Page 5 of All Her Ghosts

Jaw hard, shoulders rigid, she pulls into the school’s ghost-proof iron gates at a crawl, swinging wide to avoid the little blue flicker sitting at the very edge of the grass berm. Ghosts rarely stray far from their death site—trapped forever in the bone-crunching loop of their last fifteen minutes—and this one’s no different, sitting on a stain in the asphalt. Its little head turns, following our progress as we trundle past the guardhouse and are waved through by the bored-looking, balding man inside.

Not that it’s supposed to do that. Ghosts seek out electricity sometimes, sure—that’s how people get ghost-drained, hungry ghosts listing off course toward living bioelectricity that got too close—but they’re not technically aware. They’re not supposed to react to stimuli. They’re certainly not supposed to react to me.

To only me.

I brought it up once. Mom refused to look at me. She called it a random coincidence, a morbid fascination, and told me, “If you feel theneed to fabricate facetious experiences out of a desire to feel important, Persephone, you should channel that energy into something productive instead.”

She didn’t have an answer when I asked if that meant she’d ever leave the stupid basement long enough to drive me tosomething productive. No, she just grounded me and told me never to mention it again. So I don’t. But I don’t stop watching.

I stare at this one now, nose practically pressed to the window, hunting down every little detail.

No claws, no obvious teeth. A rabbit maybe, or a squirrel. Except… rabbits and squirrels don’t usually watch me like that, head inching around to track us as we pass. The empathy-ache squeezes my lungs so hard I have to dig my knuckles into my sternum for a gasp of relief.

God, I think it’s a dog.

My right hand spasms on the door handle. I could just… open it? At five miles an hour, it wouldn’t even hurt. Hell, the ghost is so close, right there on the edge of the road, I could just lean out. I could—

My thoughts fog and scatter. Could… what? It’s dead. There’s nothing I can do. And ghosts siphon off electricity from anything nearby. If I touched it, it would eat the electricity out of my brain and heart, leave me deader thancatatonic disassociationin under sixty seconds.

So why do I feel like I need to? Why is my every aching nerve ending screaming at me to open this door? To cuddle that little light close? What is this bone-deep certainty that if I could just touch it, I could let it know it’s not alone, I’m here, Iunderstand—

Mom punches a finger into the lock button. She holds it there so long even the car protests, beeping a sullen complaint.

“Nice try. You’re not getting out here. Since apparently, I can’t trust you to walk ten feet on your own power, I am going to pull up to the school and watch you walk in.”

“And if you’d just let me get a GED, you wouldn’t have to watch me walk anywhere,” I snarl back.

But we’ve rehashed this argument so many times we’ve worn holes in it. Mom’s attention plummets straight through the fraying gaps and she doesn’t bother to listen this time any more than she ever did. Windshield wipers on high for a drizzle, headlights blasting through the barely dim outside, she creeps us up the road. For what? A minute ago, she had somewhere to be in a hurry, furious that I made her late to work. Now, kids on the weed-eaten sidewalk outpace us without even trying, taking this slow-moving opportunity to gawp at the weird new kid with her funeral eyes and sopping hair.

My cheeks burn. I want to kick the door open so bad my bones echo with anticipated impact. Mom must be savoring this. God, my discomfort must be like cocaine to her. Locked in her elaborate show of slow-rolling up the hill, her performative little turtle crawl catching the attention of the entire school, I stare at her, silently daring.

Go on. Just say it. Stop pretending we haven’t acted out every scene of this script so many times I memorized my lines from the brackets around your frowning mouth, your furrowed brows, your constant weaponized disappointment. Just get it over with. Make it all my fault, my responsibility. Make it because of me, for my own good, none of my business, a learning experience—

But Mom just pulls over, tires gently butting the curb, and says, “Learn something new today.”

I can’t breathe. Something like a laugh catches crookedly on the fury blocking my throat, too thick to choke down.

A strange man turned up at our newest house in a series of new houses, my mother’s unused name in his mouth—myname in his mouth—demanding to know her plan for the seventeen-year-old catastrophe that could only be me and all I get islearn something new today?

My lip curls. “I already have.”

Fingers numb, it takes me two attempts to fumble the lock open and kick my way free. I don’t bother to look back or even twist my volume down so I can hear her call my name. She won’t bother, and I don’t want to hear the empty space where it should have been.

My surplus combat boots hit the sidewalk running, storming into the school. Immediately, a dozen pairs of eyes burn into my already overheated face. My skin crawls at the flurry of whispers, the barely concealed smirks darting behind cupped hands. Every muscle in my body screams to scrub the sleeve of my black sweater over my eyes, to trade the funerary cobwebs of my rain-streaked mascara for smeary raccoon desperation, but I refuse. I ball my fists tight, bite back the urge to cringe and hide. Perpetual new girl in a tiny school, I never would have flown beneath their radar anyway. A shark can smell a single drop of blood in 100 liters and shitty, small-town teenagers can smell weakness.

Mom cut a fit, but even after her slow crawl up the hill, I’m not even late. A glance at the clock leaves me stranded in enemy territory ten minutes before the bell, small packs prowling the hallways, huddling in whispering knots against walls and lockers. Too many of them watch me with an opportunistic kind of interest, waiting and willing to be amused.

And sure, I know they’re not all cruel. I could make friends, find a couple theater kids to tolerate me, but what’s the point? In three months, six tops, I won’t be here, their names lost in the jumble of my jewelry and perpetually trash-bagged clothing. I’ll forget them before they even notice I’m missing.

Head down, I cut toward the stairwell, aiming for the sanctuary of the second-floor library. Three perfectly color-coordinated girls stand beside the door. I recognize their type, even if I don’t remember their names. Adjusting my grip on my carpetbag, I square my shoulders, ready for the inevitable barbs.

True to form, one of them fake shivers as I approach, theatrically chattering her teeth. “I think I just felt a ghost!”

“Itdefinitelygot colder.”

“We need cleansing vibes.”

They pull out ghost sprays in pale pink designer bottles dangling from bedazzled good luck charm key chains. Some popular new brand name—nothing like my homemade spray in a dollar store glass bottle, mixed with God knows what from my mother’s basement office.