by Leah Thomas
“Yeah.” His face remained deadpan. “Counseling has helped me a lot.”
For a moment, we both huffed on cold air.
“That thing you said, on Friday,” I said, staring at my shoes. “About loved ones? You said if someone in your family were dying, you’d want to know about it. Why?”
He stared at me. I couldn’t tell whether he was playing dumb, so I stood up straight, wishing I had broad shoulders and a stoic, handsome face like his.
Then he said, “Because I wish I’d known. My mom was dying, and I didn’t know. I wish she’d told me. Now please, leave me the hell alone.”
He pulled himself free of my limp grip and left me on the sloppy sidewalk.
“NO SCRUBS”
I made it through school and to cross-country practice. Coach Ma eyeballed my wan face and tired eyes, but didn’t let up on my prescribed double dose of crunches. This was our second-to-last week before regional finals, so she was pretty fired up. Only four of our runners had placed high enough in districts to compete, but my teammates had decided to practice alongside them, to cheer them on and hope that someone might slip through to state finals, too.
To my dismay, after warm-ups, Coach Ma announced we’d be busing over to the trails behind Holland Park again.
“I don’t want you getting lost again, Dani,” she added, “so you’ll be running with Charley, buddy-system style.”
I was frustrated, but also a bit relieved. I loved Patricia, but I wasn’t eager to stumble across another dead woman today, especially without Sarah around.
Charley chatted my ears off as we hit the frosted trail. His endless gossip about weekend bonfires and comic book movies did a lot to ease the crisp quiet of the darkening woods. I tried not to think about what had happened to Patricia out here, and I tried not to think about the murderer who might still haunt these paths, or the number of clouded breaths that may have ended here.
Charley’s inane chatter had a grounding effect. I smiled and laughed as we jogged. In the first few minutes we fell behind the others because we were wasting our breath on talk, but eventually we were too winded for conversation.
As the sky darkened, the trees became more like hands. Was Patricia’s killer really among those fingers, spectral and grinning?
I used to see my father’s face in the half-darkness, even when he wasn’t there.
I stumbled, almost fell.
“Let’s rest,” Charley gasped as we rounded a bend. He slowed to a stop, his hands on his knees. “I need a breather.”
“We should keep going.” I jogged in place, wiping damp hair from my forehead. “Coach Ma . . .”
He flapped one of his hands. “No worries, Dani. Not like either of us is competing this weekend. She’ll cut us some slack.”
I doubted Coach Ma knew the meaning of the word “slack,” but Charley seemed determined to linger. I stopped moving my feet, rubbed at the aches in my legs and neck, and plopped down beside him on a fallen log.
“Just for a second.”
“Well, it might take a little longer than that.” Charley laughed, and the next thing I knew, he was pressed against me with his lips on mine, clutching my hair with his sweaty hands, shoving his tongue between my teeth.
I shoved back. Charley recoiled and laughed his happy-go-lucky laugh. “Damn, Dani, you almost made me bite my tongue!”
“The fuck?” I gasped, clambering to my feet. He grabbed my waist and pulled me back down atop him. His mouth was on mine again with this nasty sluggish pressure, an invasive parasitic thing.
This time I bit his tongue.
“Fuck!” he cursed, shoving me away. “What the hell, Dani? What’s wrong?”
“You just forced yourself on me!”
“What? You didn’t say no,” Charley protested, climbing to his feet.
I shook my head in disbelief. “I guess saying ‘what the fuck’ and trying to shove you away wasn’t clear enough? Fuck you, Charley.”
“Jesus, Dani! You’ve been flirting with me for months. Don’t look at me like I’m a creep for picking up on that.”
“I have not been flirting with you,” I snapped, stumbling down the path, trying to put Charley and his stupid smile far behind me. “Believe me.”
“You talk to me all the time! And you always laugh at my jokes. I’ve seen how you look at me.”
I felt absolutely sick. I looked at Charley like I looked at everyone else with my uneven gaze, and I laughed at his bad jokes because we were teammates. If I was ever admiring him, it was only because I wished I had shoulders like his. If I wanted anything, I wanted to look like him.
“I’m not interested,” I repeated. “Charley, never touch me again.”
His smile crumpled into hurt. “Fine, Dani. Whatever.”
“Not ‘whatever.’ I mean it.”
He threw up his hands. “I guess I felt sorry for you, you know?”
I knew I shouldn’t ask. “Why?”
“Well.” He gestured at me. “Just because. But hey, if you’re a lesbo, just say so.” He plastered on a grin, as if nothing broken had occurred between us.
“You go ahead,” I said numbly.
“But Coach Ma said we should run to—”
“Get away from me, Charley!”
He blinked at me, all wounded-puppy like, and ran on.
I spent ten minutes spitting into the dirt, trying to shake the taste of him.
When I finally reached the clearing where the others were waiting, Coach Ma raised her eyebrows. On the bus, when he spotted me near the back, Charley sat with his friends near the front. Then he cheerfully instigated a bus-wide sing-along, and the whole team belted out an old TLC song.
I don’t think Charley thought he’d done anything wrong, even after I’d explained how I felt. I don’t think he questioned his instincts for one second. He saw the world, saw me, in a way that I did not. Unfortunately, the world tended to agree with people like him.
I’d been afraid of the woods, but what made the woods sinister was not confined to trees and shadows. It grew wherever there were people.
How deep did those bloody roots go?
POP ROCKS (REPRISE)
Sarah and Patricia were waiting for me in the brown-carpeted apartment, sitting at the makeshift coffee table. Whatever they’d been talking about, the conversation ended when I walked in.
“Wish I could brew you some tea,” Patricia said. “You look like you could use a cup.”
“I can do it myself.”
“Of course you can. But sometimes it’s nice to be looked after.”
I wouldn’t really know about that, but didn’t say as much. I slumped in my seat, trying to process the horrors of the day.
“I take it school was less than spectacular,” Sarah hazarded.
I didn’t know where to start, and I didn’t want to talk about the worst of it, especially in front of Patricia. “Seiji Grayson told me I’m an angry person.”
I waited for them to laugh.
“You are,” Sarah said, “and good thing, too. Being angry is a good look. We could use more angry women in the world.”
I’m pretty sure I didn’t react, but Patricia corrected quietly, “Angry people.”
I smiled at her a little. “He told me to get counseling. Seiji, I mean.”
“There’s nothing wrong with counseling,” Patricia said. “It helped me through my divorce. It helps a lot of people through all kinds of things. Having someone to listen is vital.”
“Yeah, I know.” I thought back on our days at the Green House. Mom might have spoken to Dad on the phone a few times since we left him, but he hadn’t been welcomed back into our lives, and in the interim, Mom had held a job and become a landlady. I don’t think she’d have gotten there without some help.
“Honestly,” Sarah pondered, “even I wouldn’t mind a bit of counseling.”
I thought she might be taking the piss, but her face was serious.
“Counseling,” I said. “Counseling f
or ghosts.”
“Is that funny to you?” Sarah asked defensively.
“No,” I said. “It isn’t funny.”
Patricia’s face crinkled up. “My mother always said that all one needs in life is a roof over your head and a good shoulder to lean on.”
“Well, that and some Pop Rocks,” Sarah joked.
“It makes sense. Maybe we all need the same thing. Maybe we all need a Green House.” I sat up straight, my heart pounding. “That’s it, isn’t it?
Sarah frowned at me. “You still feverish?”
But Patricia held up a hand. “What do you mean, Dani?”
“Patricia—you said, last weekend, that even though you’re scared all the time, you feel safe in the lobby, right?”
Patricia nodded. “I feel safer. It’s the walls, but mostly the company.”
“Right.” I fought the urge to stand and pace. “So here’s what I’m thinking. The living world has a lot of rules, right? There are courts and prisons to hold murderers and monsters responsible, but there are also places to hold and help victims. Rehab, hospitals, clinics, schools, foster care. Shelters. But are there resources like that in the afterlife? I mean, there are victims and victimizers, but are there, I don’t know, ghost cops?”
“Ghost Cop sounds like a B-movie starring Steven Seagal,” Sarah said.
“I doubt it.” Patricia frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think it’s feasible, considering the state most ghosts find themselves in. When I was in the woods, perhaps I saw other ghosts, but they were probably wandering lost, too. I can’t imagine ghosts being organized enough to help each other like the living do.”
I nodded. “Not without a safe place to do so, or a reason to organize, or someone to help them with the basic logistics. If ghosts are in trauma, they need the same things that other traumatized people need! They need people to listen to them, to talk to them.”
“I know what they need.” Sarah’s eyes shone. “They need you, Dani.”
“I’m being serious,” I snap.
“Me too!” Sarah replied. “All that you said? Company, someone who listens, provides shelter? That’s what you were to me. That’s what you are to me.”
“And to me,” Patricia agreed. “The pair of you brought me back to myself.”
Their compliments pained me, and my cheeks flushed. I refused to be distracted by the admiration in Sarah’s eyes.
Sometimes, Sarah looked at me as if I were beautiful.
“You too,” I said. “You’ve helped me, too.”
Patricia smiled. “I always tell—told—my students: Helping is contagious.”
Many of the staff in the Green House shelter had once been victims of one kind or another themselves. Perhaps it took being wounded to understand how to help others.
“So let’s do it,” I said. “Let’s make this old motel a sanctuary. We can take in other ghosts who might be haunted. We can befriend them, help them, and keep them safe. If there’s any killers, dead or alive, out there bothering them—we’ll keep them out. We give them the wrong fucking address, or something.”
“Or,” Sarah said, face grim, “we could exorcise them. The murderous ghosts, I mean.”
Patricia started coughing, and I nearly slid off my seat.
“Is that an actual thing, Sarah? Exorcism?”
“I mean, it’s probably a thing. Haven’t you seen movies?”
“You told me never to believe the movies!”
“Except Poltergeist,” she said, finger aloft. “I told you, Poltergeist knew what was up, probably because the set was so freaking haunted.”
I was almost sputtering. “Exorcisms might be real, and you never thought to mention it?”
“Why, did you want to exorcise me?” Sarah showed her gapped teeth.
“No, but doesn’t it seem, I dunno, relevant?”
“Not to me.” Sarah shrugs. “My killer is still alive. Exorcism won’t do a damned thing for me.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. This was the most Sarah had ever said about her death, and the casual way she said it left me lost.
“Don’t ask, Dani. I’m only saying, exorcism wouldn’t have helped me.” Sarah turned to Patricia. “But it’s not just me anymore, right, Trish?”
Patricia grimaced. “I suppose it isn’t.”
“So it can’t hurt to look into getting rid of the evil dead.”
It was a terrifying and exciting notion.
But all I could hear were the echoes of Sarah’s cool tone, the brusque warning: Don’t ask.
Patricia raised her hand. “I’m all for the spirit shelter, but less enthused about the ghost-cop-exorcism operation. There are some dangerous souls out there.”
“That’s true,” Sarah agreed, “but wouldn’t it be great to walk in the woods without feeling afraid, Trish?”
“It would,” she conceded. “To walk to where you once were needed.”
“Or to walk to someplace new.”
Hopeful quiet fell in the apartment, an unbearable, beautiful thread-like spider silk of stillness. I thought it would slip away without our help. I thought I needed to be part of it, to grab hold as well.
“Okay. So let’s try it. Let’s shelter the dead.”
Sarah put her chin on her hands. “You’re not developing a savior complex, are you, Dani? What’s gotten you so riled?”
“I don’t know. A hundred things.”
Maybe it was Patricia, when she told me only I could choose what I was. Or maybe I’d gotten to myself. Maybe if I could become the kind of person—the kind of man—who was an ally to women, perhaps Sarah would accept that not all men were terrible. Perhaps she could accept me, or the me I knew I was.
It wasn’t selflessness that fueled my crusade. It wasn’t goodness. This was an act of desperation. This was the final leap from one cliff to another.
Maybe then we both could stop keeping so many secrets.
This shelter might be my shelter, too.
“It won’t be easy. But I do think it’s a beautiful idea,” Patricia said.
“Patricia,” I said, “you told me stories start from beautiful ideas.”
Sarah gave me a genuine smile. “I love you, you know, Dani.”
There were ten million ways I could’ve responded to that, because who knew which kind of love Sarah meant, or what kind I felt, but I knew I didn’t know how to exist without her, and I thought she might feel the same.
“Rightbackatcha.”
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS
“So do we have to splash the undead murderers with holy water?” I asked Sarah. That night, lying in bed after she’d spent hours at the library, Sarah rattled off the things she’d read online about exorcisms and doing away with nasty spirits.
“Maybe? Personally, I don’t totally buy into the religious nonsense.” Sarah waved dismissively. “If murderers didn’t give a shit about following the teachings of God or Allah or anyone else in life, why the hell would muttering Latin do anything to them in death? Sure, the research leans that way, but I don’t.”
“So . . . what should we do, then?”
“Well, do I have an answer for you!” Sarah chirped.
“. . . yes . . . ?”
She flashed a smile and waggled spirit fingers. “I have no idea!”
“Wow. That’s it?”
“Seriously, do you realize how many different theories there are? How many different methods have been written about? Every culture has its own tactics. So I think our best bet is to create a sort of kit—a backpack filled with different exorcism supplies. So yeah, that’d be holy water, but also shit like candles, amulets, and Ouija boards. A ram’s horn. And maybe a conch shell.”
“A conch shell. All hail the magic conch!”
“It’s a Hindu thing.”
“It’s a SpongeBob thing.”
Sarah had become excellent at ignoring my pop culture references. “Also, maybe some strong perfume? I think that’s a Muslim tradition. And some noodle sou
p, so you don’t get possessed?”
“That’s gonna have to be one big backpack.”
She laughed. “Look, we’ve gotta start somewhere. You’re gonna have to learn some dances and chants, too.”
“I can do the Macarena, if that helps.”
“We’ll have you memorize some mantras. That seems like a big part of it.”
“Good thing I’m not busy studying for the ACT,” I said dryly. “Oh. Wait.”
“Sit on it. To begin with, start hoarding your mom’s salt.”
I imagined myself lobbing a canister of Morton salt at some spectral psychopath. “Right. And if none of this stuff works?”
She snickered. “Well, lucky you’re good at running.”
The silence shifted between us, weighted by what I dared not ask. “Sarah?”
She sighed. “Seriously, Dani. Don’t ask.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say!”
She sighed beside me. “Of course I do. I know everything about you.”
“And if you didn’t?” I inhale, then exhale. “If there was something about me that I’d never told you? Would you . . . would we still . . . Sarah?”
I waited for her to reply, but the silence grew bigger, and Sarah grew smaller, and I knew that no matter what I told her, she could never truly sleep beside me, and I could never truly hold her, but I couldn’t stop trying.
NOVEMBER 2002
ADDY
ORAL-B
Maybe I was good at running, but I quit the cross-country team about a week after we decided to open a shelter for ghosts. I told myself it had nothing to do with Charley, and everything to do with being busy with the afterlife.
But there was no denying that the team didn’t feel like home anymore.
I don’t know what Charley told people, exactly, but most of the other runners stopped talking to me. Because I’d always kept a firm distance between myself and my not-quite friends, there was no one invested enough to ask what had really happened, or to doubt his side of the story. Charley was beloved, a ball of sunshine that was impossible to eclipse. Gloomy moon that I was, I didn’t have the will to try.
For some reason I couldn’t explain to myself, I didn’t tell a soul about Charley forcing his mouth on me. Sarah would go on a rampage; Coach Ma would get our parents involved. Charley would call me a cross-eyed, lying lesbian.
