Chapter 1 #2
She turns the next corner, but doesn’t know if she could handle seeing other humans today along the Central Park West side of the building, with its few inhabited staff rooms. So instead, she hovers just around the corner on the twisty side of the hall and lets herself slump against the wall between two of the large windows.
It’s too early to bother her parents. Her brother’s just going to tell her to quit, again. And all her college friends are at their normal, nine-to-five jobs, doing normal, nine-to-five things. They’re tired of hearing about her dead-end assistant gig.
She sighs, rolling her neck to stare down the hallway and count the sunbeams.
But there’s a gauzy little girl in a yellow Victorian dress in her way.
… wait.
There aren’t any children on this floor.
There was no one here a second ago.
Why would someone’s kid be in a stained Victorian dress, holding a really, really old red ball, with sunlight going through her?
The sunlight is—
“Jesus Christ!” Frannie shrieks, falling over herself as the little girl with the big brown eyes peers at her, head tilted. “I’m going insane. He’s finally driven me insane.”
“Do you need a lobotomy?”
Frannie’s heart actually stutters. The girl’s voice sounds as real as anything, tinkling and high, and maybe just a little sarcastic.
“A—” Frannie starts, blinking furiously.
This isn’t real. It just isn’t.
“It’s when they drive a big poker through your eye socket and scrape around in your frontal lobe.”
It’s such a weird answer it makes Frannie stop panicking, just for a second. “There weren’t lobotomies in the Victorian era. Why do you know that?” pops out of her mouth.
Quite possibly the least important question to ask a LITTLE GHOST GIRL.
The girl gives her a deeply sardonic look. “Why do you know that?”
A ghost girl. An actual ghost girl.
“What—how—why—” Frannie starts, watching as the little girl raises her eyebrows.
“Am I a ghost? What am I doing here? Are you actually insane?”
She’s very sassy for what looks like an eight-year-old Victorian orphan. But, Victorian orphans are often sassy, aren’t they? It’s a literary thing. Everyone loves a sassy street urchin.
Everyone except Henry L. Olsen, who told Frannie her sassy little Victorian orphan was derivative.
Really not the point right now.
“Am I awake?” Frannie asks instead.
“I don’t know, are you?” the girl replies.
Frannie pauses. Did she actually go into the office and cry herself into a depression nap, and now she’s having an intense nightmare? She gives herself a hard pinch with numb fingers.
It hurts.
“I’m awake,” she mumbles.
“Want to play catch?” The little girl grins slyly, shifting back and forth on her feet like she’s asked for a lollipop, not if Frannie wants to play catch with a ghost.
“Can we even?” Frannie asks.
She really should be better at the interrogatory questions. She’s a writer. A bad writer, apparently. But that’s hardly the point. She should be more concerned that she’s not screaming in fright, right?
The red ball careens into her stomach with a tangible thwump and Frannie winces. The little girl giggles. Frannie watches her, confused and cautious. She tries to remember anything she can about the laws of physics (which isn’t much).
The little girl gestures to the ball and Frannie finds herself slowly bending to pick it up. It’s plastic, the size of a child’s soccer ball. Some wear and tear, but nothing strange about it.
“Are you going to throw it or what?”
Frannie looks back at the gauzy little girl waiting in the sunlight. Hell, this day can’t get any worse, or any weirder. If she’s losing her mind, she may as well go all in.
So, she throws it back.
The little girl catches it with a grin. She tosses the ball again and Frannie catches it. It doesn’t feel any different. She throws it back, but her aim is, rather understandably, off, and the ball goes rolling gently down the hall.
The little girl huffs and chases after it. She looks almost real in the shadows, messy brown hair bouncing, steps light. There’s only a slight haze around her that Frannie might have thought was just her astigmatism. But then the girl runs into the sunbeams, and they go right through her.
Frannie feels a little faint.
The girl retakes her spot in front of the window closest to Frannie and tosses the ball intentionally wide, sending Frannie careening into the wall to catch it. That really hurt. She’s definitely awake.
“What’s your name?” the girl asks.
“Frannie,” she says, tossing the ball one-handed so she can rub at her shoulder. “You?”
The girl catches the ball and then stares at her. For a while. An uncomfortably long while.
“You … don’t have to tell me,” Frannie says when the silence stretches out past what must be thirty seconds. “I shouldn’t have asked?”
Are there rules for interacting with precocious Victorian orphan children?
Gilded Age children? There wasn’t, technically, a Victorian age in America. Henry says so all the time. Did so this morning, in fact.
Should she have told a ghost her name?
“I’m Bridgette.”
Frannie blinks, looking back at the little girl. “Nice to meet you,” she says automatically.
Bridgette snorts. “Is it?”
“Jury’s frankly still out,” Frannie admits. “But you’ve taken my mind off my shi—sucky morning, so, thanks.”
Bridgette smiles. “I knew you were sad.”
“Oh?” Frannie says, suddenly self-conscious. It’s mortifying to think this little ghost girl might have been witness to her petulance.
Or maybe it’s terrifying?
“You’re always alone up here, and today you seemed more alone than normal. So, I thought I’d scare the shit out of you.”
Frannie laughs, startled. “I don’t think that’s a nice word.”
Bridgette tilts her head and stares at Frannie. “How old do you think I am?”
“Eight?” Frannie hazards.
“And how long have I been eight?”
“Who are you, Edward Cullen?” Frannie asks.
Bridgette lets out a pealing giggle. The sound crackles around them—like the moment before a lightning strike, when the air almost sings. The sensation fades before Frannie can examine it further, and Bridgette grins.
“I like you. You’re funny,” she says decisively.
Frannie opens her mouth to say she inexplicably likes the little ghost girl, too, but then Bridgette turns to look at the wall. Frannie follows her gaze to the unassuming beige paint.
“Lunchtime, gotta go. See you soon, Frannie!”
And then she disappears into the wall, taking her very corporeal ball along with her.
Flabbergasted, Frannie spins around to make sure Bridgette— or … anyone else—isn’t standing behind her. But she’s alone. All alone. After playing catch with a ghost?
The chorus of “Pink Pony Club” splits the silence.
Frannie jumps at least a foot in the air. She presses a hand against her chest and fishes her phone out of her back pocket, flicking off her alarm. It’s time to check her email.
She stands there breathing heavily, forcing herself to focus. She has to go back to her office, send that back cover copy change to Henry’s publicist, and get started on her transcription. Because it’s a Tuesday.
She just played catch with a ghost.
Because she works for Henry L. Olsen, who lives on the eighth floor of the Dakota Building. Which is thoroughly living up to its reputation as one of the most haunted buildings in Manhattan.
Frannie shakes her head and starts back down the hallway. She’ll put the whole encounter out of her mind … forever. She’s just overworked and overtired and she has a very vivid imagination.
She didn’t play catch with a ghost. Impossible.