheel of Fortune

  As she sat staring out over the aged and water stained balcony, sipping on her third cup of java for the morning, and nursing an incredible hangover, Drew wondered what she was going to do now that she had been evicted from her second floor French Quarter apartment. She flicked a cigarette with one hand and absent mindedly rolled a lone ivy leaf that had made its way over the top of the banister in the other.

  It wasn’t her fault the stupid old ladies had been out walking in the middle of the night when she and her friend Liza had decided to moon the sleeping neighborhood.

  Didn’t old people have curfews or something? She thought.

  It was the French Quarter. People showed body parts all of the time, but it just so happened that she knocked her shot glass off of the balcony, and knocked one of them in the head. She wasn’t quite sure what caused her to do the things that she did sometimes. Last night’s mishap had been brought on by the dozens of margaritas that she and Liza had devoured, one right after the other, or it could have been the countless shots of tequila. Either way, it was New Orleans. It was the place for partying right? Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do?

  It wasn’t like she was a complete loser that did nothing but get drunk and into trouble all of the time. She had a good job working at the local art gallery, and if she would ever get her head out of her ass and try to sell some of her own work she might be able to make some extra money for a down payment on her own home. She didn’t think that she would be able to get another apartment this time. After all of the bad references she had had in the past she had barely gotten this one.

  She played with the hot pink strand of hair that hung unruly in front of her eyes. There was no way she was calling her mother. She hadn’t talked to her since last Christmas when she showed up at the “family” dinner completely inebriated. She didn’t know what the big deal was; she was having a good time after all.

  Drew was an only child, and for many reasons she preferred it that way. She would have hated to have had someone else to look after growing up. She could barely look after herself and Lord knows her mother hadn’t done a very good job of it. Any brothers or sisters that she would have been blessed with would have ended up being her responsibility.

  She didn’t know how long it had been since she had been able to sleep in and not because she wasn’t allowed to. This particular morning was no different. She had watched the sun rise just as she had many mornings before, whether it had been from staying up all night or just tired of tossing and turning trying to get a few minutes of sleep. She didn’t need to look inside over her kitchen counter to know that it was now creeping up on the eight o’clock hour and she was in no way near ready to get off her butt and start the day.

  A large bang came from what sounded like the living room area. Liza must have decided to join the living by falling off of the couch. Poor Liza, she had been Drew’s best friend since Drew beat up that girl for her back in Junior high. She couldn’t remember her real name, but she and Liza had called her Kelly, because she looked and acted like she was a perfect young Kelly Barbie doll. The bitch.

  Liza had been kind of a geek in school and after that day in gym class when Drew had had just about enough of those preppies picking on anyone that didn’t look and act just the way they did, Liza had followed her around like a shadow. It kind of annoyed Drew at first because at the time she was happy being a loner. After a couple of weeks though, the two were inseparable.

  “Good morning, Sunshine!” Drew yelled in through the sliding doors that she had left wide open. It was the middle of August and hot as hell in New Orleans. Her air conditioner was running full blast but she didn’t really care since it was in the lease that the owners paid the utilities. She planned on letting the water run for a while that afternoon as well.

  “What?” Liza yelled back.

  Drew snorted. She and Liza had been on a three day drunk. She lived way too close to Bourbon Street anyway, she had decided. It was too damn tempting.

  Going back to work the next day was going to be a bitch. She loved her job and it was probably the only thing that she did right in her life. , the lights were way too bright some days in that gallery.

  “Where the hell are my pants?” Liza asked as she stepped out on the patio. Drew noticed that Liza’s pixy haircut was flat on one side while the other stood up on end. She looked like she had slept upside down on the couch with one side of her head lying flat against it.

  “Who gives a shit?” Drew asked. “I can’t get evicted twice in the same day can I?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact I did once.” Liza said seriously.

  They both laughed at that. Liza was always on the straight and narrow until she got around Drew. Liza getting evicted twice in one day when she was in college was pretty much Drew’s fault though. Drew had come to visit Liza for the weekend and stayed in her dorm after hours even though she wasn’t allowed (but that is another story). When Drew decided to use the dorm showers the next morning and walked back to the room naked with nothing but a towel on her head and a pair of black thongs, the two girls were escorted out of the dorms immediately. Liza had to even wait a couple of days before they would let her come back and get her things. At the time though, her most valued possession was her bong. The jerks had confiscated that though while she was on her little “vacation” away from the dorm. The second eviction for the dayhad been from Drew’s apartment. Of course Liza couldn’t tell her parents that she was evicted so she stayed at Drew’s. It wasn’t their fault the floor was rotted out and when they tried to do the Lavern and Shirley walk down Drew’s hallway, they both fell through the floor into the downstairs tenant’s bedroom. Thank God they landed on the bed and no one was seriously injured.

  “Did you really get evicted?” Liza asked.

  “Yep! A great big red notice on the front door this morning, plus a written lecture on how I need to respect my elders.”

  “You went out your front door this morning?”

  Drew thought about that for a minute and laughed. “Yea, I guess I did.”

  They both sat in silence for a moment. Liza lay on her back in nothing but boy shorts and a tank top. Drew sat in her lawn chair already dressed in jean shorts and a tight pink TShirt that read “Yes, they are real”. She was still contemplating where she was going to go. The owners had only given her a five day notice.

  “Why?” Liza said.

  “Why, what?”

  “Why did you go out your front door this morning?” Liza asked in awe.

  “To check the mail.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Oh.” Drew said. “That’s probably why I didn’t have any.”

  “What the hell are you going to do?” Liza said.

  “Check it tomorrow after work I guess.” Drew said absently.

  “I’m not talking about the mail, dork! I meant what are you going to do about the apartment?”

  “Well, I am not really sure yet. I could always move in with you and Tim and your little army of sunshine.” Drew batted her eyes at her friend.

  “No, really, what ar
e you going to do?” Liza laughed she hated that Drew’s angel like face made her feel like glitter should be falling from the sky when her lashes fluttered that way.

  Though she loved Drew to death, she wasn’t into the partying scene like Drew was. This weekend had been the first drinking craze that she had been on in a long time. She was actually happily married with three kids. Her family just happened to be on vacation without her to Tim’s parent’s house for the weekend. There was no way that she would still be married in a week if Drew moved into her house.

  Liza admired and pitied Drew at the same time. She loved her free spirit and how nothing could bring her friend down. She also loved that she was very honest, sometimes brutally,and that if she had something to say she wasn’t afraid to let it out. She felt sorry for her though because she knew deep down that Drew was struggling with a past that she probably hadn’t even told God about.

  Drew would never talk about her personal life even to her though, her closest friend. She didn’t have to be a psychiatrist to tell that something was wrong. Even she knew that Drew wasn’t fooling anyone with the tough girl rebel routine. She was hiding something that Liza knew she desperately needed to get out. Besides, the girl was 25 years old. It was time to grow up. Maybe finding out that life doesn’t always just pick itself back up when you knock it down was what her friend needed.

  “I love this apartment. It looks out over all of the nosey people in the city.” Drew whined. “I can walk to work. Depending on which way the wind is blowing I can smell the garbage from Bourbon Street or the bakeries at Jackson Square. Who could ask for a better place to live?” She stood over the balcony looking out at the buildings that surrounded her. She had never roamed far from the city. It was where she felt that she belonged. She had no intentions of leaving.

  “Well, I for one have only stayed with you three nights and am already sick of the smells down here. I love you, Drew, but I am ready to go home to my little suburb across the Ponchatrain. It is quiet there and I don’t have to worry about how close I carry my purse or if someone is going to puke on my shoes.”

  Drew snorted at that. “It isn’t that bad here, if you aren’t a tourist that is.”

  “No, it is great really, just not every day for me.”

  “I guess I could always go back to tending bar at Boudreaux’s. He nearly fell to the ground weeping when I took the job at the gallery. If hewasn’t gay I would swear he was in love with me.” Drew cooed, batting those eyes again making Liza roll her own.

  “Do you think he would give you your old loft back, the one that you didn’t ever sleep in because you lived right over the bar and partied every morning until 6 or 7?” Liza asked.

  “Good point. I couldn’t live there and still work at the gallery. I’d never make it to work.” She said chewing on her nail, contemplating another cigarette. “I still need to find a part time job though. I really need to buy my own place. My credit isn’t the greatest in the world though.”

  “You are rambling. Why don’t you go back to fortune telling? You are great at reading tarots and palms.” Liza suggested.

  “Because the last few times I tried to read other people’s tarots I kept coming up with the same cards. I seriously doubt that girl Cookie from “the corner”, a computer geek, and a bakery chef are going to all end up with the same fortune. Then I tried to read them for myself and guess what? The same exactcards!” Drew said as she got up and walked towards the balcony rail again.

  “Did you remember to shuffle them?” Liza laughed. Drew just glared at her, making her friend take her a little more seriously.

  “Well, what were the cards?” Liza was always very interested in Drew’s other worldly ventures though she never could tell if Drew was taking it seriously herself or not. Coming from her Nana’s “witchy” world she knew all about tell-tale signs of the future and sometimes how the past opened doors for the future. Drew may not have believed in what she practiced, but Liza did.

  “Ten of the Major Arcana, which is really strange; The Wheel of Fortune, The Fool, Hermit, The Moon, Chains, The Lovers, Death, Judgment, Justice, and The Sun. The meanings aren’t exactly what they sound like.” Drew said when she saw the horror on Liza’s face. “At least, they aren’t supposed to be.”

  As she watched a couple walk by holding hands and noticed that the poor boy had been suckered into buying one of the crazy ladies roses down the street, she thought to herself that there was one card that bothered her more than any of the others, even the Death card, and that was the Sixth card, “The Lovers”.

  Drew was trapped in her own secret world, a world where no men were allowed. Shedidn’t mind putting the act on when she was bartending. Of course she knew the more you flirted and the more you let peek out around the edges the more tips you got, but that was as close to men as she would ever get. She had had many phone numbers slipped her way and many propositions that most women would die for, but not Drew.

  She could blame that one on her first step-father. She had been a very beautiful blonde headed, blue-eyed little girl. Everyone would tell her that she looked like an angel. Somehow, she never let it go to her head. Her step-father had been obsessed with her and he had taken that obsession just a little too far. Drew still had her virginity, but she had been about a half of a second away from losing it at twelve years old. She hated him from the first moment that she met him and yet her mother had refused to listen to her when she would tell her just how uncomfortable he would make her feel.

  One night, her mother found out for herself when she walked in on her step-father about to ruin the rest of all of their lives. Drew was glad for her mother’s sake that it didn’t happen. As far as Drew was concerned, it may as well have happened and it was never going to happen again.

  “Drew, you know you can talk to me about anything.” Liza said sitting up now on the balcony floor. She noticed that Drew had gone off into one of her dream lands again. The Ivy leaf that Drew had been rolling around between her fingers now looked like a ball of mush and Drew’s finger and thumb had turned green.

  “Oh, I’m fine… really.” She said to Liza as she looked skeptical. “I’m just really tired and very hung over.”

  “Ditto. I think it is more than that though, and I wish that for once you would just tell me what is on your mind. You have known all of my life long secrets since we were fourteen. Don’t you think that it is time that you let me in even just a little bit?” Liza held up her thumb and pointer as if to indicate that she really did mean it could be the tiniest bit of information.

  “Liza, you sound like a jealous husband.” Drew said rolling her eyes then turning back to the city.

  “Well, Drew, sometimes I feel like I am a worried parent with you, and we have been together longer than most couples stay together anymore so why not? Just talk to me.”

  Drew stared at what she could see of the top of the St. Louis Cathedral. She loved Jackson Square. She loved New Orleans. She had been born and raised in Hammond, about an hour north of New Orleans. Her mother would bring her to the market at Jackson Square though every chance she got when she was a child. Drew had made friends with the local artists. The painters, singers, piano players, even the mimes would wink silently at her as she walked by, she loved them all.

  She remembered being about six years old and standing in front of a very old building and listening to someone play the piano, it was the most beautiful music she had ever heard and it had been coming from one of the windows above. (Later, she heard the same tune being played in a movie and had to blink the tears back as she refused to cry.) She watched an old man draw a painting of the building in front of her at the same time. It was almost like magic. The man’s brush strokes seemed to match the beat of the music. He drew her into the picture and then handed it to her. Her mother tried to hand the man some money but he wouldn’t accept it.

  Drew thought about that now. Knowing that was probably the man’s only income and he wouldn’t accept her payment for the
drawing. He had said with a toothless smile that it was for the little angel who had given him the inspiration that was sure to last him for the rest of the day.

  “Do you ever wonder why at twenty -five years old, I am still a virgin?” Drew said still staring out at the buildings. Drew’s shoulders shot up then as if she were expecting a blow. She was usually very careful about what she said when it was about her, this time it just fell out of her mouth.

  If Liza had been standing up she was sure that she would have fallen right back down. Never in the eleven years that they had known each other had the subject been brought up. Sure, every now and then they would joke about making out with guys or how Drew had never been in a serious relationship. Liza had just assumed that what Drew did behind closed doors was something that she kept to herself. How could she be her best friend and never know that she had never had sex with anyone?

  “Drew, I am as plain Jane as they get and I have a husband and three kids at twenty-five. How can you still be a virgin when you have the body of an underwear model and the face and hair of an angel?”

  Drew laughed and turned to sit down in front of her closest friend and the only person that she had ever talked to about what was getting ready to be said in her life.

  “First, and most importantly, you are not plain Jane. You are very beautiful and you know it. Do you remember that day that I beat the crap out of Kelly in the 7th grade?”

  “Of course I do. I think that you have gotten me in enough trouble since then that we should be pretty much even by now though.” Liza laughed, but the laugh didn’t quite make it to her ocean colored eyes.

  “Did you even know who I was before that day?” Drew asked.

  “Drew, you were the strange girl who always sat in the corner by yourself at lunch and who would rather go to ISS then read a report or answer a question aloud in class. If anyone spoke to you, you would turn your head and pretend not to hear them. I remember following you around like a lost puppy until you finally broke after the “Kelly” day.” Liza sighed and took a moment to calculate her words. “You have been a different person since then though. You are fun and outgoing and everyone that knows you loves you. Though, sometimes I think that you make people a little uncomfortable when you aren’t in your element.”