by F. T. Lukens
As soon as he was settled, a bag of flour fell, spilling its contents all over the floor. Bridger stared intently as letters appeared in the mess.
Hi, Bridger! It said in curly script. Happy birthday!
“Hi, Ginny,” he said, shoving his hand in the bag and grabbing a lemon bar. The pixies could deal with one missing treat. “And thank you. I had a great day.”
Groovy.
Ginny was one of the side effects of Leo’s hero cycle. When Leo moved to Midden, he had, unknowingly, been in the midst of an epic hero’s journey which consisted of a series of stages he needed to complete to reach a transformation. Except, Leo had met Bridger—his temptation—and promptly became stuck. Since all myths and cryptids are creatures of habit and routine, Leo’s inability to progress in the cycle affected other paranormal entities, like Ginny. She had been drawn to the town and popped up in the middle of a crowded mall scaring the daylights out of a few unwitting townsfolk.
It all worked out in the end. Leo’s epic hero’s journey turned out to be not-so-epic, and his metaphorical death and transformation consisted of leaving behind the mantle of naturally-gifted-athletic football player and donning the one of naturally-gifted-athletic-hardworking-focused baseball player. Bridger moved from being a temptation to a helper which meant he went from bisexual-disaster-crush to bisexual-disaster-boyfriend. Awesome. And Ginny moved into the bakery downtown.
Before Leo’s abrupt halt in the hero journey and the subsequent disruption of Ginny’s life, she had haunted a bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania for fifty years. According to her, after haunting the same place for half a century, things got boring. And the owners of the bed and breakfast were constantly trying to exorcise her.
Ginny had died as a teenager in the 1960s from the measles and took up haunting instead of crossing over into the “swirling cinnamon roll of light.” Those were her words, not his. He couldn’t grasp the idea of the bright vortex of death appearing as something as innocuous as a cinnamon roll, but Ginny was a glass-half-full kind of girl. Bridger had questions, so many questions, but Pavel warned him that it was impolite to interrogate the dead. And there was a communication barrier.
Sometimes when Bridger visited, Ginny would fully manifest in a translucent image of a beautiful girl in a skirt and sweater with bright-red lipstick and long hair pulled into a high ponytail and styled in a large curl. On those days, talking was difficult, because Ginny poured all her energy into her appearance and not her voice. On other days, she communicated through whispers and cold touches and moving ingredients around. Today, she was writing messages in flour.
“How are you doing?”
The flour shifted, as if an invisible hand swiped over the letters, erasing them. Then words appeared one letter at a time.
Ok. Bored.
“Yeah, same. I guess you heard from Pavel to lay low. Right?”
There was a sigh followed by a puff of flour skittering over the floor.
Yes.
“Okay. There is this reporter lady in town that has made my life ten times more interesting than I need it to be. So just be aware.”
Do you want me to haunt her?
“No. Thanks for the offer though.”
“I’d do it, Bridger, for you.” Her voice whispered across the shell of Bridger’s ear. He shivered. “Pull her hair. Push her into the oven.”
The hair on Bridger’s arms stood on end. Sometimes he forgot that Ginny was a ghost. She acted like a teenager most of the time, but, every once in a while, she reminded him in funny ways that she didn’t hold life in quite the same regard as the living did.
“Um, again, thanks for the offer, but I’m good.”
She was here.
Bridger froze. “She was?”
A few days ago.
“And what happened?”
Another sigh. Nothing. Followed by a frowny face. Bridger had taught her emojis thinking it might be useful in communicating. It hadn’t been.
Bridger rolled his neck, noticed the tension setting in along his spine, and consciously unclenched his jaw. “But everything else good? How are Peter and Meadow treating you?”
Good. Still here. Still dead.
Bridger snorted as more flour spilled from the bag.
How’s Leo?
“Amazing.”
Ginny giggled. The breath was cold on Bridger’s neck; goosebumps bloomed.
“I’ll bring him next time,” Bridger said, shoving the rest of the lemon bar into his mouth. He chewed loudly, and more letters appeared in the flour. “If he’s not busy.”
Please. I miss cute boys.
“Hey! I resent that.”
She giggled again.
“But I get it. He is cute.” Bridger pulled his phone from his pocket and flipped through his pictures. He found a selfie they’d taken together where they both were looking at the camera and neither was making a weird face. He held it up.
She cooed in his ear.
Bridger sat for a while longer and talked with Ginny. Despite the massive differences in their upbringings, she was easy to talk to, for a ghost, and loved to learn about the modern world. But the time grew late, and Bridger had homework.
He hopped down from the stool. “I’ll be back in a few weeks. If you need Pavel, use a mirror, or, you know, knock stuff over until one of the toasters goes off.”
“Thank you, Bridger.”
He shuddered and grasped the straps of his backpack a little tighter. “You’re welcome, Ginny. See ya.”
Bridger left the storage room, waved at Meadow as she frosted a batch of cupcakes, and bounced to the door. Swinging it open, he walked right into Summer.
Stumbling back, Bridger was saved from falling on his ass by a handy display of insulated travel mugs. He grabbed the plastic-covered metal display rack. His fingers caught in the grid. The cups went flying, rolling along the floor like multicolored barrels in a personal game of Donkey Kong.
“Hello, Bridger,” Summer said, with a mean smirk. “What are you up to?”
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. He needed to make like an octopus and escape.
“Leaving,” he said, attempting to shoulder past her in the doorway and keeping his eyes on the floor to dodge the debris. Her cameraman, Matt, was on her heels. He made his way into the shop, stepped around them, and went to the register.
“Ah, it’s your modus operandi then.” She gestured at the scattered merchandise. A travel mug with a picture of Ash from the Evil Dead franchise and the store’s name in bright glittery letters stared up at Bridger. “You cause a disturbance, then leave before the cleanup.”
Don’t respond. Don’t respond. Don’t respond. “I guess we have that in common then.” Fuck.
She cocked her head. “Really? That’s what you think?”
He’d said too much. Pavel was going to murder him. But in for the penny, might as well go for the pound. “Well, yeah. You stir up a frenzy with a lot of hearsay and wrong information, get a good feature for your show, then ghost before the town knows you used its legends and traditions for ratings and a laugh.”
She blinked. “Wow. You really don’t like me. What did I do to piss you off, huh?” She swept her hair off her shoulder, then tented her pink-tipped fingers. “It’s a fun show about monsters, and you are treating it like a documentary.”
“Whatever.” Bridger backed away from her, knocking into the display again. He gathered and carefully restacked the mugs, while keeping his gaze averted.
“You’re interesting, Bridger.” Summer handed him a mug.
“I’m really not.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Bridger finished picking up the mess. He gave a sheepish look to Meadow, who merely laughed and told him not to worry about it.
Matt returned, carrying equipment. His cheeks were pale, and his eyes we
re wide. “Summer,” he said, holding up a tape recorder. “You have to hear this.”
Bridger straightened. “What’s that?”
“EVP recorder,” Summer said. At Bridger’s blank look she rolled her eyes. “Electronic Voice Phenomenon recorder. I thought you were a fan of the show, Bridger? It’s a staple in ghost investigations. It picks up voices of the spirits that haunt the locale. Peter and Meadow allowed us to set it up when we first visited.”
Blood drained from Bridger’s face, and he was sure he matched Matt.
“Listen,” Matt said, eagerly. “This is so creepy.” He rewound a few seconds, then pressed play.
Ginny’s voice came over the speaker, not the fast, light sound Bridger heard when she used her energy to speak, but slow and deep and creepy.
“Thank you, Bridger.”
Oh, no.
Eyes wide, pink lips parted, Summer whipped her head around to stare at him.
“That’s your name.”
“No, it’s not.”
“That voice said your name.”
“No, it didn’t. I didn’t hear anything.”
Incredulous, she pointed at the device. “That’s your name. Plain as day. How do you explain that?”
Okay. Denial was not working. He needed a new move. Thoughts whirling, Bridger responded. “That clearly picked up a conversation I had with Meadow earlier.”
She crossed her arms. “How come I don’t buy that either?”
Crap. Bridger stepped back and did the only thing he could think of.
He fled.
The bell above the front door clanged, and he dashed onto the sidewalk. Summer followed, hobbling after him in her high heels, calling his name as he ran. Dodging pedestrians, Bridger sprinted while Summer yelled. He’d thought he’d finished with running, but no. Last semester he ran away from monsters. This semester he ran away from gorgeous women who wanted to ruin his life. What was his life?
He snuck a peak over his shoulder, and, yep, she was still behind him. A little farther back, but on his trail. Shit. She’d follow him right to the bus stop, and there was no way the bus would be waiting for him and he could pull a cool, action-movie stunt and jump in just as the doors closed in her face.
His luck didn’t work that way. Stumbling over a crack in the sidewalk, Bridger fell to his knees, breaking skin and tearing his jeans. His palms bled from scraping along the concrete. He pushed to a crouch and then froze.
Barking and snarling, a massive black dog barreled toward him with its lips curled back over its fangs and saliva dripping from his jowls. Bridger’s brain conjured visions of a dog-like cryptid eating his face. He froze in terror but, at the last second, he rolled out of its way, and, miracle of miracles, it ran right past him.
Huh.
Summer wasn’t as lucky. The dog skidded to a halt in front of her and growled. Shooing it away with her purse, she attempted to walk around it, to no avail. It snapped at her and prevented her from moving forward. In fact, it aggressively corralled her back toward the bakery.
Not one to look a gift dog in the mouth, Bridger jumped to his feet. He ran to the bus stop, just as the bus rolled in. He didn’t look back as he vaulted through the open doors and, chest heaving, cheeks flushed, slammed into a seat.
Glancing out of the smudged window as the bus pulled away, Bridger saw Summer, disheveled and shrieking, in the middle of the sidewalk.
There was no sign of the dog.
Chapter 7
On Friday, Bridger kept his head down and his hood pulled up as he ran up the front steps of the school. He looked over his shoulder a few thousand times. His usual twitchiness was dialed up to eleven, and he wasn’t certain he could make it through school without spraining something. His neck already hurt from checking behind him every few steps because he was paranoid Summer would jump out from behind a tree and shove a microphone in his face.
“Bridge?”
He jumped, clutched his chest, and stumbled backward. The squeak that emanated from his open mouth was loud enough that several students turned to look at him. His shoulders slammed into the lockers.
“Holy wow, Astrid. Don’t sneak up on me.”
She shook her head and frowned. “I literally didn’t. I stood at your locker like I do every morning and waited for your dumb ass to show up. What is wrong with you?”
Bridger’s heart thundered.
“Nothing.”
Raising an eyebrow, Astrid bent toward him. “Is it myth stuff? Hey, whatever happened with Grandma Alice?”
“Nothing. Pavel told me to stay out of it, so I am staying out of it.” Bridger tugged on his lock and sighed when it didn’t give. Hands shaking, he spun the dial and tried again. “This is me staying out of it.”
“It doesn’t look like you’re staying out of it.”
“Well, I’m trying to keep a low profile. I don’t need any undue attention. Okay?”
“I really don’t know how you deal with all of it. I only made it a month working for Pavel, and that was over winter break. I had to step away because the weird became too weird, even for me.”
“Well, he did say not many assistants last. Apparently, I’m the longest to hold on, which is kind of sad, if you think about it. I have no idea how long Mindy has been there, but she pays bills and ignores the rest of it.” Bridger tried the lock again. It held fast. “Damn it!” He hit his fist on the locker, then realized that he was drawing attention to himself. He ducked his head.
“You’re really doing great with that low profile. Banging on your locker. Screaming in the middle of the hallway. Keeping all that tension on the down-low.” Bridger glared. “I mean, I hear ya.” She rifled through her bag and pulled out a copy of the school newspaper. “You have to stay totally under the radar. Like this.”
Bridger abandoned his lock. He snatched the paper. The front-page headline declared “A Hot Race for Prom Court.” Below it was a picture of him and Leo snuggling in the hallway by the gym. Bridger had his arm around Leo’s shoulders, and Leo, baseball hat on, was tucked into his side. They were laughing about something, Leo’s eyes were crinkled as he stared up at Bridger’s jaw, and Bridger wore the dopiest grin in the history of dopey grins. It was obvious by their twin besotted expressions that they were a couple. There was no way to interpret it otherwise. And it was the cutest picture ever and it was on the front page of the school newspaper. They weren’t the only couple featured. Zeke and Lacey were on there, as were a few others from the senior and junior classes, but Bridger and Leo were front and center with their names neatly printed under the photo.
“I always knew I’d be a headline someday,” he muttered.
“Cute.”
“This is awful.”
“Yes, so sad. Alexa, play 'Despacito.'”
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m hilarious. And this is great, by the way. You’re breaking barriers. Did you know that you and Leo are the first same-sex couple to ever be considered for prom court?”
“That’s also awful. We shouldn’t be the first.”
“No one ever accused this high school of being the forefront of progressive thinking. But hey! It’s happening now. And it’s great!” Astrid punched him on the shoulder. “And you thought you’d have to move halfway across the country to come out.”
Bridger rubbed his temple. “I can’t deal with this right now.” He handed the paper back to her.
“Why? Because of the whole monster-show thing? I thought you were staying out of it?”
“I am! I mean…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “…I was! But there was an incident at the baseball field and then another at the bakery. And now, I really need to focus on school and hiding. Summer chased me yesterday, and it wasn’t great.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the last vowel. “I can see it is stressing you out so I’m
not going to ask. But you can focus on school and on graduating so we can be besties at State next year. I know you can.”
Bridger nodded, quickly. He tried his lock again and failed. “Could you?”
Rolling her eyes, Astrid successfully put in the combination. “What would you do without me?”
“Shrivel up and die. Seriously.”
She nudged him with her shoulder. “Seriously.”
“Hey, how’s your calculus grade? Did the quiz go okay?”
Astrid crossed her hands over her heart. “Oh, you remembered. You really are my best friend.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I was a jerk last semester. We’ve established that. No need to bring it up every time.”
He slammed his locker shut, and they walked down the hall.
“I did great on the quiz. My grade is holding steady. I just have to do a little better on the homework and I’ll be fine.”
“Great. Let me know if I can help.”
“You suck at math.”
“Yes. I do. But I am a great shoulder to cry on. And I’m kind of good at random facts. I win Jeopardy at least four times a week.”
“God, you’re a nerd.” She slid her arm through his and tugged him close to her side. “I don’t know how you ended up dating the prom king.”
“Pfft. If you figure it out, let me know.”
Bridger made it to lunch without doing anything more than mildly embarrassing, which he counted as a win.
Lacey was not happy with him for whatever reason. It may have been about the dive-bombing bug. It also may have been that she was in a tight race with him—of all people—for best prom couple, which was ridiculous.
He plopped down next to Astrid with his tray of unappetizing school lunch and, after eyeing it for a long minute, pushed it away.
Astrid poked him. “I am so tempted to quote the Captain America PSA about a hot lunch, but I don’t think I can get through it without giggling.”
Bridger snorted. Trust Astrid to bring up not only their mutual love of comic book movies, but their fictional BFF counterparts. She was the Bucky to his Cap. “I don’t think I could get through it either. I’d probably end up with milk coming out of my nose.”
