29
“Sandy Brown,” Nicola read off her phone.
That’s not a real person, I said. It’s a hair color.
“You sure? That’s the name Ginger says is written on the bank statement.”
Banks don’t look at names, just the account numbers. It’s an alias. I’d bet my stuffing on it.
“You ain’t got no stuffing,” Nicola muttered.
Hey.
We were in Nicola’s shed. Nicola’s elbows were resting on the workbench, her phone held loosely in her hand.
I sat in front of her, propped up against the WD-40 can with the hammer-shaped dent in the side.
The light bulb hanging overhead was the sort that hummed and flickered and cast the room in a strange, sickly orange glow.
Needless to say, the vibes were immaculate.
“Why would Kyle put a fake name on the bank statement?” Nicola asked.
Because Ginger did meet her, I said. Did know her, but Kyle didn’t want her to ask questions. Ask her if a woman disappeared from their life around that time. Ask if she had sandy-brown hair.
Nicola’s thumbs began dancing over her phone screen, replying to Ginger’s text. “Where was this detective brain when I wanted to retrace your steps?”
Paying attention, I replied. I told you. Retracing my steps was useless. There was nothing to find.
“Nothing except a phone call to Krissy,” Nicola muttered, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her. I pretended I hadn’t.
Are you going to glue gun me again? I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
I’m missing a few more pieces.
“I noticed. Also, no offense, but you smell moldy. The bad sort of moldy.”
There’s a good sort of moldy?
“With your consent, I would like to either douse you in bleach or get rid of your fabric components entirely.”
By fabric components you mean my body. You want to rip my head off my body.
“And then give you a cooler, more fungus-resistant body, yes.”
I looked at the scrappy remnants of my chest. The fabric poking out from the frayed edge of the duct tape was looking a little . . . fuzzy. And yet the idea of getting rid of my torso entirely made what little insides I had left feel twisty and cold.
It was irrational. My legs were smashed, my wooden arm starting to splinter, my head one bad turn away from rolling off my body.
If anyone was in need of an extreme makeover, it was me.
So long as Ghost Lore Fact #4 held true—when you possess an object, you don’t possess the molecules, or the material; you possess that object as a concept—I had nothing to fear.
If my limbs could be switched out, then there was no reason to assume my whole body couldn’t be as well.
But still . . .
This new fungus-resistant beach bod better be cool, I said.
Nicola smirked. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a couple of ideas. They’re not very original ideas, but you were a bride doll, so—”
Hey. Don’t knock my bride-doll era. It was a look.
“It was a clichéd look.”
You have an infinity tattoo.
“Touché.”
What were you thinking? For my new body?
“I’ll show you. You’re gonna—” Her phone buzzed. Her eyes flicked back to the screen and widened. “Holy shit.”
She ejaculated, I whispered.
“Stop being a creep. This is huge. This is . . . you were right. Ginger says she did lose touch with a friend around then, a friend with brown hair. She moved to Sydney suddenly right after Christmas. Ginger doesn’t think she’s Sandy Brown, but—”
But Ginger doesn’t think a lot of things. Those words felt thorny in my mind, the roots of them deeper and darker than I wanted to admit.
Nicola pushed off the table and started pacing. “This could be it. This could be the key. If Kyle did something to Ginger’s friend and she’s willing to come forward—”
If she was willing to come forward, she already would’ve.
“Maybe if we talk to her. Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
Plan C, I said. Try to convince someone we don’t know to take him to court.
“It’s better than nothing,” Nicola insisted. “Plan A is crazy. Plan B didn’t work. Maybe whatever happened with Sandy Brown could get him locked up.”
If it could, then she would’ve gone to the police, don’t you think? If it was a rock-solid case, if there was evidence, if there was a chance.
“Look. I know it’s not what you wanted—”
It’s not what you wanted either, I reminded her. You wanted his reputation ruined. You wanted everyone to see him for what he is.
“I want him behind bars,” Nicola said. “I don’t care about the details anymore. I don’t care if this town never sees the truth. I just want him—”
Away from Ginger? I guessed.
She stopped pacing and fixed me with a long, tortured look. “Don’t you?”
It struck me then how much better she knew Ginger. Ginger had always been in my life, that kid in class who seemed to shine just a little bit brighter than everyone else. But Nicola had been Ginger’s friend. Their orbit closer, more intimate, more real.
“I don’t want her to get hurt,” Nicola said. “Even after everything, I don’t want her to get hurt. I know it’s pathetic—”
That’s not pathetic.
“Then why do you sound like that? Like you don’t want this plan to work?”
I wasn’t sure. If Sandy Brown was another victim, if she had some evidence that would put Kyle in handcuffs, I should be reaching for that with everything my cold, dead soul could muster.
But I wasn’t. A part of me just didn’t believe it.
I couldn’t imagine it would be so easy. I also couldn’t imagine it would be enough.
Even if everything went as perfectly as it could, even if Kyle did end up behind bars, would he get a life sentence? Would the world know everything that he’d done? Would I be able to read about it in the paper and feel OK again?
The storm inside me said no. It said no with a fierceness, a desperateness that I couldn’t contain.
I felt hollow, I felt angry, I felt like a pile of unskinned nerves, exposed and electric with pain.
Kyle had ended my life, destroyed my grandma’s.
He’d hurt Nicola, and Ginger, and probably Sandy Brown too, and for what?
For what? How could any of this make up for that?
How could anything Sandy Brown gave us make any of that OK?
I’m a ghost, I said. Plan C isn’t a ghost’s plan.
“What does that mean?”
I didn’t have an answer.
“Lu,” Nicola said softly, and came back to the table, leaning her elbows against it so we were at eye level. “Talk to me. I thought this would be good news. We might have something here. Another person. A witness, maybe. Not to what happened to you, but to who and what he is.”
I can do Plan B, I said. I still can do it. I can haunt him. I can make him confess.
Nicola was already shaking her head. “Plan B is done. He knows it’s me. Krissy said he’d take me to court if I didn’t cease and desist. Literally, those are the words she used. Cease and desist.”
That’s why you can’t do it. But I can.
“Lu,” she said, low and tired. “That’s not—”
Listen. Go to Sydney. Find Sandy Brown. Take your phone, location on, meet her somewhere with CCTV. Leave me here and—
“No,” Nicola was already saying. “I’m not leaving you.”
Please, trust me. I trusted you. I did what you wanted. I stayed quiet when you talked to Ginger.
“Actually, you spoke twice when I was with Ginger.”
I . . . I’m sorry. I . . .
“It’s OK,” Nicola said. “I can tell the difference between stuff you say on purpose and stuff you say by mistake.”
You can?
“Yeah. The stuff you say by mistake is fainter, further away, sometimes jumbled, like you’re thinking all the words at once, or out of order. Sometimes you don’t even sound like you. Sometimes you sound like . . . other people.”
I didn’t know what to say, and so I said nothing, and for a minute that silence stuck.
We stayed there, her leaning against the table, me sitting on it.
Her skin was pale beneath her freckles, her eyes shadowed, her mullet even shaggier than normal.
For the first time I noticed that some of the tattoos on her arm were unfinished. Cartoonish flowers fading into nothing.
“You’re about to tell me how gross I look,” she whispered. “I can tell.”
You don’t look gross.
“I feel gross.”
I’m growing mold, I reminded her. You’re fine.
The smile that twisted her lips was a small, tight, unhappy thing. She bowed her head, hiding it from me, and sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “OK,” she said, voice tight and quick. “Fine. What’s your plan?”
I don’t have a plan.
“That’s a lie. I know you, Lu. You have an idea. It’s probably a stupid idea, an insane idea, but you have one.”
She was right. I had an idea, flimsy and full of holes. It was an idea that had started to form as I lay in the back seat of Nicola’s car, listening to the quiet quake in Ginger’s voice.
“Lu?”
I messaged Krissy, I said. I didn’t know I could do that until I did it. I could call Kyle. I could haunt him that way.
She exhaled and looked back up at me. “You’d need a phone to do that.”
I jerked my head in my best approximation of a nod.
“So . . . what? You want me to put on a face mask, go into town, buy a burner with cash?”
I can’t do this without you. I don’t want to do this without you. But just think about it. They wouldn’t be able to blame you if you had an alibi.
“That’s a long-winded way of saying yes, that’s exactly what you want me to do.”
Go and see Sandy Brown, I said, trying my best to sound reasonable, to sound sane.
Take Ginger. I’ll stay here and keep the pressure on him.
I don’t even need your hearing aid to do it.
And maybe it’ll work. Maybe it’ll scare him enough to confess.
You heard Ginger, he was crying. Maybe just one more stone is all it’ll take.
Maybe we can still start that avalanche.
Nicola didn’t look convinced. “You really think that? Everyone at the police station just wrote your last message off as AI. Why wouldn’t he just assume the same thing? Why wouldn’t he just block you immediately after the first call? How would you even get his number in the first place?”
What else good am I? I asked. I’m a ghost. If I came to see Sandy Brown, I’d just be hiding in your backpack, in the dark, saying nothing, doing nothing.