The Girl in Acid Park

by Lauren Harris

  At last, someone decided to listen to me.

  The remaining gang members ran, scattering toward the woods, the road. I stood there for a long time, shaking from the adrenaline, from the terror, from the cold. I barely even noticed when the guns all drifted down from the sky like featherlight stars; I was still staring at the drive, staring after the headlights now rumbling at top speed toward the road. Only when they disappeared completely behind the cover of trees did I let my arms drop.

  I couldn't see anything for a moment, couldn't quite breathe. My pulse rushed hard in my ears, blackness pressing into my mind from every side.

  Hands were on my hands, gently uncurling my fingers from the gun. "G?" Hiroki's voice was next to me. "G, come on, I need your help."

  I opened my eyes, saw Hiroki standing there, alive and apparently uninjured, and all my breath left my lungs. I looked around for Jamie.

  "Where's...?"

  "Over there," Hiroki pointed behind him. Jamie bent over a fallen gang member, tying him up. There was blood on his cheek, and more on his arm and my stomach did a frightened little flip. Still, he couldn't be hurt too badly if he was walking around.

  "Get the truck," I said. I turned back to Hiroki and pointed to the spot where Willy still lay, prone and unconscious and still gripping his crotch. "I dropped the keys back over there. We should call the police and get the hell out of here in case they come back with more guns."

  "Yeah, but there's something we ought to do first." Hiroki looked around, and his eyes seemed to fall on something I couldn't see. "She says she's gotten weaker since the whirligigs were moved. She wanted to help you, because she saw you here with Jamie and it reminded her of... well, she saw you. And she knew you could help her move on."

  I nodded, and the dizziness came back. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, of course. But we should wait until the police get here. She can help provide evidence for the murder--that's what they were afraid of. Willy over there has Spectral Sight, and he knew she'd seen what they did, and if they got that police officer from Durham down here, or you, she could rat him out."

  Hiroki chewed at the inside of his lip, though he rocked on his heels like he always did when he was uncertain. "They've got the body, though. And now they've got him. And that guy," he nodded back toward our prisoners. "Is it really necessary to talk to her?"

  Jamie walked toward us, one of his shoes flopping awkwardly with no laces. I took advantage of this momentary distraction to consider my answer to Hiroki. The cut on his arm had opened up the sleeve of his black turtleneck, and the skin underneath gleamed with blood. I opened my mouth to ask if he wanted me to help him bandage it up, but he didn't give me a chance.

  His hands found my head and pulled me in against his chest. For a second, I had no idea how to react. It had been several weeks since I'd hugged someone, and I've never really been hugged like that. By a guy. With the chest. And the nearly dying.

  I gave myself about five seconds to appreciate how nice it felt to lean into him. He was so much warmer than his pale skin and gray eyes made him look, and he was so lean, I could grab my sore wrist behind his back, feel his ribs expand as he breathed.

  We were all alive. How the fuck were we alive? Maybe I'd just used up all my bad luck and there simply wasn't space on my karma scale for more.

  I pulled from Jamie's arms and he let me go, stepping away and clapping a hand on Hiroki's shoulder before letting it fall. Hiroki flinched, but didn't leap away like he might have once.

  I looked at Hiroki, feeling slightly more steady now. "Is she still here."

  He nodded, and I felt the pull of air next to me, something like a breeze caught in one space, or a high pressure zone that made everything around it less dense. The hair on my arms stood up, and, from the side of my eye, I swore I could see a flash of pink dress.

  "April?" After a pause Hiroki nodded.

  "She's listening."

  "I can help you move on. I'm... a conveyor of souls. A psycho...thingie."

  "Psychopomp," Jamie said.

  "Yup, a psychopomp. I'll help you move on, if you want."

  Another beat of silence and Hiroki shook his head at the air. "No, I don't think it hurts." He looked at me for confirmation, and I managed something like a comforting smile.

  "It won't hurt either of us. You just sort of go...through me."

  Hiroki stared at the pocket of dense air for another moment, his hands clasped behind him like they were zip tied again. He nodded solemnly.

  "We should probably be the ones thanking you." He glanced at me. "Ready?"

  I swallowed and braced myself. Next to me, Jamie took a step closer, as if he could prevent anything bad from happening. He'd seen Aaron pass on only from a distance, and I hadn't really felt right describing it to him. I'm not certain he knew what to expect. But with him standing at my shoulder and Hiroki in front of me, nothing could stop me.

  "Ready," I said, extending my left hand. I don't know if it was necessary, but it's what I did last time, so it felt right.

  Cold touched my fingertips, like the bite of ice touched for too long. The feeling crept up my arm slowly at first, and then, like plunging through a crust of ice, my consciousness submerged.

  The gymnasium had been covered in sunflowers, and the band was playing Three Dog Night. Joseph's arms locked at the small of my back, and I memorized the smell of his cologne, and the feel of his shirt's starched ruffles against my cheek. He sang along to Pieces of April and I knew it was forever. We danced again under the sky, the tobacco fields stretched like an ocean, and he dropped to one knee. I said yes.

  We had our lives stretching out in front of us like a never-ending road. And then the turn. Glass shattering, spilling across the asphalt like stars.

  The road ended. I'd wanted to stay, for Joseph. But I'd become a memory, just like the song, and he'd lost himself without me. But now here it was again, drawing me into the next place. Tugging, pulling me free, pulling me away, away...

  Her soul strained, frayed, and released, and all at once I was alone in my head. I staggered back, reaching up to cover my mouth, and found my cheeks wet. Tears rolled down my cheeks--hers, and maybe mine too. Before I even opened my eyes, I lifted a hand to swipe them away. I blew out a shaky breath and opened my eyes.

  "She's gone," I said.

  "And look who's showed up, right on time," Hiroki said, and nodded toward the road, where blue lights flashed between the trees.

  "How did they even-"

  Jamie interrupted me. "I'm pretty sure the news van was behind us the whole way here."

  I almost punched him in the arm, before I realized it was still bleeding. "Why didn't you say anything?"

  He shrugged. "I didn't think you'd go through with it if you knew there might be more publicity."

  Hiroki lifted his eyebrows, prodding Willy with a toe. "This'll make the news in Raleigh."

  I gave a low chuckle, because we were alive, and because help was here and it was almost over, and we'd stopped the bad guys. There might be another sleepless night filled with paperwork and interviews, and I'd probably hate myself in a few hours, but right now I stood between Hiroki and Jamie, watching the Sheriff's flashlight beam swing through the trees.

  "Are you kidding?" I said. "This is going to make the Toilet Paper 2.0."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Paper Push

  The news hit national about three days later. I did my best to stay away from news casts and--sadly--the internet, and though both Jamie and Hiroki had agreed not to look either, a few articles had slipped through the cracks.

  "Do you think I'm more of a Velma or more of a Daphne?" I asked, tapping my pencil eraser against my chin. Hiroki and I were tucked away in a corner table at Higher Grounds and I had my notebook in front of me, the outline of my newest article carefully bullet-pointed out on graph paper to my left. Across from me, Hiroki didn't bother looking up from his sketch pad.

  "I literally have no idea what you're talking about."

&nbs
p; "That's not how you use 'literally'," I said. "It's a cartoon reference."

  He pointed at himself with his charcoal stick. "Not raised on your cartoons."

  A thick stack of photocopies landed next to me with a slap.

  "Neither," Jamie said, falling into the chair to my right. "You might be love-child material, though. Please tell me I'm not being compared to any of them."

  I cocked my head at the stack of papers, and poked it with my pencil.

  "If this is your epic Spock/Kirk fan fiction, I'm not sure I-"

  "It's everything I could find within a reasonable amount of time on psychopomps," he said, leaning his elbows on the table and rubbing at the spot on his arm where he'd been given fourteen stitches. "I thought you might want to write a strongly-worded editorial to the Daily Times. Or, you know, an 'About the Exorcist' page for your new blog."

  I cackled, thumbed through the pages. "You're my favorite."

  "Hey," Hiroki said, looking up. "I'm your favorite."

  "You're both my favorite."

  "That dilutes the definition of 'favorite'."

  Jamie ignored us, leaning across the table to see what Hiroki was drawing. "Is that the prom queen with the forehead?" he asked.

  "I'm drawing her without the forehead," Hiroki said. "I mean, she has a forehead. Not that I'm drawing her with no forehead."

  I peered over my notebook to look at the drawing. "Oh yeah," I said, laughing. "That's the dress. Ugliest thing in the world."

  He'd drawn someone who looked very like April, standing on a mostly-dark background with the suggestions of whirligigs made in eraser marks behind her. She was smiling in the picture, and her eyes were wide and alive. She looked happy.

  I couldn't say everything had improved, because there were still a lot of people who hated me. Some classmates had come around, especially when the picture of Hiroki, and Jamie, and me hit the front page of the Daily Times. We were muddy, triumphant, and dressed all in black beneath a moonlit whirligig. There's a lot to be said for looking completely badass.

  Also, it turns out, taking down part of a local drug ring gives you some credibility as an investigator. Also, a very, very strong reprimand from law enforcement and even more paperwork than finding a body.

  Hiroki pulled out a smudger and went to work on refining the shading, and I went back to my article. Jamie settled in with us, dragging a physics book from his bag, which he immediately leaned over and began highlighting.

  "Would you spell 'y'allselves' with two apostrophes or one?" I wondered aloud.

  Hiroki looked up, bored-facing. "Possessive..."

  "And a contraction," I said. "And a compound word."

  Hiroki shook his head and looked back down. "Just pick what looks right."

  I looked at Jamie and raised my eyebrows. He winced. "Punctuation is not my strong point."

  Hiroki's head snapped back up. We both stared, and after a moment, Jamie stopped highlighting and glanced at us, nonplussed. "What?"

  Hiroki's tone was one of awe. "There's something you can't do."

  "You have a weakness." I added.

  "Quick, name all the state capitals in backwards alphabetical order."

  "Prove you're really James Marion Grant."

  He groaned and leaned back in his chair, but the groan was a half laugh. I pushed my knee into his, and he nudged mine back. Our legs settled against each other in the space beneath the table. I looked up to see Hiroki watching us, a sly expression on his face.

  Jamie had defied his parents' wishes that we all remain apart but, partly at my urging, consented to weekly therapy sessions. Over the past few days, he'd spent more time with us than ever. I had zero problem with that, especially since Brother What-a-waste had seen to it Aaron's old bed was removed from Jamie's room.

  There may or may not have been a midnight jaunt to steal a couch from the drama room's storage closet. I may or may not have spilled coffee on it immediately after.

  Maybe everything wasn't okay--given what we'd all been going through, it probably shouldn't be--but I was no longer afraid of the other students, or the ghosts that continued their non-life around us. I knew what I was and, more importantly, I was beginning to decide who I wanted to be. And I would tell the world one epic article at a time.

  Thanks for reading THE GIRL IN ACID PARK! If you enjoyed this story (or, you know, if you didn't), please consider leaving a review. Just click on the link below to head to this book's Amazon page.

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B018O7RZXU

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  THE GIRL IN ACID PARK has been both difficult and rewarding because of the real setting woven into the story. Acid Park is an urban legend in my parents' hometown of Wilson, North Carolina--one that has very little basis in reality, but offered me an excellent foundation for a ghost story.

  The legend is much the same as Georgia described in the book: a girl coming home from prom after taking acid and wrapping her car around a tree in front of her house. Her repair-man father creating a reflective memorial out of scrap metal in the trees, leaving her car there as a warning.

  Not a bit of it is true, of course. Vollis Simpson, the maker of the whirligigs, always had an artistic side. Looking to use some of the scrap from his auto-repair business, he created enormous, whimsical whirligigs that he displayed on his roadside property and which lit up in a spectacular display when encountered at night.

  I've been fortunate enough not only to see that reflection in person, but to have a first-hand look at the actual restoration process of the whirligigs, which moved to downtown Wilson and are now celebrated each year in the Whirligig Festival. Unfortunately, Mr. Simpson passed away before the completion of the Whirligig Park downtown, but he got the opportunity to see its beginning.

  He hated the tale of Acid Park, of course--I only hope he wouldn't be too mad at me for using it. Let it be known that Simpson's daughter is very much alive!

  Examples of Simpson's work can be found all over the country, including the Smithsonian Museum of Art. You can even see the nighttime reflections of "Acid Park" on YouTube.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  More than anything, I'd like to acknowledge my friends from the Smoky Writers 2015 writing retreat, where I drafted majority of this novella. To Alex White, who organized it all; to Abbie Hilton, Katie Bryski and Dave Robison, who listened to the rough draft; and to Hugh J. O'Donell and Foo Borregard, who shared my writing table and spent the week giggling through synonyms and copious amounts of caffeine.

  Numbered among the Smoky Writers was also my cover artist (and chauffeur), the inimitable Starla Huchton, and the producer of the Millroad Academy audiobooks, Bryan Lincoln.

  To Renee White and Chris Bupp, who fed us; to Philippa Ballantine and P.C. Haring, who supplied us with many laughs; and to Stephen Granade, Christine McDonnell, Rosemary Tizledoun, and Taum DellArmo, who were there too.

  Finally, I would be remiss not to thank the Wilson Arts Council and the Whirligig Restoration Committee for allowing me to tour the warehouse where the restoration took place. If Dr. Seuss hired a contractor, I think the result would look something like that warehouse.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lauren Harris, author of the Millroad Academy Exorcists novella series and Assistant Editor of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. She's the co-creator of 2012 Parsec Finalist, Pendragon Variety: A Genre Writing Podcast, which is now a network of writing and media associated podcasts and blogs, the Pendragon Variety Network.