The Ghost Collector

by Allison Mills

  Her mom can correct her when she comes back.

  “Okay,” Grandma says, getting to her feet, too. “As long as you know, that’s all I ask.”

  Grandma walks her into the school and to her classroom. Ms. Flores’s face creases into a mask of sympathy and sorrow as soon as she sees them. “Shelly,” she says. “It’s so good to have you back with us today. How are you feeling?”

  Shelly feels like the answer to Ms. Flores’s question is obvious, but she lies because she knows the right answer. “I’m okay.”

  “Good,” says Ms. Flores. “Do you want to put your stuff away while I talk to your grandma?”

  Grandma squeezes Shelly’s hand. “Remember,” she says, “you don’t have to stay for the whole day.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Shelly says, pulling her hand away and pretending she doesn’t see the concern on Grandma’s face. Shelly walks to her desk, nestled in a cluster of four desks, and takes a seat, ignoring her classmates and the way most of them are staring. Lucas, in the desk across from Shelly’s, is looking anywhere but at her. Their seating assignments, the layout of the classroom—it’s all exactly the same as it was the last time she was here, but Shelly feels like a different person looking at it.

  Shelly has no idea what they’re studying in class today. Her last day at school feels like it happened months and months ago, not just a few weeks. Shelly’s life has become a before and an after and she doesn’t know how to bring them together. It’s like being a ghost—she can see all the parts of her previous life, but it doesn’t belong to her anymore.

  Shelly pulls out her pencil case and concentrates on it because needing a pencil is one thing she can count on not having changed.

  “Shelly, you’re back?”

  It’s Isabel. She’s playing with the ends of her long hair. She doesn’t look unhappy to see Shelly, but she doesn’t look happy either—she looks uncomfortable.

  “Yeah,” Shelly says. “I’m back.”

  “I heard about— Sorry about your mom,” Isabel says. “Ms. Flores had us all make a card. Did you get it?”

  Shelly doesn’t know. There are a lot of cards stacked up in the kitchen. “Probably. I haven’t read them all.”

  “Oh,” says Isabel. “Okay.”

  Isabel sits at her desk next to Shelly’s, gingerly, like she’s afraid the chair will collapse under her if she’s not careful. The rest of the day is pretty much the same. Shelly sits at her desk and goes out to the playground and it’s like there’s a bubble around her keeping everyone else away. It’s like everyone knows she’s there, but they don’t want to look right at her.

  It’s like she’s a ghost.

  Isabel keeps turning to Shelly and stopping right before saying something. By lunchtime, Shelly wants to tell Isabel to just say whatever she wants to say. She wants to climb up on the jungle gym and yell at everyone that it’s not like they’ll catch having a dead mom if they talk to her. It’s not a cold.

  Shelly’d probably get in trouble if she did that. Maybe not trouble-trouble, but the school would make her sit in the office and they’d call her Grandma to come take her home.

  Shelly’s mom would laugh and say, Well, she’s not wrong. Shelly hasn’t gotten in trouble at school often, but when she was in first grade Lucas cut off the end of her braid and when she hit him the principal said they were both wrong and called their parents.

  Shelly’s mom said she didn’t see how her daughter hitting a kid after he cut her hair was an unreasonable response. She’d said she hoped Lucas learned his lesson. Then she took Shelly to Zhou’s.

  “Hitting people shouldn’t be your first response,” she said, pointing a fry at Shelly. “But fighting back when someone tries to bully you isn’t a bad thing, Shell. I want you to know it’s okay to stand up for yourself.” She paused, pushing the plate of sweet and sour pork and french fries toward Shelly. “Let’s not tell your grandma everything, though, okay? She doesn’t need to know about the hitting or the fries.”

  Shelly suddenly doesn’t want to be at school anymore, but she doesn’t want to go home either. She wants french fries and sweet and sour pork and a milkshake. And maybe, if she’s honest, Shelly wants to see if her mother is waiting there for her.

  There’s a whole bunch of places her mom might anchor herself, and maybe Zhou’s is unlikely, but Shelly’s mom loved the food and it was their place. Grandma didn’t know about it.

  Shelly sits through the rest of the school day and doesn’t pay attention to Isabel beside her or Ms. Flores at the front of the room. She sits and she thinks about how she’s going to get to Zhou’s. She can’t ask outright. It would mean giving up her mother’s secret and she doesn’t want that—it was theirs and it should stay theirs.

  Still, when her grandma shows up to take Shelly home at the end of the day, Shelly’s plan isn’t much better. “Can we go to the thrift store on the way home?” she asks. “I don’t need to buy anything. I just—want to go.” She pauses. “Mom and I used to go there.”

  Grandma hesitates and for a moment Shelly thinks she’s going to have to tell Grandma everything, but then she nods. “Maybe we can find some tapes to take to Joseph.”

  “Maybe,” Shelly agrees, although she has no intention of looking.

  The store is on the same bus route as the one they take to get home. Shelly pushes the button for their stop and she and Grandma exit the bus. There are cars outside of Zhou’s already—people getting an early dinner or a late lunch. Shelly watches a woman about her mother’s age disappear inside as she and Grandma walk past the restaurant and into the thrift store.

  “Where did you want to look?” Grandma asks her. “Tapes?”

  Shelly shakes her head. There are shelves of books on the opposite side of the store from the tapes. “I’m going to look at books,” she says. “You can look at the tapes, though.”

  Grandma looks around the mostly empty store and considers this. “All right,” she says. “It shouldn’t take me long to see if there’s anything Joseph would like.”

  It shouldn’t take Shelly long to see if her mother’s at Zhou’s, either. She heads to the book section, stopping as soon as she has a shelf to hide behind, and waits until she’s sure Grandma’s not looking. Then she leaves the shop, jogs to Zhou’s, and pulls open the door, stepping inside.

  The restaurant smells comforting and familiar, like fried meat. Shelly’s instantly transported back to sharing milkshakes and fries and pork with her mom. She gets a sudden, intense craving for Chinese food, stomach gurgling even though she’s not hungry.

  The lady behind the counter smiles at Shelly. “Hello,” she says. “Are you here for pickup?”

  Shelly scans the restaurant for any sign of her mom. There’s a rubber bin of dirty dishes on their usual two-person table. The kitchen is noisy, but the restaurant itself is pretty empty. Shelly’s spent hours building this up in her head, hours telling herself maybe—that Zhou’s was a secret just between them, so there was a chance.

  Only there’s no hint of the dead in Zhou’s. It’s just a nice family restaurant and Shelly shouldn’t have pinned her hopes on this one thing.

  Shelly looks at the lady behind the counter and shakes her head. “No,” she says, around the lump forming in her throat. “I’m just looking for my mom, but she’s not here. Sorry to bother you.”

  Shelly swallows her tears on the way back to the thrift store. She slips inside and heads toward the back corner where the tapes are kept.

  Grandma meets her halfway. “No luck?” she says. “Me neither—nothing Joseph would like. It’s all classical and country.”

  “Let’s go home,” Shelly says. “I want to go home.”

  “Of course,” says Grandma, sighing and putting a hand on Shelly’s shoulder, squeezing gently. She keeps doing that now, holding Shelly’s hand or touching her shoulder, like she’s worried Shelly
is going to run away on her.

  Shelly is disappointed, yeah, but she’s frustrated, too. She’d known Zhou’s was a long shot—why would it be more important to her mother than any other place she could reappear? The house or the cemetery makes way more sense and one of those places is already crossed off the list. If she were going to appear at home, she would have done it by now.

  So she must be somewhere else.

  She’ll check the cemetery again. Sometimes the dead are confused when they come back—like John Francis German and the river ghost. They don’t know who they are. If her mom’s lost, it’s up to Shelly to find her.

  She already asked Joseph to look out for her mom. She can recruit other ghosts, too. Shelly knows the chances of finding a ghost who’s seen her mom are slim, but if there’s even a slight possibility—and she’s sure there is—then it’s worth trying.

  She’ll find ghosts and ask them if they’ve seen her mom. She’ll show them a photo so they know who to look for. She’ll ask if they’ve run across a woman looking for her daughter.

  Her mom is out there somewhere, and Shelly knows just where to start her search.

  12

  Shelly waits until Grandma starts cooking dinner then goes into her mother’s room.

  There’s a framed photo of Shelly and her mom sitting on the bedside table. It was taken when Shelly was little, but not so little that Shelly can’t recognize herself. Shelly’s mother is holding her and smiling at the camera. Shelly looks thrilled to be caught up in her mother’s arms. The frame is fancy—colored gold with lots of little flowers carved into the metal.

  For as long as Shelly can remember, their family was always her, her mom, and Grandma. She doesn’t remember the day the photo was taken, but she wishes she could go back. It’s a sunny day and they’re outside in a park somewhere. Shelly’s mom’s hair is short, barely reaching chin length. Even if her mom had wanted to, she couldn’t have caught ghosts with hair that short. She’s wearing a sweatshirt that Shelly recognizes—it’s dark red with flowers stitched across the front. Her mom used to wear it all the time. Shelly doesn’t know where it went.

  Shelly’s hands are shaking when she opens up the back of the frame and slips the photo out.

  Not going along with Grandma’s idea to look at tapes was a mistake, but Shelly hadn’t had a plan then. The only cassettes Shelly has left are the holiday ones her mom refused to keep in the car year-round. There are three tucked away in the drawer of the bedside table. Giving one away hurts, but if Joseph has seen or heard anything from her mom, it’ll be worth it.

  Shelly waits for Grandma to take another job that leaves Shelly home alone, but she doesn’t. Instead, Grandma takes the bus with Shelly to school in the mornings, and on days when she doesn’t pick Shelly up, Grandma is always waiting with a snack at home, ready to ask about her day.

  “What about money?” Shelly asks, the fifth day in a row she comes home to a warm house. Grandma is roasting a pork loin in the oven and the fridge is fully stocked with milk, like Grandma is expecting to feed more ghosts soon. “What about jobs?”

  “I’m working during the day,” Grandma says. “I shouldn’t be leaving you home alone. People who want a ghost out of their house badly enough will accommodate me working daytime hours now.”

  It’s true that people will bend over backward to get rid of the things they don’t want. They’ll use their vacation days to watch Grandma wander through their homes, plucking up the skittering ghosts of rats and freeing them in the garden.

  It’s true, but it’s another way Grandma is breaking her own rules.

  “They’ll do anything to get rid of a ghost once they know they have one,” Shelly says. “That doesn’t mean we should make them.”

  “No,” Grandma agrees. “But right now the two of us being together is more important.”

  Shelly wants to snap at Grandma—to remind her that she’s the one who left Shelly while she worked with the police in the first place—but she stays silent. She has her tape chosen and a plan in mind, but she can’t count on Grandma leaving her alone again anytime soon. It means she needs to sneak out when she knows Grandma isn’t likely to check on her. It means going to the graveyard at night.

  • • •

  Shelly waits until she’s sure Grandma is asleep—until almost midnight—and slips out of her bedroom. Shelly’s never left the house alone after dark before. She puts on her coat and boots as quietly as she can. The cassette is in her pocket. The sound of the door opening seems much, much louder than she’s used to when she turns the lock and pulls it open, but Grandma doesn’t stir—just gently snores.

  She closes the front door and waits. Grandma doesn’t come running out behind her. Mrs. Potts’s lights stay off. Nobody is going to stop her from leaving. Even the front yard looks different at night, cast in unfamiliar shadows.

  Shelly shivers, alone in the dark, and tugs her coat tighter around her body.

  The bus stops running after nine, which means she has to walk to the cemetery. Shelly isn’t afraid of the dead, but the unnatural yellow glow of the streetlights makes the night seem scary, like something bad could be waiting for her around every corner. She takes a step toward the road, moving slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the dark.

  The night is noisier than Shelly expected. The trees rustle. There are cars on the road. Dogs barking. Shelly’s not alone, but she feels like she is. Stepping onto the street and starting the long, cold walk to the graveyard, Shelly feels like she’s the only person in an unreal world. She has to keep checking street signs to make sure she’s going the right way. Everything looks different even though she knows it shouldn’t.

  She wonders if this is what being a ghost is like. Scary. Confusing. Shelly can see why her mom got lost if it is. Shelly feels like there’s something dark lurking around every corner. Like every time the wind rustles a bush, it’s someone sneaking up on her.

  She can’t believe she has to walk home after this, too.

  When she reaches the cemetery, the gate is closed but not locked. It’s easy to push it open and step inside. Surrounded by death, a dozen lingering souls tugging at the ends of Shelly’s ponytail, she lets her shoulders relax and her eyes adjust to the darkness. After all this time, and with all she knows, being here is almost like being home.

  Shelly tucks her ponytail into the collar of her jacket and begins the trek across the cemetery toward Joseph’s grave. She doesn’t know if he’ll like her tape, but he seemed sorry for her before. She figures he might forgive it being Christmas music.

  When she reaches the outskirts of the graveyard, Joseph is there, where he always is, sitting on his grave. He’s singing under his breath and looking up at the sky with his eyes like black holes.

  “Joseph.”

  He turns to look at her, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Little Shell,” he says. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here right now.”

  Shelly frowns and digs the tape out of her pocket, holding it out to him. “I’m here to ask you if you’ve seen my mother,” she says. “This is the only thing I could find to bring you.”

  Joseph glances down at the cassette, and for a long moment his only reaction is the buzz of static from the headphones around his neck. Then he looks up at her like he can’t believe this is what Shelly has to offer. “Christmas carols?”

  “Holiday favorites!” Shelly steps closer to Joseph, hand still outstretched. She needs this. “It’s not just Christmas music. There are a couple Hanukkah songs.”

  “It’s not even winter yet.” Joseph doesn’t reach for the tape. “You gave me three tapes last time. Let’s call that a down payment. I don’t want what you’ve got to offer, but I like you. I’d like to help.” He tilts his head. “Besides, you want to know if I’ve seen your mother.”

  Shelly nods, impatient. “She hasn’t come home yet.”

  “I do
n’t need tapes for that, Little Shell. It’s yours for free. I haven’t seen her,” Joseph says. “Nobody new is out walking. The only real company I’ve got right now is Angel Lady. Everyone else is fading away.”

  Estelle is there, suddenly, standing behind Joseph and frowning down at him. “Angel Lady,” she scoffs. “As if I hadn’t introduced myself. I’m perfectly polite and this is the thanks I get. Teenagers.”

  “I’ve been here longer than you,” Joseph says. “I don’t know why you gotta act like you know more about everything than everyone.”

  “Teenagers,” Estelle repeats, and then turns her attention to Shelly. “Poor girl, missing your mother. Let me show you my angel. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Shelly doesn’t really want to look at Estelle’s angel, but she doesn’t want to be rude and Joseph is no help to her right now. “Thank you,” she says. “I’d love to see it.”

  Estelle’s fogged-over glasses aren’t quite solid, but they gleam in the moonlight as she grins at Shelly. “I knew I liked you, kid,” she says. “It’s beautiful. You can’t miss it. One of the biggest tombstones in the whole cemetery. I’ve checked.”

  “Little Shell,” says Joseph, before Shelly can leave to follow Estelle. “You’re not dead yet.”

  Shelly shivers. She likes Joseph, but she doesn’t like the yet. “I know.”

  Joseph shrugs. “Just wanted to be sure you did. I like you. Don’t want to watch you fade away.” He slides his headphones on and leans back to look at the sky again.

  Shelly turns away and follows Estelle. Estelle doesn’t mind moving over graves and cutting corners, but Shelly sticks to the paths. She keeps her hair to herself all the way to Estelle’s grave.

  “See?” says Estelle. “My angel.”

  It is a very large marker—the angel alone is at least five feet tall and the base it’s sitting on adds a couple more feet to its final height. Its wings are half-unfurled, and it looks down at Shelly and Estelle beside her, the expression on its face stern, but gentle. It holds a banner with ESTELLE K. J. PARK written on it.