by Leah Thomas
“Why are you crying?” Seiji demanded.
“You know why!” I could almost smell the Sharpie wafting off him.
His expression didn’t change. “But it’s a dumb reason to cry.”
“Shut up.” I pressed my back against the bathroom door.
“Are you a whore?”
“Obviously I’m not!”
“So why cry about it, if it isn’t true?”
I slipped backward into the restroom. Seiji didn’t take his eyes off me as the door closed. By the time I’d locked myself in a stall like a middle school cliché, my breath was coming in high-pitched wheezes.
I knew this was a panic attack, and I knew I needed to focus on my breathing, and I knew I wasn’t a whore, but I couldn’t understand why some asshole like Seiji Grayson could decide that a word shouldn’t hurt simply because it was untrue.
FORENSIC FILES
The day felt eternal. When I got home, Mom was on the couch watching Forensic Files. If I seemed miserable and puffy-eyed, so did she.
“You want macaroni tonight?” She tapped her cigarette against the rim of a mother-of-pearl ashtray. On the screen, a private detective described the way he’d used gas station security footage to track a “perp” all the way from Idaho to a cabin in Colorado. “With ketchup and hot dogs?”
“Sure.” She didn’t ask me how I was, and I didn’t ask her. This was about as close as we got.
“I picked up some Bugles.” Her smile was always a little uncertain. “If you want a snack later.”
“Thanks,” I said, eyes on the screen. I wondered if there was an episode about Sarah in the series. I wondered whether Mom knew that a girl had died in my bedroom, or if we were in a part of town where that might be a fair assumption no matter which bedroom I slept in.
———
After dinner, I crawled into the space under my bed, relishing the darkness, being unseen and unheard. I placed my folder of secrets under my head, even though my frizzy hair clung to the gloss. I must have dozed off. When I came to, Sarah lay beside me in the darkness.
“Welcome to my neck of the woods,” she whispered. “What’s up, chicken-butt?”
I told her about my day, about Seiji and the others.
“Boys are such assholes.”
I knew I should agree with her. I had no reason not to, but something in me ached at the finality of her words. “Not all of them are assholes . . .”
“Believe me, I’d love to be proven wrong,” Sarah said, with the saddest laugh.
For a moment or many, the air under my bed fell still. We listened to the hazy murmur of the television from the living room. I hoped Mom had put out her cigarette before conking out. I hoped she’d set down her shot glass, too.
“Sarah. You asleep?”
“Sleep’s not really my thing.”
I took a deep breath. “Can I ask you another question?”
“I’m not the one who has school tomorrow. And I like talking to something other than dust bunnies for a change.”
The idea that anyone would feel anything other than annoyed by my presence made me teary. “Have you ever talked to anyone else? I mean, before me?”
“I’ve been dead awhile. A lot of families have passed through here. This isn’t the kind of house where anyone stays for long, you know? It’s a real shithole.”
This so-called shithole was better than the trailer we’d left behind. The linoleum here was peeling, sure, but the ceiling wasn’t leaking and the air smelled less sour. And I’d never had my own bedroom before. I’d never had a door I could lock, or walls I could put between myself and violence.
“But you know what? In all that time, I never thought to talk to anyone. I mean, why would they listen? No one ever has before. Time sort of passed like I wasn’t part of it. I thought I’d ‘move on’ or whatever, like ghosts do in movies. But I never did.”
“Do you . . . do you want to?”
“No. I’m too stubborn, I guess. And too angry.” She paused. “Every time someone moved out and took their bed away—that was the worst. I made myself as small as a spider and hid in the closet. I can’t stand the sunlight.”
“I thought vampires were the ones who hated sunlight.”
“I used to think that, too. But I don’t think I’d last a minute in sunlight.”
“Why not? Does it burn?”
“Not really. But in the sunlight, I can’t ignore the holes in me, and I’m pretty sure they’d grow big enough to swallow me up.”
I felt ghostly fingers on my cheek. My eyes shot open. Sarah was warm like a summer breeze, soft like cotton.
“So why did you start talking to me, Sarah?” I did not ask, Am I special? I think she sensed how much I longed for answers, to matter. What child doesn’t want to be a wizard? Who doesn’t want to escape a life of insults and bruises for one of magic and wonder?
Her fingers left me. “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because you’re on the same trajectory I was. Tragic girl, shitty family, bad vibes. We’re the same.”
This was very far from being special, and we both knew it.
“You mean someone’s gonna murder me, too?” I thought of Seiji’s shoulders, Dad’s dull-eyed boozy stare. “That’s what you think?”
“Not while I’m around.” I felt a great rustling beside me, as if Sarah had become a swarm of winding strings. “What happened to me—I don’t want it to happen to anyone else. I think that’s why I can’t just . . . go.”
“If you’re waiting for the world to be safe, you’ll be waiting forever,” I whispered. Mom had told me that my eye hadn’t always been lazy, but a punch or seven got it there. “You’re stuck under this bed, and I’m . . . I’m stuck, too.”
“I’d resent the comparison if I didn’t know how much the world sucks,” Sarah said. “Fine, so we’re stuck. Let’s start local. This Sam-gee guy. I’ve got some ideas on how we can deal.”
“Seiji,” I corrected.
“Who cares? He called you a whore. He’s Joe Schmo to me.”
Somehow, I actually laughed. But Sarah’s eyes were darker than ever, and her mouth was a grim line. “Sarah. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t ever want to hurt anyone.”
“Fine. We won’t, not physically.” Sarah looked right into me. “Trust me, okay?”
“I do.” I did then, and I still would years later.
SPACEMAKER
On Tuesday, minutes before the first bell, I hurried across the courtyard, past meandering classmates and teachers, up the stairs, and into the semi-vacant school hallways.
I’d have to be quick about it.
“Joe Schmo can’t accuse you of swapping desks with him unless he admits he knew what was written on yours,” Sarah told me. “He’ll be stuck looking at the word for a day at least. His friends will give him endless shit for it, if nothing else.”
Each time Sarah swore, a little trill hummed in my rib cage. Dad always said girls were ugly when they swore, but Sarah was never ugly. That helped me think maybe I wasn’t, either, and maybe girls who acted like boys were beautiful, or maybe ugly existed even less than pretty did. Her “shits” and “damns” lit a wick in me, and those flames fueled me as I snuck into the classroom.
I made a beeline for my desk and began yanking my stuff from the front slot. It would take at least a minute to clear out mine and then Seiji’s, and even empty desks weren’t the easiest things to move—
“Jeez, Daniela, you scared me!”
I dropped my pencil box, scattering erasers and gel pens across the floor. Sarah and I hadn’t considered Ms. Peele might already be in the windowless classroom, sitting at her desk in the dark.
“Sorry—did I scare you back?” She turned on the overhead projector, illuminating a square of the wall and ceiling, adding lines to her bespectacled face. “You know, sometimes I close my eyes for a bit before the chaos begins.” She frowned. “Daniela? Everything okay?”
I nodded and then shook my head. Ms. Peele stepped closer. �
��I know it can be hard starting at a new school.”
“I’ve been here since September.”
“Even so. This is a small town, and things stay new for ages. If you need a friend to talk to . . .”
“I have friends,” I snapped.
“Oh, of course you do. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“No.” I looked away. “I mean. I have one friend. Just one.”
“Oh? I’m glad to hear that, Daniela.” She smiled a real smile, and I thought we were done, but then her gaze fell to my desk.
“What’s this?”
I sat down, crushed and tired.
“Daniela. Do you know who wrote this?”
I shook my head. Snitching wouldn’t help.
Ms. Peele pulled a black dry-erase marker from the front pocket of her denim dress and proffered it to me. “The easiest way to remove permanent marker from plastic is to trace over it with an impermanent one. Go on.”
Because she was watching, I did as I was asked. I outlined every hateful letter. Ms. Peele pulled a whiteboard eraser from the same massive pocket and handed it to me.
“You do the rest.”
Whore vanished in a few swipes, leaving an unmarred patch of desk behind.
“There’s no word in the world that can’t be overwritten.” Ms. Peele returned to her desk. “You can come here early whenever you feel like it, Daniela.”
“Dani.”
“Sorry?”
She and I had almost cleaned the mess up when the bell sounded. The boys, Seiji among them, stumbled into the classroom, laughing and jostling one another.
Halfway through first hour, a spit wad struck the back of my neck.
I spun around. Seiji held his Game Boy under the desk, pretending to be fixated on Mario Bros. But I saw the red flush in his cheeks and the cafeteria straw tucked in one of his big hands.
One of the others whispered, “What you lookin’ at, whore?”
Ms. Peele had her back to us, busy with the board and equivalent fractions. No matter her kindness, she couldn’t overwrite these cruelties. She wasn’t the one with saliva dribbling down her neck.
And clean as my desk was, their hands were still dirty.
POP ROCKS
Sarah paced without ever touching the floor, unshod feet dangling inches above the ragged carpet so that only her toes brushed the fibers. “Look, we’ll just have to think of something else.”
“It won’t change anything. It’ll only make it worse.”
“Not if you put a real stop to him,” she said, baring her teeth. “There are a thousand ways you could take revenge on those dumbass boys!”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I reiterated.
“You keep saying that! But they’ve hurt you, haven’t they?”
I shrugged. “What else is new.”
Just like that, a windstorm began.
“Dani—no. No. Don’t sit there and take it!” Like a sponge filling with water, Sarah expanded. Her shoulders scraped the ceiling, and her braids split apart and rose as if she were floating in the sea. The blinds rattled and my bangs blew back. “How can you sit there and take it?”
“Sarah. You’re freaking out.”
“I—I know.” The wind died. “I know, all right?”
“Are you okay?”
“God, I wish I hadn’t taken it.” Sarah’s ghost shrank to smaller than a cat. She sank to the floor with her arms around her knees. I climbed down off the bed and sat beside her. After a moment, she raised her head and her shoulders until she was girl size again.
“What I wouldn’t give for some Pop Rocks,” she murmured.
“They still make those,” I told her, wiping my eyes.
“No way. Can you bring me some?”
“Yeah. But . . . can you eat them?”
Sarah snorted. “Nah. Dead girls can’t eat a thing. But I can watch you eat them. Do you know the meaning of the word ‘vicarious’?”
“No.”
Her eyes looked faraway and her outline turned a bit fuzzy. “When you’re living vicariously, it means you’re living life through someone else. Like, those dads who used to play football but got injured or weren’t good enough for college teams, who go crazy if their kids aren’t good at sports?”
“I get the idea.”
“Well, it’s like that.”
“You want me to play football,” I joked, and she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, ha. I’m saying, because . . . because I’m dead and stuck in darkness and everything, I have to get my kicks through the things you do. The boys who hurt me are probably as long gone as I am, god willing. But I’m still so dang angry, and I have to—to put it somewhere. Helping you school Schmo will have to do. Vicariously.”
I couldn’t help it—a laugh built inside me and burst from my throat. I clapped my hand over my mouth to capture the sound.
Her expression went jagged. “What’s so funny?”
“It’s just . . . I think I’m living through you, too.”
“God, Dani. You must be desperate trying to live through a dead teenager.” When Sarah tried to hug me, her weightless arms encompassed all of me, wrapping me in velvet.
My bedroom door burst open. Light pierced the room like a blade, and Sarah hissed and vanished like dissipating steam.
My heart was already racing, my throat already closing up—
Then I recognized Mom’s silhouette, not Dad’s, and began breathing again.
“What’s with all the racket?” Mom demanded, the slur of Jack Daniel’s on her tongue. “Get to bed. Big day tomorrow.”
“Big day?”
Mom leaned against the doorframe. “We’re moving.”
“Moving?”
“Yes. Moving.”
“Why?”
“Why? The new place is cheaper, and hopefully the landlord’s less of a creep.” Her voice softened. “Don’t worry. It’s not about your father. He’s still got no idea where we are, okay?”
“Okay.”
“We’ll start packing after you get home from school tomorrow.”
I could do little more than nod as she kissed me on the head and left me alone with the door open. I closed it and put my back to it.
“. . . Sarah?”
“Told you,” whispered the smallest voice, from deep within the closet. “No one but me stays in this shithole for long.”
GAME BOY COLOR
Blood rushed in my ears. If this random Wednesday was to be my last day at Rochdale Middle, my last day living with Sarah, I would live for her as best I could.
Once again, I left the bus and hurried across the courtyard. Before I reached the steps, my eyes slipped to a gaggle gathered beside the play tunnel—Aaron Walker, Billy Williams, and yes, there—Seiji Grayson.
Our eyes met. I waved him closer.
Seiji’s expression was as unreadable as ever. He muttered something to his friends, shoved his Game Boy into his backpack, and lumbered toward me.
“What do you want?” Though Seiji loomed, my father had loomed taller. And I knew something Seiji didn’t:
Soon I’d be a ghost, too. After today, I’d never have to face Seiji Grayson again.
No matter what I did to him, he couldn’t take revenge.
“You’re not going to bully me anymore, Seiji.”
He blinked. “Is that all you wanted to say?”
I steeled myself. “I know you’re only shitty to me because you hate yourself.”
He stiffened. “That’s what you think?”
“That’s what I know.”
At last he showed some expression, his scowl as jagged as the cracks in the sidewalk. “Am I supposed to be afraid of you?”
Of course not. I was supposed to be afraid of him. I wondered if I would always be a little wary around big shoulders and large hands and unreadable expressions. Boys like Seiji were not what I thought boys should be, and not what I longed to be. I loathed him for wasting what I’d never been allowed to have.
&
nbsp; I turned and left him there.
———
Outside Ms. Peele’s classroom, I looked left and right to ensure the coast was clear. I took a deep, steadying breath, pulled my sixth-grade science textbook from my backpack, and held it horizontal, level with my lazy eye.
I thought about Sarah’s outburst the night before, about the infinite power of appearing helpless but blossoming into anything but.
I tilted my face to the side and thrust the hardcover once, twice, three times against my eye socket, until my cheekbone throbbed and my face began puffing up, tender and broken. The swollen skin tore just above my eyelid. I could already feel bruises darkening my cheek, spreading like puddles in a storm.
Perhaps this would have been harder for someone who hadn’t been struck a dozen times by fatherly fists. But it was as familiar as sleep to me, as familiar as pizza.
After a minute, I took another breath and burst through the classroom door, clutching my eye and shrieking.
Ms. Peele stood quickly in the lamplight, knocking over a heap of paper.
“Daniela! What’s wrong? What’s happened? Are you bleeding?”
“The courtyard,” I gasped. “Seiji hit me. He hit me so hard.”
“Seiji did? Seiji Grayson?” She tilted my face toward the light. “Oh my god! Where is he now?”
“Outside,” I whimpered, as she led me to my desk. “By the steps.”
“Wait here a moment, sweetie,” she told me, and she called the office from the phone beside the door. I settled into my seat, head throbbing. Minutes later, she reappeared with a cold CapriSun in her hand. “Press this to your eye. The office is going to call your parents.”
My heart stopped. “My parents?”
“Sorry, it’s just your mother, isn’t it? She’s on her way.”
I exhaled, staring at my feet. “What will happen to Seiji?”
“Principal Hardisty has gone to fetch him. He’ll be suspended, most likely, depending on his side of the story.”
