The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  “Do you think maybe I was Jane Austen in a former life?” I ask sleepily when we finally turn off the lights. It must be after midnight. Oscar has weaseled his way in between us on the bed, but I don’t mind because even though he takes up half the square footage of the mattress, I’m a lot warmer with him curled up beside me.

  “Of course not,” Mom says. She doesn’t believe in things like past lives. She believes in logic and medicine, things that can be proven with organic chemistry.

  “Okay, but I mean if you did believe in that kind of thing—”

  “Which I don’t—”

  “Okay, but if you did—”

  “If I did, then would I also believe that you’d been Jane Austen in a former life?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?” I scoff, feigning offense.

  I can feel Mom shrug on her side of the bed like the answer is really obvious. “Statistics. Mathematically the chances are infinitesimal.”

  “You’re applying statistics to my hypothetical past life?”

  “Numbers don’t lie, Sunshine State.” Mom calls me that sometimes, even though we’ve never even been to Florida, the actual Sunshine State. I’m pretty sure Washington is as far as you can get from Florida without actually leaving the contiguous United States. But Mom’s always said that as long as she’s with me, she’s in a state of perpetual sunshine. She says she felt that way from the instant she picked me up when I was a just a newborn baby. That’s why she named me Sunshine in the first place.

  “Good night, sweetie,” she says into the darkness.

  “Good night.”

  The sound wakes me up. I’m not sure what time it is when I hear it. Hear them. Footsteps. Coming from the floor above us. I wasn’t sleeping all that soundly anyway. Usually when I fall asleep after reading Pride and Prejudice I dream about Mr. Darcy, but tonight I was having really weird dreams. I saw a little girl crying in the corner of a bathroom, but no matter what I said or did, her tears kept flowing. I tried to put my arms around her, but she was always out of reach, even when I was right beside her.

  “What the freak?” I whisper, rolling over and reaching for Oscar. Dogs’ hearing is supposed to be really good, so if he doesn’t hear anything, then this is definitely just my imagination, right? But Oscar isn’t on the bed anymore, and it’s pitch dark in here, so I can’t see where he is. He can’t be that far away, though, because I can smell the wet-dog-smell of his fur, which hasn’t fully dried since we got here. Suddenly the footsteps stop.

  “Mom,” I whisper, gently shaking her shoulder. “Mom, did you hear that?”

  “Hmmm?” she answers, her voice thick with sleep. She was really tired after having driven so far. I should let her sleep. But then the footsteps start again.

  Oh gosh, maybe this house doesn’t feel creepy because it’s been empty for months. Maybe it feels creepy because a crazed murderer has been squatting on the floor above us, waiting for some unsuspecting family to move in so he could strangle them in their sleep. My heart is pounding and I take deep breaths, trying to slow it. But it just gets faster.

  The footsteps don’t actually sound like a crazed murderer’s, though. They sound light, kind of playful—kind of like a child is skipping through the rooms above us.

  “Mom,” I repeat, more urgently this time. Maybe there really is a kid up there. Maybe he or she got lost or ran away from home.

  “What is it?” Mom asks sleepily.

  “Do you hear that?” I ask.

  “Hear what?”

  “Those footsteps.”

  “All I hear is your voice keeping me awake,” she says, but I can tell she’s smiling. “It’s probably just the cat,” she adds, rolling over and putting her arms around me. “Go back to sleep. I promise this place won’t seem so creepy in the morning.” She emphasizes the word creepy like it’s some kind of joke.

  “It’s not funny,” I protest, but Mom’s breathing has resumed its steady rhythm—she’s already fallen back to sleep. “It’s not funny,” I repeat, whispering the words into the darkness.

  The last thing I expect is an answer, but almost immediately after I speak, I hear it, clearly and softly as though someone is whispering in my ear. Not footsteps this time but a child’s laugh: a giggle, light and clear as crystal, traveling through the darkness.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, willing myself to think about anything else: Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane and Mr. Bingley, even Lydia and Mr. Wickham. I try to picture them dancing at the Netherfield ball (even though I know Mr. Wickham wasn’t actually there that night), but instead, all I can see is the little girl from my dream, her dark dress tattered with age, playing hopscotch on the floor above me. And again I hear laughter. A child’s laugh has never sounded quite so scary.

  Before I know what I’m doing, I crawl out of bed and head for the stairs. If there’s a little girl up there, she’s probably just as frightened as I am, right? Though she didn’t sound frightened. I mean, she was laughing.

  I place my foot on the bottom step and look up. There’s nothing but darkness above me. Oscar appears at my side, leaning his warm body against my leg. “Good boy.” My voice comes out breathless, as though I’ve been running.

  I put my foot on the second step and it creaks. Then there’s nothing but quiet—no laughter, no footsteps, no skipping. My heart is pounding, but I take a deep breath and it slows to a steady beat.

  “Maybe it’s over,” I say. Oscar pants in agreement. Other than our breathing, the house is silent. “Let’s go back to bed,” I sigh finally, turning around.

  Oscar curls up beside me on the air mattress, and I run my fingers up and down his warm fur. I expect to lie awake, staring at the ceiling, for hours. Instead, my eyelids grow heavy, my breathing slows until it keeps time with Mom’s.

  But I swear, just as I’m drifting out of consciousness, in that place where you’re more asleep than awake anymore, I hear something else. A phrase uttered in a child’s voice, no more than a whisper:

  Night-night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Pink Irony

  “How pink can it possibly be?” Ashley sounds almost as skeptical about the color of my new room as my mother did about the possibility that this house might be haunted.

  Even though she can’t see me through the phone, I shake my head. The movers left an hour ago, and Mom and I have been unpacking ever since. My new room is a crooked sort of rectangle. I thought I’d be able to see how our life would fit into these rooms once our belongings were here with us—how my life would fit into my new bedroom. But I’m not sure I will ever fit into a room that looks like this.

  “I swear, Ashley.” I keep my phone on speaker as I sift through all the items I packed so carefully just a few days ago in Austin: my antique typewriter, which now sits on my desk beside my laptop, my taxidermied owl—Dr. Hoo—currently perched on a shelf above my desk like he’s about to swoop down and lift up my collection of glass figurines. “You’ve never seen a room this pink. You’ve never seen a pink this pink.” Ashley laughs, but I’m being totally serious. The pink in my new room is everywhere: in the roses on the wallpaper, the shaggy carpet on the floor. Even the light switch is painted pink.

  When I woke up this morning I immediately raced up the stairs to search for any trace of a child hiding up here. But there was nothing. No footprints, no dirt tracked over the carpets, no sticky fingerprints on the windows, and certainly no little girl hiding in the closets or the bathroom. Mom said that whatever I thought I heard last night was probably just a bad dream, but I shook my head. I know what I heard. Plus, it’s even colder on the second floor of this house than the first floor. Maybe the air is too damp to move here; the mildewy smell is even stronger on the second floor, the carpet almost damp, as though it flooded a few months ago and never had a chance to air out.

  “My room used to be pink,” Ashley offers. Clearly she still doesn’t grasp the gravity of the situation.
<
br />   “Yeah, until you turned thirteen and outgrew it.”

  “Didn’t you see pictures of the house online before you moved?”

  “Obviously they neglected to include pictures of this room.”

  “So move into another room.”

  “There isn’t any other room. There’s my mom’s bedroom and there’s this bedroom and a bathroom in between.”

  “What about a guest room for when your best friend comes to visit?”

  I laugh. “Nope. You’ll join me inside this giant Pepto-Bismol bottle.”

  I pick up what might be my most prized possession, removing it from a cocoon of Bubble Wrap: the Nikon F5 camera my mother bought me for my sweet sixteen. I place it gingerly on the bed. Ashley thought I should have asked for a car. Every teenager in America asks for a car when they turn sixteen, she’d said. She got one, a bright blue, shiny, four-door hybrid that she proudly drove around town with the windows down and the music loud. But what I really wanted was an old-fashioned camera to shoot with real film. And boy, did Mom deliver.

  My high school in Austin offered photography classes, and I signed up the first day of my freshman year, borrowing a camera from the photography teacher, Mrs. Soderberg. She patiently taught me how to develop film in the school’s basement darkroom. Most everyone else used digital cameras, but those pictures never looked as true to me as the ones taken with film.

  Ashley has always teased me because I’d rather spend hours in the darkroom with a teacher instead of staring at a screen looking at the status updates of people I see at school all day anyway. She said that was the reason I didn’t have more friends. And she said my collection of stuffed birds didn’t help either. Normal girls are grossed out by dead animals.

  It’s only one stuffed bird, I’d insisted. Mom and I found Dr. Hoo at an antique store just outside of Austin. I can’t explain it, but the instant I saw him I knew I just had to have him. He was snowy white with black speckles on his soft head and wings, and even though he’d clearly been dead for a long time, he just felt so alive to me.

  It’s not like I needed more friends. Ashley and I were different, but we’d bonded in second grade over a shared love of colorful construction paper and glitter-glue, and we’ve been close ever since. Besides, she and my mom had always felt like enough in the friends department. Mom always said I was all she needed, and truth be told, between me and her work, it never seemed like she had time for much else. Anyway, why would I want friends I had to act fake in front of? I don’t want to pretend to be scared of dead things and to prefer digital to film. I don’t mind that I’m old-fashioned.

  “Just promise me you’re not going to be as antisocial in Ridgemont as you were in Austin.”

  “I’ve lived in Ridgemont for less than twenty-four hours. I haven’t had time to be antisocial.”

  “Will you at least promise to wear something normal on the first day of school?”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “Define normal.”

  “It is not normal for a sixteen-year-old to have pajamas with feet.”

  “That was one sleepover, and we were in the eighth grade!”

  “Do you still have them?” Ashley asks, knowing the answer.

  I laugh and close my eyes. I can picture Ashley now, her pretty blue eyes sparkling, her blond hair blown dry straight and smooth down her back. She’s probably planted next to the air conditioning vent in her (normal-colored) room, wearing normal denim shorts and a normal T-shirt. She always refused to come with me whenever I went to Goodwill in search of vintage blouses and boots and bags. I don’t dress like a crazy person or anything like that; I just don’t dress like most of the other kids I know either. I like crocheted hats and scarves, T-shirts with funny little icons on them, and long sleeves that hang past my wrists.

  “Maybe the kids at Ridgemont High will dress the way I do.”

  “Maybe,” Ashley agrees, though I can tell she doesn’t really think so. “Or maybe they’ll think your style is some really cool import from out of town. You could pretend to be from New York. Or London!”

  “Who would believe I’m from London?”

  “You could do a British accent. Boys love British accents.”

  I shake my head. “If I’m going British, I’m doing it for British things like afternoon tea and carriage rides across the castle lawn.”

  “So you won’t just be British, you’ll be royalty too?”

  “As long as I’m inventing a new reality, I may as well make it count.”

  “You’ll be the most popular girl at school in no time.”

  I nod in agreement. “The boys will be falling all over me the second I say my first Right-o, jolly good!”

  Ashley giggles. “Now what’s so funny?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says, but her giggles just get louder. I bet her cheeks have turned nearly as pink as my carpet. When she speaks she can barely get the words out. “I’m just trying to imagine you sneaking a boy up to your room. What would be more mortifying—the dead bird or the pink walls?”

  “He’d run away as fast as his legs could carry him,” I agree, and I’m laughing too. The mere idea of a boy in my room is absurd all on its own. Ashley knows full well that I’ve never so much as kissed a guy.

  From downstairs my mother’s voice is calling my name. “Ash, I gotta go,” I say. “Mom needs me.”

  “Tell Kat I say Hi.”

  “I will,” I promise. “Miss you.”

  “You too,” Ashley says before hanging up.

  I step into the hall. The carpet out here is a nice neutral color: tan. Nothing like the pink monstrosity going on in my room.

  Wait. The hallway is carpeted. So is Mom’s room. So is mine. I pace back and forth, then skip a little, trying to imitate the sounds I heard last night.

  “Hey Mom, do you hear that?” I shout.

  “Hear what?”

  I skip more, into my own room, into Mom’s, and then back to the hallway. The carpet is so thick that I can feel its plushness even with shoes on. “Hear that!”

  “I hear your voice, yelling at me!” she calls back, an echo of what she said when I woke her in the middle of the night. Now I race down the stairs, two at a time. My mother is in the kitchen, leaning on the enormous counter in the center of the room, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes of pots and pans and Tupperware. The cat mews at her feet, wondering which box his food is in. The counter was probably white once, but it’s taken on a gray tinge, just like the outside of the house. Mom’s turned all the lights on, but it still seems dark in here. Rain beats against the window above the sink. Thunder rumbles in the distance.

  “I’m making a grocery list,” Mom says. “What do you need?”

  “The floor is carpeted,” I answer.

  “What?”

  “Upstairs. It’s hardwood down here, but the entire second floor is covered in carpet.” Lex mews insistently, rubbing up against my legs. I bend down to pet him. He’s got a patch of white fur on his chest and face, but otherwise he’s all black. Having a black cat never seemed like bad luck before.

  “I know,” Mom shrugs. “It said so on Craigslist.”

  “Did it say on Craigslist that the color pink almost certainly originated in the second bedroom?”

  Mom wrinkles her nose. She hates pink as much as I do. “I’m going to ask the landlord if we can paint over that wallpaper.”

  “Why would anyone want to paint over pink roses the size of my head?” I joke.

  “Just be glad they’re not the size of your head plus your hair.”

  “Now you’re just being mean.” Mom knows I’m jealous of her hair, which is always perfectly straight—unlike mine, which bursts into a ball of frizz the instant even a milliliter of moisture has the nerve to enter the atmosphere. “This climate is not doing my hair any favors.”

  “Sweetie, you’re going to have to pick one thing to complain about at a time. I can’t keep track of it all.”

  “I’m not complaining,” I
say, but I stick my lower lip out into a babyish pout so that Mom laughs. I am complaining and I know it. The weather, the noises, the creepiness. The pink.

  “Wait.” I interrupt my own train of thought. “I wanted to tell you about the carpet.”

  “What about the carpet?”

  “It’s carpeted upstairs. You didn’t hear me skipping around, did you?”

  “No.”

  “So then how did I hear those footsteps last night?”

  Mom smiles, walking across the room to put her arm around my shoulders. “Sunshine, I know you think you heard something last night—”

  “I did hear something.”

  “Okay,” she concedes. “You did hear something. But don’t you think it’s more likely that it was just a branch hitting an upstairs window, or the wind blowing through the trees, or—”

  “I know the difference between branches and footsteps. Between the wind and an actual voice.”

  “Okay,” Mom says patiently. “But like you said, it’d be almost impossible to hear footsteps coming from the second floor.”

  “Exactly,” I nod, snapping my fingers and spinning around in a not-particularly-graceful attempt at a victory dance.

  “Exactly what?”

  I stop spinning. “I’ve been saying it since we got here. This house is just plain strange.”

  “I know this is a tough transition for you.” Mom reaches out to rub my back up and down. “Last night was your first night living anywhere but our house in Austin. It’s going to take a while to adjust.”

  I shake my head. It’s not as though I’ve never slept anywhere but our old house. I’ve slept at Ashley’s more times than I can count. Mom and I have gone on vacations and shared hotel rooms. What I felt last night was not just homesickness. Homesickness makes you sad, not scared.