by Tonya Hurley
“That was just a coincidence,” he said, playing it off.
“Don’t you get it, Eric? If she’s there, alive and well in Hawthorne, we can’t be here.”
4
Winter Wanderland
Story of Christmas
If our lives are like the chapters in a book, then Christmas is the page we keep rereading. Searching for a sentence, a phrase, or even just a word we might have overlooked the first time that will help us to move on and clarify our understanding of what comes afterward. We may adjust the lighting, check our eyes, and ultimately question our powers of concentration in a futile effort to make sense of it all. Sometimes, though, it’s worth remembering that the problem may not be with you. It might just be a misprint.
Charlotte strolled down the still-familiar lanes of Hawthorne, lost in thought and brimming with anticipation, running her hands along whitewashed fence posts, flicking snow off the occasional evergreen branch, breathing in the sweet and smoky smell of burning birchwood from fireplaces up and down the street. She meandered cautiously through the maze created by the mounds of snow piled up on the sides of the road discoloring gradually—from pure virgin white to dove gray to dark black soot—like the strata of an archeological dig.
A full spectrum of color. Of reality. Of life.
The quaint homes were decorated with miniature lights, which illuminated the snow on the trees from underneath, diffusing the rainbow colors like snow cones. Tasteful wreaths sprinkled with snow hung peacefully on doors and windows, and Charlotte couldn’t help but imagine the cozy happenings and precelebratory preparations, not to mention magical expectations, building up inside each house as intricate ice crystals formed beautifully in her full, long black hair.
Suddenly a loud rumble from a tricked-out muffler preceded a warning flash of high-beam halogen headlights and a shrill horn blowing as she attempted to cross the street.
“Hey!” a guy’s voice yelled as a late-model sports coupe screeched to a halt, crunching the snow mercilessly underneath its tire treads. “Look out. You could get killed that way.”
Charlotte snapped out of her reverie and stared directly into the driver’s eyes.
His eyes.
Damen’s eyes.
“Do I know you?” he asked uncertainly, squinting.
Charlotte didn’t answer. She was stunned. Paralyzed.
“Do you know you?” Damen asked.
“Yes,” Charlotte stammered, unable to get the word out.
“Yeah, I do know you. You’re that girl from physics class who agreed to tutor me. Carla, right?”
“Charlotte.”
“Right,” Damen said as if he was trying to sink it deep into his brain. “Well, you need to be more careful. Good thing I was slowing down to park in front of my girlfriend’s house.”
“Petula,” Charlotte muttered.
“Yeah,” Damen said, surprised. “Do you live around here?”
“I do. I mean, I used to. Well, yes I do, but not, like, on this block or anything.”
She was still flustered in his presence and frustrated with herself at how little she’d changed. Grown.
A strident, commanding voice suddenly interrupted their conversation. It was coming from an upper window in a house just three doors down. Petula’s bedroom window.
“Damen! Now!”
She might as well have been calling a misbehaving puppy home.
“Listen, I gotta go,” Damen said, embarrassed. “It’s dark. You should really be getting home. You were totally invisible.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Charlotte said. “Thanks for not running me over.”
“No problem,” Damen said modestly, without the slight hint of irony in his voice.
He gave her a little smile, drove the hundred yards down the street, and pulled up against the curb in front of Petula’s house. And Scarlet’s house. Charlotte hung back for a minute and watched as he ran obediently up the driveway and stepped through the front door. Petula certainly had him wrapped, but Charlotte knew who he was inside. She’d seen it, experienced it. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment from Petula. She would never treat Eric that way. Probably the single most important thing she ever learned from Petula, she reflected, was how not to treat people.
Charlotte walked slowly along the sidewalk and stopped in front of her target destination. She strolled nervously and silently up the walk, like a cat burglar, looked up to see two silhouettes on the window shade in Petula’s room, and approached the front door.
Charlotte stood there staring at the doorbell. Now that she was there, she wasn’t exactly sure what to do. If she wanted to see Scarlet, she had to get inside. Charlotte took a deep breath and walked right into the door, face-first.
“Ouch!” she cried, making an angry fist at the sturdy wooden portal.
The first time she was ever here, she’d walked right through. Things were definitely different now. If she needed any further proof that this was all real, that she wasn’t a ghost any longer, the pain in her forehead was it.
The fight she overheard inside wasn’t helping matters.
“I can’t believe you kept me waiting like that,” Petula ranted while putting the finishing touches on the pink Christmas tree sitting on her vanity. All of the ornaments were little mirrors, with one big mirror star on top.
“Sorry. The team meeting ran long,” Damen said, a little put back by all the tiny Petulas reflecting from the tree at every angle possible, like a popular-girl disco ball.
“Since when does the team have meetings in the middle of the street?” she fumed.
“She’s jealous of me?” Charlotte crowed.
“Oh, that was just that smart girl from physics. I . . .” Damen tried to explain.
“He thinks I’m smart.” Charlotte swooned, resting her hands over her heart.
“How would you know if there are any other girls in physics?”
“Don’t start,” he said sternly. “I almost hit her crossing the street.”
“Almost? Fail! Next time, try harder!” Petula spat out.
In the end, that was Damen’s trump card, Charlotte thought. No matter how much Petula tried to threaten him or push him around, it was all coming from a place of insecurity. He was the guy. And to Petula—beautiful, smart, perfect Petula—any girl and every girl who crossed his path was the enemy and had to be denigrated, defeated, and destroyed.
As Charlotte basked in all the queen-bee animosity directed toward her, she was reminded of her fight with Eric. She felt it getting easier and easier for her to slip back into her old life, into old habits, old crushes, even after just a few hours. Maybe he was right; maybe he knew something about her that she wouldn’t even admit to herself. No wonder he got so angry at all her Hawthorne reminiscences. In the Great Beyond, his argument was purely theoretical, but back here, in the real world, she had to admit, she was losing perspective.
“SHUT UP!” A loud, guttural scream reverberated suddenly through the house and seeped out from under the doorjamb and the windowpanes. It was chilling. Urgent. The kind of yelp you usually only hear on TV when someone is about to be chopped to pieces. A last gasp. The upstairs room went silent.
God, I hope he’s not killing her, Charlotte thought, but just in case, she backed away slowly, down the driveway, looking up at the window, watching and listening for any signs of a crime. She could see their shadows on the shade, standing still. No hitting, no choking. It wasn’t Petula who had yelled. That could only mean one thing. Before Charlotte could speak her name, a red-lipped, black-bobbed whirlwind of leather, lace, crushed velvet, and combat boots burst through the front door, still in midrant.
“This lame-ass conversation you two pathetic mannequins are having is bringing on an absence seizure,” Scarlet said to them. “I’m leaving now, so you can just go ahead and have makeup sex already.”
“This from a girl who equates Christmas with cancer,” Petula shouted back at her.
“Well, it comes
whether you want it to or not, it drains everyone’s energy and finances, and it sucks the life out of its victims,” Scarlet said. “Much like you,” she said, slamming the door shut behind her.
Scarlet trudged down the driveway, totally oblivious that Charlotte was standing there. Charlotte smiled as she approached. Admiring her outfit and her attitude. Trying to quickly prioritize all the things she wanted to tell her. Wondering what she should say first. All she could think to say was “Scarlet.”
The gothed-out girl took a few more angry strides before she stopped and turned back to the frail, pale girl calling out to her in the twilight.
“What do you want?” Scarlet glowered at her, her eyes glowing as menacingly as the taillights on Petula’s car had earlier. Charlotte was paralyzed. She had no idea how to respond. What should she say? I just came back to life to check in on my best friend. So, how have you been? That was not going to fly. Not with this pre-possession Scarlet.
“Me? Oh, nothing,” Charlotte bumbled.
“Please don’t tell me you’re stalking her?”
Charlotte shook her head no.
“Then what are you doing around here, standing in front of my house, in the dark, the night before Christmas Eve?”
“I just came over to say hi.”
“To me?” Scarlet paused. “Now that’s funny.”
“I’m serious. I came over to see . . .”
Scarlet scrunched up her face the way she always did whenever she was trying to decide if she was being played. Charlotte seemed guileless enough to her, without any deep, dark agenda she could see.
“Oh, okay. It’s him you’re after, isn’t it?” Scarlet said, satisfied that she’d cracked the code, as she looked Charlotte up and down. “Here’s a little piece of advice. You can do better.”
Charlotte tried to stifle her laugh. This was the Scarlet she knew and loved, even if Scarlet didn’t know her. Not yet, anyway.
Scarlet turned to leave.
“I’m Charlotte.”
Scarlet turned back to her once again and extended her hand. A hopeful sign, Charlotte thought. She reached out and grabbed Scarlet’s hand. She suddenly pulled Charlotte toward her and leaned in, near enough for a kiss, or a curse.
“I don’t care what you call yourself,” she whispered, squeezing her bony hand firmly. “Don’t ever let me see you here again.”
Charlotte was stunned.
“Oi to the world!” Scarlet said, walking away, her middle finger stuck high up in the air as she disappeared into the darkness.
“Listen up, everybody,” Pam shouted, trying to call the gathering to order.
The meeting room was packed with Dead Ed kids, confused and grumbling. Nobody was feeling like themselves.
“Where’s Charlotte?” Mike called out, like an angry old man.
“I looked everywhere,” Eric said. “She’s not around.”
“Not around here, anyway,” Pam interjected.
“Stop it, Pam,” Eric shot back. “Don’t put nonsense in their heads.”
“What is he talking about, Pam?” Prue pressed. “Where do you think she is?”
“We’re not going to find her,” Pam began. “Not here.”
“Stop with the riddles,” Prue hissed.
“I can make a few calls,” Kim suggested.
“Shut it, Kim,” Prue said, obviously not in the mood.
“Where is she, Pam?”
“At Hawthorne.”
All the chitchat stopped, and the room fell totally, eerily silent.
“Why would she do such a crazy thing?” CoCo asked. “I thought she was way past that.”
“The last thing she said to me was she wished she’d never died. I think she got her wish.”
“Christmastime traveling?” Mike wondered. “I know we can, but . . .”
“But isn’t the whole point of being here not wanting to be there?” Gary continued, completing Mike’s thought.
“I’m with the guys on this,” Prue said. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” Pam responded. “You know her as well as I do. If things were really going wrong for her, that is the one place she would try to get back to.”
“Look, this is not our problem,” Prue said, still very skeptical of the entire premise.
“I think it is,” Pam observed. “Look around.”
The Christmas lights continued their dimming downward spiral, but it wasn’t just that. Everyone seemed sluggish, tired, haggard, short-tempered—definitely unusual for beings in their advanced spiritual state—and noticeably falling into their old habits. Habits they died for. Habits they spent all of Dead Ed breaking.
“We’re burning out,” Prue concluded.
“Charlotte was the last seat in Dead Ed, remember? We couldn’t have crossed over without her. If she never died, if she’s back there, then we can’t be here.”
“She changed history? That’s epic,” Deadhead Jerry wondered aloud, his stoner navel-gazing self reemerging.
“Maybe not all of history, but our history,” Pam confirmed reluctantly. “And hers.”
“No way!” Rotting Rita cried, now swatting stray bugs and worms as they crawled out of the pores on her face. “I’m not going back to Dead Ed, starting all over again.”
“Me either,” Green Gary agreed.
“We have to get her back,” Prue urged. “Fast.”
“Don’t look at me,” Eric said, rebuffing their anxious stares. “I’m the last person she wants to see right now.”
Pam and Prue felt likewise.
“I can’t believe you’re going to let us all just disappear like this,” Toxic Shock Sally scolded Pam, Prue, and Eric. “Isn’t anyone here willing to take a chance and get her?”
From the corner of the room, a small voice bravely volunteered.
“I will,” Virginia said, remembering that Charlotte took the same chance on her once.
5
Ghost of Christmas
Christmas Past
Holidays are so powerful for us because more than anything they recall other holidays of the past. Christmas makes you feel like a child again, but not always in a good way. No matter what is happening in your life at that moment, that week, that year, how much progress or growth has been made or ground lost in your journey, you can easily find yourself thrust into your own personal time machine, where it can be difficult for your heart, mind, or spirit to tell exactly what time it actually is.
“Who says you can’t go home again.” Charlotte sighed deeply. Her house wasn’t far but was a world away from the other side of town. The side where Petula, Scarlet, Damen, The Wendys, and most of the other kids at Hawthorne lived. The simple wood-sided Cape Cod house was pleasant enough, if in need of a renovation. It was designated a group home, which she never understood, since she was the only kid living there, along with Gladys, her foster mom.
The neighborhood was run-down and had been for years. It sat inconspicuously behind a strip mall, the smell of the Dumpsters from the few shops that remained open wafting through the neighborhood and making it a must to avoid. Even the few Christmas decorations that hung sparsely from the neighbors’ roofs and doors brought little cheer to the grim environment. Most were just kept up all year long anyway, forgotten and faded. A string of Christmas lights ran along the gutters of her house too, but they remained unlit, having burned out long before she ever arrived there all those years ago.
Charlotte approached the door, admired the colorless wreath, and stopped to read a note taped to the door before entering.
“You are late. Kitchen is closed.”
“No dinner,” Charlotte murmured. Of all the great things about being alive, one downside definitely was hunger. She hadn’t been hungry in ages, but all that walking and returning to life had left her famished. There was always cereal, she hoped.
Charlotte pulled at the doorknob only to find it locked. No surprise. Gladys never cared enough to hide a just-in-case key, so Charlotte eyed the tre
e next to the side of the house and walked toward it, as she had many times before.
“How are you, old friend?”
She leaned her tired head against it, patted the trunk, and hoisted herself up onto it by the leafless, icy branches jutting from it. It looked as if it were encased in glass, making it nearly impossible to climb. She slipped and slid her way up, grabbing on for dear life, and finally stepped onto the first-floor roof. She cautiously crawled across the cedar shingles, loosening a few as she scampered to her window.
Charlotte looked behind, noted the steep pitch of the gabled roof, and thought about all the times she’d made this risky climb and how she could have fallen and broken her neck any one of them. By comparison, death by gummy bear seemed both more embarrassing and cruel. But then, she was a choker in life, not a risk taker. That and, well, she wasn’t dead anymore, was she. She had triumphed. The fructose bear had not won after all. She considered standing up, arms raised in victory for the full Rocky, but the shingles wouldn’t permit it. She lifted her unlatched bedroom window and stepped inside.
She reached instinctively for the wall switch and flicked it, the harsh burst of light from the dusty ceiling bulb instantly flooding the sparely furnished room.
“Holy crap,” Charlotte said out loud, scanning her surroundings.
There they were, all over the walls, the floor, her desk, and her bed, plastered everywhere, nearly floor to ceiling—pictures of her own personal idols: Petula, The Wendys, Damen.
A lot of people get nostalgic for their past, Charlotte thought, but she had the novel experience of feeling nostalgic for her present.
“I was—I mean, I am obsessed.”
Coming back was so disorienting, surreal, and yet so natural. The truth was everything was the same; nothing had changed except her. She was totally different. Filled with insight and wisdom. At least this was what she kept telling herself. Being thrust back into her former life was bringing back all her old insecurities, old feelings of rejection and of longing, most of all. She could feel them growing inside of her, crowding out her rationality. She was aware of it yet helpless somehow, finding those feelings harder and harder to shake off, like a determined spider about to bite.
