“Do you know where he went?” Brooke asks.
“He was just gone. He’s not in the basement anymore. Not in the house. Or if he is, I can’t see him.” She shakes her head, then looks up at me through her bangs; her eyes underneath are a light greenish gray. And pretty, I realize.
“So you just watched us?” Brooke asks. “This whole time you’ve been watching us?”
“Not watching. Just . . . I’d see you. The first time I saw you, I ran away. All the way home.” She dips her head bashfully. “It was a few weeks after your . . . your death. You were walking down the hall after”—she turns to me—“Paige, actually.”
“Stalker,” I tease, but Brooke’s attention is fixed on Greenvale.
“Can other people see us?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think it’s just me.”
“I know you were helping Usha with the—” I start to say, but Greenvale interrupts me with a squeak.
“Oh, no. Usha!” She puts her hands to her face. “I dropped her paint. I ran away. She’ll think I’m crazy.” She sighs. “Like the rest of them.”
“Maybe not,” I say. “You could tell her about me. You could explain how—” But I stop at the stricken look on her face. “No, I know. Of course you can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I can’t. They’ll send me back.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“And I’m sorry I ran away from you.”
“You were scared.”
“And I’m also sorry . . .” She hides behind her bangs again.
“What?” Brooke says.
She whispers, “I’m sorry you’re dead.”
“Thank you,” I say, then add, “Thank you, Harriet.”
15: SPREADING RUMORS
EVEN THOUGH HARRIET CAN SEE ME, I FEEL MORE INVISIBLE than ever. Usha has painted over the mural, and I still haven’t been able to undo the rumor of my supposed suicide. The next morning dawns, and the only not-so-terrible news is that Mr. Fisk has left the drop cloth up to let all that white paint dry. I don’t have much time left until the mural is really and truly gone, only a day or two more when people will pass that drop cloth and think of me. There’s no more time for half measures.
I decide to inhabit Chris Rackham, the roundest of the well-rounders, class president and likely valedictorian. In class, I try to keep a straight face as everyone, including the teachers, turns to me for the answers. When I was alive, I rarely participated in class discussions. It seemed like such an act, so obvious what the teachers were waiting to hear, so easy to say the words to please them. But, hey, I’m a well-rounder now. I’ve always had the answers; now I may as well give them. And everyone is glad that things have gone as expected.
Funny that I am not unglad about this. Class, it turns out, goes by more quickly when you’re part of the conversation. I decide that maybe the well-rounders aren’t completely dumb about acting smart. I discover something else, too. If I answer the teacher’s questions, I can sometimes sneak in a question or two of my own.
“I read that Andy Warhol was gay,” I say when Mr. Fisk calls on me (for the fifth time that hour) in art class. “Was he?” This question is for Evan, but I don’t dare glance at him sitting invisibly on the cupboard behind me.
My comment earns a few titters and a shout of “Awesome!”
“Yes,” Mr. Fisk agrees gamely, “and in Warhol’s time, there were actually laws that made it illegal to . . .” And on he goes.
After the bell has rung, I approach Mr. Fisk’s desk, where he stirs a soup of papers between his long fingers.
“Thanks for telling us about Andy Warhol,” I say.
“Certainly.” Mr. Fisk looks up. “Thanks for asking.”
“I just thought it could be helpful for some people who might be thinking about their, you know, orientation.”
“I agree.” Mr. Fisk leaves the papers altogether. His eyebrows draw together. Serious teacher face. I know where this is headed. “Is that something you’re worried about, Chris?”
“No, not me. At least, I don’t think so,” I add because I don’t know the inner halls of Chris Rackham’s heart or even the topiary lining its front walk.
“It’s all right not to be sure,” Mr. Fisk says.
“Yeah, I know. But, really, it’s a friend who’s wondering.”
“Ah,” Mr. Fisk says. “A friend.”
“Not a ‘friend’ that’s me. A real friend. He exists.”
Mr. Fisk smiles. “I wasn’t trying to imply it was you. It’s just I had a friend like that, too.” The angles of his smile have shifted somehow into something sad. Your mouth really should be bent the opposite way, I want to tell him. “Are you worried about your friend?” he asks.
“I just want him to . . . be okay with himself.”
Mr. Fisk closes his eyes, right there in the classroom. “I want that for every student.” He opens them. “Maybe you could invite him to a GSA meeting. Gay-Straight Alliance. Every other Wednesday after school.”
“I don’t know if he’d go to that.”
“Maybe if you came with him.”
“Yeah, maybe. Thanks.”
I turn, eager to see Evan’s reaction to this. But the back cupboard holds only art supplies, not, as I’d hoped, an attentive ghost. All that awkward teacher conversation, and Evan hasn’t even bothered to listen to it.
And now for lunch, and the real reason I’ve chosen to inhabit Chris Rackham. Not only was Chris elected class president by the sheer tens of students who had bothered to fill out a ballot, but his mom is superintendent of our school district. There is no one more trustworthy at Paul Revere High. People will have to believe him when he says I fell.
I time it for midway through lunch, the well-rounders reaching the pudding cups at the bottoms of their brown bags. There’s a lull in the conversation as butterscotch is wordlessly traded for vanilla and foils are peeled back with a snick of plastic. I wait for the silence to peak. At just the right moment, Kelsey Pope obliges me by standing up on her chair and waving one of the ponies over to her with a giddy yell.
“Someone sure needs a lot of attention,” I make Chris say, looking meaningfully at Kelsey.
“She’s a pleasure-seeking monster,” Whitney Puryear agrees grimly. “We used to be best friends for, like, all of middle school. Did you know that?”
“No,” I say honestly.
“Well, we were. She used to say,” Whitney sits up extra straight, widens her eyes, and heaves an imaginary sheath of hair over her shoulder, “ ‘Whitney, do you ever feel like you’ll love everyone, and no one will ever love you back?’ ”
“Awww!” the well-rounders chorus faux pity in a minor key.
“That must have been before she got breasts,” I quip, and the rounders all look at me, stunned.
“Chris, ouch!” Whitney says.
“Yes, people, you heard it here. Chris just said that,” another one says.
“Just kidding,” I mumble, reminding myself to act more like Chris, less like me.
“Well, everyone frigging loves her now anyway.” Whitney rolls her eyes.
“Do they?” I ask. “I heard she made up this nasty rumor about—”
“Paige Wheeler?” one of the rounders cuts in. “Yeah, a kid in calc was saying that maybe Kelsey made that up.”
“Right. Exactly. Did anyone else hear that?” I ask, thinking of my hours of careful rumor spreading. I am
