by Leah Thomas
Sarah and her loose braids exuded a soft white glow as we led the nameless woman out of the woods. Sarah was another moon, a star to see by. Again the ache in my belly spiked, as if punishing me for disappointing her, even for a moment.
At last we reached a clearing and semi-civilization once again: the barren excuse of a park known as Holland. No one was walking a dog as we crossed the lawn. In small towns, visiting a park at night is sinister as hell. Autumn leaves crunched under my tennis shoes. The cool night beaded the sweat on my neck and back, but the ghosts kept the shivers at bay.
We reached the road and paused on the curb beneath a flickering streetlight. I’m not sure what stopped first: me, feeling another inexplicable pang in my stomach, or the woman, taken aback by the sight of the faded water tower and the streetlamps stretching above the tiny houses.
Sarah urged us forward until we were walking along Main Street. I glanced left and right, up and down.
“You can walk ahead of us,” Sarah told me, “if you’re so worried about someone seeing you walking the streets at night, talking to yourself.”
I winced. “No. I’m not—I’m just—”
“Look, I get it.” Sarah turned away. “I go to school with you, you know? Those idiots’ll use any damn excuse to alienate a girl.”
I looked at the woman’s face, her reflective glassy eyes and the trees that still seemed caught in them.
“No one’s around to see us,” I said finally, and I stayed beside them.
Sarah nodded. “Fine.”
As we passed the 7-Eleven, mere blocks from home, the woman halted again. Her head sat a little less crookedly on her neck as she stared at the orange-and-green sign above the entrance.
“Come on, now,” Sarah said. “We’re almost there.”
“I want a Slurpee.” The woman’s voice was as clear as water.
“You what?”
She put a hand on her stomach; her pants were slipping again, but she tugged them up herself. “I really, really want a raspberry Slurpee.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s a drink, Sarah.” I broke the news to the trembling woman. “You won’t be able to drink it.”
She frowned. “Please. Please don’t step—I mean. No, that’s not it. Please get me a Slurpee.”
“But there’s no point.” I wanted to go home and lie down; my stomach felt like the aftermath of running it through a garbage disposal.
Sarah folded her arms. “Dani, if a slurp-thing is what she wants, let her have it. When do you think she last got anything she wanted?”
And just like that, Sarah had silenced me once again. The prospect of a raspberry Slurpee seemed to break the newcomer from the loop she’d been stuck in. Against all odds, she seemed present.
“Okay,” I muttered.
The ghost smiled, and I looked away, face on fire.
SOBE
Buzzing fluorescent lights shredded my vision to sparks and lines. Behind the counter, an elderly cashier craned his neck, watching a TV in the back room. He didn’t look at me as I crossed the linoleum.
The Slurpee machine had clearly seen better days, but whatever; who hadn’t?
As I filled a medium cup with glooping liquid, a door slammed behind me, scaring me out of my skin. You wouldn’t think anything would spook me anymore. But honestly, most things do, when I’m alone.
I spun around.
Seiji Grayson knelt on the peeling tiles, midway through restocking a cooler with orange SoBe. He held my gaze before dropping his eyes. I cursed as my cup overflowed and flicked the sticky blue ice from my hand before popping a lid on as quickly as possible.
The old man still wouldn’t look at me, even after I put my money on the counter.
“Um. Excuse me?”
“Grayson!” the man barked. “Take care of it, won’t you? It’s the last inning.”
To my dismay, Seiji lumbered his way to the register. These days he was so much bigger than he’d been in sixth grade. His shoulders were always rounded and hunched, as if he were made of hills, and his hair had grown longer. His eyes were deep glimmers beneath reeds of black. His work polo didn’t fit him.
But there I was in my track uniform, covered in pine needles and sweat, and nothing ever fit me either.
“That’ll be $1.19, please.”
The softness of his voice was jarring. I slid the fiver toward him.
Our history aside, Seiji had earned a real reputation over the past few years. He’d been kicked off the soccer team for punching both an opponent and a teammate, and rumor had it that he spent every single day in after-school detention. There were whispers, probably racist, that Seiji was involved with the yakuza (because being Asian in northern Michigan meant people had to come up with some ludicrous excuse for your presence, right?).
Then again, as he took the money from my fingers, I noticed tattoos—actual tattoos!—between each of his knuckles. Who has tats at sixteen, other than gangsters?
“Blood.” Seiji spoke not to me, but to the counter.
“What?” I snapped.
“You’re bleeding.” Seiji gestured with a limp hand.
For a wild moment, I thought that the dead woman’s blood might have stained me somehow.
But when I looked down at myself, the blood in question was a terrifying patch staining the fabric between my legs.
Just like that, I was looking down at a stranger’s body, and though suddenly it made sense—the restlessness and sadness and bellyache—I wanted to sob, for reasons beyond lost childhood and beyond Seiji fucking Grayson.
This could not be happening. I had hoped it never would, and after so many years dreading it, I’d almost believed it wouldn’t, thought I’d wished away this curse. I thought in this small instance, some heavenly bastard had taken pity on me, and maybe, maybe, that bastard knew what I was and wasn’t.
But here I was, bleeding in 7-Eleven.
Seiji shoved a small box my way—pads. He must have pulled it from the shelf when I was getting the Slurpee. He must have seen the blood, while I was still oblivious.
“Here,” he said, as if that fixed everything.
“I don’t need that,” I sputtered. “Put it away.”
He was as expressionless as ever.
“Seriously, get rid of it. I don’t want those!”
“I live with my aunt,” he said cryptically.
“That’s nice. But I’m not your fucking aunt.”
I felt his stare trail me as I grabbed my change and hurried out the door, wishing I could hide all of me, wishing for hilly shoulders of my own, for anything but the blood.
Sarah and the dead woman stood right where I’d left them, staring at the sky. I set the Slurpee on the ground below their levitating feet and crouched on the pavement, trying to breathe, trying to be any other boy.
“Whoa there, is that Windex?” Sarah asked, peering at the drink while the woman knelt before it as if it were holy. Then Sarah saw my face. She put her hand on my back. “What is it? Dani? What the hell happened?”
I shook my head.
Mom hadn’t bothered talking to me about puberty, but I’d learned all about it from school and living in general. Ostensibly, I’d known this was coming. But some part of me had hoped my body would not betray me more than it already had. Because I always knew what I was, even if no one else did.
I always knew that I wasn’t a girl.
This heat between my legs felt like another death, one that I couldn’t discuss with Sarah. She’d never understood my panda folder of boy photos, and she couldn’t understand why I fought so hard not to wear bras, why I refused to wear dresses or makeup. Maybe she wouldn’t understand this, either. Maybe Sarah had welcomed her period.
I could not relate.
“I just got my first period,” I said dully.
“You think?” Sarah glanced me up and down, then let loose a whistle. “Yeah, I’d say so. Wow. Guess you’re a woman now.”
At that, I los
t it.
“Whoa, h-hey, it’s not that big a deal, Dani—” Sarah began, clearly shaken by my sobs. Before she could question the scale of my reaction, we were interrupted.
“I can’t even pick it up!” the dead woman hollered, as her hands passed through the sticky cup of ice. She aimed a doomed kick at the cup and swung with all her might.
The Slurpee didn’t even tremble as her foot passed through it.
“I can’t drink the damn thing!”
“Wow, Windex must taste good, huh?” Sarah joked, but humor didn’t touch her voice. She knew better than I that the woman’s rage had little to do with the Slurpee.
“After all of this, I can’t even enjoy a fucking Slurpee? What right did he have? Who the hell was he? Some stranger! Some creep! Who told him he could take anything—no, everything—away from me? As if I had anything left? What fucking right?”
She collapsed as I had, but with far more reason to.
I stood and wiped my eyes. I may not have been grateful for my body, but at least I had one. No one had taken it from me yet.
“Fuck him, truly and forever,” the woman whispered.
“Yeah, fuck that guy,” I agreed. “Let’s get you home.”
“My name’s Patricia,” the woman said.
Sarah smiled. “Nice to meet you, Patricia.”
We walked home, leaving the Slurpee behind.
ALWAYS
Mom worked late-night shifts at the Big Anchor, serving the locals their Natty Ices and Long Islands, so there was no chance of colliding with her as we crossed the Teepee parking lot. There were only seven occupied apartments in the building, and virtually everyone minded their own business. Probably no one saw me arrive, and of course no one saw my companions.
I wanted to put a few doors between me and every part of this night so far.
Once me, Sarah, and Patricia got inside, I ran straight to Mom’s bathroom. At the bottom of the cupboard I found a pack of pads wrapped in strange soft plastic. Pulling down my shorts proved that the damage had already been done; there was no salvaging them. I crumpled my clothes and resolved to toss them in the dumpster ASAP, and then I climbed under the showerhead and tried to erase myself beneath it.
By the time I reemerged, still cramping and bleeding, Sarah and Patricia were sitting on Mom’s bed, watching MTV with the volume all the way up. Sometimes lights turned on when Sarah was around, but this was the first time she’d switched on the TV.
“Music’s gotten worse again,” Patricia observed. Sarah was sprawling, but Patricia sat primly on the edge of the bed. “Whatever happened to Pearl Jam?”
“I can actually change the channel, if you want.” These days, Sarah was pretty damn good with technology. At least in her case, the ability to manipulate machines was one aspect of ghosthood that Poltergeist got right.
Sarah couldn’t move physical objects as a rule, but electricity was different. She rationalized it with a shrug, arguing what were ghosts, if not concentrations of energy, much like electricity? After a few months in the Game Boy, Sarah could operate the electric mixer on a whim, and turning on lights was as easy as blinking for her.
“Good god, a shower would feel amazing.” Patricia stared at me, envious. She seemed calmer and the bruises on her neck had faded, but there was no denying her deadness.
“I say that every time, too,” Sarah told her. That wasn’t quite true, but I didn’t call her out on it. Clearly Sarah was pleased as punch to have another dead person around. I told myself the jealousy I felt was misplaced.
“Mom will be home soon.”
“I used to be a mom,” Patricia said, silencing us.
After another Avril Lavigne video petered out on TRL, I tried again.
“Mom will be home soon. We probably shouldn’t stay here.” If Mom had ever noticed me whispering to Sarah, she’d never said so, but then, she hardly noticed anything. Still, keeping two ghosts secret might be harder than one.
“Fine,” Sarah said. “I have something in mind.”
———
The motel lobby beneath remained decrepit as ever, its windows blacked out, doors chained shut and boarded up by a landlord we hadn’t heard from in months.
“My grandmother was Chippewa.” Patricia stared up at the rusted tepee facade, frowning a little.
I winced. “Oh. Um. Sorry.”
“It’s not as though you built it,” Patricia said gently.
Sarah was all summer heat, but Patricia felt like rain.
“Over here.” Sarah led us around to the back of the building, where the petroleum pig blocked most of the wall from view. The curves of the tepee guttered out here, staining the building orange and brown.
“There’s a way in through the cellar.” Sarah gestured with her eyebrows raised. I craned over the damp tank. Beyond it was a broken basement window. Whatever glass had been there was all but cleared away.
“In we go.”
I stared at the rectangle of black. “When did you find out about this, Sarah?”
“Saw some kids creeping in here to smoke dope. They covered the place in graffiti, but the upstairs was mostly left alone.”
I frowned. “Do those boys still come here?”
“Nah, not likely. I spooked ’em pretty good.” Her nonchalance was jarring; I hadn’t known she haunted anyone but me. I hadn’t known she could. “I’d bet they won’t be back. Probably won’t be smoking dope again anytime soon, either.” She grinned wickedly. “They thought I was the worst trip ever.”
I followed Sarah and Patricia carefully through the broken window—they couldn’t get splinters, but I could—and all three of us dropped into the dank cellar. It seemed like it had served as a storage or maintenance area, and maybe also as the motel laundry, based on the pipes draping the brick walls like forlorn snakes. Sarah was right about the graffiti—I spotted obligatory dicks and swear words on the wall. The boys had left other evidence behind, too: tattered couch cushions arranged around a dubious ashtray, the glass of a shattered bong.
“I’m not fond of the damp,” Patricia admitted. “It rained too much in the woods.”
“We’ll go upstairs. Come on.” Sarah led us up a narrow set of concrete stairs and we emerged in a mildewed, beige lobby beneath the tepee’s peak. There was the check-in counter, coated in dust and adorned with a tasteless taxidermied raccoon. The remains of a few ugly sofas were tipped over here and there.
“Here’s home, Trish,” Sarah declared. “It’s a mess, but no daylight gets in here, and there are still some chairs and good cubbies under the desk where the room keys were kept. I don’t know about you, Patricia, but I feel safer when I sleep in small dark places these days.
“I don’t know about me yet,” Patricia said, “but thank you.”
“Nah, don’t thank me.” Sarah locked eyes with me. “You should thank Dani. I wouldn’t be here to help you if she hadn’t helped me first.” That comment felt barbed to me—Sarah and I both knew I’d almost left Patricia alone in the woods.
“Thank you, Dani.” Patricia nodded at me, unaware of my shame. She sat down on a deflated cushion and stared at the pointed ceiling.
“Well,” I said, “we’ll let you get some rest.”
I made my way toward the stairs. Sarah hung back.
“I think I’ll spend the night here with her,” she said. “You don’t mind, right?”
It would be selfish to mind. “No, it’s cool. Good night.”
———
Mom had returned from work. She glanced up from the television when I came in, eyes glossy with drink. “You’re home late.”
“Track practice.” It was only half a lie.
She must have seen some part of it in my face. “You okay?”
Once, I would have cherished that question coming from her. There was a bloody pair of shorts in my bedroom closet, an emptiness in my ears, an ache in my belly, my best friend and a murdered woman shivering in the motel lobby. I felt a sadness I couldn’t express. “
Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Okay. I’m clocking out. There are leftover chicken strips in the fridge.”
For the first night in years, I slept without Sarah’s warmth beneath or beside me, and I dreamed of rain that wasn’t really falling. Patricia needed Sarah, I knew that. And it really would be selfish of me to mind.
I guess that made me pretty damn selfish.
FUNYUNS
The next morning, I woke up lying in my own blood.
My cramps worsened during the walk to school, these small and constant kicks to my abdomen. Sarah stayed back at the motel to help Patricia settle into the lobby. Being alone wasn’t that unusual—Sarah didn’t come to school with me every day. But her absence didn’t usually feel like another unbearable cramp.
Coach Ma found me in the hall before homeroom, pulled me aside, and reprimanded me loudly enough that passersby stared.
“Do you know that I spent an hour alone on that trail, searching for you? And then, when I couldn’t find any sign of you, I had to call your mother to tell her I’d lost her daughter? She said you were home sleeping, safe and sound. Do you know how worried I was?”
Her words hit me hard. Coach Ma was stocky and strong, but she’d still walked those woods alone.
“I’m sorry. Really, Coach Ma.”
“That’s not an explanation.” She folded her arms.
I could pull the period card for the first time in my life. Maybe I’d avoid punishment if I cried. But this was Coach Ma. She’d probably tell me to man up.
God, if only I could man up. I wish people who said that actually thought about what they were saying.
“I’m really sorry,” I repeated, then pinched my mouth shut.
Coach Ma shook her head. “You’re gonna be. You’ll be doing double the blood and guts of your teammates tomorrow. Got it?”
“Um, yeah. Got it.”
I couldn’t believe she was letting me off so lightly. I thought the day might be turning around, until I felt a sudden warmth between my legs. I ran to the bathroom, breath wild and heavy. I hadn’t bled through, but the pad seemed like another kind of victim.
