Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy Read Free

her elbows. “A witch?”
    â€œPlease. I would never be something so obvious. I’m you ! All I need now is a shoulder bag filled with math textbooks, calendars, and staplers.”
    â€œThat seems dumb,” said Wendy. “I don’t carry around calendars and staplers.”
    â€œIt’s a caricature, Wendy. The calendars and staplers symbolize your organizing tendencies.”
    â€œFine. Then I’ll be a caricature of you .” Wendy searched in Gilda’s closet until she found a feather boa and a leopard-print jacket. “Here,” she said. “Mismatched weird clothes plus typewriter equals Gilda Joyce.”
    â€œNow you’re just being mean. I would never wear that boa with leopard print.”
    â€œYou’re the one who suggested doing caricatures!”
    â€œWell, I just changed my mind.” Gilda tore off the brunette wig and tried on another option—a blond wig with sausage ringlets. “Maybe I’ll be something totally different, like an old-fashioned Southern belle.” Gilda put a plumed hat over the wig and stared at herself in the mirror.
    Gilda’s ear suddenly tickled. An image flashed in her mind: She saw an old, yellow house shadowed by tall trees. An enormous porch surrounded the house. As she looked at the house in her mind, she felt cold.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Wendy asked.
    â€œWendy, I think I just got a psychic signal.” Gilda had spent more than a year working to develop her psychic skills. She had memorized The Master Psychic’s Handbook by famed psychic Balthazar Frobenius, and her budding psychic abilities had already helped her solve several mysteries.
    â€œDid you get a vision of a sheep?” Wendy joked. “Because you kind of look like Little Bo Peep right now.”
    â€œWendy, I’m serious . I saw a picture in my mind—a very clear image of a house. And there was something really spooky about it.”
    â€œWas it a house around this neighborhood?”
    â€œI don’t think so.” Gilda took off the hat and wig. “It kind of looked like the Southern plantation house in that old movie— Gone with the Wind .”
    â€œWell, that’s probably because of your mom’s trip to Florida, right?”
    â€œYes. . . . I have a strange feeling about that trip.”
    â€œYou really think she’s secretly visiting some guy?”
    â€œI told you: she was giggling like crazy on the phone before she left, and her suitcase was full of new outfits.”
    Gilda suddenly felt sad as she looked at her closet filled with costumes, but she couldn’t articulate what was wrong. It bothered her to suspect that her mother might be concealing the true purpose of her trip. She also had a premonition of some general instability—the sense that something very important in her life was suddenly out of place.
    â€œI can’t explain it yet,” she said. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about this.”

3
    Darla
    O n a quiet street in one of the old neighborhoods of St. Augustine, a twelve-year-old girl named Darla sat on her sprawling front porch sipping sweet tea and staring at a page of her history textbook. She was supposed to be studying for a quiz on Florida history, but she couldn’t concentrate on the descriptions of Spanish and French explorers in the New World. She felt sleepy as she listened to birds calling from branches in the mossy trees and the magical, sparkling sound of wind chimes as they moved in a warm breeze.
    Suddenly Darla felt a presence. I’m not alone, she thought, sitting up straighter in her chair. She felt certain that someone was in the yard, watching her. Reluctantly, Darla raised her eyes from her book.
    A woman wearing a long, white dress stood motionless under one of the towering oak trees. Her hair hung in long waves, but it did not move in the wind. She was beautiful, but oddly frozen there under the tree, and Darla