Haint Misbehavin'

by Maureen Hardegree

  The women’s bathroom shone like a beacon ahead, probably due to the sun hitting the fresh white paint on the door. I’d go in there to regroup and calm down. Struggling to swallow the lump in my throat, I pushed through the swinging door. I dropped my towel and put my wet top back on, triple-knotting the damp halter ties around my neck. My hot skin still hadn’t cooled.

  Wary, I dared a peek at myself in the mirror above the chipped porcelain sink. I was definitely more than a little pink, not good. I turned half-way around to check the back view and lifted the elastic on my bikini bottom, noting the distinct contrast of white butt cheek and deepening pink, burnt leg flesh.

  Amy appeared in the mirror. I wanted to shout at her, but I settled for shaking my fist. To be sure no one else was in the bathroom with me, I checked the yellow metal bathroom stalls and the shower before returning to the sink area to blast her.

  “What do I have to do to get you to leave permanently?” My voice echoed off the tiled walls.

  Amy floated out of the reflection to the stalls, then back again to the sink where I was standing. A haint’s version of pacing, I guess.

  “Remember how you said if you had fun, you’d tell me how to get rid of you? I think it’s time for you to explain.”

  “Well…” Amy sighed. “I guess coming to the swimming pool was fun for you. But it’s been as exciting as shelling peas for me until your bathing costume fell down.”

  “You mean until you untied it,” I corrected.

  “Oh, I had nothing to do with it falling down.” She crossed her heart and spit over her shoulder. “I swear.”

  My hope of getting Audrey to like me by summer’s end popped like a balloon stuck with a pin. I was doomed even when the ghost wasn’t involved. “So did I, or didn’t I fulfill the fun quota today?”

  “Quota?”

  “The amount of fun you require before you tell me how to get rid of you.”

  Tapping her index finger against her cheek, Amy pondered my question.

  Jeopardy music played in my head as I waited for her verdict, hoping, praying, considering a novena if necessary to encourage her to answer with a “yes,” so I could get back on track with my summer plans.

  She stopped tapping her finger and smiled at me, gap-toothed and happy. “Nope, I think you can do better,” she twanged.

  I balled my hands into fists, tried to keep my voice even, but, oh, how I wanted to yell. “So you’re not going to tell me what to do to make you leave?”

  “I’ll tell you once I’ve had me enough fun.”

  “Seriously, Amy, I’m not that interesting. The pool’s about as exciting as it gets around here. Can’t you find somebody else to haunt?”

  “No. I like you, Heather.”

  I guess I was too involved in my ghostly turmoil to hear Drew call Adult Swim. But he must have, because I found him leaning against the brick wall next to the bathroom door when I walked out. An arm’s length away from Drew was the Coke machine, where the hairy lifeguard was pressing every button to an electronic sold out flash. Drew held a bucket full of cleaning supplies. I guess he was waiting for me to come out so he could disinfect the toilets. Audrey and her friends would make the most of the opportunity presented; they’d talk to him. She’d think I was a goober if I ignored him.

  “Hey, thanks for helping me with those boys,” I said, getting lost in his gorgeous icy blue eyes. Oh, God, I was staring. Had he said something? Was he expecting a response? I had to say something. “Middle schoolers can be so immature.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at the closed door expectantly, then back at me. “I take it you’re not in middle school,” he said, implying that he thought I was, or worse, that I looked like I was in grade school.

  My burnt flesh actually flared higher. “Uh, no, I’m a freshman. Or I will be this fall.”

  “Really? Did you just move here?”

  I didn’t appreciate the surprise in his voice. “No, I’ve been fortunate enough to have lived in Pecan Hills my whole exciting life.”

  His mouth twitched like he was tempted to smile at my sarcasm, then he poked his head into the bathroom. “Anyone in here?” he called.

  “It’s okay,” I reassured him. “It’s empty.”

  “So where’s the girl you were talking to?” he asked.

  I swallowed, trying to ignore the itchiness that now competed with the nearly unbearable pain of my sunburn. “Um, I think she left through the door to the tennis courts.”

  With an odd sort of whoosh that felt like a cold breeze blowing inside me, Amy entered my body for the third time in less than a week. My core temperature must have dropped twenty degrees. So now I was itchy and freezing.

  Walking away from Drew was my only option. Who knew what Amy would make me do if I stuck around?

  Prepared to fight to take that first step, I was surprised at how easy it was to lead myself from Drew and any additional embarrassment. A little too easy.

  “See you around,” I said, shocked to be fully in control of my mouth. What was Amy up to?

  “Yeah,” he said, squinting, so that I could barely see the blue gorgeousness of his eyes. “What’s your name again?”

  Oh, my, God. Drew Blanton wanted to know my name. Okay. What was it? I couldn’t remember my own name.

  “Princess and the Pea!” Freckle boy shouted, and one of his buddies walked over to the nearby bench of shame to press fists with him.

  “It’s Tildy, Heather Tildy,” I said, suddenly remembering, then realizing with dread after I’d said it that I sounded like a James Bond wannabe. All I needed was a sardonic smile. I already had the freakin’ deep voice. My God, if Drew hadn’t already decided I was a superfreak, he would now.

  Okay, calm down, Heather. Just save face and walk away.

  Have you ever noticed how confident older girls walk when they are more than a little proud of their total package? How they swing their hips seductively and hold their heads high?

  Let me say right now, I have never attempted that I’m-so-hot stride, nor have I ever really thought of myself as sexy. I mean, I’d fantasized about Drew lusting after me, but I wasn’t delusional.

  As I pivoted toward the lounge chairs and my nice sister who would console me, Amy decided to try out a bootylicious strut, using my body like a puppet master.

  I kid you not, as I walked away from Drew and hoped my bikini bottom wouldn’t ride up my butt cheeks, she forced my hips into such an exaggerated swing that I wanted to melt into the concrete deck to escape the humiliation.

  Instead, I forced my lower limbs to stop. I looked back over my shoulder at Drew, who was biting his full lower lip and staring at me as if he was debating whether he needed to call 9-1-1 for a straight jacket. His forehead wrinkled, revealing worry lines I’d never noticed before.

  I shrugged. “I guess I should have warned you about my oddball sense of humor. The walk was a joke.”

  “Yeah. Right,” he said, shaking his head as he entered the girl’s bathroom with his cleaning bucket.

  Amy sailed out of me, and the sun seemed to beat down even harder.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Audrey’s roar filled the air. If she could have left her window at the snack bar, I think she would have killed me. Seriously.

  Our family vacation to Jekyll Island was coming up in a little less than four weeks, and Amy wasn’t tagging along with me to the beach or to anywhere else in this stinking town, for that matter. If she asked to go, my answer would be a big N-O. Even if she plucked all Dad’s grapes and I was blamed, I’d gladly suffer the consequences. As long as those consequences didn’t involve me being forbidden to go to my first boy-girl party, or being banned from the beach, or worse yet, being sent to Aunt Geneva’s for the rest of the summer.

  Claire’s fingers dug into the burnt itching flesh of my upper arm as she pulled me toward our lounge chairs. “We’re leaving.”

  “Stop. You’re hurting me.”

  She loosened her grip, slightly. “Heather, what is wr
ong with you, lately?”

  I decided to level with her. “It’s not my fault. See, this ghost took over my body.”

  “Ha, ha. Very funny.” She let go of my arm and started folding up my towels. “I think the heat and bathing suit trauma have warped your brain.” She reached out and poked my forearm, leaving a white mark that lingered for a second or two. “And as I suspected, you’re really burnt.”

  “It’ll turn brown by tomorrow.” I hoped. I prayed. I gathered the rest of my stuff.

  “What are we gonna do when get back to your house?” Amy asked. She should have been begging my forgiveness. “Oh, I know. Let’s play Hide and Go Seek.”

  Giving her the silent treatment, I zipped up my white cotton cover-up and noticed the toddler with the goggles sitting next to me, shaking his can of orange soda.

  I thought duck, just as he popped the top. The carbonated orange liquid spurted up and out like orange fireworks with a six-foot diameter trajectory.

  “No!” his mother screamed, and everyone including the boy, Mrs. Mom, his pig-tailed sister, and my sister, got sprinkled with sticky soda. Everyone, that is, but me. I seemed to be coated in some sort of ghost Teflon.

  They were too busy wiping off and grumbling to notice that I was dry and unstained. Why Amy would want to do something nice, albeit weird, I had no clue. But something told me I’d soon find out, and it wouldn’t make me any happier than I had made Audrey today.

  Claire and I started walking home in silence. Amy was kicking a rock the size of a gumball along the sidewalk in front of Claire, who didn’t notice, thanks to the street traffic. Or maybe my sister was just so angry with me for embarrassing her that she didn’t find it odd. Then again, she could be focusing on the yellow jackets and wasps she was attracting, thanks to the soda shower.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I asked as we moved out of the street and waited on the curb for a silver minivan to pass.

  Claire waved a yellow jacket away. “What else is there to say?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, wow, you must have been embarrassed when your top fell down. That’s called sympathy.”

  The van passed. Claire looked both ways and resumed walking in the road. “Yeah, well I’m not so sure you didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Heat rose from the sun-warmed asphalt adding to the increasing discomfort I was experiencing thanks to my own stupidity. My skin felt unnaturally tight. I stopped in the middle of the street. “Why would I want to reveal my so-called chest to everyone including Drew? I could understand you thinking that—if I’d had a boob job. But, hello, I’m not exactly endowed!”

  A gas-guzzling Hummer headed straight toward me and honked for me to get out of the way. I trotted to the curb.

  The guy in the Hummer slowed down and leaned his head out of the driver’s side open window. All the windows were lowered in his modified tank. His long bangs ruffled in the blast from his air conditioner vent. “What’s your problem?”

  “People like you wasting our fossil fuels!” I yelled back.

  Claire started walking away from me. Actually, with her rate of speed, I should have used the word running.

  The guy in the Hummer peeled away only to screech to a halt at the four-way intersection ahead. Jerk.

  “Come on, Claire. Wait up!”

  She thought about it for a second or two, then paused in front of supergeek Xavier’s house, a place I didn’t want to linger. All I needed was to somehow be associated with him, and I could kiss away any hope of redeeming myself in Audrey’s eyes. It was bad enough that Claire was even embarrassed by me.

  “I don’t like being the center of attention,” she said. Two wasps circled her head.

  “And I do?” I asked.

  She gazed at me over the rim of her sunglasses.

  “Look, I know you think my weirdness rubs off on you, and that people will now point and say, hey, it’s the sister of the topless girl—”

  “The sunburned, topless girl with the hoochie mama walk, don’t forget.”

  “How can I? If it makes you feel any better, Claire, I was flying the freak flag so high today, I doubt anyone even noticed you came to the pool with me. And your hair is lighter than mine. Worse case scenario, they might think we’re friends. Some people might not guess we share a similar genetic code.”

  Claire smiled begrudgingly. “You really think so? I’m so scared about school this fall. I don’t want people to point at me.”

  Having been pointed at most of my life, I understood. Claire was going to be a sixth-grader. The leap between grade and middle school was far from easy. I didn’t want to make it harder for her.

  “Give me your pinky,” I said, crooking mine towards her.

  Claire hooked her long, narrow finger with mine.

  “I swear that I will be normal. I will not embarrass you or myself like I did today, ever again.”

  No way could anything surpass the horror of what had gone down at the pool.

  I expected vapor girl to either return to her usual spot among the scuppernongs when we arrived hot and sweaty back at the house, but she didn’t. She followed me inside as I snuck up the back stairs, carefully avoiding my mom and her lecture on skin cancer, which was a given once she noticed my sunburn.

  The cool green walls of my room normally soothed me. Even the color’s name is calming—celadon. Not today. Not after what I had been through. Not with Amy in here with me.

  I squirted my lavender linen water on my bed, which apparently made it more interesting to Amy, who floated over there after examining my photo board, the left corner of it in particular. So I had taken some photos of Drew I’d copied from Audrey’s high school yearbook. That didn’t make me a stalker. It’s not like I camped out in front of his house.

  I turned on the radio, so I could claim I was singing if anyone noticed I was talking.

  Amy reclined against the pillowed back of my daybed.

  “In case you didn’t notice,” I said, hands on hips. “I didn’t give you permission to come with me into my room.”

  She gnawed at a ghostly nail. “Oh, I don’t need permission no more.”

  “Since when? You told me—”

  Amy, fast learner that she was, raised her ghostly hand like I’d done to her the other day. “I did a second nice thing for you, not that you’d consider thanking me.”

  I was stumped—completely. “How could anything you’ve done today be considered nice?”

  “Let’s see. I stopped that orange phosphate from getting on you, which meant those yeller jackets bothered Claire on the way home, not you.”

  Now that she’d saved me from a soda shower, she could go anywhere with me and materialize? Not good. Not good at all. “But doesn’t the mean stuff you did cancel the good?”

  “What mean stuff?”

  I threw one of my wet towels at her. “You made me swing my hips in front of Drew.”

  She laughed. “You wanted him to take notice of you, and he did.”

  “Notice in a good way, like, oh, Heather, she’s really cute or witty. Not, oh, Heather, she’s the weirdo, itchy exhibitionist. He must think I’m a loon.”

  Amy smirked. “You don’t look like no bird to me.”

  “I don’t mean loon the bird, I mean loon as in loony, as in crazy, mad, insane, which is what I am because I’m arguing with a ghost.”

  I had a big problem with her added mobility. If she wanted to, she could pretty much hang with me twenty-four, seven—guaranteeing that neither Audrey nor Drew would see me as anything other than a joke or an embarrassment. But first things first, I needed to get this damp bathing suit off. “Turn around,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m about to get naked, and I don’t want you looking.”

  Amy turned her back to me and stretched out along my comforter.

  I rifled through my chest of drawers and pulled out a tagless, oversized pima cotton tee and loose oversized tagless, cotton knit shorts. In case you didn
’t know, cotton is the fabric of choice for those of us with skin sensitivity issues.

  My sunburn stung more sharply as I moved. It actually felt like my skin had shrunk over my muscles. I glanced in my dresser mirror, and noted the lacy red rash marbling the stark white skin where my wet bathing suit had pressed for too long. It started to itch.

  I slid the tee over my now pounding head and red shoulders. Even the part in my hair hurt.

  Amy left my bed to hang on one of the blades of my ceiling fan. She spun around slowly in a circle. It looked disturbing, yet fun. Fun enough to fulfill the good time requirement? I wondered.

  “Heather?” Mom called from the hallway outside my door. I tensed. She hadn’t heard me talking to Amy, had she?

  “Will you please set the table for dinner?” she said, voice louder, closer to the door.

  “Let’s go. You gotta do your chores,” Amy ordered, leaving the fan, like setting the table was excitement to end all excitement.

  I scowled at Amy, then reminded Mom, “I’ve got dish duty. It’s Claire’s night to set.”

  “I know, but she’s not feeling well. She has growing pains.”

  Yeah, right. “So give her some Advil.”

  Mom opened my door. The look on her face said ‘no backtalk.’ “Set the table. If Claire’s feeling better after dinner, she’ll help you with the dishes.”

  “Fat chance of that happening,” I said, a little too loudly to qualify as under my breath.

  The skin between Mom’s eyebrows wrinkled. She entered my sanctuary, arms folded over the cleavage that hadn’t passed down to me. But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the same gene that gave her normal-sized breasts also gave her the propensity to wear oversized tee shirts with goofy sayings on them.

  She examined me from my burned part down to my red toes, which were maybe a couple of shades lighter than the spicy tomato polish I’d painted them. “Do you have a sunburn?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “Do I?”

  Amy flitted around my mother. She reached out and touched Mom’s wavy brown hair.