The Ghost and the Goth

He let out a deep sigh. “Okay, look, let’s just start at the beginning.”

Someone in line groaned.

“Just shut up,” he shouted at them. He rolled his eyes at me. “So impatient, you wouldn’t think they was already dead, right?”

I nodded. It seemed the best thing to do.

“So here it is … We’re all dead and we all have last requests. You with me so far?”

I nodded again.

“There are things that maybe are holding us here, keeping us from moving into the light.”

“Maybe?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We don’t really know. We’re guessing.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. Seemed like kind of a bad thing to guess about, but whatever. I wasn’t doing much better.

“Anyway, it’s pretty rare to find one among the living who can hear and see us, like your boy Will.”

“He’s not my boy,” I protested, and immediately sensed a sudden rise in tension. I looked and found all of them staring at me, as if I were on the verge of denying something important. Shoot. “Okay, he’s mine, like in the ‘he helps me, I help him’ way, but not in the boyfriend/girlfriend way.”

Grandpa Brewster shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Whatever. Point is, you claimed him. He’s yours. So, if we want him to do something for us, we got to go through you. Plain and simple.”

“Go through as in …”

“The line, sweetheart.” He gestured impatiently to the spirits standing behind him. “We’ll all wait for our turn to tell you what we need him to do for us, and then you tell him.” He shook his head. “God almighty, I’m beginning to think that bus scrambled your brains into eternity.”

“Told you,” the janitor muttered.

“Wait, wait.” I held up my hand. “I don’t understand.”

“What a shock,” the janitor said, a little louder.

I switched my attention to him. “You, move to the back of the line.”

His mouth fell open in protest. “You can’t do that.”

“She can and she just did,” Grandpa Brewster pointed out. “Move it.”

Muttering under his breath, the janitor stuffed his hands in his pockets and slouched his way toward the end of the line.

“No calling me bad names,” I yelled after him. Then I turned back to Grandpa Brewster. “So if I have all of this power just because I said Killian is mine, how come one of you didn’t just claim him or whatever before I did?”

A low murmur rose from the line, the spirits whispering and talking among themselves suddenly.

“What?” I asked. “What did I say?”

“None of us knew about him until yesterday,” Grandpa Brewster said, glaring at the people in line over his shoulder. “He was real good at hiding among the others.”

“Okay, but you still had plenty of time to—”

“She deserves to know the truth, Bob,” the pink-polka-dot girl spoke up. Then she gave me an evil gleeful grin. “Nobody claimed him because nobody wants to be what you are.”

“Liesel,” Grandpa Brewster said in a warning voice.

I frowned at her. “Everyone always wants to be what I am. What are you talking about?”

“You’re a spirit guide now. You’re at everyone’s beck and call, but especially his, the medium’s.”

Suddenly, I felt cold all over. I shook my head. “No.”

She sighed impatiently. “Been waking up in strange places lately?”

I stared at her. I hadn’t woken up on the road since yesterday morning. It had been close this morning, but no … I’d found myself inside Killian’s car.

“Wherever he is, that’s where you are, right?” she prodded.

“That doesn’t mean—”

“You tied yourself to him. You’re his guide.” She eyed me with a nasty gleam of amusement. “Has he started calling you yet?”

“What?”

“If he thinks hard enough about you, concentrates on you long enough, poof! You’re dragged away from whatever you were doing, wherever you were, to wherever he is.”

I felt a little sick. Could that be true?

Liesel stared up at the sky, her hand tapping her chin. “What is that phrase the kids use today? Oh, yeah. You’re his bitch, his spirit-world bitch.” She laughed delightedly at her own cleverness.

“Hey, Liesel, you’re looking a little thin today, don’t you think?” I asked. “A little more see-through than usual?”

Her laughter immediately ceased, and she stared down at herself. “No, I’m not … am I? Oh, God. Eric? Eric, where are you?” She wandered out of her place in line, looking for someone else to verify her state of existence.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Grandpa Brewster admonished.

I thought about that for a second. “Your hair looks …great, very healthy,” I called after her.

Grandpa Brewster stared at me.

I shrugged. “It’s the best I could do and still be honest. Besides which, she was being mean first.”

He opened his mouth, as if to protest, and then lifted his shoulders. “Fair enough.”

“So, is what she said true?” I asked.

He hesitated long enough that I didn’t need to hear his answer.

“Forget it,” I said firmly. “I am nobody’s bitch, spirit world or not.”

“I certainly wouldn’t have put it that way,” Grandpa Brewster said. “It’s very disrespectful, but—”

“But nothing. I don’t belong to Killian.”

“You’re denying the connection?” Grandpa Brewster asked casually.

“I …” It dawned on me that if I said yes, they’d probably all sail right past me into the school and begin bugging Killian again. He’d get kicked out of school and then locked up in some nuthouse, and I’d be stuck here forever. Then again, if he liked having a spirit guide well enough, it sounded like I might be stuck here anyway. But he’d promised to help me. The question was, did I believe him?

“Well?” Grandpa Brewster’s impatience showed through.

Looking at it from a purely selfish perspective, if I didn’t help Killian out with these guys, he wouldn’t be able to help me, even if he wanted to. Of course, that didn’t mean he would help me, but he’d seemed pretty willing to do so before, and besides which, even if he changed his mind, I can be very persistent. It’s part of my charm.

“No,” I said finally. “I’m not denying it.”

Groans rose up from the line.

“Oh, just quiet down,” I snapped.

“All right then,” Grandpa Brewster said with a sigh. “Then how do you want us? In a line, first come, first serve? Alphabetically?”

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head and holding my hands out in front of me in the classic “stop” position. “Just because I’m claiming Killian”—I refused to think of it the other way around—“doesn’t mean I’ve got anything to do with you.”

That shut them up for a second.

“You’d turn your back on your own kind?” Grandpa Brewster asked, astonished.

“None of you are my kind … except possibly her.” I tilted my head toward a pretty blond, pony-tailed girl in a poodle skirt, tapping her saddle shoe impatiently against the sidewalk, about halfway down the line. “If she dressed better.”

“Some of us have waited years, decades even, to say our piece,” Grandpa B.said. “You think we like being stuck here?”

I frowned. Now that he mentioned it … “No, probably not.”