Ghostgirl Read online

  “I think you should take advantage of this coupling. It looks like Fate to me,” Widget said with a wink of his real eye.

  Charlotte was over the moon and in total agreement, while Damen looked somewhat miserable and a little confused, both by the statement and by Widget’s glass eye, which he was getting a good look at for the first time. Mr. Widget then leaned into Damen, as was his habit.

  “You know, they’re really cracking down on student athletes this year. There’s a new policy. You have to maintain a C average in all of your subjects or you’ll be kicked off the team,” he warned.

  Charlotte, seeing an opening to advance her strategy, smiled and blurted out, “I love Physics!”

  Mr. Widget and Damen looked at Charlotte oddly, as if they were studying a trained parakeet screeching out nonsense words from a cage. Widget walked away with a slight smirk on his face as he packed up his things. Damen leaned into Charlotte, trying to be discreet.

  “Hey…,” Damen whispered, “uh…” He stuttered, fumbling for her name.

  “… Charlotte,” she responded helpfully, pointing to herself.

  “You’re smart…,” he continued, matter-of-factly.

  “Thank you,” she replied, clasping her hands behind her back modestly, as if he were paying her a flirtatious compliment.

  “I was wondering…,” he continued.

  “Yes???” Charlotte eagerly responded, as if he were going to ask her out right then and there!

  “Would you maybe be into, you know, tutoring me or whatever?” he asked.

  Charlotte wasn’t so naïve to believe this was a romantic gesture, or even a friendly one. She knew he had a major ulterior motive. Still, she dismissed all that and put the best spin on it. It wasn’t an invitation to the dance, but it was an opportunity to spend time alone with him, and she couldn’t have been more thrilled.

  She stifled the quiver in her voice and consciously tightened up her knees, which had been slowly buckling ever since Damen walked in the classroom. She tried to play it cool for a second as she kept him waiting for a response to his offer. Her wish was coming true, not the way she had intended, but coming true just the same. It was Fate, like Widget said. It had to be.

  Just as she was about to agree, Petula, with one Wendy on each side, walked over to Damen and interrupted.

  “Where were you?” she asked Damen angrily.

  “Time’s up,” Wendy Anderson said snidely to Charlotte, hip-checking her to the outskirts of the conversation.

  Charlotte stuck around anyway and started popping gummy bears in her mouth as she put her laptop and books away. She decided to try and “hang” like she was one of the group while she waited to get a last word with Damen.

  “I was sooooo worried,” Petula cooed.

  The idea of Petula caring that much about anyone else’s well-being, even Damen’s, was so ludicrous that even the Wendys had to turn away and bite their lips to keep from laughing.

  “Not worried enough to wait for me though,” Damen said sarcastically, looking back at Charlotte and making it clear to Petula he knew she was more worried about getting stuck with a D-List lab partner than his whereabouts.

  “You didn’t expect me to wait, like, forever, did you?” Petula said selfishly. Petula’s choice of words surprised Charlotte, since she would have waited forever and a day for him.

  “Forever?” Damen jibed. “I told you I might be a little late.”

  “Oh, really? I didn’t get your text,” Petula replied, only half-listening by this point.

  “How’d you know it was a text, then?” Damen said as he shook his head and zipped up his backpack.

  Stalling until she could come up with a plausible excuse, Petula rambled, “My phone was in my bag, and my bag is—”

  “Right here,” a snotty voice interrupted from outside the classroom. Petula turned to the familiar but unwelcome sound to see a girl holding her bag as if it were radioactive. She rolled her eyes in disdain and walked to the doorway.

  “Didn’t I tell you never to touch my things!” Petula said firmly in a loud whisper.

  “You left it in Dad’s car and I didn’t want you to get textually frustrated, God forbid,” the girl said, holding the super-expensive designer satchel at arm’s length. “Besides, I know how hard it is for you to get through a day without lip plump.”

  “I don’t plump!” Petula snapped.

  Charlotte was as shocked by the young girl’s brashness as her darkwave-meets-burlesque outfit: pink and black Plasmatics tee peeking out from under a long fitted V-neck, an enormous vintage pink-stoned ring to emphasize her overused middle finger, short black skirt, black fishnets, silver studded flats, and flaming matte red lipstick. She recognized her immediately as Scarlet Kensington, Petula’s younger sister. And from the looks of things, the only thing they had in common was DNA.

  Petula snatched the purse away with a scowl and rifled through the bag to make sure nothing was missing. Confirming that all was indeed intact, she pulled out a razor blade that she used to shave her silky-smooth legs.

  “This is for you,” Petula offered sarcastically. “A little gesture of appreciation. Maybe you can use it to relieve some stress later?”

  The Wendys laughed out loud at the dis while Damen just shook his head as if to say, “Here we go again.”

  “The only way to relieve my stress is if I cut your throat with it, but then what would you vomit your meals through?” Scarlet said with a phony smile.

  Charlotte could not believe Scarlet’s audacity and let out a single gasp ignored by everyone but Scarlet.

  “What are you looking at?” Scarlet groused, her dyed black bob flying around her face like a dark curtain as she turned to stare daggers at Charlotte. She was totally intimidated as Scarlet’s hazel eyes burned into her.

  Before Charlotte could get out a “Who, me?” in response, Scarlet turned and bolted, the jiggling sound from the chains on her leather jacket fading as she turned away.

  Petula, her attention span rapidly shrinking, reached for her lip gloss and spackled her lips with her signature shade of pink. She held the compact up, turned her face to each side, pouted seductively, decided she looked great, and kissed the mirror, leaving, as always, a perfect pink lipstick trace.

  Charlotte, who was close enough behind Petula to see her own reflection in the compact, lined up her lips with Petula’s mirror kiss, pretending for a second they were her own.

  Sam Wolfe, a “slow” student affectionately nicknamed A/V Retard by Petula and her friends, startled Petula and Charlotte from their respective daydreams as he awkwardly moved the video monitor in front of the room, next to them. Petula, still stressing over the shade of her ball gown, snapped the compact shut and turned to Sam without warning.

  “You’re so lucky you’re retarded,” Petula said at Sam.

  Sam smiled indifferently, but Damen looked at Petula in disgust. Charlotte made a mental note—she was liking him more and more.

  “What?” Petula replied to Damen’s look of disapproval with genuine confusion.

  She then turned to Sam again, and in her own pseudosensitive way attempted an apology.

  “Oh, I’m sorry… MENTALLY retarded,” she said to him, now thinking she was PC.

  The bell rang and everyone started frantically filing out of the room. Everyone except for the Wendys, Damen, and Petula, who always took their time leaving and getting to the next class. Charlotte, too, slowed down, remaining at her desk, nervously popping more gummy bears as she became increasingly preoccupied by Damen and Petula’s conversation and increasingly hopeful that she and Damen might be able to finish theirs.

  She watched Petula give him a perfunctory air kiss as they prepared to go their separate ways. Damen left first, and as he passed by the teacher’s desk, Mr. Widget also stood to leave, but took a second to caution Damen.

  “Remember the new policy, Mr. Dylan,” Widget warned as he closed his briefcase and walked out.

  With that, Dame
n was reminded of his encounter with Charlotte a few minutes before. He looked back nonchalantly and held up his Physics book in Charlotte’s direction. He opened his eyes wide and shrugged his shoulders, as if he was asking for Charlotte to give him an answer.

  “Will you help me?” Damen mouthed to Charlotte, backing slowly out the doorway and followed closely by Petula and crew.

  Charlotte popped a last gummy bear into her mouth, and as she started to walk forward and mouth her response, she accidentally sucked in the candy, lodging it in her throat.

  She started to walk faster to the doorway, making desperate hand signals, but there was such a big crowd around Damen already, as soon as he stepped out into the hallway, he couldn’t even see her. Charlotte was doing her best to cough up the gummy bear so that she could yell out to him, but just as it was about to dislodge, Petula abruptly slammed the classroom door shut in Charlotte’s face.

  Charlotte smacked right into it, lodging the candy even deeper in her airway. She tried futilely to give herself the Heimlich, sputtering around like a balloon losing air. She was gagging badly now and the room was totally empty. There was no one to notice her. No one to help.

  She put one hand around her throat and the other up on the glass window in the door to steady herself. Unable to breathe, she desperately tried to get Damen’s attention by pounding her hand on the window, but Damen thought she was just waving to him.

  He waved back at her briefly, put his arm around Petula, and headed for the next class.

  She pressed her face against the glass like Tiny Tim outside the toy shop, and, unable to keep herself up, ever so slowly slid down the door. She could still see the students laughing and talking on their way to their next class as she fell, keeping Damen and Petula in her sights as they walked away.

  Her hand, which she hoped someone would see, slowly lost its clammy grasp on the long rectangular window as her faint handprint smeared its way down to the ground, joining the rest of her body on the floor.

  3

  A Wake

  How can you see into my eyes like open doors Leading you down into my core Where I’ve become so numb without a soul My spirit sleeping somewhere cold Until you find it there and lead it back home.

  —Evanescence

  How do you know?

  How do you know that it’s not just some crazy fantasy or dream, a delusion you’ve created in your own mind? There are no dress rehearsals in life and there certainly aren’t any in love. That much Charlotte now knew.

  Thoughts of Damen were swirling manically through Charlotte’s mind as she woke to the gentle buzzing from the fluorescent bulbs that lined the classroom ceiling. As she slowly opened one eye, and then the other, she couldn’t help but notice the cool white light was bright, but it didn’t hurt to stare at it.

  She blinked a few times and then jacked herself into a semi-seated position, propping herself up on her elbows. She could see the dingy, brownish water stains and the spitballs stuck to the foam board ceiling squares above her. She felt a little dizzy but blamed it on all the excitement.

  “Great, he asks me to help him. ME. And what do I do? I pass out,” she chastised herself.

  All those changes she’d struggled to make, Charlotte reasoned, hadn’t changed who she was on the inside. What was it that Horace said? “We can change our skies but not our nature” or something like that? You are who and what you are. The sad reality that a 2,000-year-old Roman poet probably had a better grasp of her life than she did was… disappointing to say the least. Even weirder was why this, of all things, was occurring to her just now. And then a much less demoralizing scenario sunk in.

  It must have been low blood sugar! she thought, remembering that she forgot to eat breakfast in her anxiety to make the bus and amid all her premeditated brushes with Damen at school.

  As Charlotte turned her head from side to side, she noticed that she was totally alone. No surprise, since she didn’t really expect that anyone would be looking for her. Then, looking down, she realized she was not as alone as she thought. There it was—The Gummy Bear—lying there innocent and lifeless, almost taunting her like the Talking Tina doll in that old Twilight Zone episode. It wasn’t the slightly opaque color red, but rather the transparent bright red that they turn when they are sucked on a little.

  She stared at the candy for quite sometime—oddly suspicious of it—reached for her throat, and coughed. It was there on the floor but she still felt it in her larynx.

  “That’s… peculiar,” Charlotte said, completely perplexed.

  Just as she began forming a recollection of what happened, an announcement came over the PA system.

  “Charlotte Usher, please report to room 1313,” the muffled voice requested.

  She gathered her stuff and walked out the door into the empty hallway, in a pretty good mood, all things considered. Expecting to be heckled on her way to the office, she was almost disappointed that her summoning had gone unnoticed, but then again, everyone was in class, so she marched on.

  “Room 1313?” she asked herself, still reeling from her brush with both Damen and the gummy bear.

  Turning down a long corridor, a reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” seeped into the hall from a distant classroom. It was her second period Lit class, a place she was supposed to be, already in progress. The words echoed through the vacant hallway, bouncing off the newly waxed and buffed first-day-of-school floors.

  But our love it was stronger by far than the love

  Of those who were older than we—

  Of many far wiser than we—

  And neither the angels in Heaven above,

  Nor the demons down under the sea,

  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

  For some reason, she seemed to know the way to the strange room, though she’d never been there. She was drawn to an unmarked door at the end of the hallway. As she opened it, she looked down the stairwell into a basement area, still more disoriented than scared. Descending, she could see the chipped, exposed pipes on the ceiling above her and a cement floor below as she stepped down. Charlotte took a breath and held her nose as a precautionary measure thinking she’d sucked in enough pollutants for one day on the skywalk.

  “Walk this way,” she whined to herself, nose pinched, channeling her best Young Frankenstein, and headed down. Her footsteps fell silently.

  The pipes looked slick from condensation, but oddly, they weren’t dripping, and there was no smell of mildew or mold. She let go her nose to take a second breath and quickly realized there was no need to go on holding it.

  As she walked on through the narrow corridor of plumbing, air ducts, and wiring, she saw a light shining into her path and stopped. It was bright, but pale, like moonlight. It seemed to come from behind the old boiler, which was cold from not running. She peeked behind and saw a room in the corner. Etched in the glass on the door was 1313.

  Charlotte was starting to get nervous, not so much from the ominous office and chilly beams that emanated from it, but because she was falling behind her self-imposed schedule. This little detour had taken up so much of the time she planned to use stalking, er, “getting to know” Damen. Still, she was more curious then irritated when it hit her.

  “This must be where the sign-ups are for AP classes! Could this day get any better?” she asked herself obliviously, bolting through the doorway and up to the counter with all the exuberance of Tracy Flick in Election.

  The first thing she saw was an old transistor radio and a few vases of wilted flowers at the reception desk. The first thing she heard was the Terry Jacks song “Seasons in the Sun” playing at low volume. She didn’t know the song well, but hearing it now, wafting through the humid air, in such a quiet, dank, and empty room, it was hard to imagine it was ever a hit. Even in the seventies.

  Bummer, Charlotte thought as she looked around and drummed her fingers on the counter, hoping someone might hear.

 
“Hi, ah, I got called to this office? Charlotte Usher!” she finally yelled to the back of the office, hoping to get someone’s attention.

  A secretary with a messy bun and wearing a high-neck, lace Victorian blouse popped up from below the desk.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. I didn’t think to look down,” Charlotte said.

  “No one ever does, sweetheart,” the secretary quipped.

  Without making eye contact, the secretary handed her a clipboard with a bunch of paperwork.

  “Here, fill these out, and remember…” the secretary stopped mid-sentence and pulled Charlotte close to her, as if she were about to impart some invaluable advice. “… to give me back my PEN.”

  Charlotte was taken aback by the secretary’s strange behavior, but then she thought that if the woman was a “people person,” she wouldn’t be stuck in a high school basement, working by herself, in virtual isolation.

  Before Charlotte could get her first question out, the secretary slammed the window shut. Charlotte organized the papers on the clipboard and headed over to take a seat next to a girl sporting long, curly orange-red locks and a bright Kelly green majorette outfit. Charlotte didn’t think the girl was there when she first came in, but she’d been so preoccupied she couldn’t be sure.

  As she shuffled through the paperwork for a second, she turned her head and tried to make eye contact with her—without success.

  “Hi. I’m Charlotte,” she said tentatively, her hand thrust forward for a shake. And… nothing.

  The greeting seemed to fall on deaf, or at least disinterested, ears as the girl kept looking downward, her nose in her book. Charlotte was all too used to this kind of dismissive treatment, but from a NEW girl? Were things actually worse than she imagined?

  She decided to overcompensate, thrusting her hand out even farther, but the girl continued reading, not even acknowledging the Charlotte Usher welcome wagon. Maybe this girl was already friends with someone else in school, Charlotte thought. Maybe she moved here over the summer and this “friend in school” told her about Charlotte. No, that couldn’t be right; she couldn’t imagine anyone talking about her over the summer—even to say bad stuff.