Authors: Emily Hainsworth
A knock sounds on the front door.
I flip the phone closed, straining to hear. It’s probably a solicitor. Maybe the Mormons. I’m afraid of what I might say to someone preaching God today, so I creep toward the door and listen, waiting for them to go away.
The knock comes again. Louder.
“Shit.”
God must have heard that, because whoever is outside starts pounding on the door.
I pull it open so fast I have to duck out of the way of a small fist.
My mouth drops open.
Staring up from my front step, her eyes brimming with tears, is the girl from the corner.
She isn’t transparent. She isn’t green.
She’s real.
SHE SLUMPS AGAINST THE DOOR FRAME
.
“Oh, thank God—you still live here.” She wipes the back of her hand across her cheek. “I went to my house. Only it wasn’t my house—”
She’s here—on my doorstep. My stomach is empty, but I’m ready to heave. She straightens a little, presses her lips together, and looks at me expectantly. All I can do is stare.
She’s a real, flesh-colored girl. Her jacket is gray; the skirt beneath it, dark blue. Her hair is a shiny, even shade of copper. Her eyes are brown, not green, and there are freckles on her nose. She isn’t very tall.
“Do I
know
you?” I ask.
“Please, Cam, you’ve got to let me in.”
I scan the street behind her, not sure what I’m looking for. Someone hiding behind a bush, laughing? And then it hits me.
Logan.
“Who put you up to this?” I demand.
“No one—”
I ball up my fists. “Kind of a sick joke, don’t you think?”
“Don’t be crazy—”
My vision goes red. “It was Logan, wasn’t it? I know it was Logan—”
“It’s your fault I’m stuck here,
you
shoved me!”
I suck in a breath. She’s touching her shoulder where I hit her last night.
“Look, I just want to get back home,” she says.
There are dark circles under her eyes. Her hair is tangled, but she grips the door frame like she might rip it off to get in the house. I close my mouth and step aside. She comes in. I take one more suspicious look at the street. No reason to carry this on where they can watch … or record.
I close the door.
“What happened to this place?” she murmurs.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says quickly, but she doesn’t tear her gaze from the room. She studies the furniture and shelves. I realize in this moment our two houseplants are dead.
She starts down the hall toward my room, like she’s hypnotized or something, half floating, half stumbling. She doesn’t even look at me, just passes by like I’m not even there. As if she knows exactly where to go. I start after her.
“Hey, you can’t—”
She stops in the open doorway long enough to see in, and closes her eyes. I reach past her and bang the door shut. It echoes loudly down the hall and I’m glad for the noise because I’m ready to scream. I squeeze the doorknob.
“Everything’s so wrong,” she says. “Everywhere.”
It’s dim in the hall, and weird with both of us just standing here in front of my door. I loosen my grip on the knob.
“Who the hell
are
you?”
She doesn’t say anything. She has to be working with Logan; there’s no other answer. She’s definitely not a ghost. I rub my forehead, exhausted, but she looks like she might pass out.
“Could I—” Her voice wavers. “Could I have a glass of water?”
The only ice in the freezer is crystallized on the outside of an old bag of peas. I fill a glass with cold water at the sink and set it down in front of her.
“Thanks,” she says, sliding onto a stool at the breakfast bar.
I wonder what school she goes to, how he knows her. I wait until she’s gulped down half the glass before saying anything. She sets it on the counter. Her eyes are calm now, her pupils not quite so large. She’s probably rehearsed this.
“You feel better?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer, but she looks miserable. Nice touch. I lean against the wall where the phone used to go. She won’t look me in the eye—she can’t be that good. She starts to ask something, and stops.
“What?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“What were you going to say?”
She presses her lips together, and I study her while she studies the floor. I wonder how Logan pulled off making her appear transparent. Or did my own mind provide that extrasensory detail? I clench my jaw. Her hands are clearly opaque now. They don’t pass through the water glass, but every time she moves, I still expect her to start glowing or something.
I shake it off.
“So, did he offer to pay you for this?”
“I told you, this isn’t a joke.” She closes her eyes. “I wish it were.”
I snort. “What, you’re really a ghost?”
“
I’m
not the ghost,” she chokes.
“Then what are you?”
“I’m alive.” She bites her lower lip, considering. “But I think I’m in the wrong place.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “And that’s somehow my fault?”
“Yes.”
She shifts stiffly, as if she’s uncomfortable, and I remember how hard I shoved her. I realize just how sore and bruised she probably is, and that
is
my fault. The back of my neck gets hot. But I thought she was a ghost!
“What did you mean … in the wrong place?” I ask.
She pushes her hair out of her face with an unsteady hand. “I didn’t notice anything different at first. It took forever just to catch my breath and climb out of the bushes after you pushed me.” She glances at me and swallows. “But when I tried to go home last night, some other family was living in my house … and that’s not the only thing. Granted, it was two in the morning, but I went to my friend’s house, and her dad
chased
me out of the yard—I’ve known Mr. Caccione since I was ten!” Her voice rises. “I spent the night drinking coffee at McDonald’s, calling everyone I could think of from the pay phone, but they all hung up on me or didn’t answer.” She picks up the empty glass and stares into it. “When I tried the school this morning, the front office had never heard of me either … so when I saw you, I followed you home. Only this is all wrong too!”
The glass slips from her fingers and shatters spectacularly all over the floor.
“Oh! I’m sorry!”
I watch a fragment spin across the tile and skid to a stop against the wall. She’s off her stool, trying to pick up the shards. I move to touch her shoulder, but stop myself. I don’t want to play into her.
“I’ll get it later.”
She looks at my hand still hovering over her, and flinches away. She backs up, sits on the barstool, and hugs herself.
“Either everyone’s playing a cruel joke on me, or—”
“A cruel joke on
you
?” I say.
She shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s just … like I don’t exist.”
This girl could win an Oscar.
“Yeah, well, I’ve never seen you before.”
She smacks her hand down on the table.
“My name is Nina Larson! I go to Fowler High School! I live at Twenty-six Genesee Street with my idiot aunt and little brother, who
needs
me!” Her voice breaks and she covers her face with her hands. “You have to help me, Cam.”
My skin prickles when she says my name.
I rest my head in my hand, and fight with myself. Don’t indulge the joke, don’t play along. I would have made sure she was okay if I’d seen her hurt in the bushes last night—if I knew she was even real. But she’s an actress and she’s trying to make me feel bad … I take in the face and the tears. He probably hired her just for her tragic looks. Or maybe—
Maybe Logan is fucking with her, too?
No, that’s too much, even for him. She has to be in on it. I should test her; see if I can poke a hole in her story. I rack my brain for every weird sci-fi book, story, movie, or TV show I’ve ever seen. I remember one show about strange encounters where a hunter said he was in the woods when a man appeared out of thin air, walking through the trees, and disappeared again. He’d been dressed in a uniform from the Revolutionary War.
“What’s the date where you’re from?” I ask gamely.
She points at today’s newspaper spread over the counter. “Same as today. I thought of that. I’m
not
a time traveler.” She focuses intently on the paper in front of her, and then steals a glance at me. “But I think I know … how to get back.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
She tears at the edge of the paper, turning the margin into neat shreds.
“I tried. I went back to the corner during the day today. I thought—since that’s where it happened before—maybe there’s a way back. But I couldn’t find anything.”
And there it is. “So, Logan sent you to lure me back to the corner. What’s he got planned? Has he invited the whole school to come out and laugh at me—call me crazy? Make sure I don’t try to get back on the team?”
She looks me straight in the eye. “My skin tingled when we touched last night.”
Whatever words I was going to say next die on my lips. I curl one hand into a fist, the same hand she grabbed yesterday. I can almost feel the electric sensation still dancing under my skin. How could Logan have orchestrated
that
?
“You felt it too?”
She grimaces and nods. “It made me think … maybe I need
you
to get back.”
“No.”
“You pushed me …”
“No way.”
“And I ended up here—”
“I can’t—”
She slips off her stool and comes right up to me, desperate. “Maybe if we try the same thing again, I’ll go back!”
I jerk away from her. “I’m not going back there with you!”
I rub my eyes and stare at her, looking like a frightened animal, yet sitting in my kitchen like the very fact she’s here is nothing new. Logan can’t make me look dumb if I know what he’s up to … but something nags at me deep down.
A tingling under my skin.
When we reach Fowler High School, it’s obvious we’ll have to wait until dusk. The weather is chilly but clear, and the campus is crawling with activity. The track team runs laps around the block, jogging past Viv’s shrine, again and again. A group of skaters do ollies in the parking lot. I don’t look at the athletic field.
Since I’m exhausted, and ghost girl looks like she’s ready to claw her way back wherever she came from, I buy us each a cup of coffee at the gas station down the block. I lean against the bus shelter. She sits. Neither of us says much. I can’t help looking at her. Her cheeks are pink with cold, which looks kind of odd against the color of her hair. Not striking, the way Viv’s looked with her dark eyes and curls, but pretty enough in her own way. I turn my Zippo over in my fingers, think about lighting a cigarette, but I don’t. A bus pulls up, the door opens. When neither of us moves, the driver gives us a look that probably sums up his Monday, and drives on.
“That means a lot to you?” she asks.
I follow her gaze to the lighter in my hand.
“You just keep staring at it,” she says. “But you don’t smoke.”
“I thought I lost it,” I mutter.
“When I came to the corner the other morning, it just came clattering out of the bushes.” Her voice brightens. “I would never have seen you if I hadn’t looked to find out where it came from.”
I roll my eyes and put the Zippo back in my pocket. I’m done listening to her stories.
She looks at her lap.
By the time everyone has either driven away or had their parents come get them, it’s gotten dark. We walk across the street side by side, and I’m startled by the headlights of a slow-moving car. The beams slide over both of us. She squints, and moves closer to me. I try not to jerk away. The street gets dark again. The corner of campus seems deserted compared to half an hour ago, though I’m secretly relieved. If this still turns out to be a setup, there won’t be many witnesses.
We pass the shrine. Viv’s pictures, the notes, the stuffed animals. She slows when we get to the pole, lingering on the images.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing, I just—” She shakes her head. “I used to know her.”
“
You
knew Viv?” I stop and clamp my mouth shut. Is this part of the act too? Would she dare take it that far? Or if it’s the truth … how did they know each other? I knew everything about Viv. How could I have missed that?
She looks more closely at the notes. “It was a car accident?”
I can’t unlock my jaw. My teeth are too tightly clenched. I manage to nod my head, but I think it looks more like a shudder.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, looking away.
We’re standing under the street light, which is just flickering on. It’s dark at the base of the pole and in the bushes. No eerie green lights anywhere.