"You want to do what? Here?" Danielle couldn't believe that Nicole had actually suggested what she'd just heard.
"Well, your folks are out of town, mine aren't. Besides, it'll be fun! C'mon, please?" Nicole had a way of wheedling what she wanted out of Danielle; she always had.
"Nicole, we have that econ mid-term Friday. Aren't you going to study at all?"
"I can study later. You know I'll do fine, I always do. C'mon, Danielle! You know you want to ..." Nicole was smiling, Danielle could tell even over the phone.
Danielle sighed. "I think it's crazy. You know stuff like that's nothing but superstition, but ... okay."
"Cool! I knew you'd let us! Told Gabe you would! Okay, we'll be over there around eight ... see ya!"
As she hung up the phone, Danielle wondered why she'd let Nicole talk her into yet another silly stunt like what she was planning. It always happened this way, always had. Both were smart, pretty, and privileged members of old Creole families. But Nicole was an impulsive dreamer, and Danielle preferred her feet firmly on the ground. From kindergarten on, Danielle had been trying to talk Nicole out of one wild scheme or another, while Nicole did her best to coax Danielle into joining her in her escapades. They were both equally successful.
Danielle sat back down at her desk, and tried to concentrate on her economics notes, but there was a niggling voice in the back of her mind telling her that she was going to regret giving in to Nicole this time.
* * *
Sitting on the porch that evening, Danielle gazed down Jackson Street, watching for Nicole and Gabriel. It was only a couple of blocks from where Nicole lived to Danielle's house, and most likely they would be walking. The streetcar full of tourists going by caught her eye, and Danielle wondered what it was that made the tourists flock to this area so much. The houses were pretty, true, but she had grown up in the Garden District, and saw nothing unusual in the neighborhood of stately old houses. The white house with the tall columns behind her was just home, just like the pink brick house down the street where Nicole lived with her parents was simply where Nicole lived.
As the evening came on, the air seemed to become thicker, humidity hold Danielle close in its embrace. The scent of flowering vines, underlined with just a hint of decaying vegetation, reminded her of the summer that was ending. She looked down the street at the ancient oaks lining it, bent with age and dressed in decades of Spanish moss. They loomed over the manicured lawns with the same kind of brooding antiquity that the houses in the French quarter had as they leaned over cobbled streets.
It was dusk, and the crickets in the Carolina jasmine, which crawled over the sides of the porch, were getting loud when Danielle saw her friends coming towards her. She wouldn't have recognized them, but Nicole's energetic way of walking was unmistakable. It was almost as if she was constantly amazed at the things around her, loving the way the world appeared to her, and she gestured with her hands, talking, while she walked with her boyfriend up the old sidewalk, sidestepping around places where the roots of the trees had buckled the concrete.
When she got close enough to see Danielle on the porch, Nicole came close to skipping the last few yards left, coming through the old wrought-iron gate in front of the house, a huge grin on her face, and dark ponytail swinging.
"Are you ready?" Nicole burst out as soon as she joined Danielle on the porch.
"I guess, but I'm still not so sure this is a great idea. Gabe, didn't you try to talk her out of this? The whole thing sort of gives me the creeps." Danielle was starting to have second thoughts.
Gabriel shrugged his shoulders, "I tried, but you know how she is."
"I wanted to go down to the St. Louis cemetery, you know, where her tomb is, but it's so full of drug addicts at night, and Gabe said he wouldn't help if I tried to do that," Nicole chimed in, looking not at all daunted by what she had just proposed, as if sane people went into the St. Louis cemetery after dark every night.
Danielle looked straight at Nicole, and said, "Nicole Marie Rousseau, I am positive that you have completely lost your mind! Really, Nic! The cemetery?"
"Well, I wanted to do it right." Nicole finally managed to look sheepish under Danielle's rebuke. She brightened again when she reached for the package Gabriel held under his arm, and then dropped it in Danielle's lap. "Ta-da!"
Danielle looked down at what Nicole had placed in her lap with such pride, and saw a box for an old Ouija board game. She recoiled as if a snake had been placed in her lap. "You know what Father Fournier has to say about these."
"Oh, he's just an ol' stick in the mud, you know that." Nicole started tugging on Danielle's arm, pulling her out of her chair. "C'mon, let's get started. Gabe, honey, grab that board."
They entered the front hall of the large house, steps echoing on the hardwood floors, and Nicole headed for the staircase to the left, feeling just as comfortable here as she did in her own home.
Danielle waved them on. "Y'all go on upstairs to my room. I'm going to get us some drinks and some stuff to munch on." She headed towards the back of the house, and the kitchen, while Nicole and Gabriel stomped their way up the stairs to Danielle's room.
When Danielle joined them in her bedroom, loaded down with cokes and chips, she found they had already set up the board on the floor, and were sitting next to it. She again felt the revulsion to it she had felt outside on the porch, but couldn't put her finger on the reason for it. She didn't even like to look at it, and the thought of actually touching the small pointer filled her with loathing.
Nicole, in her excitement, didn't seem to notice the way Danielle was avoiding the board, but Gabriel did, and shot her a questioning look that she answered mutely with a small shake of her head. Not wanting to be anywhere close to the board, Danielle finally settled for climbing up on her bed, coke in hand, and curling her legs underneath her.
Nicole grinned up at Danielle, and then turned her smile on Gabriel, "Y'all ready?"
