Mine

by Delilah S. Dawson

  “Lily? What on earth?”

  Lily stopped screaming and opened her eyes. Her mother stood in her doorway. There was no water on the floor, and the lamp was on again, and the fan was slowing to a standstill. The storm outside had fallen away to gray drizzle. Rachel had also stopped screaming; she swiftly pulled her hand away.

  “Hi, Mom,” Lily said, her voice scratchy and small.

  “Care to explain why you two are sitting on the bed, holding hands and screaming for no good reason? You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

  Lily felt a tiny wash of guilt at making her mom mad, but then again, there had been a very good reason for the screaming. It seemed to be the only thing that drove away…well, fine. She’d call it what it was.

  The ghost.

  Britney’s ghost.

  “We were just…,” Lily began. She looked at Rachel, who looked like she was in shock. With a deep breath, Lily put on a smile and said, “We were practicing our stage screams. I was teaching Rachel what I learned in Broadway camp. Sorry if we scared you.”

  Her mom’s face went from exasperated to annoyed. “Well, go outside if you want to make noise. Although I really wish you guys wouldn’t scream like that—it makes every adult in the area have a panic attack. I swear, my heart is still pounding.”

  Mine, too, Lily thought.

  Mom shook her head at them in that kids-are-so-silly way, then turned to leave.

  Rachel hopped up and shakily said, “I should go.”

  Lily’s heart fell. It had been a bad idea, letting Rachel come over to her stupid, creepy, haunted house. She was about to lose her first and only friend in the entire state of Florida, and it wasn’t even her fault.

  “No, wait,” Lily said, standing up. “Please.”

  Mom was all the way down the stairs now, and Rachel looked at Lily like she’d been wounded.

  “No offense. Like, I know it’s not your fault. But that was weird. Your room is just…I need to go. I’ll text you later.” She shivered and frowned and played with her friendship bracelets, waiting for Lily to say something.

  “Maybe we could go for a boat ride tomorrow?” Lily offered. “Or jump on the trampoline? I can just walk over, if you don’t want to go on the boat.”

  Rachel smiled weakly. “Yeah, okay, whatever. Just…you come to my house next time. And no more Ouija board.”

  Lily wanted to remind Rachel that she was the one who’d found the stupid thing in the first place, but she recognized a peace offering when she saw one. If Rachel never wanted to talk about ghosts again, that was fair, after what had just happened.

  As Rachel walked toward the door, she kept looking back, like Lily needed to be watched carefully.

  Lily followed her to the top of the stairs. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not…That hasn’t happened before. I don’t even know what just happened. I only knew that this was Britney’s room because her name is in some of the books.”

  Rachel shrugged. “Well, I guess we’ve learned a lesson about finding mysterious haunted Ouija boards in hidden secret stairs and using them to contact dead children.” A strangled giggle burst out of her mouth, surprising her. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just said that sentence. This is nuts. Yeah, definitely going home now. Text me if it ever starts to make sense, or if you think we had some kind of shared, messed-up daydream or got poisoned by peanut butter sandwiches.”

  Lily laughed, too, and she couldn’t believe that they were both laughing after what they’d just been through. The laughter seemed to help the fear drain away.

  “Yeah, okay. Lesson learned,” Lily said.

  Rachel gave a sad little wave and turned to go.

  But as she put her foot on the top stair, it was as if someone stepped out and shoved her. She squeaked and her arms pinwheeled as she floated in space for just a moment before tumbling, flailing down all fourteen steps with a series of sickening thumps.

  As Lily watched from upstairs, Rachel landed on the floor of the den like a broken doll.

  18.

  They had to call an ambulance. Lily’s mom used her cell phone, speaking quickly as she stumbled over their new address. Rachel was crying, but Lily’s mom told her not to touch Rachel, that she had definitely broken her arm and could possibly have damaged her back or neck. Rachel begged Lily’s mom to use her phone to call Kyle, and when Mom asked if Rachel wanted her to call her parents, too, Rachel muttered that they were in Greece and Carla would handle it, then went back to crying.

  Kyle beat the ambulance to the door, and he practically shoved Lily out of the way to get to Rachel, even as Mom warned him not to touch her. An older woman sat in the driver’s seat of the shiny Land Rover he’d leapt out of, glasses pulled down on her nose while she texted, frowning.

  “Don’t touch her? Screw that,” Kyle said, scooping Rachel up and hugging her to his chest as she really let loose with the sobs. “Where does it hurt, Rachy?” he asked in a soft voice.

  She just moaned and answered, “Everywhere.”

  The wail of sirens cut through all the tears, and Mom stood in the open door, arms crossed, waiting to direct the EMTs.

  Through all this, Lily just stood there, numb. She felt like she was watching things happen from someplace far removed, from the audience, like this was a play she’d seen before and wasn’t a part of. There was no role for her, nothing to do. Rachel wouldn’t look at her. Soon strangers in uniforms were rolling a gurney in and moving Rachel onto it as bright lights flashed in the yard and people talked into radios. Was this what it had looked like, Lily wondered, the night Rachel saw lights here?

  “What happened?” someone asked Mom, and Mom just said, “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. She fell down the stairs.”

  When one of the EMTs asked if there had been witnesses, Mom pointed them to Lily, and they asked her so many questions that she started crying, too.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she told them. “She was standing at the top of the stairs, and then she just fell.”

  One of the EMTs grabbed Lily’s hand, and turned it over, looking at her bloody fingertips. With everything else going on, she had totally forgotten about the pain.

  “What happened here?” he asked her, opening his kit and gently swabbing her skin with a sharp-smelling pad. He had a bushy beard, a deep Southern accent, and kind eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she moaned, shivering at the sting of whatever he was using.

  “You tellin’ me you don’t know how you ripped off four of your fingertips?”

  She shook her head, and closed her eyes, wishing for the pain to go away, and for Rachel to be okay, and for her house to be a place that felt good and comfortable and safe.

  “We were playing with a Ouija board,” she managed. “It…it got weird.”

  The EMT dabbed ointment on her fingertips and wrapped each one gently with a Band-Aid. “I’m not supposed to do this,” he said, “so we’ll keep it our secret. But maybe don’t go playing with that sort of scary stuff, okay? Looks like it got out of control.”

  They were rolling out Rachel’s gurney now, and Kyle was right beside his sister. Lily nodded at the EMT and murmured a thank-you before following the gurney out the door.

  “Are you okay?” she asked Rachel.

  Rachel had stopped crying. She was strapped down and had an IV in her hand with several bags dripping into it. Her smile was wide and wobbling, her pupils huge.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  It came out all slurry, and Lily figured she was on some kind of medicine for pain.

  “You’re not fine. You’ve got several fractures,” Kyle said. He pinned Lily with a glare. “You stay away from her, you hear me? Freaky kid, running out of the swamp. You let this happen to her!”

  Lily jerked back like he’d slapped her.
“Me? I didn’t do this!”

  “She’s right,” Rachel said, frowning and confused. “Wasn’t her. It was Britney.”

  “Who’s Britney?” Kyle asked.

  “The girl in the rain.”

  “The what?”

  But Rachel just turned her head away on the paper pillow, her eyes closing. They put her gurney in the back of the ambulance, and Kyle jumped in and shot up his middle finger at Lily as the doors closed.

  The emergency vehicles pulled away, lights on and sirens off, and Lily just stood on the wet gravel and watched, feeling sick with guilt. Warm arms encircled her, and Mom hugged her from behind.

  “She’s going to be okay, sweetie,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Lily replied. Right now, it felt like nothing would ever be okay again.

  “She just slipped. It was an accident.”

  Lily took a deep breath. “No, Mom. It was a ghost. Our house is haunted.”

  There was a long, expectant pause, and her mom sighed sadly, her chin on Lily’s shoulder.

  “I know it’s your thing, but let’s not be dramatic about something this serious. Old houses can be creepy, and I know you don’t like it here yet. But you can’t blame this on ghosts. Rachel is just a little girl who went down some old wood stairs too fast in her socks. We probably need to get some carpet put down so it doesn’t happen again.” Mom pulled away. “Oh God. Do you think her parents are going to sue us? Can they sue us for that? I’ve got to call your father.”

  Mom hurried inside, leaving Lily alone in the driveway. Standing there, she could feel the blood pulsing in her bandaged fingertips. Were they burned? Frozen? Torn? She hadn’t really looked; she just knew they were bleeding. Carefully she peeled back one of the Band-Aids.

  All she saw was blood.

  19.

  Dinner was quiet that night. Lily could tell that her parents were nervous about Rachel’s fall. Her mom’s phone was out on the table, and both her parents kept glancing nervously at the door, waiting for Rachel’s angry parents—or their angry lawyers—to knock. But nothing happened. Lily barely tasted her food, and no one asked her about her four identical Band-Aids—well, five, considering the accident with the scissors. She longed for the comforts of Wi-Fi and full bars, of being able to distract herself with stupid memes or a cozy Disney movie marathon. There were about a dozen things she needed to Google. But all she had was her barely functional phone, which was only good for talking and texting—and sometimes not even that.

  Lily’s parents disappeared to their room after dinner, and hearing them argue through their closed door was about the only thing in the world more uncomfortable than sharing her room with an angry ghost. She put away the dishes herself and went upstairs, careful to hold the railing tightly. She was surprised to find the Ouija board still upside down at the top of the stairs, and for now, she carefully stepped over it and left it there.

  The lamp in her room was still on, everything exactly as it had been when Rachel fell. On hands and knees, she found the planchette under her bed and swept it out using one of Britney’s books. She put socks over her hands before she returned the Ouija board and planchette to their box and put the top on it—she definitely wasn’t going to touch any of it again with her skin. Sitting on her butt, she scooted down the steps one by one, put the board back in the secret stair, and refitted everything so it looked totally normal. If she’d had superglue or a hammer and nails, she would’ve made sure no one else could get that Ouija board out of its hiding place ever again.

  Back in her room, Lily walked around nervously. It didn’t feel safe. It didn’t feel like home. It felt like Britney’s place, like Britney could come back anytime and do something horrible. But downstairs felt no better, and she couldn’t imagine trying to fall asleep on the old, musty couch. She was so exhausted and sleepy she could hardly stand, but she was filled with nervous energy. She couldn’t even do the math to figure out how long she’d gone without a full night’s sleep.

  She wasn’t sure what to do, but she had an idea and figured it might be worth a try. She pulled a blank page out of one of Britney’s books, picked up a pen, and wrote,

  Dear Britney,

  I’m sorry that you are angry. My parents said this was my room, so I have to live here now. Maybe you’re the one who should go away. You don’t belong here, and you’re hurting people. Please leave us alone.

  Signed,

  Lily

  She left the note on the floor by the door and hoped it would be enough.

  When she finally curled up in bed under her comforter, now stained with rusty-red drips from her fingertips, Lily didn’t think she’d ever fall asleep. But the horrors of the day had used up all her energy. She nodded off almost immediately.

  Her dreams were strange and very real. It was almost like she was awake as she threw off the covers, then snarled and pulled the comforter and sheets off the bed, hurling the pillows with all her might and stomping on the pile of fabric. She found the note by the door and sank her teeth into it, ripping it to shreds with her mouth and hands.

  She walked down the center of the stairs, unafraid of falling, unlocked the front door, and went outside. The moon was a Cheshire Cat grin high in a cloudless sky, and she smiled at the stars and identified Orion’s belt and Sirius and the Big Dipper. She put two fingers between her lips and whistled, and a joyous bark sounded in the forest. Soon Buddy came running with a new confidence, his tail wagging like a flag as he leapt up and put his paws on her, then frisked around and rolled on the ground, showing his belly for tummy rubs. She knelt and patted him all over and accepted his frantic licks before standing again and looking out toward the lake.

  The gravel hurt her bare feet, but she didn’t care. Walking toward the dock, she felt mosquitoes land on her and didn’t slap them away. The humid air settled over her like a blanket, and she breathed in deep, smelling the lemons on the trees and the honeysuckle tangled in the forest, all of nature opening up to the night’s heat like a million hungry mouths. It felt good being here. It felt like home.

  She kept walking until she stood fearlessly on the dock. The old wood was wet and soft under her feet, and she curled her toes into it. She went to the edge and sat down, letting her feet slip into the blood-warm water. Buddy settled down and sat by her side. She rubbed his skull and watched a big turtle surface and splash in the still black lake. It was so peaceful, so comforting.

  And then, suddenly, terrifyingly, everything went black. Her eyes were stuck open, and her teeth clacked together, and she was falling, falling, falling through the deep black water. All around her, the water was churning up, muddy, opaque, thick, and something was pulling at her, pulling her down, scratching her face and arms. But she couldn’t fight it, couldn’t move.

  She just sank, sank, sank to the bottom of the deep, dark lake where all was still and black and she couldn’t even open her mouth to scream.

  And then the dream ended.

  20.

  When she woke up the next morning, Lily was asleep on top of her comforter and sheets on the floor, covered in mosquito bites, and her feet were wet with mud. When her mom asked her why the front door was wide open, she had no idea.

  She couldn’t remember her dreams.

  And the note she’d left for Britney was gone.

  21.

  With CJ away at camp and Rachel not answering Lily’s texts, the days were long and boring. She read and crocheted and made friendship bracelets despite the fact that she now had no one to give them to. No matter where she was or what she did, Lily felt like the world was holding its breath, just waiting to exhale. Sometimes she thought maybe she was being watched, but when she spun around to look behind her, no one was there. She would take food outside whenever she felt lonely and call out for Buddy. She had never been able to whistle between her fingers before, but now she could, and anytime he
heard her whistle, he came running. She had dreams of floating in blue water and woke up wishing her pool was clean.

  One time, she fell asleep on the couch in the afternoon and woke up on her belly on the dock, her fingers trailing in the water. She tried to convince herself she’d been sleepwalking, but even her increasingly wild imagination couldn’t fabricate a realistic story for why she would go there. She began subtly shoving chairs against the front door before she went to sleep, hoping that it would stop happening. She didn’t tell her parents, though; it was exhausting being called overly dramatic when overly dramatic things were happening against one’s will. It felt as if she were drifting through the days, floating on a lazy river, propelled by something outside herself.

  One morning, when Buddy wasn’t scared of her anymore and her mom was out shopping, she found an old bucket and took it outside. She filled it with hose water and added a squirt of shampoo and whistled. Buddy came running, and when he saw the hose, he wriggled with happiness and tried to bite the water. As long as she kept feeding him bits of food, he stood still enough for the bath. The fur that was revealed was a soft golden brown, and when she rinsed out the dirt and sticks and tangles that she had not yet cut out, it curled up. He looked like a real dog, like a well-loved dog, like a dog that any mother might welcome into her house, if he promised not to pee on anything. Lily still hadn’t found his lost collar, and she had to assume her mother had thrown it away. When she ran out of food, Buddy bounced off into the forest, back to wherever it was he spent most of his time. He wouldn’t come back no matter how much she whistled, so her hope of convincing her mom to let him come inside crumbled.

  With nothing to do and the days gone long and hot, Lily took to reading more of Britney’s books off the shelf in her room. They were all fantasy books, epic tales of magical realms where children had great powers and were often the key to saving the world. She hadn’t liked this type of book so much before, had thought them frivolous and silly. She had enjoyed more realistic books about real kids with real problems—and, of course, anything about drama kids in particular. But now that she had real problems, the escape into fantasy was welcome. It was strange, though. There seemed to be fewer books than she remembered. The shelves had been crowded when she’d arrived, and now there was so much room that some of the books had fallen sideways.