Violet Ghosts

by Leah Thomas

  “Really? You wanna go to middle school?”

  “You’re frowning.” Sarah folded her arms. “What is it? You worried you’ll be seen talking to yourself?”

  That hadn’t even occurred to me. The truth was, selfishly, that I wanted Sarah to remain my secret.

  “Just trust me, Dani.”

  And I did trust her, like I’d never trusted anyone else.

  That realization should have frightened me more.

  TAMAGOTCHI

  “Going somewhere?” Mom asked, poking her head out from heaps of boxes. “You need to start unpacking. We won’t be living like hoarders here.”

  “I’m going for a walk. I wanna check out the neighborhood.”

  “Not much neighborhood to it,” she observed. “But fine. Be back before dark.”

  The sun was already sinking, but I didn’t say so. I pulled up my hood and walked out into the empty parking lot. It was a chilly winter evening, and the forest of pines behind the motel didn’t make the place feel more welcoming. I doubted summer sunshine or a marching band could make this place feel more welcoming.

  I reached the end of the lot, looked both ways down the vacant road, and pulled a pair of battered headphones from my pocket, shoving them over my ears. “This is crazy.”

  “YOU SAY THAT, BUT WHAT ISN’T CRAZY?” Sarah asked.

  I yelped and yanked off the headphones. It took me a moment to find the tiny volume switch on the Game Boy, and by the time I managed to put the headphones back on, I realized my terrible mistake:

  I’d been holding the Game Boy directly in the red light of the sunset.

  “Oh my god, Sarah. Sarah! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Sarah’s voice was tinny, but no longer ear-shattering. The Game Boy weighed heavier in my pocket now that she’d slipped inside it. “Better than fine. That was the first sunset I’ve seen in . . . ​well, you know. Never thought that would happen.”

  “Could you see it?” There was no lens and no camera on the Game Boy. Even as Sarah spoke, the screen remained blank, although the machine felt as warm as a sleeping cat. “I mean, how?”

  “I’m not stuck inside your deathly fanny pack, for one. But even when I was under the bed, I could always see every part of the bedroom. I never really have a body or eyes, so I guess it doesn’t matter too much. I can probably see more than you can.”

  “Then why am I hearing you through the headphones, and not just in general?”

  “Huh. No idea. Ghosts don’t make a ton of sense, Dani. Those rules of yours don’t exist, remember?”

  “That’s true.” A giddy laugh escaped me. “Oh my god.”

  “What?”

  “Sarah. You’re like the world’s weirdest Tamagotchi.”

  “That’s not a real word. There’s no way it’s a real word.”

  “It’s like a portable electronic pet.” I explained the difference between GigaPets and Tamagotchis, tiny artificial creatures that rely on the whims of children to exist.

  “Again with the stupid computers! And I thought computers would save the world one day. Man, was I wrong.”

  I laughed and pressed the Game Boy close to my chest. “And I haven’t even mentioned Furbys. You sure you’re okay in there?”

  “You mother me more than my own mother ever did.”

  “Rightbackatcha.”

  “Well, Mom. Let’s take that walk. I’d dig that for sure.”

  There weren’t any sidewalks on Iroquois, but once we crossed onto Main Street, there were a few. The neon orange and green of a 7-Eleven illuminated one side of the road, and sparse streetlights helped us walk all five blocks of town.

  We passed what looked like a public library, and a more familiar sight: the Green House Women’s Shelter. Midway down the strip, a furniture store crammed between a pizzeria and a video rental place declared that it was going out of business: 75% off all rustic furniture!

  Sarah and I spotted two other souls downtown: A drunk man smoked a cigarette outside the Big Anchor Bar and Grill (I hurried past, avoiding his eyes). Another man stood inside the most inexplicable business on the sad little strip: Murphy’s Flower Shoppe.

  Rochdale was the kind of town where probably no one was ever in love, let alone wealthy enough to waste money on floral arrangements. Later, it occurred to me that the shop’s business was likely funeral and church functions. But that night, my first night as a townie, the shop felt as improbable as being besties with a ghost girl.

  The man in the window was bent over window boxes filled with flowers I couldn’t name—I mean, could I name any, other than violets and pansies and tulips? Other than roses?

  I paused to watch him, and he offered me a small smile.

  I wanted to wave at him, but I didn’t.

  “Dani?” Sarah’s voice was weaker. I felt a chill and turned from the window.

  “Sarah?”

  “You don’t really think I’m like a computer or a toy or something, do you? Because I’m not. Or I didn’t use to be, even if people treated me that way.”

  “No, sorry, it was a bad joke. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “I know you didn’t mean it.” Her sigh grazed the smallest hairs inside my ear. “Let’s head back, Dani. I don’t feel well.”

  I tried to imagine how overwhelming a sunset walk might be after decades of darkness.

  And I would not realize for almost five years that opening up my heart to Sarah somehow meant welcoming a whole world of dead things, that Sarah was right about ghosts not being computers, and I was right about people, ghosts included, being messy.

  Sarah said I made her realer, and she made me realer, too.

  Turns out getting too real can be dangerous.

  OCTOBER 2002

  PATRICIA

  ADIDAS

  It was 2002 before Sarah and I met another ghost. I was almost sixteen, The Lord of the Rings movies were pretty great, and you couldn’t escape The Eminem Show if you tried.

  I was running laps in the woods behind Holland Park with the rest of the junior cross-country team. As the sun slipped behind the pines, the wind turned frigid cold, but we kept at it all the same. Late as it was, we were practicing hard for district finals the following week, tackling the longest trails, taking advantage of all those winding paths before the snow could smother them.

  The October air pricked at the cords of my throat, left my fingertips needled and numb, and adhered clumps of hair to my forehead. I’d cut my hair as short as Mom would let me, but since I was determined to hide my lazy eye, I’d ended up with awkward bangs and a bob too short for a ponytail. Despite my headphones, my ears were freezing, and a stomachache had plagued me since lunchtime.

  My feet beat the uneven earth. Inevitably I would lose the cadence that had put me ahead of my teammates. The boys’ and girls’ teams practiced together, and usually broke into smaller groups. In a mile or so, I’d be overtaken by slower runners because I could never pace myself.

  I knew this but knowing didn’t seem to change anything.

  “Honestly, want me to clap my hands to keep tempo?” Sarah’s voice shook my eardrums. The Game Boy that held her was pressed against my chest beneath my shirt, secured by a strap and my sports bra. “Coach Ma is gonna be pissed if you’re last again.”

  I was too breathless to answer. Sarah probably didn’t expect me to. Her voice was as much a constant in my head as my own thoughts were. Speech was hardly necessary between us these days.

  “Christ, Dani! Slow down!”

  A sharp, strange pain pierced my abdomen. I caught my foot on a tree root and toppled forward. My knees grazed the dirt. My hands scraped the earth.

  “Dani—Dani. I feel sick.” I’d heard a lot of cussing from Sarah over the years, but I’d rarely heard her sound so scared.

  “You too?” I wheezed, rubbing my bloodied knees. The ache in my stomach lessened. “Sorry. What do you mean by sick?”

  “It’s . . . like something’s earthquaking through me
. I’m seeing double, or somehow I’m not as real, like I’m a double? And I’m cold. Christ. Really, extremely cold.”

  I placed my hand over the Game Boy, as if that could help.

  Every so often, I had this one, specific nightmare: Sarah left me. She achieved the sort of catharsis Patrick Swayze reached in Ghost and abandoned me for some higher plane, heaven or an ethereal nothingness. I always woke up a mess, worried I’d revert to that scared kid who punched himself in the face, ashamed that I didn’t want catharsis for her.

  I’d promised Sarah years ago not to ask about her death, but that wasn’t the real reason I didn’t ask. Close as we were, she didn’t know the selfish heart of me. I didn’t want to know her secrets, because what if that would release her somehow?

  What if she stepped into the sun one day?

  Anyone’s stomach would hurt if they were full of thoughts like these.

  “Dani. Up ahead. What is that?”

  “What? I don’t see anything.”

  “Look.” Her voice sharpened, popped in my icy ears.

  Once again, Sarah made it realer, made me see what I had missed.

  As the trees swallowed the last of the sunlight, the dead woman appeared on the trail. At least, her feet appeared. The bulk of her body remained obscured by the ferns and tree trunks that lined the path.

  I approached slowly, almost on tiptoe. The vision didn’t fade.

  The woman’s shins were blue.

  “Look,” Sarah said again.

  Carefully, I parted the ferns and peered down at her prostrate form.

  “Please don’t step on me,” the dead woman rasped, without much conviction. Glassy blue eyes stared skyward above pronounced cheekbones. Her crow’s-feet made me think she was Mom’s age, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was only exhausted. Blood stained her lips, her chin. “I’m so tired of being stepped on.”

  Her neck was red with bruises, and her head was askew, twisted to the side at a disturbing angle, jammed against the trunk of a tree. She wore Under Armour with Adidas trainers. Striped track pants had been pulled down to her knees with her department store underwear still inside them, and strands of her graying hair had been torn loose from her scrunchie.

  I looked away to spare her, or maybe to spare myself.

  Sarah said, “She’s like me, Dani.”

  Even though Sarah was the only ghost I knew at the time, I didn’t doubt that for a minute. If life had taught me anything, it was this: every place is haunted by something, and most people just pretend otherwise.

  Maybe that was why Sarah felt so ill as we approached, shaking like we’d struck a note on a tuning fork, like we were forcing two negative magnets together.

  The woman blinked and repeated herself:

  “Please don’t step on me. I’m tired of being stepped on.”

  She seemed no less tangible to me than Sarah, but her gaze was distant.

  “I don’t think she knows we’re here.” In the twilight, Sarah could leave the Game Boy behind. Now she stood beside me, holding her stomach. She padded forward and knelt before the woman. “She’s probably really confused . . . ​I mean. Who knows how long she’s been stuck here.”

  Judging by her clothes, I thought she must have been dead at least a decade.

  I could hear footsteps rapidly nearing, voices filling the trail behind us.

  “Sarah, the others are coming.”

  Sarah placed her palm on the woman’s forehead. “We won’t leave you here.”

  “Sarah . . .”

  “Dani. We can’t leave her. We’d have to be monsters.”

  The plaintive note in Sarah’s voice pierced me. I knew she was right. Leaving this woman here, half-naked and alone and trod upon, would be monstrous.

  But this ghost was not Sarah. She was not the girl beneath my bed. This was a stranger, who looked right through us. And maybe, just maybe, I was a monster.

  “Dani. Help me help her.”

  “I don’t know how we can help her . . .”

  Sarah’s eyes flashed, humming with upset. “This isn’t a choice.”

  The footsteps were close now—not one pair, but a dozen—so I hushed her, knelt over my shoes, and put my back to both ghosts.

  Charley Meyer came around the bend in the dimming light, followed by a boy I didn’t know and a girl named Leann. Not surprisingly, none of them seemed to see the dead woman, but they could see me, crouched on the path like a weirdo.

  “You burn yourself out already, Dani?” Leann called, as she and the other boy plowed on by. Charley slowed to jog in place beside me, grinning beneath his freckles. He was tall and 90 percent Adam’s apple, and about as cheesy as stuffed-crust pizza.

  “Dan the Man! What’s up? Charley horse? My bad!”

  It was an awful joke, and a nickname that rankled. Still, Charley wasn’t a bad guy, despite Sarah’s derisive snort. “Nah, I just tripped. I’m fine.”

  “Want me to hang back with you? Need help getting up?”

  “I’m good, thanks.” It still surprised me, how easily kindness came to kids like him.

  In the years since we’d moved downtown, something unexpected had happened: I’d gotten by okay at school. Maybe Sarah’s presence, that conscience in my pocket, had something to do with it.

  But honestly?

  My self-inflicted black eye in middle school had been the start of it. That twisted incident had garnered me a lot of sympathy, especially because I refused to talk about it. By the time Seiji returned from his suspension, most of the class had blacklisted him for unspeakable horrors he’d never committed. Several girls sat beside me during lunch, an unexpected line of defense, and walked with me between classes. Because Seiji never said a word to defend himself, the kindness of those girls stuck.

  They didn’t know what I was, and I didn’t tell them. Because, dream of dreams, I had friends at school, or at least people who didn’t sneer at me.

  Maybe Sarah couldn’t see the appeal of guys like Charley, but I could.

  “Dani? Do you need help?” he asked again.

  “Don’t step on me,” the dead woman said.

  To my horror, Charley was jogging in place directly on top of her spectral ankles.

  I stood so abruptly that Charley took one merciful step back. “Or you know what, hey—I’ll get ahead of the others and tell Coach Ma what happened, all right?”

  “Thanks, Charley.”

  Charley clapped me on the back and moved on, running backward with both thumbs up.

  “Stop mooning after him, Dani, let’s get her out of here!”

  “Not yet.” I shook my head. “Let’s wait for the rest of the team to pass first.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

  “Dani!”

  I didn’t answer, but I crouched on the path to prevent anyone else from treading on the woman. As the remainder of the team passed by, I stared at her legs. There was mud on her calves, but her shoes were still tied. One of her socks was shorter than the other, an off-white mismatch.

  There were only a few more kids to go. One or two asked if I needed help, but I smiled and waved them on. They were as fearful of Coach Ma’s retribution as I was, and none other than Charley offered to go down with me.

  Sarah pinched my cheek in frustration, but I ignored her until Kylie Waters, the slowest among us, huffed by with a half-hearted nod.

  “Really, Dani? You care that much what those breathers think?” Sarah demanded. “This woman needs us, but you’re worried about them?”

  I swatted her hand away. “Come on, Sarah! What difference did five more minutes make?”

  Even as I said it, I regretted it.

  “It makes a difference,” Sarah said hollowly. “Every second makes a difference.”

  “Okay. Yeah, okay. Sorry.”

  Sarah stared at the woman. “Let’s help her up.”

  Sarah helped the dead woman to her feet. The ache in my stomach intensif
ied as the woman stood. I could only watch, awkward and useless, as Sarah held her steady, pulled the woman’s pants back up, and plucked phantom twigs from her tangled hair. Later those twigs might reappear, like Sarah’s bloodstains did when she was unhappy. But for the moment, the dead woman was returned some small part of her dignity.

  Being upright seemed to rouse her, or maybe Sarah’s touch made her more alert, because the dead woman met my eyes for the first time. “They kept stepping on me. Can you believe that?”

  “What’s your name?” Sarah asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I just don’t want to be stepped on.”

  “You won’t be,” Sarah said, drawing the woman’s arm over her shoulders. “Never again. I promise.”

  Sarah caught my eye over the woman’s shoulder. As usual, I read her mind.

  I nodded, powerless against her eyes. “You’re coming home with us.”

  SLURPEE

  I led them down the path, back the way we’d come. Somewhere at the opposite end of the trail, I knew Coach Ma was checking her watch and rolling up her sleeves, ready to dig into me. I might get kicked off the team for ditching practice, but the longer I walked beside Sarah and the woman, the less I doubted my decision.

  The woman was quiet, trembling as we walked the path out of the woods.

  Twigs cracked under only my feet, and the starlight and occasional high beams that pierced the woods rendered my companions luminous. It occurred to me that the dead woman had good reason to tremble. A murderer had passed through these woods at least once before, as she was testament. The branches seemed like veins inching toward the sky, and the trees muffled the wind too much, their branches crossing like capillaries over our head, trapping us beneath them.

  My stomach knotted again.

  Had I been alone, I might have started sprinting.

  But Sarah was beside me. She always was, now.

  And with Sarah riffing in my pocket, I was braver. I cared less about saying something stupid in class, less about whether people were looking at my good eye or my lazy one. And she softened bigger fears, too. Last month I overheard Mom talking with Dad on the phone. I had my first panic attack in years at the possibility they might get back together. Sarah climbed in bed beside me and pressed her hands over my ears in our coffin of a room so I wouldn’t have to hear Mom laughing at his stupid, disarming jokes. Sarah sang Joni Mitchell songs until I fell asleep.