The Girl and the Ghost

by Hanna Alkaf

  “Poor things,” Suraya said softly, and the other girl snorted.

  “If you say so,” she said. Then she quickly slipped away. It wouldn’t do to be seen talking to Suraya, not when the new girl was so clearly in Kamelia’s crosshairs.

  Pink poked his head out of Suraya’s worn shirt pocket to drink in the sight of the two girls, their long, shiny hair now cropped close to their heads, and smiled a slow, wicked smile.

  It was only what they deserved.

  Nine

  Ghost

  AFTER THE LICE incident, Kamelia and Divya’s reign of terror seemed to lose steam. They didn’t exactly stop being their mean, bullying selves, but they seemed to shrink slightly, as if losing their hair meant losing some of their power.

  For Suraya, this meant happier, lighter times. She could often make it through entire school days with nothing worse happening to her than a tug of her braid or a small shove in the chaos before assembly. It didn’t mean making friends became any easier—unpopularity is a leech that’s hard to shake off once it sinks its teeth into you—but she accepted this as she always had, and was content. She put her head down in class and concentrated on her work; she spent every recess with Pink in the secret spot they’d found on the first day of school, in the dappled sunshine that filtered through the frangipani leaves. Slowly, Pink could feel her unclenching, settling in, settling down, and he was glad.

  In fact, Suraya and Pink could quite happily have gone on this way forever, if not for the new girl.

  She appeared one day about a month into the school year, standing quietly next to their teacher Puan Rosnah as she made the introductions. “Class!” Puan Rosnah clapped her plump hands hard, and the sharp cracks brought an abrupt stop to their chatter. “Class! We have a new student. Her name is Jing Wei, and I’m sure you’ll make her feel very welcome.” There was an obvious emphasis on the last two words, and the class snickered. Suraya looked with interest at this new girl, who was gazing back at her new classmates in a way that seemed entirely unconcerned. She was small, this Jing Wei, with black-rimmed glasses that seemed to take up half of her face, a sunburned nose, and hair cropped short like a boy’s—a rare sight in this school, where hair served as a sort of status symbol, and the longer and shinier it was, the better.

  Introductions over, Jing Wei slipped into a seat in the middle of the class and took out her history book. If she was aware of the curious stares and hushed whispers of the other girls, she didn’t show it.

  It was pouring with rain when the bell rang for recess, and the girls raced for the best spots in the canteen and the school hall. Suraya followed slowly, her hands clutching her plastic lunch container, her eyes on the new girl. Jing Wei walked serenely among the boisterous crowd, carefully staking out a spot for herself in a stairwell just off the hall, away from the noise and the damp. She had a book in one hand and her own lunch box in the other.

  Pink could feel Suraya hesitate. Go and talk to her, he said. Go on. Why not? We’ve got nothing to lose.

  (Later, Pink would think back and wonder why he’d said this; why he hadn’t just said Come, let’s go sit over in that corner, just you and me, like we always do. But big moments don’t come with price tags, and Pink would have no idea how much this moment cost him until much later.)

  Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath, and Pink almost lost his balance in her swaying pocket.

  “Okay,” she muttered under her breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  She walked over and stood awkwardly in front of the new girl, who looked up from her book. “Hullo,” Jing Wei said cheerily. “I’m Jing Wei, who’re you?”

  “I’m Suraya.” She shuffled her feet. “Is it okay if I sit with you?”

  “Ya, of course.” Jing Wei slid over to make room for her on the step, and Suraya sat down, smiling shyly. “I got pork in my lunch though. Is that okay?”

  “Ya, it’s okay, I don’t mind.”

  “I know some Malay girls don’t like when I eat pork near them.” Jing Wei shrugged, spooning another heap of rice into her mouth. “But I dunno why. Not like I force you to eat it also, right?”

  “Right.” Suraya took a small bite of the kaya and butter sandwich she’d made for herself that morning and glanced down at the other girl’s book. “What are you reading?”

  Jing Wei’s small face lit up. When she smiled, her eyes crinkled up until they almost disappeared. “It’s a great book! It’s called A Wrinkle in Time. You know it?”

  “Know it! I’ve read it like four times!” Suraya’s smile was so wide it nearly cracked her face in two. “It’s one of my favorite books.”

  “Wah, four times! It’s only my first time, but I’m almost halfway through already. I like that Charles Wallace, he’s damn smart.”

  Suraya nodded, wiping a spot of kaya from the side of her mouth. “You like to read?”

  “Oh ya.” Jing Wei scraped the last of her rice out of her container, which was black and shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet. “My mother said that’s how I ruined my eyes, because I read all the time. As if that’s a bad thing. You read a lot too?”

  “Yes. I . . . don’t have many friends, so I have a lot of time to read.”

  “Hah? No friends? Why ah?” Jing Wei regarded her with frank curiosity, pushing her glasses back up her nose, and Suraya shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m new to this school, and I live pretty far away. But even back home I don’t have many friends. I guess other girls just . . . don’t like me.”

  “You seem okay to me.” Her smile was wide and friendly. “And you like to read too! If you like Star Wars then we’re definitely going to be friends.”

  “I’ve never seen Star Wars,” Suraya confessed, and then began to laugh at Jing Wei’s expression of open-mouthed dismay.

  “Ohmygoooooood, never seen Star Wars? You serious? You have to come to my house and watch it, I’ve got all of them, on Blu-Ray somemore.”

  It was the first time Suraya’d ever been invited back to someone’s home, and Pink thought his nonexistent heart might burst with happiness and pride.

  “Okay,” Suraya said happily. “Okay, I will. And you can come to my house and look at my books.”

  “Cool!”

  “Hey, are you done?” Pink frowned; Suraya’s own container was still half full of the soggy sandwiches she’d put together that morning.

  “Ya, why?” Bits of rice flew out as Jing replied through her last mouthful.

  “I want to show you this secret spot I like to go to during recess, before the bell rings. You know. To get away from people.”

  Their secret place? Pink felt his heart sink. Their own special spot, the one place they went to for a little peace during the chaos of the school day?

  She was taking this strange new girl to their secret place?

  Pink felt it then: a shimmer in the air, a ripple that told him change was coming, a hot flame of anger licking delicately at his insides. We have nothing to lose, he’d told Suraya, but suddenly he wondered: She has nothing to lose. Do I?

  But Suraya and Jing Wei noticed nothing. They raced happily toward the frangipani trees, secure in the knowledge that they’d each found a friend.

  Ten

  Girl

  SURAYA HAD WATCHED the animated movie Pinocchio exactly once, and then never again, because the bearded puppet master Stromboli, with his dark beard and his wild eyes, freaked her out and gave her nightmares for a week. She’d taken the DVD and hidden it in the crack between the bookcase and the wall, where there was space for little else but dust and geckos. It was, as far as she knew, still there.

  But when she looked back on the moment she met Jing Wei, she would say that, much like the little boy made of wood, this was the moment that she felt like she became real. This was the moment she began to blossom into herself. It was as if having Jing accept her showed her that it was okay to accept herself too. She stopped stooping and trying to hide behind her hair; she walked tall and l
ooked people in the eye when they spoke to her. And it was refreshing to have a friendship she didn’t need to hide, for once.

  With Jing Wei by her side, she learned to laugh, and even to make jokes of her own. They were never apart, and the other girls got used to seeing the two of them together, the tall, lanky figure of Suraya beside the petite Jing, who barely came up to Suraya’s shoulder. The two exchanged books, shared their food—as long as it was halal, of course—and talked about everything, from what they’d read to their families. Suraya even showed Jing her notebook, a new one, its thin blue lines slowly filling with a cast of colorful characters, improbable scenes, fantastic beasts. She’d held her breath as Jing flipped slowly through the pages, and didn’t let go until she heard Jing’s breathless, drawn-out “Coooooooooooooooool.”

  Jing had a huge family, a cast of thousands, and her stories were often peopled with colorful characters: grandparents, uncles, aunts, and a never-ending stream of cousins, whom she divided into cousin-brothers and cousin-sisters.

  She was fascinated by the idea of a family consisting of just two people. “But you don’t have any cousins or anything?”

  “No,” Suraya said. “It’s just me and my mother.”

  “And your dad?”

  Suraya looked down, studying the frayed tips of her shoes intently. “He died a long time ago. I was really little. I don’t even remember him. My mother never talks about him.”

  She looked up to see Jing looking at her with frank sympathy and understanding. “It’s okay. My dad died too, you know.” She pushed her glasses back up from where they’d slid down her nose. “Just last year. He loved Star Wars. We used to watch all the movies together, have lightsaber battles.” She lapsed into silence, and Suraya’s heart ached for her.

  “How did he die?” she asked gently.

  “Heart attack. He didn’t even know there was anything wrong. He had a pain, he said. We thought resting would help. Next morning . . .” Her voice trailed off, and Suraya thought she detected a glint of tears behind those glasses. “Anyway. That’s why Ma moved us back here, so we could be closer to family.”

  Suraya nodded. “I wish we had more family,” she said wistfully.

  Jing glanced at her. “You have me now what.” Her tone was light, but her hand brushed against Suraya’s as she spoke, and her smile lit up her entire face.

  “I do,” Suraya said. Her answering smile was so wide it made her cheeks ache.

  She went on the first of many visits to Jing Wei’s house, a neat, modern affair in a neat, modern neighborhood ten minutes from school. Jing’s mother—“Call me Aunty Soo, dear”—picked them up in her car, a trim red Mercedes-Benz, and served them fried rice she’d bought from a stall nearby for lunch. “Halal, darling, don’t worry,” she’d said, patting Suraya’s shoulder with a perfectly manicured hand, the nails painted bright red. “I purposely went to buy from that stall because I knew you were coming. Ha, eat, eat, don’t be shy ya, you want somemore you just ask.”

  “Okay, aunty,” Suraya said, her mouth full, her heart so happy she thought it might burst.

  Jing’s room was big and sunny, like her personality, and full and colorful, like her life. The walls were painted a soft blue, and there was an entire wall of shelves crammed full of books and DVDs and toys. “I used to play with those when I was small,” she said quickly as she saw Suraya’s eyes linger on the worn dolls and teddies. “Not anymore.” There was a desk with a shiny laptop and piles of books and notebooks, and in the corner, Jing’s own small TV and DVD player.

  Suraya ran her hands along the books, craning her neck to read their spines while Jing Wei popped a DVD out of a case on her desk and crammed it into the player. “Come on, come on!” she said, grabbing Suraya’s hand and forcing her to sit down on the bed. “Okay,” she said, standing next to the TV with the remote in her hand, a serious look on her face. “There are prequels, and there’s the original trilogy. I’m gonna make you watch the original trilogy first, ’cause the prequels suuuuuuck.”

  “Does that mean I don’t have to watch them?”

  Jing stared at her, wrinkling her nose. “Of COURSE you have to watch them, Sooz. I just mean you watch these ones first, because then you’ll get why people love these movies so much. Then only you watch the others so you get the full story. Understand?”

  Suraya smiled and rolled her eyes. “Okay, cikgu. Teach me the way of Star Wars.”

  They watched them all as the weeks passed, in between doing their homework and talking and eating the snacks that Jing’s mother pressed on them in between, from fresh pisang goreng, the batter fried to crispy golden perfection, the banana inside still warm and steaming, to ais krim potong, blocks hand-cut from frozen ice cream, skewered with sticks, and flavored with everything from mangos to lychees and deliciously refreshing on hot afternoons. The more she was there, the more she experienced of Jing’s seemingly charmed life, the less willing Suraya was to let Jing see her own. Jing almost forgave Suraya for never quite being as excited about Star Wars as she was, though that didn’t mean she stopped trying to stoke her enthusiasm for it. But she never understood why Suraya wouldn’t invite her to her house.

  “I could go with you on the bus what,” she said. “And I could see your room and your books, and you could show me the orchards and the paddy fields. I’ve never even seen paddy fields in real life, Sooz.” Jing Wei had spent her whole life in cities and towns; Suraya’s stories of climbing trees and plucking fruit right from the branch fascinated her.

  Suraya thought of Mama, distant and cold, and the shabby wooden house on the edge of the paddy fields. The idea of Jing setting foot into her bare little room was enough to make her shudder. “No lah,” she demurred, trying to sound casual. “It’s too far, and my mom is always working. Better I come here.”

  “Then can’t I come on a weekend, or something?” Jing pressed on. “Some time when your mom isn’t working. She can’t be working all the time lah right?”

  “Right,” Suraya said. “I’ll ask her.”

  She never did. She was quite happy with her life as it was, quite happy to endure Kamelia and Divya, and the long bus ride later in the day that brought her home close to sundown, if this warmth and friendship was what she got in return. And eventually, Jing stopped asking.

  Mama, for her part, never asked where she’d been all day; she just assumed, Suraya guessed, that it was a school thing.

  She realized that being Pink’s friend was like dancing on the edge of a precipice; it was fun, and you were on solid ground as long as you didn’t slip, but you worried about that line separating you from the darkness all the time. Being friends with Jing, by contrast, was like . . . just dancing, with a partner who matched your every move. It was easy and free, balancing and satisfying. It felt right. It felt good.

  And so life went on, in a way that made Suraya the happiest she had ever been.

  Eleven

  Ghost

  BUT WHAT ABOUT Pink?

  This was a question that Pink found himself asking constantly as Suraya watched movies and ate meals and spent hours talking and giggling with Jing. What about me? What about me, Suraya, what about me?

  No longer did they spend their time idling in the sunshine, or lying on the cold kitchen floor to escape the heat, or nestled in the crook of tree branches, Suraya’s feet swinging in the air as they talked. She turned to him less and less as he lay curled up in the pocket of her school shirt, listening to the rhythm and music of her day. She often dozed off on the long bus ride back home from Jing’s house, leaving Pink to stare out of the window as streaks of orange and rose wove themselves through the darkening sky, and at home, between dinner and bed, there was barely any time to talk at all. “G’night, Pink,” she’d say sleepily as they curled up together the way they had for years, but even as she slept peacefully in his arms, Pink could feel that he was losing her. They were bound together by blood, as they always were—but she’d never been so far from him.

&
nbsp; Do you not think you are spending too much time with this girl? he’d asked her one day, trying to mask his anxiety, the fretful note that crept into his voice.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she’d answered, with a puzzled smile. “At least, I haven’t heard her complain about it. Why?”

  It doesn’t leave much time for other people. By for other people, Pink really meant for me. But he was hoping she’d understand that on her own; it felt vaguely embarrassing to have to talk about his emotions like this.

  “There’s really nobody else I’d want to spend that time with anyway,” Suraya had said, and the way she laughed as she said the words, so careless, so lighthearted, tore right through his chest.

  And he didn’t know what to do about it. What was this feeling, this sense of loss? Loneliness? Fear? Resentment? The ghost didn’t know. All he knew was he didn’t like it, not one bit. Ghosts, he told himself sternly, were not meant to feel things. Therefore, he couldn’t possibly be feeling those things, yes? Yes.

  The only way he knew how to cope with this mysterious new sea of emotions he found himself navigating was by hanging on to the one thing he did recognize: anger.

  Anger was good. Anger was familiar. Anger was nourishment to a dark spirit like himself. He could work with anger.

  But how?

  The source of his anger, Pink knew, was Jing Wei. Jing Wei, with her smug little grin and her irritating giggles and her whispered confidences. Jing Wei, who had waltzed into school with her offer of friendship and stolen his Suraya away, the way the witch used to lure children with those perfect, mouth-watering jambu.

  And so it was to Jing Wei that he directed his anger.

  His magics were small at first. A lost storybook, one of her favorites. A scratch on her favorite Star Wars DVD (The Empire Strikes Back, a movie far superior, she insisted to Suraya, than all the others), rendering it unplayable. A smack to the face during a game of netball, shattering her glasses into three pieces and bruising her cheek. An ink blot blossoming on the pages of her English essay, eating up the neatly written words until only a third could be seen, earning her a sharp rap on the knuckles from Miss Low’s heavy wooden ruler—Miss Low never could tolerate any carelessness in homework. A hole in the pocket of her pinafore, so that her pocket money worked its way out and she had to go without the new Millennium Falcon figurine she’d been saving up for. “I don’t know how it happened,” she told Suraya, blinking back tears of disappointment as they frantically retraced her steps. “It’s never happened before.”