Invisible Ghosts

by Robyn Schneider

  “Um, excuse me,” Jamie called.

  The ghost turned around, glaring at us, the darkness in her eyes returning.

  “GET OFF MY LAWNNN!” she shrieked, rushing toward us.

  I twisted aside, narrowly avoiding the collision.

  “Stop it! Mrs. Lee? We came to talk to you,” Jamie said.

  The old woman was taken aback. She spluttered a moment, and then the crazed expression in her eyes faded a little, replaced with curiosity.

  “You can see me?” she asked, peering at us.

  Jamie and I nodded uneasily.

  “Well, then,” she said, pleased. She smoothed the front of her nightie, as though trying to make herself more presentable. And then she glared. “You’re not moving into my house, are you?”

  “Um, no,” I said.

  The ghost drifted closer to us, and next to me, I felt Jamie go stiff.

  “They were waiting for me to die,” she confessed. “My children. They were after the money all along. They locked me up and sold my house.”

  “That’s awful,” Jamie said.

  “I’m really sorry,” I added quietly.

  “My husband’s waiting for me,” the ghost said, her shoulders sagging. “I just can’t get to him.”

  “Tell me about your husband,” Jamie said.

  “Oh, he was wonderful,” she said. “He used to come by my father’s mechanic shop every few weeks, his hair all combed, looking nervous. There was always something the matter with his car. Turned out he was having all of that car trouble on purpose. Finally got up the courage to ask me to the drive-in.”

  “Do you have a favorite memory of him?” Jamie asked.

  “The way we used to dance around the kitchen,” she said. “He’d ask what I was making for dinner, and then he’d put on a record, and we’d dance until our dinner was ready.”

  “This is great,” Jamie said. “Keep going.”

  She stared dreamily off into the distance, describing the different types of dancing they used to do.

  “Okay,” Jamie said, turning to me. “I need you to concentrate. Count of three, we’re in her kitchen watching them dance. Got it?”

  I nodded. It sounded absurd, but I tried to do what he said. To see Amelia Lee, much younger, in a frilly apron, her head on her husband’s shoulder as a chicken roasted in the oven.

  I was just about to say it wasn’t working when, miraculously, it was. We were moving, and yet we weren’t. I felt dizzy and a little sick. But there we were, in a tiny kitchen, watching an older couple sway together, their eyes closed.

  “Got it,” I whispered.

  “Me too,” Jamie said.

  At first, the ghost was stuck tight, tethered to her house, to this canyon, but the bonds began to loosen. And then break. And I realized we were causing it, somehow.

  The ghost was so pale now she was practically transparent. She let out a sigh of relief.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “I can see him now. I can hear the music.”

  And so could we, a faint, quick jazz song, all saxophone.

  The ground lurched, and everything slid sideways again until we were back on her lawn in our Halloween costumes, just the two of us.

  My head was pounding, like someone had pressed their hands to my temples and squeezed. Judging from the look on Jamie’s face, he felt even worse.

  I sunk down to the ground, overwhelmed by the enormity of what we’d just done.

  I didn’t know that ghosts could move on. That they’d want to. Or that it was so easy to do.

  “Rose?” Jamie said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, giving him a shaky smile. “But we can’t tell Logan about this. Not ever.”

  Jamie nodded.

  And then my phone started buzzing.

  Oh no. My curfew.

  “Hello?” I said. “Mom?”

  “It’s 12:19,” she said, sounding upset. “Where are you?”

  “I’m still at Sam’s,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “That wasn’t the deal. You have four minutes to get home or I’m taking your phone away.”

  “Crap,” I muttered, hanging up. “I missed my curfew. I have to get home, like, now.”

  “Shit,” Jamie said, digging out his keys. “Come on.”

  Even as he ran toward the car, somehow I knew we wouldn’t make it.

  22

  MY MOM WAS furious. I’d missed my curfew by almost half an hour, and she didn’t believe for a second that I’d lost track of time at Sam’s.

  “I saw you pull up in his car,” she fumed, arms folded across the front of her bathrobe. “He better not have had one drink.”

  “Mom, of course not,” I promised, even though it wasn’t true.

  “I said you could go to Sam’s,” she went on. “With your friends. Not driving around god knows where until after midnight.”

  “We were at Sam’s,” I insisted. But I could tell she didn’t believe me. And I didn’t blame her. I knew what it looked like.

  I wished I could tell her the truth, because I knew that whatever she was picturing was far worse than what had really happened.

  But she just shook her head, disappointed, and held out her hand.

  “Phone,” she demanded.

  “Mom,” I pleaded. “No.”

  I needed my phone. It was my lifeline to Jamie, but my mom’s hand was still outstretched, waiting. And I didn’t have a choice. So I powered it down and passed it over.

  “I’ll take care of this until I feel you’ve earned it back,” Mom said.

  And then, because that wasn’t bad enough, she grounded me for two weeks for lying that we’d been at Sam’s.

  IT WAS A disaster not having my phone. Plus, when I woke up, I discovered my mom had changed all my passwords, so I couldn’t even use my laptop to DM.

  I sent Jamie an email, but it felt as futile as stuffing a message into a bottle and tying it to a balloon. I wished Logan would turn up, so I’d have someone to hang out with, but he stayed away entirely, leaving me to my homework and an entirely unsatisfying string of Friends episodes on Netflix.

  Even in school, I felt detached. Gardner was on a rampage about everyone being off book, and my friends spent lunch frantically running lines. Abby joined us, and Nima slung his arm around her, looking thrilled.

  When she showed up again on Tuesday, it was clear that she’d become a permanent fixture. Max rolled his eyes over it, but Nima was so excited that I knew no one really minded. And every afternoon, when everyone else stayed behind for rehearsal, I was the one who stuck out, not Abby.

  The doorbell rang on Wednesday afternoon while I was finishing up my precalc homework at the kitchen table.

  It was Jamie, in his glasses and sweatshirt. He was carrying two cups of frozen yogurt.

  “Sorry, I forgot to get spoons,” he said.

  “What about rehearsal?” I asked.

  “Gardner let everyone who’s off book leave early,” Jamie explained. “I would have texted, but . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Not sure how long my parents are going to keep this up. I’m going stir-crazy.”

  “I thought you were hanging out with Logan,” Jamie said, following me into the kitchen.

  I took out two plastic spoons from the drawer where my mom saved all of the take-out condiments.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Then we should go somewhere,” Jamie said.

  “Grounded,” I reminded him.

  “Who’s going to know?” he asked through a mouthful of frozen yogurt. “We don’t have to go far. Claudia told me she passed by our old tree fort the other day, and it’s still there.”

  Jamie stared at me, his expression pleading. He looked so hopeful about our childhood fort. And it really was one of the last warm days. I could feel the weather changing, the Santa Anas changing into a sharp winter wind.

  Besides, the end of the block wasn’t really going anywhere.

  “Okay,” I re
lented. “We can go to the preserve.”

  JAMIE ENTERTAINED ME with stories about rehearsal as we walked over. He seemed so excited to be in the play, and so pleased that Gardner had dismissed him early.

  “Abby’s a disaster,” he confided. “Claudia’s convinced she’s one of those bad-rehearsal-great-performance types, but I’m not so sure. And Max is having a hard time remembering his lines.”

  “Max?” I said, surprised.

  “He’s taking even more APs than I am,” Jamie said. “I think he’s going to implode.”

  “Either that, or he’ll get into Yale drama,” I pointed out.

  Jamie let out an enormous sneeze.

  I stared at him in shock, and his lips twitched, unable to hold back a smile.

  “You totally bought that prophesneeze,” he accused.

  “Oh my god, you’re the worst!” I said, laughing.

  We’d reached the end of the street. The sun was just starting to set, making the limestone take on a soft orange glow. We walked past the fork in the trail, then cut past the honeysuckle bushes to the tree fort.

  It was still there, weathered but intact. The platform was lower than I remembered, only eight or nine feet high, if I had to guess. Jamie scrambled up the rope ladder first and then reached down for our frozen yogurts.

  “Was it always this small?” he asked as I climbed up.

  “Memory makes things shrink,” I joked, squeezing next to him. There was barely enough room for the two of us to sit down.

  “God, I remember when Sam’s dad built this place,” Jamie said. “I have so many good memories here.”

  I didn’t say anything. Just stirred the yogurt on my lap and stared down at my dangling feet. I’d worn my Birkenstocks, stupidly, and the left one kept threatening to fall off.

  “I was here the day Logan died,” I admitted.

  Jamie looked appalled.

  “Rose, you should have said something.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, shrugging. “I mean, he’s not really gone. We’ll probably hang out tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll see my dad in a few hours. But it’s not the same as when he used to cut the crusts off my sandwiches,” Jamie pointed out.

  “Do you remember how Sam used to eat all of our pizza crusts?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Jamie said. “Claudia used to ask if she could eat my cheese, and it drove me nuts. She didn’t want any other part, just the cheese.”

  “The cheese is the whole thing,” I argued. “Crust is expendable.”

  “Exactly.”

  I smiled and stirred my yogurt. It was coffee-chocolate swirl with mochi and coconut, a combination that seemed very Jamie.

  “Thanks for this, by the way,” I said.

  “It’s apology yogurt,” Jamie explained. “I should have told you about the other ghosts. The ones I got rid of. I swear to god, I tried that first day in your kitchen. Except Logan seemed so different, and I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “That old lady we exorcised,” I said. “Are the other ghosts you’ve seen like her?”

  Jamie’s mouth tightened.

  “Worse,” he said, reaching for my hand.

  The electricity was back, flowing between us, and for the first time, I wondered if I wasn’t making it up. If maybe we were connected by an invisible bond, like the ones we’d broken to exorcise that ghost. Or maybe it was the ghosts that were connecting us.

  My sandal chose that moment to fall off and drop to the ground.

  I sighed.

  “Back in a sec,” I promised, climbing down the rope ladder.

  When I got to the ground, I stiffened, because we weren’t alone.

  “Logan,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  My voice sounded fake and upbeat, exactly like Delia’s had whenever she got caught bad-mouthing someone.

  “Don’t,” Logan said coldly. “I overheard everything!”

  Oh my god. This couldn’t be happening. My heart sped up as I tried to remember everything Jamie and I had said.

  “It’s not what you think,” I began, but Logan cut me off.

  “No, it’s worse,” he insisted, floating up to the tree fort.

  “Hey, buddy,” Jamie said. I’d never heard him sound like that before. He sounded scared.

  “I can’t believe you,” Logan accused. “You hooked up with my sister, and now you’re getting rid of ghosts?”

  “Logan, come down from there!” I shouted.

  But Logan ignored me. He was in Jamie’s face, hovering above the platform.

  Jamie winced and took a step back.

  “You ruined everything!” Logan accused. “I wish you’d never come!”

  “Stop it!” I cried.

  There was a cracking sound as the branches holding our tree fort started to break. One of the nails flew out, embedding itself in the dirt.

  “Let’s get down from here and talk about it, okay?” he asked.

  Logan shook his head, hysterical.

  “No, you’re going to exorcise me!” he said, sobbing.

  “I promise I’m not going to exorcise you,” Jamie said.

  Overhead, a tree branch snapped in half.

  “Logan, please!” I cried. “You’re going to hurt him!”

  The platform cracked ominously.

  “Good!” Logan sobbed, his whole body blurring.

  Jamie took another step back, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. His foot hit a branch, and he wobbled for a second, his arms pinwheeling.

  There was a terrible thud as he hit the ground.

  I must have screamed, because my ears were ringing, and it seemed too quiet all of a sudden.

  “Jamie!” I cried, rushing over.

  No, please, no.

  I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I’d gone back to the day when I’d found Logan’s body, covered in beestings, already cold.

  And then, miraculously, Jamie twitched.

  “Ughhhh,” he groaned.

  My shoulders sagged with relief, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

  “Jamie,” I said. “I thought—I thought you were dead.”

  My voice sounded wrong, far too high, like it belonged to someone else.

  Jamie winced. His face was pale, and there were leaves and bits of twig in his hair.

  “So did I,” he said, clearing his throat. He glanced around nervously. “Where’s Logan?”

  “Not here,” I said.

  “Good. Because the next time I see him . . .” Jamie sat up cautiously, then gasped, clutching his arm.

  His shoulder was jutting out at an odd angle. It was too sharp, and all wrong.

  “I think it’s dislocated,” he said, gritting his teeth.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “Google ‘dislocated arm’?” Jamie suggested, his voice tight with pain.

  I could do that. I reached into my back pocket and stopped. No phone.

  “Um,” I said. “Slight problem.”

  “Mine’s in my car,” he said.

  I grabbed his key lanyard and ran. By the time I got back, carrying Jamie’s schoolbag, he wasn’t alone.

  Nima’s dad was helping Jamie to his feet. His running shirt was soaked through with sweat, and a pair of earbuds dangled around his neck.

  “Hi, Mr. Shirazi,” I said.

  He insisted on giving Jamie a lift to the ER. I hovered uselessly as he helped Jamie into his car. Jamie’s face was white with pain, and his arm hung limply at his side.

  “Rose? You coming?” Mr. Shirazi asked.

  “Um,” I said, hesitating. I was still grounded, and my parents would be home any minute.

  And then, as if I’d summoned her, I watched as my mom’s car pulled into the driveway.

  Crap. Jamie’s Prius was still parked outside our house. My mom stared at it, and then shaded her eyes, squinting at us.

  “Rose?” she called. “That you?”

  Jamie let out a hiss of pain, clutching his arm.


  “Yeah, Mom,” I shouted back from Nima’s driveway. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Jamie said.

  “Yeah, tomorrow,” I promised, although it was possible my mom would kill me before then.

  SHE VERY NEARLY did. Jamie had come over while I was grounded, and not only had I left the house, I’d been reckless. That was what she called it—“reckless”—which is a terrible word because it sounds as though nothing at all has been wrecked.

  “You know that fort is old and unstable,” she said, shaking her head. “What if he’d pulled you down when he fell?”

  “But he didn’t,” I said.

  “Rose, honestly. I have no idea what’s going on with you these days,” Mom said. “You used to tell me everything.”

  She was so wrong. I couldn’t help it, I burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” I shouted. “I’m sorry I’m the worst one and you got stuck with me!”

  And then I ran upstairs to my room, slamming the door and crying until I fell asleep.

  23

  “WHAT THE FUCK, dude?” Sam asked, gawking at Jamie’s arm. It was immobilized in a sling, the kind that fastened around his waist for extra support.

  I was carrying his lunch, and I laid it on the grass, watching as Jamie sat down clumsily. We hadn’t gotten a moment to talk, and I’d naively thought that we’d have a chance at lunch. But clearly I’d thought wrong.

  “Holy shit,” Max said, looking up from his script. “Please tell me that’s a prop.”

  “I broke the tree fort,” Jamie lied. “I guess those things have an expiration date.”

  “It’s all my fault,” Claudia said, looking miserable. “I was the one who told you to go there.”

  Jamie shook his head. “That wood is ancient, and the nails were rusted through. You couldn’t have known.”

  I felt even worse than Claudia, watching Jamie lie about what had happened. And watching Claudia blame herself for something that definitely wasn’t her fault.

  Abby joined us then, carrying a hot lunch.

  “Oh my god, how long?” she gasped, peering at his arm.

  “Three weeks,” Jamie said. There was a bitter edge to his voice that I didn’t understand. I couldn’t figure out what I was missing.

  “Gardner’s never going to let you do the play like that,” Abby went on.