The The Name of the Star (20 page)

“So,” I said, “it's your job to hang around with me?”

“Pretty much,” she said.

“How does this work?”

“Well, Stephen's an actual police officer with a uniform and everything. Callum works undercover on the Underground, because there's loads of ghosts down there. And I'm new. My first assignment was to come and watch over you.”

“So you had something happen to you?” I asked. “That's why you're like this?”

“When I was eighteen, I was a bit of a club kid—”

“When you were eighteen? How old are you now?”

“Twenty.”

“Twenty?”

“I'm a fake student,” she said. “With a fake age. Anyway, my friend Violet and I were coming home from a club. She was driving. I knew she was drunk. I should never have gotten in the car. I should have stopped her. But I was kind of drunk myself, and I didn't always make the best decisions back then. We ran smack into a bollard. There was smoke, we were bloody, Violet was unconscious. I heard this voice telling me to keep calm, to get out of the car. I looked over, and it was Jo. She was standing there. I was crying, completely freaking out, but she talked me through it. We've been best friends since then. Actually, I tried to get her a phone for Christmas. She can carry things—not big things, but she can lift things like phones. But it's kind of hard owning things when you're a ghost. You don't have pockets or anything. And people would just see a phone floating around, which would be weird. She picks up trash because she likes to keep busy, and apparently people don't notice trash moving. They think the wind's blown it or someone's thrown it. You have to think about these kinds of things when you're a ghost.”

“I don't know if I can do this,” I said.

“Do what?”

“This
thing
. This thing that I am.”

“Course you can. There's nothing to
do
, anyway. It's just natural, yeah?”

“How am I supposed to do all this work?” I said, running my hands through my hair. “This essay. I have to write it this weekend. I have to write an
essay
on Samuel
Pepys
and his stupid frickin'
diary
and I can see
ghosts
.”

I walked around the room, picking up my things, putting them back down again, trying to establish some baseline of reality. Everything seemed the same. Same room. Same Boo. Same ashtray. Same unwashed mug with red wine residue in it.

Boo ate her sandwich and watched me.

“I've got it,” she said, brushing the crumbs from her lap onto the floor. “The library.”

 

As it was a Saturday night and just before dinner, there were only a handful of people in the library, and those who were weren't the kind who paid much notice to other people. They were all deep in their zones—headphones, computers, books. Boo walked the floor quickly, weaving in and out of all the stacks downstairs, then going upstairs and doing the same thing. Alistair was sprawled on one of the wide windowsills at the end of the literature section, authors Ea–Gr row. He had one leg stretched high, his Doc Martens boot planted flat against the side of the window, the other hanging down. He seemed to be the focus of Boo's search, because she walked right up to him.

“She knows now,” Boo said.

Alistair lazily lifted his gaze from the book.

“Congratulations,” he said drily.

I still had no idea what we were doing. My thoughts were moving very slowly. They both looked at me, and when I didn't respond, Boo explained.

“What we just talked about,” Boo said. “Alistair is . . . like that.”

“Like . . .”

And then I realized why Alistair was looking at me like I was so stupid. The eighties look he was rocking—that was no look. That was his actual hairstyle from the actual eighties.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You're . . .”

“Yeah! He's dead.”

Boo said it like she was telling me it was his birthday. Alistair looked . . . like a person. The spiked hair and the rolled jeans and the big trench coat . . . I reached up and touched my own hair—longish, straight, very dark—and was suddenly very glad that I hadn't dyed it pink, like I'd been considering. Pink hair for a few weeks, fine. Pink hair for eternity, that I wasn't so sure about.

Which was not a good or decent thought to be thinking. I should have been thinking about the nature of life, the idea of dying at eighteen at school, the idea that for some people, death wasn't the end. But those were all big thoughts, too big for me right now. So I concentrated on his hair. His eternal hair. His eternal Doc Martens.

I started laughing hysterically. I laughed so hard, I thought I was pretty much going to throw up in the middle of the literature section. Someone came into the end of the aisle and stared at me in annoyance, but I couldn't stop. When I finally got it under control a little, Alistair slipped down from his perch.

“Come on,” he said. “Might as well show you.”

He walked us down to the ground floor, to the research section, by the librarian's desk. There was a shelf full of
The Wexford Register,
the school newspaper, bound in green leather.

“March 1989,” he said.

Boo pulled the 1989 volume down and set it on one of the nearby tables. She flipped through to March. The paper looked weirdly cheap and cheesy, roughly typed. We found a large photo of Alistair on the front of the issue from March 17. He was smiling in the photo, his hair particularly large and obviously bleached blond even in black-and-white. The headline read “Wexford Mourns Death of Student.” “‘Alistair Gilliam died in his sleep on Thursday evening,'” Boo read softly. “‘He was the editor of the school literary magazine and was well-known for his love of poetry and the band the Smiths' . . . in your sleep?” “Asthma attack,” Alistair said.

I started to giggle again. It rose up in my throat. The librarian looked over with an annoyed expression and put his finger to his lips. Boo nodded, replaced the book, and we returned to the privacy of the upstairs stacks. After checking to make sure we were basically alone, she continued the conversation.

“You didn't die here,” Boo said quietly. “So why do you come here?”

“Would you want to stay in Aldshot all the time? At least here I can read. Got nothing else to do. Read everything in here—twice. Well, most of it. Lots of it's shite.”

“It's great how you can pick up the books and turn pages,” Boo said.

“It took time,” he said. “But what about you two? You usually don't come in pairs.”

“You've met people like us before?” Boo asked.

“One or two over the years. But they're always alone, and always a bit mental.”

Not a great endorsement of my kind. And from the way Alistair was looking at me, I could tell that he hadn't quite put me in the nonmental category yet.

“We're a bit special,” Boo said. “I'm a police officer.”

“You're a rozzer?” Alistair laughed properly for the first time.

“
Yes,
me,” she said. “We're working on the Ripper case. The Ripper is . . . like you.”

“What do you mean,
like me
? You mean dead?”

Boo nodded.

“Dead, but nothing like me. We're not all alike, you know.”

“Course!” Boo said. “Sorry!”

“I'm not into killers,” Alistair replied. “I was a vegetarian. Meat is murder, you know.”

“I'm
really
sorry.”

Boo reached out and touched his arm. He looked solid enough.

“How are you doing that?” I said. “I saw someone walk through that other woman.”

“Oh,” Boo said. “It depends on the person. Some people are really solid. Some are a bit more like air. Alistair is more solid. Can you pass through things? Doors, or walls?”

“I don't like to,” he said. “I can. It takes time.”

“The more solid, the longer it takes and the harder it is. The ones who are more like air, they can do that more easily, but they're not as physically strong. It's harder for them to move things. But all ghosts are people, and you just respect them, no matter what they're like, yeah?”

Alistair seemed mollified by this ghosts' rights speech.

“Rory is needed for the investigation, see?” Boo said. “And she's just found out what she can do, and it takes some time to adjust to that. She has this assignment to do, and obviously, she can't do it. So, I was thinking, maybe you could help?”

Alistair didn't, to my surprise, walk away or simply evaporate in disgust (because, for all I knew, he could do that).

“What is it?” he asked.

“Six to eight pages on the major themes of
The Diary of Samuel Pepys,
” I said automatically.

“
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
is massive,” Alistair replied.

“Oh . . . I mean, just the part about the fire.”

“The major theme of the part about the fire is the fire.”

“Also . . . rhetorical technique, or something.”

“Could you help us with that?” Boo asked. She had an alarmingly huge smile. “I mean, you're obviously clever, and we have a murderer to stop. Can you type, or—”

“I
don't
type.”

“Or write,” she said quickly. “Can you hold a pen?”

“I haven't practiced in a while,” he replied. “I used to be able to do it. When do you need it?”

“Tomorrow morning?” I replied.

Alistair tapped his mouth with his fisted hand and thought for a moment.

“I want music,” he said.

“Music!” Boo nodded. “We can get you music! What music do you want?”

“I want
Strangeways, Here We Come
by the Smiths and
Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
by the Cure—”

“Wait, wait . . .”

Boo hurried off. I heard her making her way down the steps. While she was gone, I just stared at Alistair and he stared back at me.

“Pen,” she said as she returned. She held up a pen as proof. “Say those again.”

Alistair repeated his album choices, and Boo wrote them down on her palm.

“And
London Calling,
” he added, leaning over to make sure she was getting the names right. “I want
London Calling
by the Clash.”

“I'll get you these albums tonight,” she said, holding out her hand so he could see what she had written. “And something to play them on. Deal?”

“I suppose,” he said. “Wait . . . I also want
The Queen Is Dead.
Also by the Smiths.”

“Four albums,” she said, holding up her palm to show him. “One paper.
Deal?”

“Deal,” he said.

 

“See that?” Boo asked when we were outside. “Not scary, is he? And your paper is sorted.”

There was something in what she was saying. Alistair hadn't scared me. There was really nothing weird about the conversation at all, if you discounted the fact that we had discussed an article about his death.

“Are there any other ghosts around here?” I asked.

“Not that I've seen, but sometimes they're shy. A lot of them love attics, basements, underground areas. People scare them. Funny, isn't it? People are scared of ghosts, ghosts are scared of people, when there's no reason for any of it.”

“Except that the Ripper is a ghost,” I said. “There is no humanly possible way for me
not
to worry about that. And Jerome thinks I'm insane.”

“Oh.” Boo waved her hand dismissively. “He'll forget.”

“I don't think he will.”

“Course he will. And it's only Jerome.”

My silence intrigued her.

“You?” she said. “And Jerome?”

I remained silent.

“Seriously? You and Jerome?”

“It's not . . . It's not a—”

“Oh,” she said, smiling hugely. “Then don't worry. I'll fix it.”

22

J
EROME DIDN'T FORGET. OF COURSE HE DIDN'T FORGET. I saw an invisible woman and ran away from class. No one forgets that. And then I'd hidden myself away for the rest of the day, which didn't help.

When I walked into breakfast the next morning, I saw him sitting with Andrew. He raised his head when he saw me come in and nodded. Boo and I got into line. She filled up a plate with a full English—eggs, bacon, fried bread, mushrooms, tomatoes. Like me, she could put it away. That morning, though, I had no appetite. I took some toast.

“No sausage?” the lady behind the counter said. “Feeling ill?”

“I'm fine,” I said.

“Don't worry so much,” Boo said.

We took our seats, sitting on the opposite side of the table from Jerome and Andrew. They'd left space for us, as normal.

 

 

 

 

“Hi,” I said.

Jerome looked over at me from the remains of his breakfast.

“No sausage?” he asked.

Apparently my pork consumption habits were a matter of public record. Boo dropped down next to me, her spoon bouncing off her tray and clanking to the floor.

“Rory here,” she said. “Sick all night. Crazy fever. Babbling her head off about ponies.”

“Fever?” This caught Jerome's attention. “You were ill yesterday?”

“Mmmm,” I said, glancing over at Boo.

“Babbling and babbling, like a babbling thing,” Boo went on. “Madness. Wouldn't shut up.”

“Have you been to the nurse?” Jerome asked.