That didn’t stop her from following me into school like a lost puppy dog. She hadn’t been to school since October, and it was March now. She missed half of last year because of the cancer treatments, and I wondered if she hated the school because she never got to attend or because school was boring and tedious.
Katie had been a cheerleader and soccer star. Everybody loved her, and it was easy to think that would continue forever…until it didn’t. She was already talking about playing soccer at Yale, even. And then she collapsed.
At the hospital, she told me she’d been sick for a while, but she still tried to play it off. She figured she was just training too hard, and she was going to lay off after football season. But she’d been standing there, right in the middle of the school sigil—a big, blue bear—and then she’d just collapsed.
We passed over the same emblem now that she was a ghost, and her eyes lingered on it for a moment. I stopped and waited for her until the flood of bus riders rolled in and bowled right through Katie, as if they didn’t even see her. Of course, that was because nobody could see her.
The shock of a group of people passing through her woke Katie out of her funk and she floated toward me to catch up. “I hate this place.”
“It’s okay,” I mumbled under my breath, trying to stop my lips from moving so nobody could see me talking to the air.
“I know,” she replied, but it wasn’t really okay. She had come back to the place where it had all started to go downhill for her. The paramedics placed her on a stretcher on that spot and brought her to the hospital where she was tested for three days, and two weeks later she was diagnosed with stage three leukemia. Without a bone marrow donor, it escalated to stage four, and when chemo and radiation did nothing to stop the growth, she was labeled terminal.
Eighteen months after she fell on top of that stupid emblem of a blue bear, Katie was dead. I would hate this place too if it brought back such bad memories.
“Can I ask you something?” Katie said as I walked to class. I nodded. “Can I please read your thoughts, at least when we’re with other people? This is torture, and so boring. Plus, what if you say something I need to hear?”
“Okay,” I whispered as I sat down in my seat in Mrs. Hooper’s class.
“Thank you!” Katie said, smiling. She took a seat in her old chair next to mine.
“Just when we’re with people, though,” I thought to her, “and you have to ask first.”
“Deal,” Katie said, turning toward the front as if she was getting ready for the lecture.
Katie was sitting there, hovering over her seat, when Samantha walked briskly into the classroom. She pushed up her glasses as she turned down the aisle next to me.
“Get up,” I thought to Katie. She was staring off into space and apparently didn’t hear me, or anything, until Samantha slammed her books down and slid into the seat right on top of Katie.
Katie rose through Samantha and into the air. “Rude!”
“Sorry,” I thought to her. “She’s new.”
“I don’t like her already.” Katie glared at Samantha.
“She doesn’t get any better from here.”
“Why would she?”
“Hey,” Samantha said. “Did you just get the chills?”
I smiled a knowing smile. I had seen enough movies to know that moving through ghosts gave you the chills but didn’t know it was true until that moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re crazy.”
Chapter 16
“I think it was a ghost,” Samantha said as she sat down across from me at lunch.
“Yeah, we need to talk about this,” I said. “I was being nice the other day, but I like to eat alone.”
“No, I get it,” Samantha said, taking my lunch bag without asking. “Everybody else here sucks, though. I know you can’t argue with that.”
I shook my head. “No, I cannot.”
“I was wrong,” Katie said to me. “I like her.”
“You would,” I said out loud, forgetting she could hear my thoughts.
“What was that?” Samantha said.
“Nothing,” I replied. “You were saying about ghosts.”
“Yeah.” She opened the bag of chips. “They say that you’re supposed to feel it when they pass through you, and it sends a shiver down your spine, and that’s exactly what I felt.”
“Tell her I didn’t walk through her,” Katie said in a huff. “She sat on me.”
“And get this,” Samantha continued. “I overheard a couple of kids saying that they felt a shiver too when they came into the school this morning.”
“Hey!” Katie said. “That was me too. Do you think we can use her, Anna? I think we can use her. Maybe we can use her,” Katie hovered around next to Samantha and blew into her ear. “Ask her what she knows about ghosts.”
“What do you know about ghosts?” I asked Samantha.
Samantha snapped her neck toward Katie. “See. What was that? I felt it again.”
My eyes ping-ponged between Samantha and Katie. I hoped that Samantha didn’t notice, but her eyes went wide, and I could see that she noticed me looking at Katie.
“What was that?” Samantha pointed her fingers at my eyes.
“Nothing,” I replied.
“Just tell her,” Katie said. “Maybe she can help.”
“Shut up,” I growled under my breath.
“That right there.” Samantha pointed again. “That wasn’t to me, was it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, shaking my head vigorously.
“Fine, but I think you know more that you’re letting on. I think you know what’s going on here, and I’m going to figure out what it is.”
“You’re crazy,” I said, not looking at her.
“Then why do you want to know what I know about ghosts, huh?”
“I was just trying to make conversation!” I shouted, pushing myself up from the table and storming out of
