Ghostcoming!

by Orli Zuravicky

  Right about now I wish I could output my energy to the hallway so I can hear what Colin and Georgia are talking about. I just really want to know what it is they actually have in common—she couldn’t have possibly seen Star Wars, could she??

  I wonder if the magical Tabulator has Star Wars …

  “Lucy!” Mr. Chesterfield cries out, and then quickly follows this up with, “Watch out in the hallway!”

  All of a sudden, about six pencils fall to the floor. None of these are mine. I realize that all of the energy I just outputted into internally freaking out about Georgia has actually lifted my pencil off my desk and sent it zooming out of the classroom and into the hallway, headed, it would seem, straight for Georgia’s left butt cheek.

  “Oh no!” I cry out, covering my eyes as the pencil shoots across the room.

  Obviously I don’t like Georgia, but it’s not like I planned to spear her with a stick, either! They both look in my direction.

  Nooo!

  Things are already weird with Colin, thanks to me accidentally badmouthing his girlfriend. When he said good-bye to me yesterday, I could tell that he was a little less friendly. Not mean or anything, just, I don’t know. Different.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, finally opening my eyes. I float up and go over to the doorway. Luckily, they moved just in time and no one got speared. “I had no idea I was doing that—I really need to get control over my, uh, energy output, or whatever.”

  “Are you okay?” Colin asks Georgia, concerned.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she says sweetly. “Thanks.”

  “You do need to learn to control your energy,” Colin says, now looking at me. I can’t tell if he’s angry or not. “We should start our tutoring sessions today after school.”

  “Perfect, yes,” I say. “Sounds great.”

  Class ends a minute later and we head over to Cecily’s Imprinting class to pick her up for lunch.

  “So, Georgia,” I say, trying to make conversation as we walk. “What were you stuck wearing when you crossed over?”

  “Normal clothes,” she answers, with a slight tone of “duh.” “A pair of skinny jeans, a sequined T-shirt, ankle boots.”

  “She looked perfect when she got here, of course,” Colin adds.

  Ugh.

  “Every guy at school was trying to talk to her, and every girl wanted to be her friend.”

  “You’re crazy,” Georgia says, gently hitting his arm in this flirty way, but smiling like she agrees.

  I want to throw up.

  “No, I’m not!” Colin continues. “She—”

  “We’re here!” I cry out happily, as we approach the doorway to Cecily’s classroom. Anything to stop this conversation! Colin and Georgia look at me like I’m a five-year-old with no mental filter. Fantastic.

  “Hey, guys,” Cecily says from the doorway. “Is it lunchtime? I’m starving! Lou, what’s wrong? You look annoyed.”

  Now Cecily’s the one with no filter. I give her a look.

  “What?” I reply, trying to sound cool. “I’m totally fine, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Lou?” Colin repeats, intrigued.

  “Yup. She’ll always be Lou to me!” Cecily sings.

  “It’s so cool that you guys know each other already,” Colin says. “Did you go to school together?”

  “No,” I answer. “We danced at the same studio, in case you couldn’t tell by our beautiful, matching outfits.”

  “It all makes sense now!” he says, pretending to hit himself on the forehead, and I feel he’s warming up to me again. “Well, it must be really nice to have a good friend here with you.”

  Cecily and I look at each other and smile. “It is,” I reply.

  Georgia nudges Cecily and begins to walk ahead, so Colin and I fall behind a bit.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday, what I said about Georgia. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Really. She can be a handful sometimes. But when you get to know her, she’s cool.”

  I don’t want to agree or disagree, so I say nothing. Instead, I change the subject. “So, what are you going to teach me today?”

  “Well, you’ve got your aim down pretty good. We can probably skip target practice,” he says with a smirk.

  “I said I was sorry! I didn’t mean it. Promise.”

  “Right … ” he says, not believing me, but in a playful way. He’s still smiling, so I take this as a good sign. “I’m thinking we work on the basics: trying to touch the ground with your feet, for example. Maybe move up to walking and then sitting.”

  “Sweet,” I say, excited. “Not pathetic in the least.”

  “Ha-ha. Well, I wouldn’t worry. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be easy for you,” he says.

  We get our food and sit down at their lunch table. Georgia introduces Cecily to the whole gang—which is helpful for me, since I didn’t get officially introduced yesterday with all the Ghostcoming craziness (even though she purposely doesn’t take the time to introduce me properly). I take mental notes as Georgia goes down the list.

  “Listen up!” she yells across the long, rectangular table. “This is my new mentee, Cecily. She’s awesome. Be nice to her or else!”

  “And this is Lucy,” Colin jumps in, “in case you didn’t meet her yesterday.”

  “Right,” Georgia says, her face pinched like she just ate a sour grape. “Cecily, this is the whole gang: That’s Jonah the clown,” she says, pointing to the burly, athletic kid who called me Swan Lake yesterday. I try to let this slide. “That’s Marcus. He plays guitar in a band without a name with Jessie, who also plays guitar and sings”—she points to two other cute boys with sideswiped, shaggy hairdos and T-shirts with names of things I don’t recognize: One says NIRVANA, and the other says THE RAMONES.

  “We’re just in between band names right now,” Jessie says. “Which do you like better? Misty Mourning—but with a u, you know, like mourning for the dead, right?—or Man Without a Face?”

  The whole table erupts in laughter. “Dude, we ruled out Man Without a Face last week,” Colin says.

  “I want to hear what the new ladies have to say about it,” Jessie answers.

  “Moving on!” Georgia continues, ignoring him. “This is my best friend in the whole world, Chloe,” she says, pointing to her mean, blond sidekick. “That is Trey, Jonah’s equally funny but less gross younger brother, and that’s Mia, Trey’s girlfriend.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Trey says. “And I’m not that much younger. Less than a year,” he directs at us. Then he turns to Jessie. “And Man Without a Face is the worst band name of all time. Seriously, dude, what are you thinking?”

  “Trey is in your year,” Georgia tells us. There’s a snobbiness to her tone, like she thinks she’s so much better than us because she’s been dead longer. Since when is that something to brag about?

  “Hi,” Mia says cheerfully, moving closer to us. “I’m not just Trey’s girlfriend. I’m actually my own individual person, imagine that?” I can tell she doesn’t like Georgia any more than I do.

  Good. We need all the teammates we can get!

  “So, the rest of you are in seventh or eighth grade, then?” Cecily asks.

  “Um, it doesn’t really work like that here,” Georgia answers. “We’re placed in different class levels based on our skills and how long we’ve been here, but it’s not like how school used to be. Limbo Central starts with Year One, then Year Two, and so on up, until you’re ready to graduate and enter the real Ghost World.”

  “Oh,” Cecily and I say at the same time.

  “So, you and Colin are in Year Two together?” I ask her.

  “Yes,” she says, smirking, and taking Colin’s hand into hers. “And we do everything else together, too.”

  Cecily shoots me a look. This is the first time today she has reacted negatively to something Georgia has done, in front of me, at least, which makes me breathe a little sigh of relief.

  �
�Okay, so Misty Mourning it is, then?” Marcus asks the table loudly, and Jonah throws an apple at his head (but he catches it, unlike yours truly).

  “How about An Apple a Day!” Jonah jokes.

  “Mmmm … delicious,” Marcus says, taking a bite out of the juicy red apple he just won. My mouth waters. I miss real fruit.

  I barely have a chance to talk to Cecily about her day before lunch is over and it’s time to get to our next class.

  “I’ll meet you out in front of the school at 2:45,” Colin says. “Okay?”

  “Sounds great, see you then!”

  * * *

  It’s 2:45 and I’m waiting for Colin outside on the steps of the school. I’m so excited for my first lesson I can hardly stand! I mean, I can’t actually stand anyway, but hopefully I will be able to once this lesson is over. Of course, I’m also looking forward to some alone time with Colin, but I’m more focused on learning a few real skills. I feel so helpless here, not being able to do anything on my own. And the countdown to Ghostcoming is only a week away, which doesn’t leave me much time to figure out how to put something more attractive on for the dance-a-thon.

  That is, if I even go. At this point, it’s a toss-up.

  “You ready?” Colin asks, appearing on the steps of the school as if out of the blue. “I have a surprise for you—you’re going to be so stoked about where we’re going.”

  “Ooh, I love surprises!” I say as we start moving.

  We stop at the closest Limbo bus stop, and after a few minutes the bus comes and we hop on.

  For a second I wonder why we can’t just magically disappear and reappear where we need to, but I enjoy the bus ride more than I thought I would. It’s exciting seeing Limbo like this, and Colin points out a lot of cool places that I can’t imagine Ms. Keaner telling me about: Ghostbusters Theater, Clairvoyance Café (apparently if they can’t guess what you want, it’s on the house!), Cold Reads bookstore, Banchee’s Bowl-o-Rama.

  “We usually go there on the weekends. Actually, a bunch of us are going tomorrow night. You and Cecily should come.”

  “Sounds fun. Except for the fact that we won’t be able to play.”

  “You can cheer us on from the sidelines,” Colin replies.

  “How did you know I’ve always wanted to be a cheerleader?” I joke.

  “Guess I already know you better than you think.”

  He smiles at me and I smile back, and for a moment we’re both quiet. I wonder if he’s about to say something or do something, like reach out and hold my hand, even though I know that’s totally crazy because a) he has a girlfriend, and b) even if he wants to hold my hand, at this point he physically can’t and I can’t hold his back. But nothing happens.

  We ride in silence for the next ten minutes, and then he says, “Okay, close your eyes. We’re getting off at this stop and I want it to be a surprise.”

  I close my eyes and follow the sound of his voice as I float off the bus and head in the direction he leads.

  “You’re sure I’m not going to get hit by a car or anything?” I ask, half-joking, half-serious.

  “Don’t worry, you can trust me. But if you did get hit by a car, it wouldn’t be that hard to put you back together.”

  “Isn’t that a happy thought.”

  I’m floating for a good five minutes before he finally announces that we’ve reached our destination.

  “Okay, on the count of three, open your eyes. One, two, three.”

  I open them and stretched out before me is crystal clear blue water as far as the eye can see.

  “You brought me to the beach?” I say, astounded. “I can’t believe it. How did you know? I mean, did you know?” I ask, my words falling all over themselves.

  “Cecily told Georgia at lunch that you guys are from California, and all about how much you love surfing and going to the beach. I thought it might … make you smile.”

  “This is the sweetest thing,” I say, and I mean it.

  “Well, I must confess, I am trying to trick you a little, too. I thought the hope of feeling the sand or the water again might make you work harder to get it right.”

  “Sneaky, sneaky,” I joke. “I can’t believe this exists here. I didn’t think nature and weather was something that really happens in Limbo.”

  “Well, it doesn’t really, not the way you’re used to experiencing it. But since everything is just matter, we can create whatever we want. All we need are different levels of energy. There are ski slopes about ten minutes in the opposite direction.”

  “Do you ski?” I ask.

  “I snowboard. Started when I was pretty young. Every year my family would take an insane vacation to this place called the Buccaneer Ski Lodge. I’d snowboard for, like, a week straight. Best week of my life every year, hands down.”

  “That sounds so fun!” I say. “I like to snowboard, too, although I didn’t get to do it much where I was. I did skateboard, though.”

  “I’ve never met a girl skateboarder before,” Colin tells me. “Given that you’re standing here in a leotard, tutu, and ballet shoes, it’s a little hard to believe you’re into that other stuff.”

  “Well, believe it. It’s funny. Ballet is definitely girly, but it’s also incredibly hard,” I answer. “You need a lot of strength, stamina, and discipline to dance. Just like any sport. Most guys don’t think about that.”

  “True, I guess I never really have. Not until now, anyway.”

  “Have you ever surfed?” I ask.

  “No, but I’ve always wanted to. We didn’t live near the water.”

  “It’s amazing. Like, you’re scared for your life, but at the same time, you’ve never felt more alive.”

  “Maybe you can teach me once you can feel the water again?”

  “It’s a date,” I say, without thinking.

  “What’s a date?” I hear a voice bark from behind me. I turn around and see Georgia, followed by Cecily, Jessie, and Marcus.

  Of course.

  “Hey,” Colin calls out to Georgia. “You didn’t tell me you were coming here, too.”

  “Well, when you told me your plan to do your lesson on the beach I knew that Cecily would, like, completely flip and want to come, too,” Georgia said, coming around and standing next to Colin so they were both facing me, a united front against the enemy. “And when we told these guys we were coming, they said they were heading over to practice some songs, so here we are.”

  “Oh, right,” Colin says, a little awkwardly. “Cool.”

  “So … ” Georgia says, “what’s a date?”

  “Oh n-nothing,” I sputter. “It’s just a figure of speech.”

  “Figure of speech!” Jessie cries out. “That’s it, folks! That’s the winner! Our band will now forever be known as Figure of Speech.”

  “Seriously?!” Georgia barks, annoyed, but the rest of us just start laughing.

  “Going once, going twice,” Jessie continues, “sold, to the brunette in the tutu!”

  When the awkwardness finally fades, Jessie and Marcus head down the beach to practice and Cecily and Georgia slip behind a cluster of giant rocks to work, leaving Colin and me alone again.

  “Okay, the first thing you want to do is visualize your feet touching the ground,” Colin says. “Think about each individual grain of sand pulling you down into it.”

  “That sounds like the beginning of a horror flick,” I say.

  He looks at me kind of funny. “You don’t watch a lot of horror movies, do you?”

  I laugh. “No, I don’t. Actually, I hate horror movies. One night, when I was, like, eight, I couldn’t sleep, so I came out of my room to find my mom, but she and my dad were watching this scary movie about a guy with a face full of burn scars and fingers made out of knives. It was terrifying! I stood at their door, peeking through the crack, and saw way more than I should have, kind of like when you see an accident on the road and you know you shouldn’t stare but you can’t look away? Anyway, he haunted my dreams for years.
Haven’t been able to go near a horror movie since.”

  Why am I talking so much?!? Why? Why? Why??!

  “Please tell me you know that stuff isn’t real, right?”

  “I didn’t think ghosts were real, either, and yet, here we are.”

  “You’re comparing life after death to some dude who has pizza-skin for a face and knives for fingers?” He laughs.

  “When you say it like that it sounds ridiculous! But, I mean, it’s not the least possible thing in the world,” I argue.

  “So what is the least possible thing in the world, then?”

  I want to say, Me ever understanding what it is you see in Georgia!

  But I don’t.

  Obviously.

  Instead, I say, “Probably world peace.”

  “Wow, I think my soul just died.”

  “I’ll be here all afternoon, folks!”

  He laughs again, which makes me laugh. He has this one dimple on the left side of his face that comes out when he smiles; it’s almost like his face knows that two would be too much, but one? One is killer.

  “Okay, so, we were talking about visualizing,” he says, all serious again.

  “Yes, visualizing. Here I go.”

  I start to picture the sand pulling me down, trying to envision each grain like he said. First the grains are forming a line, almost like a chain to attach to my legs, but that starts to feel too jail-y so I lose that visual and instead picture them looking like little sand people holding hands, dancing in a conga line and kicking their little sand legs up like the Rockettes. Before I know it, I’m thinking about the Ghostcoming dance and whether or not Colin is going to go with Georgia, which, of course he is, and how much I like him and how unfair afterlife is, and the little sand people are all, “Yeah, that is unfair! Go get ’em, girl!” And then—

  “Uhm, Lucy?” Colin asks.

  “Yes, yeah, what’s up?” I nervously break out of my internal crazy, trying to seem casual and not at all like I was just making sand people dance in my head.

  “Look down.”

  I do as he says and am completely and totally horrified. Right there, in the sand below my feet, is the shape of a heart indented in the sand with the words Go get ’em, girl! etched into it. Like I had taken a stick and drawn it there! Except I didn’t.