The Ghost and the Goth

Tragic hairstyles and bugs aside … did that mean the janitor guy was dead, too? He could walk through walls and stuff, just like me. But he could see me and hear me, just like Killian. Killian wasn’t dead. He just dressed like it.

I frowned. Answers would be good here. Unfortunately, none of the ones I came up with made any sense. That left me only with my original plan. Find Killian and make him tell me what was going on.

Before I could even pick a direction to start walking, though, the PA system speaker on the wall gave a preemptive staticky buzz. Cranky old Mrs. Piaget — she was, like, forty and totally hated me for looking like I do; I mean, hello, a little moisturizer wouldn’t kill her — was coming on to make announcements. Crap. That meant I only had a few minutes before second hour ended and everyone filled the halls. Given how cold and shaky it made me feel when one or two people passed through me, I had no interest in being trapped in the hallway with four hundred milling human bodies.

“Attention, attention.” Mrs. Piaget’s voice boomed into the main hall. “Mark Jacobsen and Tony Briggs, please report to the office before the start of third hour.”

Panicking, I ran toward the gym, the second right branch of the H. The auto body shop, a small outbuilding, was attached to the far side of the gym through a temporary walkway that they’d never gotten around to making permanent. It reportedly flooded every time it rained, not that I had much occasion to be over there, anyway. The auto body shop was where all the weirdos, outcasts, and burners lived, always getting a pass from the shop teacher, Mr. Buddy — no really, that was his name — for permission to leave the regular classes to finish up some “project.”

As I bolted past the office, also part of the main hall, I heard the sounds of a commotion nearby. People crying, yelling, even what sounded like begging. Oooh, a fight, maybe? Ask me when I was alive, and I would have totally denied it, but there was nothing more fun to watch than a girl fight.

Intrigued in spite of myself, I slowed to a stop, my feet slipping a bit on the tile, and peered down into the second left branch of the H, where all the noise seemed to be coming from. There, looking like the latest hip-hop star to be pulled into court, was Will Killian, staggering down the hallway, his head tucked under his sweatshirt hood and his shoulders hunched. Joonie Travis, the weird psycho goth girl with the dyed black hair from my psychology class, stood under his arm, helping him walk.

A crowd surrounded Killian, people I’d never seen before. A man in an old-timey military uniform, some chick in a (gag) pink polka-dot prom dress, a young guy in a baby blue tuxedo with a ruffled front (maybe polka-dot’s date?), some dude dressed as a basketball player, only his shorts were waaay too short and his socks were pulled up all the way to his knees, two girls in poodle skirts (no lie!) and those black-and-white shoes … and those were just the ones I could see. The mass just kept shifting and moving around him, making it impossible to see all of them, and the racket was unbelievable.

“Tell my granddaughter that—”

“—My parents need to know it was an accident.”

“I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t know this would happen. Listen, though, if you can tell my boy—”

“Did I make it? Did we win? I can’t remember—”

“Thank God, you can see us. We’ve been waiting so long to tell someone—”

I stuck my fingers in my ears to block the voices.

Childish, I know, but it was either that or scream. There were so many of them, and the pleading and the crying ate away at my last nerve. Why wasn’t Mrs. Pederson, the Brit lit teacher, out here breaking this up? She hated “hallway disruptions,” and they were right outside her classroom door. Who were these people anyway? Some of them looked young enough to go to school here, but I’d never seen them before. And with their clothes — can you say fashion crisis? — I would have totally remembered them.

Then I saw a familiar face in the crowd. He’d ditched his mop and bucket somewhere along the way, but I’d recognize that disgusting blue jumpsuit anywhere. My friend, the creepy janitor, was talking to Will.

I lowered my fingers from my ears to try to hear him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he whined, pawing at Will’s shoulder. “You got to tell them that. Those kids …they were asking for it, teasing me like that. Didn’t give that judge no right to kill me.”

Holy crap. He was dead … at least as dead as me. That meant they probably all were: polka-dot girl, tuxedo guy, basketball-player dude, all of them. And every single one of them had gotten to Will Killian before me.

Ugh. I hate waiting in line.

4 Will

All I had to do was make it through the day. Not easy, but possible. I’d survived for years before Dr. Miller had taught me the music trick, something he’d found helped his real schizophrenic patients. Once I got home this afternoon, I’d casually mention that Brewster took away my medically authorized privileges for being under a minute late. The tardy thing would be the only excuse Brewster could offer without adding credence to my “wild stories.” For that, my mom would be on the phone with the school in a flash. It was all about looking like I didn’t need it. Ridiculous, but I knew it would work.

Trouble was, that meant about six hours of torture stood between me and my goal, and Grandpa Brewster wasn’t helping.

“I always knew there was something different about you.” He followed me out of the office, sounding overjoyed. They all do, at first. “I need you to do something for me.”

I tucked my head down and started walking toward my Brit lit class, ignoring him.

“Now, don’t go and do that, kid.” He chased after me. “We both know you can hear me. I just need you to deliver a couple of messages.”

That’s how it starts. Just messages. It sounds simple enough, but wait.

“First, my son, he lives in Florida. I need you to go there and talk to him for me. I want him to know that I’m sorry for all the things I did and said to him…. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.”

Uh-huh. See? Now not only am I flying out of state, I’m also supposed to talk to a man I’ve never met to explain to him that his dead father wants forgiveness. When I was younger, I used to try to help them, all the ones that talked to me. Obviously, flying out of state to deliver a message wasn’t possible then, either, but I did what I could. It only made things worse, though. The people who didn’t believe me inevitably ended up screaming at me or calling my mom, or worse yet, the cops. The people who did believe would have kept me there for days, crying and pleading with me to stay as a stand-in for their loved one. As a kid, that freaked me out more than the people who shouted at me. No thanks.

“Then, I need you to tell him not to give up on Sonny. I know you and Sonny don’t get along real good, but you have to talk to him, too. Tell him it’s not too late. He doesn’t have to screw it up the way I did.”

Me talk to Sonny, as in Principal Brewster, voluntarily? I don’t think so. I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulders and turned down the hallway to Mrs. Pederson’s class. Maybe she’d have a movie today — something I wouldn’t have to concentrate on while trying to tune out good old Grandpa whispering in my ear.

“It’s important,” Grandpa Brewster insisted. “Please. You’re the only one I’ve found who can do this.”

My resolve wavered a bit. The nice ones were always harder to ignore. I felt bad for them, stuck in that in- between place, watching the world and the consequences of their mistakes but unable to do anything to fix them. I couldn’t get involved, though. They would land me in a mental ward yet, if I let them.

Pulling Mrs. Piaget’s note from my pocket, I pushed open the door to Mrs. Pederson’s classroom, interrupting her midlecture. Great. I couldn’t catch a break today.

I handed her my pass and slipped toward the back of the classroom to my seat. Joonie, in the seat in front of me, turned her head slightly back toward me, pretending to examine the broken and chipped black polish on her fingernails. “Everything okay?” she muttered. Up close, I could see the dark smudgy makeup smeared under her eyes, and the safety pins in her lower lip flashed as she spoke. Today she was dressed in her standard uniform of a military surplus jacket, black T-shirt, a raggedy looking plaid skirt, torn stockings, and black Chucks. In addition to the safety pins, she also wore a variety of earrings in the outer shell of her ear, all the way from the bottom of the