Chapter 2 #2
A strange man turned up at our newest house in a series of new houses, my mother’s unused name in his mouth—my name in his mouth—demanding to know her plan for the seventeen-year-old catastrophe that could only be me and all I get is learn something new today?
My lip curls. “I already have.”
Fingers numb, it takes me two attempts to fumble the lock open and kick my way free. I don’t bother to look back or even twist my volume down so I can hear her call my name. She won’t bother, and I don’t want to hear the empty space where it should have been.
My surplus combat boots hit the sidewalk running, storming into the school.
Immediately, a dozen pairs of eyes burn into my already overheated face.
My skin crawls at the flurry of whispers, the barely concealed smirks darting behind cupped hands.
Every muscle in my body screams to scrub the sleeve of my black sweater over my eyes, to trade the funerary cobwebs of my rain-streaked mascara for smeary raccoon desperation, but I refuse.
I ball my fists tight, bite back the urge to cringe and hide.
Perpetual new girl in a tiny school, I never would have flown beneath their radar anyway.
A shark can smell a single drop of blood in 100 liters and shitty, small-town teenagers can smell weakness.
Mom cut a fit, but even after her slow crawl up the hill, I’m not even late.
A glance at the clock leaves me stranded in enemy territory ten minutes before the bell, small packs prowling the hallways, huddling in whispering knots against walls and lockers.
Too many of them watch me with an opportunistic kind of interest, waiting and willing to be amused.
And sure, I know they’re not all cruel. I could make friends, find a couple theater kids to tolerate me, but what’s the point?
In three months, six tops, I won’t be here, their names lost in the jumble of my jewelry and perpetually trash-bagged clothing.
I’ll forget them before they even notice I’m missing.
Head down, I cut toward the stairwell, aiming for the sanctuary of the second-floor library.
Three perfectly color-coordinated girls stand beside the door.
I recognize their type, even if I don’t remember their names.
Adjusting my grip on my carpetbag, I square my shoulders, ready for the inevitable barbs.
True to form, one of them fake shivers as I approach, theatrically chattering her teeth. “I think I just felt a ghost!”
“It definitely got colder.”
“We need cleansing vibes.”
They pull out ghost sprays in pale pink designer bottles dangling from bedazzled good luck charm key chains. Some popular new brand name—nothing like my homemade spray in a dollar store glass bottle, mixed with God knows what from my mother’s basement office.
“Crisscross double-cross,” they chant, laughing, spraying themselves and the air around me in a choking torrent like I’m some undead thing come to eat them, “ghost get lost.”
Four years and eight schools ago, I’d have been devastated.
But I went through puberty as an outsider in a hostile, small-town middle school worse than this one.
This isn’t bullying; it’s just depressing.
The most difficult part is struggling not to cough from the cloud of stinging ghost salt, the designer stuff more personal perfume than useful repellent, and I debate whether to fake a possession seizure or cut them off at the knees.
I settle for smiling at them, unblinking—another fun, unnerving talent of mine.
“Wow, you guys are still using frankincense?” I ask, so bright and peppy it physically pains me. “That’s so cute. I love vintage stuff.”
“Who asked you?” one demands, but whatever else she says gets lost in the echo of my boots on the stairwell.
I shove the heavy fire door open to find the hallways practically abandoned.
Homeroom doors hang open, waiting, an autumn breeze sighing—barely strong enough to rustle construction paper pumpkins haphazardly pinned to bulletin boards.
Teachers hunch over their desks, scribbling the last scribbles of their scant prep periods.
When I was younger and still terrified of changing schools, I used to scour the internet for invisibility spells.
I figured, ghosts didn’t used to be a thing but then, one day they just were.
So why not magic too? But for all my searching, this is the best invisibility spell I’ve ever found—looking busy and walking like I know where I’m supposed to be.
Not a single teacher looks up as I pass.
Not even the librarian herself emerges from her glass-walled office as I slip inside the darkened library, only half its florescent lights lit, faintly buzzing over the bay of computers on the far side of the room.
As far as libraries go, this one feels like an afterthought.
No rows of books to get lost in, only shelves lining the walls and a sea of tables straight out of a 1950s yard sale. But I’ll take any port in a storm.
Slapping my bag onto a table, I dig out my MP3 player, the thin crack in its screen kissing my searching finger.
I follow the damage like a worry stone, down to the button array.
Leaning back in my chair, I close my eyes, selecting the next song at random with a series of presses more familiar than my revolving series of homes.
God, I love this stupid, ugly workhorse.
I could listen to music on my phone, sure, but something about the tactile sensation of this feels better.
We’re kindred souls, me and this old, unfashionable thing.
Unpopular even when it was new, it’s laughably vintage now.
But it works every time—well, after the three weeks it took for me to find its esoteric, proprietary charging cable—and its chunky metal backplate means any wayward, energy-hungry ghosts can’t ruin my battery.
Out of nowhere, a hand emerges from under the table, swiping my MP3 player by its cord. My earbud pops out, falling to the floor, a tail behind a disappearing rat.
“‘Pastel Melodies for Rotting’?” a voice reads. “That’s a hell of a playlist title. You planning some kind of suicide party?”
“What, you want an invitation?” I snarl.
Shoving my chair back with a terrible squeal, I glare under the table to find a whole-ass man under there.
Or, at least, I think it’s a grown man, until he looks up at me and I realize his gray hair doesn’t match the freckles bridging his nose or eyes so dark brown they might as well be black. “Why are you even under there?”
I hold my hand out, palm up, an obvious last chance one second away from balling into a fist. But this freak just reaches out and grabs my wrist through my sweater like I was offering it to hold.
“I’m protesting my reintroduction to the wild,” he says and tugs me forward, off my chair and under the table beside him. Bewildered, I let him. “So how long will it take for my New Kid Stink to wear off around here?”