Ghost of a Chance

by Lauren Barnholdt

  I decide to leave my bike at the bike rack near the main buildings. Of course, I’ve forgotten to bring my bike lock, so I’m just going to have to take the chance that no one steals it. I really doubt anyone is going to take my hot-pink ten-speed with sparkly tinsel hanging from the handlebars. (What? Me and Ellie did this to our bikes when we were eleven. It was cool at the time, and if you want to know the truth, I kind of still like it.)

  “I hope no one steals your bike,” Lily says helpfully.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”

  We follow the winding sidewalk through some trees and over a cute little bridge that leads to the quad. Beyond that I can see the dorms looming in the distance.

  “This is a nice walk,” Lily says.

  “Would have been nicer if I hadn’t just biked fifteen miles,” I mutter under my breath.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” I say cheerfully. A big brick building with MILLBANK HALL on the side has come into view.

  Now, how do I get in? The building has big double doors and what looks like a keypad on the outside of it. It definitely looks very secure.

  “How do we get in?” I ask Lily.

  “I don’t know.” She looks at me. “Break in through a window?”

  “Um, no,” I say. “I mean, how did you get in? Is there a key, or a code, or what?”

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “I don’t remember.”

  I stand and look at the building, hoping someone is going to go in or come out. But although the main campus had some students wandering around, down here by the dorms things are decidedly more quiet.

  We sit down on a bench near the side of the building and wait. My legs could use the rest. After about fifteen minutes or so, two boys wearing puffy navy-blue vests and carrying cups of hot coffee come wandering down the path.

  “It was so sick,” one of them is saying. “The dude, like, broke his arm. And the bone was sticking out.”

  “That’s awesome,” the other kid says.

  I really have no idea what’s so awesome about someone breaking their arm and bones sticking out, but whatev. (Actually, now that I think about it, that sounds exactly like something boys would think is cool. Which is very upsetting, since I was hoping that by the time I got to college, boys would be more mature than they are in seventh grade. But I guess not.)

  “There was blood spurting all over the place,” the first boy continues. They’re walking up the steps to the dorm now, and I sort of meander over there, just in case there’s an opportunity for me to slip in the door. “And pus was coming out.”

  Lily looks at me and raises her eyebrows, and now I know this guy is definitely not telling the truth. Pus was coming out of a broken bone? No way. We learned in science class that pus is caused by a buildup of white blood cells from an infection. And I highly doubt that whoever they’re talking about had an infection before they broke their arm. It doesn’t make sense. Now, if they said the infection came after, then—

  Oh! They’re opening the door. The lying kid is balancing his coffee in the crook of his arm and has taken out some kind of key card. There’s a beep and a whoosh as the door opens and the two of them disappear inside.

  I sprint up the stairs and grab the door right before it’s about to shut. I slip inside, then glance around furtively, halfway expecting there to be some kind of guard or at least a check-in desk or something. But there’s no one.

  “Jeez,” I say. “This place isn’t very secure, is it?”

  “That’s why we had a lot of break-ins here,” Lily says wisely. “They were talking about revamping the security system, but I guess they haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  Great. Apparently Lily can remember the agenda of the school administration in regard to their security policies, but she can’t remember how to get in the building.

  I smooth my shirt down and try to look like I belong. Although now that I’m here, I’m nervous. I thought dressing more grown-up would make me not stick out, but I got it all wrong.

  I take a deep breath and then head down the hallway. I don’t really know where I’m going, but I can’t just stand here. Eventually someone’s going to walk in, and when they do, they’re probably going to ask me what I’m doing. Or even worse, they might demand to know who I am.

  I walk around the corner. La, la, la, nothing to see here, just hanging out.

  And then I spot the student mailboxes against one wall.

  Score! I can look for Lily’s name on the mailboxes, and hopefully it will have her room number there as well.

  I sidle over and start running my finger over the names. Wow. This is going to take forever. There’s probably, like, six hundred mailboxes here, and each one has two names. Each student must share their mailbox with their roommate.

  Twenty minutes later I’ve looked through every name and haven’t found Lily’s.

  They must have removed her name after she died.

  “Can you remember your roommate’s name?” I ask her hopefully. “Even just, like, an initial or something?”

  She shakes her head sadly. “No, I’m sorry.”

  I take a deep breath and think. How can I find out Lily’s roommate’s name? There are a few mailboxes that only have one name on them. I assumed they were for the RAs, or the kids who have singles. Maybe Lily’s room is one of those. It would make sense—after she died, her roommate probably got to have the room to herself. There’s no way the college would move in some new roommate after such a tragedy. That would be, like, totally traumatic.

  I guess I could write down all the room numbers that just have single names on their mailboxes, but then what would I do? Go to every single room and knock on the door, asking the person if their roommate died? That would take forever. And I’m kind of pressed for time, now that I realize how long it takes to bike over here.

  “Maybe we should check the mailboxes again,” Lily’s grumbling. She starts pacing the hallway. “Why would they take my name off ? That’s so messed up. Just because I died doesn’t mean that they have to completely forget about me, does it?”

  “No.” She kind of has a point. Just because she died doesn’t mean they have to remove her name from their mailboxes. It’s, like, erasing her memory or something. How callous.

  The sound of the building door opening echoes through the lobby, and Lily looks at me with alarm. “Quick!” she says. “Look casual!”

  I’m not sure how I’m supposed to do that, so I just put my head down and pretend to be looking for something in my bag. I might look nothing like a college student, but hopefully no one will be able to tell this just by looking at the back of my head.

  Two girls’ voices move down the hallway. I wish it were boys who were coming in. Boys don’t care about anything. They’re not curious at all. It comes in handy when you have to ask them things and pry around for information.

  La, la, la. Oh, nothing, just pretending to look for my keys.

  The voices get closer, bringing with them a rush of cool outside air.

  I keep rummaging through my bag. Lily, obviously, doesn’t have to worry about anything, because she’s a ghost. No one can see her, thank God.

  The girls are getting closer, and now I can hear their conversation. They’re talking about lip gloss or something ridiculous like that. One of the voices actually sounds very familiar. Like, very familiar.

  In fact, it almost sounds like Madison.

  As they pass, I shift my eyes from my bag to the floor.

  Wow. The person with the same voice as Madison also has the same UGG boots as Madison. I know because Madison loves to brag about her dumb sparkly UGG boots and how she got them the day they came out because she knew they were going to be sold out everywhere. Which they are, which kind of makes no sense, because they’re not even that great. Well, they weren’t that great. Now that they’re sold out, they’re infinitely greater just because they’re hard to get.

  “I can’t believe how fab your hair look
s, Madison,” the other girl says.

  I almost gasp out loud. What are the chances that some girl has the same voice as Madison and the same hard-to-find boots as Madison and the same name as Madison and yet isn’t Madison? And that settles it. I can’t help it. I look up.

  It’s Madison.

  She’s got a scarf around her neck and she’s wearing a long, slouchy sweater and skinny jeans, and she looks like a college student. Like what a college student would look like if they got dressed all collegiate and casual. She has a lot less makeup on than she usually does too. Just a swipe of mascara and a little blush.

  She looks effortlessly put together. How annoying.

  “Your sister would be really proud of you,” the girl with Madison is saying. She’s wearing jeans too, and a red sweater. She has stick-straight dirty-blond hair, and a soft-looking brown leather messenger bag is slung over her shoulder.

  The two of them disappear around the corner, and I breathe a sigh of relief. That could have been a disaster. Could you imagine if Madison had caught me in her sister’s dorm? Oh my God, she probably would have called the police or something. Not that I’m doing anything illegal. Although sneaking into a college dorm when you don’t live there definitely could be illegal. I’m not really sure, but it could be, like, breaking and entering or something.

  “That was Stella,” Lily whispers. “That was my roommate. It’s so weird. . . . I . . . I recognized her.” She looks at me, her eyes wide, and then she rubs her temples, like she’s getting a headache from the remembering.

  “Come on,” I say. “If we hurry, we can catch up to them.”

  “Why would we want to catch up to them?” Lily asks.

  “Because,” I say, “they’re going to your room. We have to follow them.”

  * * *

  Following Madison and Stella turns out to be surprisingly easy, considering they end up in an elevator and me and Lily have to take the stairs in order to catch up with them. (Of course, this is considerably easier for Lily, since she’s a ghost and doesn’t have to worry about things like bad cardio. Not to mention I’m the one who just biked fifteen miles.)

  We don’t know what floor the elevator is going to stop on, but luckily it’s super-loud and squeaky. Apparently, most people in this dorm are either at breakfast or still sleeping, because the stairwell and the whole building are very quiet. At the top of each flight, I stop for a second to see if I can still hear the elevator.

  By the time we get to the fourth floor, I feel like I might die.

  I bend over, trying to catch my breath, and listen for the elevator to stop.

  DING!

  The sound of the elevator doors opening drifts out to the stairwell, and Lily claps her hands.

  “Yes!”

  I peer through the pane of glass in the door of the stairwell. On the other side of the door is what looks like a lounge area. There’s a bunch of navy-blue upholstered chairs and an oak coffee table and a big flat screen TV. The room is a square, and there’s a door in each corner.

  Hmmm. If those doors lead to the rooms, I have no idea how I’m going to get inside. Each doorknob has a keypad where you enter a code. How am I supposed to know the code? And besides, it’s one thing to sneak into a building. It’s another thing altogether to sneak into someone’s actual dorm room. Not to mention that if I get caught, it’s definitely going to be breaking and entering. You can’t just go into someone’s—

  “I’m so glad you came!” Stella’s voice comes trilling through the lounge, followed by Stella herself.

  I gasp, and then duck down behind the door.

  “Shh!” Lily instructs. “You are a really loud gasper.”

  I give her an I’m-sorry look.

  “It’s okay,” Lily says. She’s still standing and looking through the glass. “Okay. They’re walking toward the door that’s right across from us.”

  “Can you see what the code is?” I whisper.

  “What code?”

  “You need a code to get into the room or the suite or whatever it is,” I say. “Can you see what numbers Stella’s punching in?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lily says, sounding doubtful. She pushes her nose right up against the glass. “Hold on.” She floats through the door.

  Her being invisible and able to move through solid objects is really coming in handy right now. I stay pushed up against the wall, my fingers crossed behind my back, hoping Lily can find the code before someone comes out here and finds me. I try to come up with a story about what I’m doing here, but I can’t really think of anything good. There’s really no good reason to be hiding in a hallway at a college where I know no one.

  Lily comes back a few seconds later, a huge smile on her face. “One, three, two, four,” she says. “I got the code.”

  “Good job!” I jump up and hold my hand out for a high five, but her hand just goes right through mine. We both giggle.

  “So now what?” Lily asks.

  “Now,” I say, sighing, “we have to wait until they leave.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then,” I say, “we break in.”

  Chapter

  12

  You’d think that Stella and Madison wouldn’t be in that room for long, wouldn’t you? You’d think that they’d want to get out and do something. I mean, what can possibly be so fun about sitting in a dorm room?

  Half an hour later my butt is falling asleep and my calves are starting to cramp from sitting.

  I stand up and jog in place.

  “What are they doing in there?” I grumble.

  “Maybe they’re telling nice stories about me,” Lily says. “You know, like reminiscing.”

  “Maybe.”

  I hop from one foot to the other, trying not to let myself get mad at Lily. It’s not her fault that I’m stuck out here. It’s not really anyone’s fault except for Madison’s. Why does she have to be in there, talking away, blabbing and blabbing? She’s probably not even telling stories about her sister. She’s probably telling stories about herself.

  My phone vibrates with a text.

  Ellie!

  Ellie is texting me!

  Even though we technically made up, Ellie and I haven’t moved on to texting or talking on the phone again. It’s nice that she’s sending me a text right now.

  Want to go to the mall?

  And she wants to hang out!

  Crap.

  We really need to get this show on the road.

  I peer through the glass, wondering if maybe I should go and throw something at the door to get their attention.

  Or maybe I should send Lily in there to see what they’re doing. If they’re settling in for a long time, I might have to just come back another day. I know I’m already here and everything, but there’s no use wasting my time if—

  Just then the door to the suite comes flying open.

  I hit the deck. Ew. This floor is incredibly dirty. Someone really should clean it. Don’t they have, like, cleaning people to do that kind of thing? Or are the students in charge of doing it themselves? They really should have cleaning people, especially with all the tuition hikes that have been going on at state schools. My dad’s always complaining about them.

  “Thanks for letting me get the rest of Lily’s stuff,” I can hear Madison saying.

  “No problem,” Stella says. “Are you sure you have time to eat before your parents pick you up?”

  “Totally. I’m starving,” Madison says. “All I had to eat today was, like, three fat-free Swedish Fish.”

  I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Well, the dining hall has the best pancakes,” Stella says. “It’s one of the only things they don’t ruin.”

  “Ew,” Madison says. “Pancakes are so fattening.”

  “Calories on Saturday mornings don’t count,” Stella says, and the two of them giggle before the sound of their voices disappears down the hall.

  “Good,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief. “Th
ey should be gone for a little while.” Now I just have to make sure I don’t get caught breaking and entering. “Come on,” I tell Lily. “We’re going in.”

  * * *

  Sure enough, Lily had the code right. Once I punch the code into the keypad, the door of the suite swings right open. We walk into a main sitting area that has three more doors off it. Which means the suite has three rooms—one for Stella and Lily, and two for whoever else lives in it.

  The suite is completely quiet. So either the roommates in the other two rooms are out or, more likely, they’re sleeping. And I’d really like to keep it that way. Hopefully, we can get in and out before anyone sees us.

  I’m about to ask Lily if she remembers which room is hers when I notice there are construction paper cutouts on each door in the shape of stars. Each one has a name written on it.

  The door to my left says “Stella” on one and “Lily” on the other. It’s one of those things they probably do before everyone gets to school to make it seem welcoming. Normally I would think that kind of thing is super-cheesy, but now I’m thankful.

  I tiptoe over to the door and put my hand on the doorknob.

  “It’ll be unlocked,” Lily says. “Stella never locks her door.”

  I hold my breath and hope she’s right. I turn the knob. It opens.

  “Oh my God,” I breathe. “We’re in.”

  I push the door open.

  The room is neat and tidy, with two single beds, two desks, and two closets in the far wall. A purple shag rug sits on the floor, and the walls are filled with posters, mostly of Nicholas Sparks movies.

  “Oh, God,” Lily says. “I totally forgot about Stella’s obsession with Nicholas Sparks.” She stops in front of the poster for The Lucky One. “Although I don’t mind the one with Zac Efron so much.”

  “Okay,” I say, anxious to get going. “So what are we looking for?”

  “The balcony?” she suggests.

  Against one wall there’s a pair of light purple billowy curtains in front of a sliding glass door.