Chapter 3
Playlist: Pastel Melodies for Rotting
“Strangers When We Meet” by David Bowie
If teachers could mind their own business, that’d be great. One glance at me and an unshakable compulsion grips them: my spiderwebbed mascara desperately pleads with them to tell me I’ll never get a job looking like this; my gashed neck tells them I need a lecture about respect.
“It’s a silent protest” works for the first two periods, male teachers and their general allergy to activism buying my way out of the rest of a tedious conversation. But in third period, Mrs. Wilson jumps me at the door like she’s been waiting.
“That is an extremely tasteless joke, young lady,” she informs me, gripping me by the arm before I can grab a seat. “Especially considering the day’s lecture. Go wash it off in the bathroom.”
A cold, hateful calm swallows me. I swear I hear a bell—ding ding, round one—and it takes a monumental force of willpower to swallow down my knee-jerk fight response.
I stop blinking. A sharp little voice in my head whispers, Mom will have to let me sit the GED if I get expelled. I smother it. Eyes wide, I stare her dead in the face, then drop my gaze to her talon clutching at my sweater. Her hand falls away.
“No, thank you,” I tell her, every word unfailingly polite.
If walking with purpose casts invisibility, weaponized politeness casts a shield.
Any fight she picks now will reflect worse on her than me and she knows it.
Quietly, I slink toward my seat, stubbornly in the middle of the room where I can keep a low profile.
Pulling books from my bag, I summon up a single corner of my party trick, craning my head out of my body just enough to look around. Mrs. Wilson glares at the back of my head, aggravation warring across her features while she decides if she gets paid enough to pick this fight.
She doesn’t. Rural schools don’t pay a lot, especially new ones in the back end of nowhere that checked three times for forgotten graveyards or Civil War battlefields before they built so much as a football field.
No hazard pay where the ghosts don’t play, as they say, and I’m just enough of a nuisance—or, at least, my IEP-wielding, school-board intruding mother is—that, after exhaling a pointed sigh, Mrs. Wilson stalks back to her desk.
Satisfied, I return to my body, sucking my hands into my sleeves to try to trap a little heat around my icicle fingers.
A sea of desks surrounds my shipwrecked self; the other students file in.
They almost all choose to sit in civilization on the far end of the room.
The last two days, they stayed that way—away from me, that is—leaving me to stare out the window contemplating a twenty-foot drop and sudden stop in peace.
But right as the bell rings, in sneaker-squealing burnout, a body drops down into the desk beside me.
I jump in surprise. The boy from the library grins at me, popping me a wink.
“Hey,” he starts.
My stomach twists. I fumble for an answer, tongue sticking to the back of my teeth, but my brain stalls out.
My cheeks flare with heat and I know even without my party trick that my ears are flaming red.
God, gross, what is this? Digging my fingernails into my palms, I get my shit together enough to answer, “Hey.”
Shakespearean. I squeeze my eyes shut in mortification. Before I can rally, the bell rings. Mrs. Wilson leaps on her cue, clapping her dry hands together with a mummified rasp.
“All right, personal conversations over, class has started,” she announces. “As it’s October first today, it’s time for us to review Remnant Safety leading up to Halloween.”
“The dying season,” someone adds in dramatic, movie announcer emphasis.
Mrs. Wilson rolls her eyes, waving a hand like she can knock the comment out of the air.
“Yes, yes, we do tend to sensationalize this time of year. Let me reassure you, the real answer is far less interesting and more to do with state curriculum standards. So, before you ask,” she says, holding up her comment-knocking hand, “because one student always does—no, it has nothing to do with the veil between worlds growing thinner on Halloween.”
State curriculum. That’s funny. The most unintentionally honest reason for these stupid safety briefings I’ve ever heard—and I’ve heard a lot. Every year since kindergarten, always the first day of October, like clockwork.
Like propaganda.
They started feeding it to us young, a constant stream in every classroom and news broadcast, so we never think to question it.
Never catch how Washington hadn’t crossed the Delaware with ghosts nipping at his heels, how Lincoln didn’t have to salt the Gettysburg National Cemetery three days ahead of his address to clear out all the ghosts.
They hit us hard and early, made it so normal we never question when our parents’ stories talk about snow days off from school instead of ghost days—when they never mention summer swarms, ghost drain, or ghost sprays.
We don’t notice that “getting home before the streetlights” used to mean avoiding getting grounded, not avoiding the grave.
Or that those streetlights used to be electric, not the gas lamps ghosts can’t eat.
They teach us not to notice anything, so we swallow it down easy when they poison us with the crap they make up.
My skin buzzes, overheated and too small. Sucking my arms farther into my sweater sleeves, I sink down into my seat, picking at any flaw I can find in the skin of my arms. It almost grounds me.
Almost.
“Remnants no longer retain the means to process outside stimuli,” Mrs. Wilson drones with a perfectly placating smile, every word ringing with the cadence of government mandates—and did the government mandate that patronizing smile too?
Does the “state curriculum” dictate how many teeth they need to show when they lie to us?
How much skipped-stone eye contact over the students’ faces makes it look honest?
“Everything they appear to experience is only an echo of their own life.”
This is why it’s so important I don’t drop out?
So I can sit here listening to Mrs. Wilson parroting the same word-for-word propaganda as if it’s not made-up?
Like 80 percent of the population can’t see the ghosts with our own eyes?
Like there wasn’t one sitting outside the school gates, clearly waiting for something—
Someone.
“Despite what they may appear to experience, ghosts are not substantive. They are without sense or memory.”
My fingernails dig into my arms hard enough to hurt.
“They do remember, though,” I blurt. “They seek out family members, manifest inside their old homes. If you actually pay attention, you can see bits and pieces of what they used to look like. What is that if not memory?”
Library Boy perks up from his bored stupor. His head twitches my way, a glitter of mischief kindling. Unfortunately, other kids look too. Someone laughs, “What, you hold a lot of séances, Spooky?” and a pack of mean little snickers answer.
Mrs. Wilson ignores it. Revenge for earlier, I guess, deciding she’s not paid enough to pick this battle either. She rolls straight over me, folding my protest into her spiel.
“Even if the remnant were to fully manifest in the guise of a family member—which, I should add, is so rare as to be functionally impossible—it is residual energy only. They cannot be spoken to or reasoned with. A remnant feels no emotion or pain, so we must not feel guilty or hesitant to use our protective equipment.”
“Convenient,” I mutter. Library Boy smiles, sneaky. It sends a spark shooting through my stomach, threatening to burn its way out.
I’ve gotta stop looking at him. With effort, I drag my eyes away. At the front of the room, Mrs. Wilson turns to the whiteboard.
“Moving on, let’s get through this quickly. What’s an item or protective equipment we use to ward against remnant activity?”
An arm shoots up across the room. “Ghost salts!”
Mrs. Wilson nods, writing it on the board. “Correct. Ghost salts are always our first line of defense. It disrupts the manifestation, allowing us time to vacate the area of infestation. Now, will—”
In my peripheral, I catch Library Boy straighten. I don’t know him, but I know trouble. True to form, he spies his opportunity and pounces. “How does it work?”
Blinking, Mrs. Wilson turns. “Pardon? If you have a question, Sebastian, I expect to see a raised hand.”
“You can look at both my hands, I don’t care. I just wanna understand how it works. Ghosts are pure energy; they absorb electricity wherever they cross it. Salt water is a conductor. Shouldn’t it make them stronger?”
One of the indistinguishable mean girl trio rolls her eyes, announcing loudly, “It cleanses them, duh.”
Library Boy—Sebastian—grins. “You saying you’d disappear if you took a shower? That’s rough, buddy.”
“Stop it,” Mrs. Wilson snaps. “While, yes, salt conducts electricity and remnants are known to seek and consume electrical sources, salt is a purifier. It repels rot and therefore death.”
Sebastian recoils, nose wrinkling. He corkscrews back in his seat and our eyes meet like a circuit closing, the electric impact of solidarity sizzling through my veins, heating up my face.
Are you hearing this crap? he mouths, a barely hidden smile twitching up the corners of his lips.
“Anyone else? Another protective article?” Mrs. Wilson asks.
Without raising a hand, the third mean girl folds her arms and smugly says, “Iron.” Sebastian claps a dramatic hand over his heart. He swings back around, head tipped, blinking at her with elaborate incredulity.
“I don’t think I’ve heard anything so dumb in my entire life,” he whispers to me under his breath. But Mrs. Wilson writes it down anyway, nodding at this no doubt sage offering of ancestral wisdom.
“Correct. Iron is an impermeable barrier, as evidenced by our defenses outside. Ghosts cannot pass through iron in any way as the metal acts as a conduit, safely dispersing the remnant energy, neutralizing the manifestation.”