Page 6 of All Her Ghosts

“Crisscross double-cross,” they chant, laughing, spraying themselves and the air around me in a choking torrent like I’m some undead thing come to eat them, “ghost get lost.”

Four years and eight schools ago, I’d have been devastated. But I went through puberty as an outsider in a hostile, small-town middle school worse than this one. This isn’t bullying; it’s just depressing. The most difficult part is struggling not to cough from the cloud of stinging ghost salt, the designer stuff more personal perfume than useful repellent, and I debate whether to fake a possession seizure or cut them off at the knees.

I settle for smiling at them, unblinking—another fun, unnerving talent of mine.

“Wow, you guys are still using frankincense?” I ask, so bright and peppy it physically pains me. “That’s so cute. I love vintage stuff.”

“Who asked you?” one demands, but whatever else she says gets lost in the echo of my boots on the stairwell. I shove the heavy fire door open to find the hallways practically abandoned. Homeroom doors hang open, waiting, an autumn breeze sighing—barely strong enough to rustle construction paper pumpkins haphazardly pinned to bulletin boards. Teachers hunch over their desks, scribbling the last scribbles of their scant prep periods.

When I was younger and still terrified of changing schools, I used to scour the internet for invisibility spells. I figured, ghosts didn’t used to be a thing but then, one day they justwere. So why not magic too? But for all my searching, this is the best invisibility spell I’ve ever found—looking busy and walking like I know where I’m supposed to be.

Not a single teacher looks up as I pass. Not even the librarian herself emerges from her glass-walled office as I slip inside the darkened library, only half its florescent lights lit, faintly buzzing over the bay of computers on the far side of the room. As far as libraries go, this one feels like an afterthought. No rows of books to get lost in, only shelves lining the walls and a sea of tables straight out of a 1950s yard sale. But I’ll take any port in a storm.

Slapping my bag onto a table, I dig out my MP3 player, the thin crack in its screen kissing my searching finger. I follow the damage like a worry stone, down to the button array. Leaning back in my chair, Iclose my eyes, selecting the next song at random with a series of presses more familiar than my revolving series of homes.

God, I love this stupid, ugly workhorse. I could listen to music on my phone, sure, but something about the tactile sensation of this feels better. We’re kindred souls, me and this old, unfashionable thing. Unpopular even when it was new, it’s laughably vintage now. But it works every time—well, after the three weeks it took for me to find its esoteric, proprietary charging cable—and its chunky metal backplate means any wayward, energy-hungry ghosts can’t ruin my battery.

Out of nowhere, a hand emerges from under the table, swiping my MP3 player by its cord. My earbud pops out, falling to the floor, a tail behind a disappearing rat.

“‘Pastel Melodies for Rotting’?” a voice reads. “That’s a hell of a playlist title. You planning some kind of suicide party?”

“What, you want an invitation?” I snarl. Shoving my chair back with a terrible squeal, I glare under the table to find a whole-ass man under there. Or, at least, I think it’s a grown man, until he looks up at me and I realize his gray hair doesn’t match the freckles bridging his nose or eyes so dark brown they might as well be black. “Why are you even under there?”

I hold my hand out, palm up, an obvious last chance one second away from balling into a fist. But this freak just reaches out and grabs my wrist through my sweater like I was offering it to hold.

“I’m protesting my reintroduction to the wild,” he says and tugs me forward, off my chair and under the table beside him. Bewildered, I let him. “So how long will it take for my New Kid Stink to wear off around here?”

Something must have broken in my brain this morning because I can’t seem to think straight. The wood floor feels warm through my tights. Caught in the strange intimacy of his makeshift hideout, my blood rushes through my ears with a carbonated hiss. Words tumble out of my mouth before I can catch them. “I wouldn’t know. I’m always the new kid.”

He grins, showing off teeth crooked enough to seem sharp, andsniffs me. This lunatic, this absolute feral madman, leans forward and sniffs my hair—then lifts my arm up by the sleeve so he can sniff that too.

“I don’t know,” he says. “You smell old as dust to me.” Still sniffing. “Decrepit. Practically ancient.”

My head spins. Normally, I can’t breathe around new people, trapped by the smog cloud of expectations, introductions, small talk, hesitant attempts to know and be known. But this boy holds my MP3 player out to me and my vision hyper-focuses, every color oxygen-rich and supersaturated, fixated on his thumb covering the cracked screen. Hoping he doesn’t notice, I reach out and pinch my leg, checking to see if I fell out of my body by accident.

It hurts. I’m still meat-bound, just broken. My brain spits static, and I feel like I’m falling, like I’m staring backward through time and I’ve been here before, like I know the exact way his hand feels laced in mine—

Fever-warm. Calluses.

No, that’s stupid. He’s like… seventeen, tops, even if he does have gray hair. Where could he have gotten calluses? I shake off the feeling, force a smile, take my MP3 player back. Whispered music spills from myearbuds scattered on the floor between us. God, I should get up. I should walk away as fast as I can and pray nobody saw me. I’ve been here three days and I’m already the weirdo, I should know better than to make it worse.

I should…

But I don’t want to. Something holds me there, in that bubble of peace beneath a library table, warm in the glow of his attention. I scour my thoughts for any scrap of self-preservation, embarrassment, common sense, but it just isn’t there. Only the carbonation in my ears, a fizzing possibility.

Buoyed by ill-advised bravery, I risk a little. “Why do I feel like I know you?”

Something flickers in his eyes, there and gone before I can place it. Mischief? Interest? Whatever it is, it sets a fishhook in my belly button. He leans in and I lean with him.

“Must have been a past life,” he says and grins. Lowering his voice, “How’d you die?”

His words catch in my rib cage like a windblown dandelion seed, the first spark of wildfire. Before I can stop to think, I tug my bag down under the table with us. Pulling out a drugstore lipstick, I slash it across my neck, an arterial cherry red I hadn’t yet worked up the courage to wear.

“Beheading in the public square.”

He grins and tells me, “You need a green ribbon, Jenny.”

This time, Idoslip ever so slightly out of my body. Suddenly too big for my bones to hold, I float around my own skin like a heat haze.