The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  I nod just as the bell rings, signaling the end of third period. I push my chair out from under the table, slide my phone in my pants pocket, and pick my backpack up from the floor. “I guess we better get to class.”

  Nolan nods. “I have chem lab.”

  “English lit,” I answer. Our respective classrooms are on opposite ends of the school, so we each set off in separate directions. The farther I get from him, the colder I feel, until goose bumps are popping up on my arms and legs, all the way down to my feet. I stop at my locker and get out my navy blue peacoat and slip it on. I found it at a vintage shop back in Austin; the original buttons have long since disappeared, and the six buttons that replaced them are totally mismatched, a rainbow of different colors.

  How can being close to Nolan feel both so good and so bad? When I’m near him I’m warm. Is that how Mom felt when she held me for the first time? I shake my head—no, because every time Nolan actually touches me, it feels so wrong that I’m tempted to run as far from him as my not-particularly-athletic legs will carry me.

  Okay, so maybe I’m not going to get swept up into a life-altering romance like Elizabeth Bennett. It’s not like I have time to fall in love anyway, not with everything else that’s going on. What matters is that Nolan is my friend, the first new friend I’ve made since elementary school. And unlike Ashley, he believes in ghosts and cares about what’s going on in my house. He’d watch that video a dozen more times if I asked him to, and I wouldn’t be able to get Ashley to watch it once. Nolan doesn’t think I’m nuttier than a fruitcake for seeing what I’ve seen. And because he can see it too, I have proof that I’m not crazy.

  To get to English class, I have to pass the visual arts room. When I see Ms. Wilde hovering in the doorway, I brace myself, expecting to be sent to the principal’s office for cutting. But instead, as I walk past, the edges of my art teacher’s mouth curl up into a subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile.

  Just before I drop into a chair in my English classroom I pick up my phone and send Nolan a text.

  What if there’s a day when I can’t be there with my mom when she’s at home?

  I don’t even have to wait thirty seconds before he sends his reply:

  Then I’ll be there.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Out of Ridgemont and into the Fire?

  On Saturday afternoon Nolan sends me a text—no words, just a picture of a wrinkled old article he found among his grandfather’s papers. I’m not able to make out much more than the headline: “Local Professor Promises Proof: Ghosts Are Real.”

  Immediately I write back: Let’s go find him.

  After school a few days later I’m sitting beside Nolan in his enormous beat-up navy blue Chrysler—“Belonged to my grandfather,” he says proudly, pushing up the sleeves of his leather jacket.

  “Your grandmother just let you have it?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah, Gramps gave it to me when he was still alive. My parents took away his license right around the time I got mine.” From the sound of Nolan’s voice, I guess that his grandfather didn’t exactly give up his license willingly. I try to imagine the confrontation: can’t let a crazy old man who believes in ghosts behind the wheel. I wonder at what age Nolan’s grandfather’s belief in the paranormal stopped being something his friends and family called just an odd sort of character quirk and started being dismissed as the ramblings of a nutty old man.

  “What was your grandfather’s name?” I ask gently.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I feel like he brought us together—” Oh my goodness . . . brought us together? What am I saying? We’re not together. Not together, together anyway. “I just mean . . . I feel like I have him to thank for the fact that you believed me that day in the library. So it feels like I should know his name, that’s all.”

  Nolan nods thoughtfully. “His name was Nolan, actually. I was named after him.”

  “Well, thank you, Nolan,” I say softly, the words heavy with meaning.

  I can’t imagine an outing more different from the ones Ashley must take in Cory Cooper’s convertible. Ashley texted me a selfie she took this morning—the two of them in his car, both wearing sunglasses to shield their eyes even though it’s November, on their way to a music festival in downtown Austin. I wrote back: Looks like fun! Now I try to imagine how she’d react if I sent her a picture of Nolan and me in his car this morning, heading not to a festival but to a university I’ve never heard of a couple of towns away where the professor from the article runs the paranormal studies department. She definitely wouldn’t write back that it looked like fun.

  After a mile or two of silence Nolan says, “You know, if he were here, he’d thank you.”

  “Me?” I squeal. “What for? For dragging his beloved grandson into my mess?”

  Nolan cocks his head to the side, considering. “Pretty much,” he says finally, and we both burst out laughing.

  “So did he ever deliver on his promise?”

  “Did who ever deliver on what promise?”

  “This professor,” I dig the article Nolan found out of the glove compartment. “Professor Abner Jones promises proof of the paranormal,” I read. “Think he ever produced said proof?”

  Nolan grins. “You feel like you need more evidence?”

  “Not for me,” I answer quickly. “I mean for everyone else.”

  “I think we probably would have heard about it if he did. I mean, it’d have been a national news story, not just an article in a local paper that I found stuffed in my grandpa’s desk, right?”

  I nod. “Right.” I finger the article. It was published in 1987, before Nolan or I were born, but it mentions the location of the professor’s office on campus: Levis Hall. Nolan tried to find his e-mail address on the university website, but he didn’t have any luck. Still, he found a description of one of his classes along with a listing of his office hours. Wednesdays, from two to five.

  “Did your grandfather ever meet him, do you think?”

  Nolan shrugs. “I don’t know. Guess I’ll have to add that to our list of questions.”

  I nod. It’s not all that long of a list. It’s really just one question: Can you help us? I close my eyes and imagine a bespectacled, gray-haired intellectual type saying, Of course I can! Easy as pie.

  Okay, maybe he won’t exactly say that, but we’re about to gain some clarity on everything that’s happening, I’m sure of it. That’s what experts are for, right?

  It’s my first time leaving Ridgemont since we moved here, and I actually hold my breath as we cross the county line. I wait for the creepy cold feeling that has saturated my life since moving here—well, not cold right now, since Nolan is close by, but still creepy—to subside.

  It doesn’t. I stare out the window.

  “You worried about your mom?” Nolan asks.

  I shake my head. “It’s not that, actually. I mean, not right now.” Mom is safely at work; she was gone before I woke up this morning and even left me a note saying that she wouldn’t be home in time to feed Oscar and Lex their dinner, so I was in charge. Nolan and I have plenty of time.

  “What is it then?”

  “I’m just so sick of this creepy feeling. You’ve lived here all your life—do you ever get used to it?”

  “Used to what?”

  “That Ridgemont feeling. Ever since we moved here, nothing feels . . . right. Everything I touch is cold, my hands are always clammy. And the air always feels thin and wet, so that taking a deep breath actually aches.”

  “Ridgemont doesn’t feel like that for me,” Nolan shrugs. “I mean, the ghost stuff is creepy and all, but the rest of my life is pretty normal.”

  “Oh,” I answer, surprised. “Even inside my house? You didn’t feel like the minute you stepped inside, the temperature dropped about twenty degrees?”

  He shakes his head. Maybe those are extra-bonus feelings the ghost is saving just for me.

  Or maybe I can feel something that other
people can’t.

  I shake my head. That’s just crazy talk.

  We wander around the campus for what feels like hours, but we can’t find Levis Hall. The college is ringed with towering Douglas firs, just like the streets back in Ridgemont. But unlike my neighborhood, the campus is actually landscaped so there are some wide-open spaces free of trees, where the meager sun (actually, it’s not so meager now that we’re out of Ridgemont) can get through the clouds. For the first time since we moved to Washington I actually have a reason to dig around in my purse and pull out my electric blue sunglasses. Students are sitting out on the lawns in front of their dorms like they think they might be able to get a tan despite the fact that it’s November and about forty degrees outside. A group of boys are tossing around a Frisbee while some girls cheer them on from the sidelines, which looks like a lot less fun than actually playing, if you ask me.

  Nolan stops and asks one of the girls for directions to Levis Hall. I’m not standing close enough to hear their exchange, but I can tell from the look on the girl’s face that she wonders why we’d bother heading over to that part of the campus. Or maybe, I realize as Nolan pushes his dirty-blond hair off his forehead, it’s just that she thinks Nolan is cute. Jealousy makes butterflies flutter in my stomach. Unlike me, she’s dressed in normal clothes—nonvintage jeans and a university T-shirt, black sunglasses instead of blue. Her hair is long and straight, hanging flatly past her shoulders, nothing like my frizzball. I wriggle my toes inside my Chuck Taylors and pull the sleeves of my oversized sweater over my wrists, forcing myself to look away, pretending to be fascinated by the Frisbee competition, pretending I don’t notice the second Nolan turns from her and back toward me.

  “It’s all the way on the other side of the campus,” he says. We get back into his car and leave the girls and the Frisbee game behind. When we finally pull into Levis Hall’s cracked parking lot, Nolan’s is the only car there. When I open my door I notice that it looks almost like the asphalt beneath my feet is tread upon so rarely that it’s covered not only in fallen leaves but also in a layer of dust.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  Nolan nods, pointing to a sign outside the enormous redbrick building across the parking lot. “Levis Hall,” he reads. “That’s where his office is.”

  I get out of the car and shut my door behind me, eyeing the building in front of us. I can’t see a single light coming from any of its windows. “It’s like a ghost town over here,” I say.

  “Pun intended?” Nolan asks.

  “Blah, pun most definitely not intended!”

  Apparently Levis Hall’s elevator is out of order, so we climb the stairs. The floor beneath our feet is marble, so our footsteps echo, and the banister is smooth dark wood, cool beneath my fingers. We don’t see a single other person, and the fluorescent lights that illuminate the hallway are dim, making everything look abandoned and sad.

  “I guess he’s not the most popular professor,” I whisper. When we reach the fourth floor we’re no longer walking on marble but on linoleum, dark green and dust covered enough to make me sneeze.

  “I don’t think this professor has had anything resembling a line of students waiting for his office hours in a long, long time,” Nolan says in agreement.

  “If ever,” I add.

  By the time we knock on the professor’s office door—room 4B-04—I’m shivering. Even standing next to Nolan isn’t enough to warm me in this cold.

  “It must be below freezing in here,” I complain, my teeth chattering. Then I remember that Nolan doesn’t feel it.

  From the other side of the door, someone shouts: “Come in!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Expert Help?

  This might just be the messiest room I’ve ever seen. Nolan has to push extra hard to open the door because there’s a stack of papers behind it. And stacks of papers scattered across the floor. And books piled so high they’re almost as tall as Nolan, threatening to topple over. I wonder how long the professor has worked here.

  “Professor Jones,” Nolan says, holding out his hand to a tiny man seated behind the desk. “I’m Nolan Foster.” He pauses, hoping to see a flicker of recognition at the name he shares with his grandfather, but there’s nothing.

  Professor Jones looks like he’s about a hundred years old, with glasses as thick as coke bottles on his face, the tiniest wisp of white hair on the top of his mostly bald head, and his skin stained with age spots. No wonder Nolan wasn’t able to find his name in the university’s e-mail system—I’m not sure the man has ever actually heard of e-mail. He clearly came of age in a time before the Internet existed. There isn’t even a computer on his desk.

  Instead, his desk is piled high with papers and books, the stacks so tall I have to stand on my tiptoes to see the whole of the professor’s face behind them. He’s definitely past the age when most people would have retired. He smacks his lips because he’s missing a few teeth.

  “Have a seat,” he says. His voice is dry as paper. It’s probably the driest thing in this whole rain-drenched state.

  Nolan and I tiptoe between piles of paper to sit on the chairs opposite his desk. Well, not on the chairs themselves, exactly; instead, we perch on the books piled on top of them. I feel paper crinkling beneath my weight, and I sit up straight, trying to make myself lighter so I don’t ruin the books beneath me. Not that it looks like they’re all that well taken care of, but I still don’t want to be rude. I finger what remains of the long, narrow wound on my left hand, curved along the fleshy part between my thumb and forefinger.

  “So you’re having a ghost problem?” the professor croaks.

  “How did you know that?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest, trying to keep warm.

  “Why else would you be here?” he answers, a smile playing on the edges of his thin lips. “Whose ghost is it?” The skin on his neck jiggles when he talks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s a little girl, but we don’t know who it is.”

  Nolan adds, “I’ve done research into the deaths that occurred in and around Sunshine’s house but couldn’t find anyone who matched up with the ghost.”

  “I think she must be about ten. Because she wants to play with me all the time.”

  “She wants to play with you?” Professor Jones echoes. A little bit of sparkle breaks through the milkiness of his gray eyes.

  I nod. “Checkers, Monopoly, that kind of thing.”

  “And have you played with her?”

  He asks the question so expectantly that I hesitate before answering. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to engage with her the way I did. Maybe when I made that very first move on the checkerboard I made an enormous mistake, like by sliding the piece across the board, I was inviting her to stay.

  “I thought it might make her happy.”

  The professor’s smile looks like it takes enormous effort: it happens slowly, first his lips widen, then his eyes crinkle, and a few of his yellowed teeth show. He wheezes heavily, as winded as if he’d been lifting weights, not just his own face.

  “I thought it would be harmless—” I add softly.

  The professor shakes his head. “Few spirits are truly harmless,” he says firmly. “Not here on Earth.”

  Great, that makes me feel so much better. Guess this guy never heard of breaking things gently. My mother would say he has bad bedside manner, like some of the doctors she’s worked with over the years.

  “Lately, my mom, she’s just been acting strange, and the other day—” I reach into my bag for my phone, ready to show him the way my mother cut herself, but the professor starts talking before I can explain.

  “Even the friendliest of spirits is dangerous. Because it simply should not be here. It is a fish out of water. A hawk with broken wings. A horse with a broken leg. Do you know what they do to horses with broken legs, child?”

  I glance at Nolan. He raises his eyebrows but nods, prompting me to tell my story.


  “I think the ghost is doing something to my mother. Or maybe not the little girl ghost. Maybe it’s some other ghost we haven’t identified yet. But she tried to hurt herself—my mom, I mean. Not the ghost—”

  The professor claps his hands and I jump. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the strength to press his hands together hard enough to make such a loud noise.

  “Spirits don’t belong here,” he says hoarsely. I lean forward to hear him better. “Fish out of water. Hawks with broken wings. Horses with broken legs.”

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t really understand what you’re getting at—”

  “They’re meant to move on,” he says sharply. “They don’t belong here.”

  I glance helplessly at Nolan.

  “My grandfather was a fan of yours,” Nolan tries, like maybe he thinks the professor will respond to flattery. “His name was Nolan Foster, just like me. I thought he might have sought you out over the years—”

  “Never heard of him,” Professor Jones interrupts, waving his hand dismissively.

  “He wasn’t an expert or anything,” Nolan explains. “Just a believer.”

  “Bet they called him crazy,” the professor wheezes, coughing in between each word. Nolan nods, and Professor Jones adds, “That’s what they called me.”

  Is that why the university stuck him off in the middle of nowhere in this nearly abandoned building? Maybe he thinks we’re here to make fun of him—and, maybe that’s why he’s speaking in riddles.

  “Can you help us?” I ask finally.

  “You can help yourself,” he answers.

  “How?”

  The professor’s eyelids flutter heavily, like he’s falling asleep. “How?” I repeat, my voice high pitched with desperation. Now his eyes close completely and his chin falls against his chest.

  “We should go, Sunshine,” Nolan says. “I think I may have led us to a dead end.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t have time for dead ends.”

  “I know.” Nolan nods. “I’m sorry.” Slowly I stand. We’re almost out the door when I hear the professor mumble something behind us.