Invisible Ghosts

by Robyn Schneider

  “You guys are nuts,” he’d say. “All this business about socks makes you sound like house elves.”

  I’d giggle, and he’d do a Dobby impression, mostly for my enjoyment. And my parents would shake their heads, asking each other why they even bothered. But I’d catch them smiling a minute later.

  Except there was no Logan to turn to. No one else to back me up, or to call out Mom and Dad for being ridiculous. I was outvoted, permanently.

  “Ugh, fine,” I relented. “I’ll read your book.”

  Mom beamed.

  “But only so I can better make fun of you,” I finished.

  THE NEXT DAY, all I could think about was art history, where I’d get to sit next to Jamie for ninety full minutes. But someone must have alerted the universe, because time decided to slow down and see if it could make me scream in frustration.

  My first two classes dragged on forever. Mr. Cope bored us halfway to death with out-loud reading, going down the rows. And Ms. Dubois, who was headache-free for once, had us drilling the subjunctif.

  It almost sounded like a spell, all of us chanting the same phrases over and over, in perfect unison: I might see, you might see, he or she might see.

  Might see what? I wondered. Ghosts?

  My friends took Spanish, and unlike Madame Tylenol, their teacher always let them out early. Which meant, more often than not, by the time I arrived at our lunch table they were already midconversation.

  That afternoon, they went suddenly quiet when I sat down. For a moment I thought they’d stopped to fill me in, so I wouldn’t have to piece together what they were talking about, but then I realized they’d gone quiet because they’d been discussing me.

  “Oh hey, Rose,” Delia said, sounding strangely cheerful.

  Yep, they’d definitely been talking about me. I wondered what offense I’d committed this time.

  And then I remembered: the sub-text message. It had completely slipped my mind, after everything else that had happened. And Delia’s fury was just about the last thing I wanted to deal with right now.

  “Hey,” I said, returning Delia’s fake smile.

  I glanced over at the patch of grass where my former friends were sitting. Someone had brought a box of doughnuts, and they looked like they were having a party rather than enduring a too-early lunch period.

  Jamie caught me staring. He grinned and held up his doughnut, as though trying to tempt me to join them. I shook my head, because he was crazy if he thought I was walking over there in front of the whole school.

  That was when I realized my friends were all watching our silent exchange. Emmy and Kate were staring at me as though I’d done something endlessly fascinating. And Delia looked like she wished she had claws.

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  “What’s the deal with you and Jamie?” Delia demanded.

  She sounded annoyed, and more than a little jealous, as though she was the only one of us who deserved any attention.

  “We’re madly in love,” I said, dripping sarcasm.

  “They’re working on a class project,” Kate interjected.

  Delia laughed, glad to see me cut down.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Kate told me all about that. How he picked you because his friend was absent.”

  Delia beamed, and Kate smirked, and Emmy stared at her lap like her silence wasn’t just as mean.

  I wished I could tell them it wasn’t like that. But it was so much easier to let them think what they wanted.

  THERE WAS A doughnut on my desk when I sat down in art history.

  “Saved it for you,” Jamie said, pleased with himself. “It’s an apology doughnut.”

  “It’s secondhand,” I told him.

  “Well, if you don’t want it . . .” He reached to take it back, and I slapped his hand away.

  “Oh, I want it,” I told him.

  Mr. Ferrara was giving me a pointed stare, like he was on the verge of walking over and reminding me what his class rules were about food. So I wrapped the doughnut in a napkin and made a big show of putting it into my bag. And then I dutifully took notes on early Cycladic art, my handwriting a messy scrawl, because I kept glancing over at Jamie.

  After class ended, he turned toward me, casually dangling his keys.

  “Need a ride home?” he asked.

  I was so shocked by the offer that I sort of spluttered at him.

  “Or we could go to Billz first,” he went on, enjoying himself immensely. “For provisions.”

  “I don’t need a ride,” I finally got out.

  “Yeah, you do,” he said. “We still need to work on our scene for drama.”

  The scene. Of course. It was due tomorrow, and I’d forgotten all about it. But Jamie hadn’t.

  “You can’t bail on me now, Cleopatra. I brought you an apology doughnut. And I offered you a ride. I’d call that a solid attempt at making up for any earlier rudeness.”

  Damn him. And damn that striped shirt he was wearing, with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, making him look a little bit like a movie star.

  “You sure you want to work at my place?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Why?” Jamie teased. “Is there something you’re hiding?”

  “Just a ghost,” I said. “But don’t worry, he’s super friendly.”

  Jamie laughed softly.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I just can’t believe this is an actual conversation we’re having.”

  “It’s weird for me, too,” I admitted. Except it didn’t feel weird. It felt amazing, like that moment at the end of a long night when you finally unbutton your jeans and slip into something comfortable. Not that I was fantasizing about taking off my pants anytime soon.

  “I’d offer my place, but my dad’s only teaching two classes this semester, so he’s always home.” Jamie sighed.

  “Well, my parents are never home,” I said, following him out of Mr. Ferrara’s classroom.

  “Yeah, I remember. Logan used to keep an eye on us.”

  And now it’s the other way around, I almost said.

  Jamie and I cut through the library quad and stopped outside the social science building. There was no student lot on this side of campus, and I realized we’d made a detour to his locker.

  Mine was behind the cafeteria, and I rarely used it, because I had this fear that anything I put in there would smell permanently of maple syrup. It had happened to a girl in my English class freshman year, and this group of asshole boys had started calling her Pancakes.

  “Are there still cookies left?” Jamie asked hopefully, swapping out some notebooks.

  “You just ate a doughnut,” I pointed out. “Like, an hour ago.”

  “Sadly, I did not,” he said. “I gave it away to a cute girl.”

  For a moment, I didn’t think I’d heard him correctly. Claudia was a cute girl. Abby Shah, from our drama class, was a cute girl. When you looked at me, it was easy to make a list of things that could be better: my thighs were too thick, my nose had bad angles, my chin was currently hosting a pop-up exhibit of hormonal acne. Plus I had Hermione hair. From the books, not the movies.

  But Jamie was staring at me like I was real-life Emma Watson. Either he was blind to the truth, or that grin of his had the power to convince anyone they were extraordinary.

  The door to one of the classrooms opened, and out walked Delia, Emmy, and Kate. I hoped they wouldn’t notice me, but of course they did.

  “Rose!” Delia called, waving a little too enthusiastically.

  My stomach dropped.

  “Oh, hi,” I called back. For some reason, it came out embarrassed, as though I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t.

  “Are those your friends?” Jamie grinned, and then, without waiting for me to answer, executed a perfect impression of Delia’s wave.

  We’d done that all the time when we were kids, copying people’s mannerisms and waiting to see how long before they noticed. Nima’s sister used to lose it. Delia, thankfully, did
n’t notice.

  I snorted, and Jamie nudged his shoe against mine, silently acknowledging the joke, like I was in on it, too.

  “Hey,” he said. “Kate, right? Sorry for kidnapping your drama partner. I swear I didn’t know.”

  “It’s fine,” Kate mumbled, fiddling nervously with the handle of her rolling backpack.

  Delia smiled sweetly, and I knew that whatever was coming next wouldn’t be good.

  “Oh my god, don’t even worry about it,” she assured him. “I’m sure Kate was thrilled not to get stuck with Rose again.”

  “Why?” Jamie asked, frowning.

  “So we were thinking about going to In-N-Out,” Emmy cut in, deftly changing the subject. “It’s National Cheeseburger Day.”

  “Doesn’t that mean it’ll be twice as crowded?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but think how many likes our pictures will get,” Delia explained.

  “That’s a solid point,” Jamie said. The corners of his mouth twitched, and I knew he was trying not to laugh.

  “So do you guys want to come?” Delia asked, sounding a little too enthusiastic.

  And I realized all at once what was going on. It was obvious they hadn’t been planning to invite me. That I was supposed to find out they’d gotten cheeseburgers together when I was scrolling through Instagram, as some kind of public payback for my text message.

  Now Delia had found an even better way to torture me. I could just imagine what she’d say about me as we waited in the never-ending cheeseburger line.

  “Sounds dope,” Jamie said, and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to tell her yes. “But it’s also National Work on a School Assignment Day, and we already made plans.”

  “It is?” Delia frowned. “Where did you read that?”

  Before he could lose his composure, Jamie yanked my arm and steered us toward the parking lot.

  “National Work on a School Assignment Day?” I asked, raising an eyebrow, and we both burst out laughing.

  IT MADE ME feel so grown up, climbing into a car with a boy, even if we did have to crank down the backseat to fit my bike. Jamie drove a blue Prius, which smelled faintly of coffee, probably from the enormous CSU Laguna thermos in the cup holder. There was a parking pass for the university on his windshield, too.

  “My dad made me take summer classes,” he explained, pulling a face. “Free tuition for professors’ kids.”

  “Gross,” I said, even though it didn’t sound that bad.

  My summer had been spent volunteering at the library, just to get out of the house. I’d lasted four weeks before I caught someone’s bronchitis and was told to please go home and stop coughing all over the children’s book cart.

  “Well, it could have been worse,” Jamie said, his smile tight. “He could have forced us to go on vacation together.”

  “And called it a family vacation,” I added.

  A corner of Jamie’s mouth hitched up.

  “My parents still call it family dinner,” I confessed. “And it makes me want to scream.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Jamie slipped on a pair of sunglasses and pulled confidently out of the parking space. He did that thing where he turned the wheel with only his palm, like he’d been driving forever. And I wondered when we’d become so adult.

  “So how often does Logan turn up?” Jamie asked, turning onto the parkway.

  “Most days,” I said. “Afternoons are best, since that’s when the house is empty.”

  “Most days,” Jamie repeated, surprised. “Wow. I figured it was more like once a week.”

  “Hey, I thought you were some kind of ghost expert,” I teased.

  Jamie’s expression soured, and I wished I hadn’t said anything.

  “Reluctant hobbyist,” he corrected. “But I mostly encounter them at random. I don’t compile information about how frequently they manifest.”

  I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

  “Wow, A-plus science speak,” I said.

  “That bad?” Jamie wrinkled his nose. “Great. I finally meet someone I can talk to about this stuff, and it turns out I’m a terrible conversationalist.”

  “I wouldn’t say terrible,” I assured him. “More like . . . intense?”

  “Ugh, that’s worse!” Jamie leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

  When we pulled up outside my house, we were both still laughing.

  Logan was already there, waiting for us by the front door like a puppy. He immediately started asking Jamie about his favorite television shows.

  It was kind of weird, actually, listening to Logan have a conversation with another person. It made him seem younger, somehow, and geekier than I’d remembered. When Logan started ranking his top three shows in the Whedonverse, Jamie finally cut in with an apology.

  “Sorry, dude,” he said. “But Rose and I have to work on our scene.”

  Logan sighed, looking pathetic.

  “How about we watch an episode of Firefly after?” Jamie suggested. “You can pick.”

  “If I’m even around then,” Logan said pitifully, letting out a fake cough. “I might not be long for this world.”

  “Oh my god,” I told him. “You’re already dead.”

  “Fine,” he sulked. “Go work on your dumb scene. I’ll be down here, watching TV by myself.”

  Logan drifted over to the couch and flopped onto a nest of sequined throw pillows.

  “That’s gotta hurt,” Jamie muttered, wincing.

  “Help,” Logan moaned, stretching out his arm. “Can’t remote.”

  I put on the episode for him, realizing my mistake too late. Like most of the homes in Hidden Canyon, ours was open plan. The downstairs all flowed together, and with the TV blaring, there was nowhere quiet left to rehearse.

  “So, I guess we’re working upstairs,” Jamie said, trying not to grin.

  My cheeks went pink at the thought.

  “Shut up, you’ve seen my room before,” I muttered, embarrassed.

  “When we were kids,” Jamie teased, as though my room might have suddenly sprouted boobs.

  “It’s the same room,” I told him. Except it wasn’t. Because your childhood bedroom is what your parents choose for you. It’s only when you start growing up that the space becomes yours.

  I watched as Jamie surveyed my twinkle lights and the star charts and sea maps I’d found at the flea market. There were props and costume pieces I was saving because they’d been too good to pass up—a jumble of opera glasses, hatboxes, and vintage tennis racquets. The bookshelf, which was crammed to the point of bursting, featured my embarrassingly huge collection of supernatural romance novels.

  Jamie glanced around at the limited seating options. And then he winced slightly, massaging his temple.

  “Aspirin?” I asked, and he nodded. “Same place as last time.”

  The second he left, I made a beeline for the pile of discarded clothing on my floor and shoved it all into my closet, hoping he hadn’t seen my beige bra poking out of the pile.

  “Sorry,” Jamie said when he got back. “I swear I’m not coming down with anything.”

  “Maybe it’s the weather?” I suggested.

  “Maybe. My mom always gets hiccups right before it rains.”

  “You’re making that up,” I accused.

  “I tell you that I see ghosts, and you’re all, ‘cool, whatever.’ But my mom’s hiccups are the part you have a hard time believing?”

  “Now that you mention it, I am starting to doubt the ghost thing,” I teased.

  Jamie dropped onto the carpet and kicked off just the heels of his shoes. He’d done that when he was little, I remembered suddenly. The two of us coloring illustrations of the Earth’s core for a science project in an explosion of scented markers and similarly scented fruit snacks.

  I sat in my desk chair, swiveling it around as I dug out my script. I was nervous for Jamie to hear me read, nervous that he’d assumed I was t
his amazing actress and would regret choosing me as a partner.

  We ran through it once, and then I flipped back to the first page.

  “Again?” I asked, but Jamie shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he said. “First, I want to know what you think of the scene. Like, our characters, for instance. What were they doing before they arrived at the train station?”

  His question surprised me. It was just a short scene, two strangers who meet on a train platform, and I’d thought it was pretty straightforward. I’d never wondered whether Character A was tired, or hungry, or frustrated. Whether Character B was poor, or lonely, or old. But as we unpacked the dialogue, our characters began to come into focus.

  When we tried it again, neither of us was just reading the lines. We were speaking them as the characters we’d created.

  After we finished, I waited for Jamie’s pronouncement, dreading what he’d say. And then his face broke into a grin.

  “So much better,” he said. “I think we’re going to nail this.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.

  “Play a lonely old man? It’s ea—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “The questions.”

  Jamie shrugged, playing it off.

  “I did National History Day at my old school,” he said. “You research historical topics and put on performances.”

  “So it’s history club for drama nerds?” I asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Canyon doesn’t have anything like that,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “Nope.”

  A muscle feathered in his jaw, and for a moment he looked defeated. But then it was gone, replaced with the cocky expression I was starting to realize he wore like armor.

  “Let’s read this through a few more times,” he said, gesturing to the script.

  We did, until we hit a good rhythm with it and had stopped making adjustments. We were just about to pack up when Logan appeared, moaning about how we were taking forever to come downstairs and watch TV.

  “I had no idea ghosts were so needy,” Jamie whispered as we followed Logan into the living room.

  “I can hear you,” Logan said.

  Jamie went red.

  “Just testing,” he mumbled.