Shadow School #1

by J. A. White

  That all changed the moment she called out his name.

  “What do you want?” he asked, picking up the soccer ball and cradling it protectively. “Why are you here?” He didn’t just look annoyed; he looked distraught. Cordelia felt a pang of guilt. This is his secret place, and I’ve ruined it.

  “I can see the ghost too,” she said.

  After an initial moment of genuine shock, Benji’s expression quickly turned bewildered. It was almost convincing.

  “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and started to walk away. This was too much for Cordelia. She had spent over a week trying to have one stupid conversation with this kid, and she wasn’t going to let him escape so easily.

  She ran in front of Benji and blocked his path.

  “I know you heard the boy crying,” Cordelia said, jabbing her finger in his face. “You might be able to hide it from everyone else, but not me!”

  “Heard who crying?” Benji asked, scoffing. “A . . . ghost?”

  He could barely bring himself to say the word.

  “You’re scared,” Cordelia said. “It’s okay! I’m scared too! But if we work together, we can—”

  Benji slipped around her with a lightning-fast move that must have left defenders in the dust back on the soccer field. He headed toward the other side of the school, already yanking his earbuds from his pocket. Cordelia felt panic well up inside her.

  I need to do something, she thought. I might not get another chance to talk to him alone!

  “You stink at soccer!” she screamed.

  This stopped Benji in his tracks, just like she’d hoped it would. In her experience, athletic boys always had the hugest egos.

  “What did you say?” he asked, giving her his full attention now.

  “I said you stink at soccer. That must be why you play back here all alone. Pure embarrassment.”

  “Just so you know,” he said, coming a few steps closer. “I scored the most goals in our entire league last year.”

  “That was last year,” Cordelia said. “Guess you stopped practicing. Or maybe”—she feigned a look of compassion—“you had some sort of serious injury? That could explain why your kicking is so pathetic.”

  Benji’s cheeks flushed.

  “My kicking is not pathetic.”

  “Prove it, then,” Cordelia said, crossing her arms. “I’ll stand up against that wall and play goalie. You kick it past me. Think you can do that?”

  “In my sleep.”

  “In your dreams, maybe,” Cordelia said. “You get it by me, I’ll never talk to you again. In fact, I’ll never even look in your direction. You have my word.”

  “I’m liking this plan.”

  “I stop the kick, though, and you have to tell me everything you know about the ghost in the gym.”

  She saw it again: the flicker of fear on Benji’s face the moment she’d said ghost. That was good. She was counting on that fear for her plan to work.

  “I told you,” Benji said, “there is no—”

  “Deal or no deal, Benji Núñez?” Cordelia asked. “If not, no worries. I’ll be back tomorrow to ask again.” She examined the area like a prospective homeowner. “I love this adorable little spot. I mean, I could see myself coming here. Every. Single. Day.”

  “Fine,” Benji said through gritted teeth. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know—if you block it. But that’s not gonna happen.”

  They returned to the wall and agreed on the boundaries of the goal—a small pile of stones on one side, a long vertical crack on the other. Benji ran out to a spot about eight yards away. Cordelia windmilled her arms and jumped up and down like a boxer preparing for a fight. It seemed like something a goalie might do.

  Benji gave her a strange look.

  “You even play soccer?” he asked.

  “That’s funny,” Cordelia said. “After seeing the way you kick, I was going to ask you the same question.”

  Benji slammed the ball into the grass and took a few steps back, preparing to take a running start.

  Cordelia bent her knees and wiggled her fingers. I have to time this perfectly. That’s the only way it’ll work.

  Benji ran forward, pumping his arms in smooth, fluid motions. He eyed the ball, lining up a masterful shot that would no doubt zip past her, and brought back his foot . . .

  “Ghost!” Cordelia screamed, pointing behind him.

  Benji let out a small moan of horror and whipped his torso around. His foot had already begun its forward momentum, however, and glanced off the side of the ball, sending a weak squib in Cordelia’s direction.

  She picked up the ball.

  “Where is it?” Benji asked, looking desperately all around him while backing toward Cordelia. “Where’s the ghost? I don’t see it!”

  He saw the ball in Cordelia’s hands, and his face fell as realization set in. Instead of feeling victorious, Cordelia felt embarrassed. Her plan had worked, but it had been a cheap trick.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Not cool,” Benji agreed, but then he smiled slightly, as though he was a little impressed, too. She decided that Benji Núñez might not be so bad after all.

  The recess bell rang.

  “Time to go,” Benji said.

  “No way,” Cordelia said, grabbing him by the elbow. “You have to tell me what you know! You promised!”

  “I will,” Benji replied with a solemn expression. “But now isn’t the time. Can you meet me by the lockers after school today? I’ll tell you what I know about the boy. The other ones too.”

  It took a moment for Benji’s last words to register.

  “What other ones?” Cordelia asked.

  6

  Ghost Tour

  Cordelia arrived at the lockers just after three. Benji was already waiting for her, slouched down with one foot planted against the wall. There was a resolute expression on his face, as though talking to Cordelia was an unwelcome task that needed to be completed as quickly as possible. She tried not to take it personally.

  “So what’s the plan?” Cordelia asked.

  “We walk around,” Benji said. “I tell you things. Afterward, you never talk to me again.”

  Before Cordelia could reply, Benji started walking.

  She followed him.

  Shadow School was even creepier at this time of day, when the classrooms were silent and no students roamed the halls. Occasionally, Cordelia and Benji passed a teacher hustling toward the parking lot. No one asked them where they were going. Cordelia suspected that the adults didn’t like the silence of the building any more than she did.

  “Could you always see ghosts?” she asked.

  “Only in Shadow School. Never anywhere else.”

  “When did it start?” Cordelia asked. “What was the first ghost you—”

  “I’ll explain when we get there,” Benji said.

  “Get where?”

  Benji ignored her and walked faster. An eggplant-colored runner stretched across the dark wooden floor of the hallway. Each door was bookended by an identical pair of tall stone planters. The plants inside them had died long ago.

  They passed a teacher with teased hair and long dangly earrings. She was considering a blank bulletin board as though it were an exhibit in a museum.

  “Some teachers are so hardcore about their bulletin boards,” Cordelia whispered, trying to lighten the mood with small talk. “Like anyone actually looks at them.”

  Benji smiled, surprising her. Then he took a deep breath, like a swimmer about to start a race, and started to talk.

  “I saw my first ghost last year,” he said. “After soccer practice. Mr. Bruce—he’s the coach—asked if I could toss the cones and some other equipment in the dungeon. That’s what we call the room where all the sports stuff is stored. Mr. Bruce always asked me to put the equipment away. It’s dark in there, and a lot of the other kids are too scared to go. There are all these stories. Things moving on their own, weird noises. But that didn’
t bother me. Back then, I wasn’t scared of anything.”

  Benji’s hood was down, but he toyed with the strings as he talked, as though he longed to duck back beneath his shell.

  “What happened?” Cordelia asked.

  “My hands were full, so I had to drop everything in order to open the door. It was dark inside. All I could see were shapes. Shoulder pads. Hockey sticks. Jocks aren’t too good at putting their stuff away. I pulled on the string, and the lightbulb clicked on. In the back of the room there was a woman standing on one of the stepladders, looking through a shelf filled with catcher’s masks and baseball mitts. She was wearing these old-fashioned clothes—a long skirt and this funny kind of hat. I said something stupid, like, ‘Hey,’ but the woman didn’t say anything back. It was all so weird, but my mind didn’t immediately scream ‘ghost,’ you know? I figured she was just someone’s mom helping out, or maybe looking to see if her son’s mitt got mixed up with the extra equipment. That happens. But when—”

  They passed a bearded black man wearing a sweater vest. He was sitting at a table in a little lounge area, holding a newspaper only a few inches from his face. Unlike the other teachers, he seemed in no hurry to leave.

  Cordelia started to wave, just to be polite, but Benji pushed down her arm.

  “Don’t bug him,” he whispered. “He’s trying to read.”

  Once they were past, Benji continued with his story.

  “When I couldn’t get the woman’s attention, I started to get worried. I thought maybe she might be—I don’t know, sick or something. That she might need help. So I got closer, and I tried to put my hand on her arm, only it passed right through. All I felt was—”

  “Cold,” Cordelia said. “Like sticking your hand in a bucket of ice.”

  Benji nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s exactly what it felt like.”

  Cordelia felt a sense of relief warm her body. Until this point, there had been a small part of her still worried that all this ghost stuff was in her head. Benji’s detail about his hand erased any lingering concern. It was too specific to be a coincidence.

  “What happened next?” Cordelia asked.

  “What do you think happened? I freaked out! Just left all the equipment behind and ran. Mr. Bruce gave me an earful the next day.”

  “Is that why you quit soccer?”

  “Nah,” Benji said with a pained expression. “That came later. The woman in the dungeon was just the first. After that, I started to see ghosts everywhere.”

  “Wow,” Cordelia said. “Guess I’m lucky. The only ghost I can see is the boy.”

  Benji laughed.

  “What?” Cordelia asked.

  “The man reading the newspaper. The woman looking at her bulletin board. Those were ghosts!”

  Cordelia froze in place and fixed him with a dubious expression.

  “They were not.”

  “That’s why we walked this way,” Benji said. “I wanted to make sure you could really see them. I told some kids on the soccer team what was going on last year, and they got mean about it. I had to make sure you were for real and not in on the joke.”

  “It was a test?” Cordelia asked. “You didn’t think that getting so close to actual ghosts might be something I’d want to know first?”

  “You’ve probably been even closer and not realized it,” Benji said. “Have you passed a woman who’s always looking down at her cell phone? Near the front stairs.”

  Cordelia, remembering her first day of school, slowly nodded.

  “How about a man looking out a window in a gray suit?”

  Cordelia nodded again.

  “Ghosts stay in one small area,” Benji said. “A bench, like Newspaper Man. Or the gym, like the boy. There’s a doctor wearing green scrubs who mostly sticks to a supply closet, but sometimes she rushes down the hallway with her hands up in the air. It always happens real quick, like she’s just been called into surgery.”

  “I’ve seen her.” Cordelia shivered with fear and just an inkling of embarrassment: How did I not know? “I thought she was a science teacher. I’m such a dumbhead.”

  “Nah,” Benji said. “You’re stubborn and bossy, but you seem to have your head on straight. I went through the same sort of stuff at the beginning. I think your brain makes all kinds of excuses for the things it can’t understand.”

  Cordelia swallowed deeply before asking her next question. Her mouth was dry.

  “Have you talked to any of them?”

  Benji looked at her as if she was crazy.

  “Why in the world would I do that?” he asked.

  “Maybe they could explain why they’re here.”

  “I don’t need to know,” Benji said. “Besides, it doesn’t work that way. The ghosts don’t talk.”

  “But we both heard the boy crying!”

  “Yeah, they make sounds. Mostly crying, when they do, though there was one last year that giggled.” He looked down and fiddled with the strings on his hoodie. “I didn’t like that one. But they never talk.”

  This piece of information raised all sorts of other questions in Cordelia’s head: Can they understand what we say? Do they choose not to talk? Or is that something they can’t do anymore? Benji didn’t look like he shared her curiosity. To him, the ghosts were just a problem that he wished would go away.

  “How many are there?” Cordelia asked.

  “The number’s always changing. New ones arrive. Old ones fade away.”

  “Fade away? Like . . . die? But they’re already—”

  “I don’t get it either,” Benji said. “I just do everything I can to avoid them completely.”

  “That’s why you’re always late to class, isn’t it?” Cordelia asked. “You walk out of your way to avoid all the ghosts! And you wear the earbuds so you can’t hear them!”

  “It makes it easier,” Benji said with a sheepish look. “I told my parents, thinking I could just transfer to the public school on the other side of town, but that’s not how it works. I’m stuck here. The only other option is a private school. I know Mom and Dad would do that if I asked—they’d do anything for me and my sisters—but they’re both working two jobs as it is. Paying for a private school would break them. So I told them I made it all up.”

  Cordelia suddenly felt very selfish. Here she was, whining nonstop about moving to New Hampshire because her dad had lost his job, while Benji had been facing horrors on a daily basis in order to keep his parents happy.

  It made her like Benji a lot more—and herself a lot less.

  “It’ll be easier now that there’s two of us,” Cordelia said.

  She expected him to shake his head and tell her to bug off, but instead Benji reached into his bookbag and pulled out a carefully folded piece of paper. He handed it to Cordelia.

  “I made this for you,” he said. “It’s a map of the school. I marked the places to avoid with red circles.”

  Cordelia unfolded the map. There were a lot of red circles, especially in the upper floors.

  “Things are always changing,” Benji said, “but this should be a good starting point. We can share information. Erase the ghosts that vanish. Give each other a heads-up on the new ones.”

  “I thought you never wanted to talk to me again after today,” Cordelia said with a grin.

  “Sorry about that,” Benji replied, brushing back his hair. “I had to make sure you were legit first. But it’s actually nice to talk about this with someone.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  They started back toward the front entrance. Cordelia had told her parents that she was staying after school for math help. Her dad would be coming to pick her up any minute.

  “Are you sure nobody else knows about this?” Cordelia asked as they descended the stairs.

  “Pretty sure,” Benji said. “I don’t know why we’re the only ones who can see them. The important thing is to ignore them, Cordelia. Don’t talk to them. Don’t look in their direction.”
>
  “Why not?”

  “If you ignore them, it’s like they can’t see you,” Benji said. “But that changes once they catch you looking. They notice you.”

  Cordelia nodded, remembering her experience with the little boy. He hadn’t responded to any of her questions at first. It was only after she tried to touch him that he reacted to her presence.

  “What happens if you don’t look away?” Cordelia asked.

  “I don’t know,” Benji said in a trembling voice. “And I really don’t want to find out.”

  7

  Glasses

  Now that Cordelia knew her school was inhabited by ghosts, she refused to go anywhere by herself. Even the idea of walking down a crowded hallway filled her with fear. She didn’t know every single student who attended Shadow School. How could she be positive who was alive and who was dead? The only thing she could do was stick to the path on the map and walk with her eyes down.

  As the weeks passed, however, a strange thing happened: Cordelia got tired of being scared. She looked up more often and risked walking by herself. One day, she even glanced at a ghost from the corner of her eye. It was a short man with red hair. Cordelia wondered why she had ever thought he was so scary. It was like a movie that was terrifying when you were a little kid but surprisingly tame when you revisited it later in life.

  Suddenly, she was no longer scared.

  She was curious.

  Each ghost was a walking mystery. They might have been a little scary, but the questions they set off in Cordelia’s head drowned out the thump-thump-thump of her racing heart.

  Who were they when they were alive? How did they end up at Shadow School? Why are Benji and I the only ones who can see them?

  Instead of avoiding the ghosts, Cordelia rearranged her walking routes in order to pass as many as possible. Each one seemed to exist in its own little world bordered by invisible walls. A wizened old man wearing a Detroit Tigers cap paced back and forth through the stacks of the library, his hands behind his back. A girl her own age sat at an empty desk, waiting for a class that would never begin. They weren’t always in these “ghost zones,” as Cordelia called them, but they were never anywhere else. Their actions repeated like a video loop. On the fourth floor, a young woman stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, puckering her lips and fixing her hair as though getting ready for a date. In the cafeteria kitchen, a heavyset man mimed the motions of baking a cake—pouring flour, cracking eggs, stirring, opening the oven door—then started the process anew.