The Harder the Fall

by Lauren Barnholdt

  I’m working on the third problem when Brandon’s mom, Mrs. Dunham, shows up. God. She’s always popping up at inopportune moments. Like when I’m trying to work on a math assignment.

  I try to ignore her and focus on my work, but she starts whispering things into my ear.

  “Stay away,” she says. “You stay away from him, Kendall Williams.”

  Wow. This is the first time she’s actually come straight out and told me to stay away from Brandon. Usually she just acts all cryptic and scary.

  I turn away from her. But she floats over and sits down on my paper. Which is a little weird. I mean, she’s a ghost. So technically I can just reach right through her. But how uncomfortable is that? Reaching through the ghost of my boyfriend’s mom? Awkward.

  “Please move,” I whisper to her. “I’m trying to get my education.”

  Jason Fields stops shooting spit wads. “What?” he says. “Who are you talking to?”

  “No one,” I say.

  “You just said to move,” he says.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Whatever.” He shoots a spit wad in my general direction. It lands on my bag.

  “That’s disgusting,” I say, a little bit louder than I intended.

  “Is there a problem, Kendall?” Mr. Jacobi asks, looking up from where he’s grading papers at his desk.

  A few people in the class turn around and look at me. “Um, no,” I say quickly. “I was just talking to myself while I tried to figure out this problem.”

  “Well, try to keep your thoughts to yourself,” the teacher says. “There are people in this classroom who are trying to learn.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jacobi.”

  I slide my paper a little over to the right, so that it’s out from under Mrs. Dunham. But she moves over. So I move my paper. Then she moves more. Then I move more. Then she moves more.

  Now my paper is practically off the desk, that’s how far she’s pushed me. And so the next time she moves, I push my paper again, only this time my math book falls to the floor.

  “Ahhh!” I scream. “Watch it!”

  I bend down to pick up my book, and when I look up, everyone in the class is staring at me. I mean, like, everyone. And then I realize that Jason Fields has gotten up to sharpen his pencil. Which means that there’s no one sitting near me. Which means it seems as if I’ve just randomly thrown my book on the floor and then just started yelling at no one.

  “Miss Williams!” Mr. Jacobi says. “This outburst is unacceptable! Please join me for lunch detention.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!” I protest.

  “I’d say that throwing your book on the floor and yelling out during class for no other reason than to start a disruption counts as something, wouldn’t you?”

  He wouldn’t be saying that if he knew there was a ghost here who was messing with me. But what can I really say? Nothing. So instead I just nod.

  “She’s so weird,” I hear Madison Baker say before she turns back toward Brandon.

  But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that Brandon doesn’t bother to contradict her.

  Whatever. Who cares if I have to have lunch detention? Lunch detention isn’t as bad as real detention, mostly because you only have to stay for the first fifteen minutes of lunch. And yes, that means that you only get twenty-five minutes to eat, but still. It’s not like you have to give up your whole period or anything.

  And honestly, I was going to spend my lunch period in the library anyway, looking up information on Mrs. Dunham. She has really crossed the line this time. This is war. If she’s going to start freaking out and messing with my academic career, well, then I’m going to have to engage with her. Obviously, ignoring her isn’t working.

  Of course, the worst part of lunch detention is that I have to sit there in the classroom, alone with Mr. Jacobi. I work on some of my math homework, and he sits there at his desk, grading papers. Every so often he lets out a big sigh and then makes a big red mark through something on someone’s paper. Probably mine.

  As soon as the hand on the clock clicks over to show that fifteen minutes is up, I bolt out of Mr. Jacobi’s room and to the library.

  I head to one of the computers along the back wall, then reach into my bag and pull out the ham and cheese sandwich I packed for lunch this morning. I’m not technically supposed to be eating in the library, but who’s going to notice me all the way back here?

  I sit down, type Mrs. Dunham’s name into Google, and scroll through the results. But nothing interesting comes up. Just some stupid 5k races she ran for charity. There’s a picture of her smiling into the camera at one of them, with a caption that says “Julie Dunham raised five thousand dollars for Save the Children.”

  That obviously tells me nothing except (a) she liked to run (which just proves she’s totally crazy—I mean, who really likes to run? like for fun? only crazy people) and (b) she had everyone fooled into thinking she was some kind of nice person who liked to do things for charity. Ha! I wonder what the organizers of that race would think if they knew what she did to me in math class today. Probably they wouldn’t be too happy.

  But there’s nothing else on the internet about Julie Dunham. She doesn’t even have a Facebook page. Of course, she probably died before Facebook was even invented. Sigh. The only real information I can find is that she graduated from our town’s high school in 1990. She’s listed on the alumni page as Julie Collier (Dunham). Collier must be her maiden name. And then I remember that the school library keeps old yearbooks on a bookshelf by the reference desk.

  I head over there and run my fingers over the spines of the yearbooks until I get to the one for 1990. I pull it off the shelf and sit down on the floor, then flip through the pages until I get to Julie Collier. Her senior picture smiles back at me happily. She has big poofy bangs, and she’s wearing a gold chain around her neck. Underneath her picture it says “Most Cheerful.” Hmm. Apparently people change as they get older.

  I turn to the index in the back and search for her name, checking to see if she appears anywhere else in the yearbook. There’s a whole string of page numbers after her name. I flip through, checking them out one by one. Cheerleader. Yearbook. Foreign Language Club. A bunch of candids—Julie in the cafeteria with her arm around some guy. Julie walking down the hall in her cheerleading skirt. Boring, boring, boring.

  But when I get to the next picture, I gasp. I swallow hard, looking down at it carefully. My heart leaps in my chest.

  It’s a picture of Julie, hanging outside after school.

  She still has the same big smile and the same poofy bangs.

  Only, in this picture she has her arm around my mom.

  Chapter

  5

  “Come on,” Ellie says after school as she pulls me down Main Street toward Sharon’s salon. “I thought you were so excited to get a manicure.”

  “I am,” I say, hoping she believes me. The truth is, I’m really not looking forward to going back to the salon. I mean, how am I supposed to concentrate on helping Lyra move on when I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything all day? I just keep thinking about that picture of my mom with Mrs. Dunham. Were they friends? Does the fact that Mrs. Dunham wants me to stay away from Brandon have anything to do with my mom? And if so, what?

  “Then why are you walking so slow?” Ellie asks. She’s a few steps ahead of me now, and she turns around and stops on the sidewalk, waiting for me to catch up.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where were you during lunch, anyway?” Ellie asks. “Everyone was looking for you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like who?”

  Ellie rolls her eyes, like she can’t believe how obvious I’m being. “If you want to know if Brandon was asking about you, then just ask me if he was.”

  “I wasn’t wondering about Brandon,” I lie. Of course I want to know if Bra
ndon was asking about me.

  “So is Brandon your official boyfriend or what?” Lyra asks, scaring me half to death. She’s suddenly walking right next to us. Great. The last thing I need is her hanging around while I’m in the salon trying to get information. Actually, it might be good if she’s there. Maybe something will spark her memory.

  But she should still be quiet until I need her. Especially when it comes to my personal life. I mean, talk about something being none of her business.

  “Brandon was asking about you,” Ellie says as she opens the door to the salon. “He wanted to know if you had to spend the whole period in lunch detention.”

  “Oh,” I say nonchalantly, stepping past her and into the salon. The chemical scent of nail polish remover hits my nostrils. Wow. That’s really strong. Hasn’t Sharon ever heard of scented candles? Or at least some flowers or something. The last thing you want to smell when you come into a salon is a bunch of chemicals.

  “So you got lunch detention?” Ellie prompts.

  “For something so stupid,” I say. “I dropped my book on the floor in math, and Mr. Jacobi thought I did it on purpose to disrupt the class.”

  The salon is completely deserted. There are no other customers, and no sign of any employee waiting to greet us, so I head over to the wall and start looking through the shelf of nail polishes. It seems like they’ve added a few to their selection. Of course, they only had, like, twenty to begin with, so a few more doesn’t really make much difference.

  “What color are you going to get?” I ask Ellie. “I think I’m going to get purple.”

  “I don’t think I need a manicure,” she says. “I just had one yesterday, remember?” She holds up her hands, waving her orange and blue nails at me.

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “It will be fun. We can sit together. Look, there are two chairs back there now.” I point to the back, where, sure enough, Sharon has set up another nail station.

  “Are they even open?” Ellie asks, frowning. “Because there’s no one in here.”

  “They’re probably just in the storeroom or something,” I say, even though I’m not so sure. I look around for one of those bells you ring when you need service, but I don’t see one.

  “Doubt it,” Lyra says conversationally. “My mom has this weird habit of wandering away and not coming back.”

  Great. Wandering away and not coming back? That sounds kind of like my mom. Of course, she didn’t just wander away. She literally went away and never came back. There was nothing wandery about it.

  “Hello?” I yell toward the back of the salon. “Hello, is anyone here?”

  “The sign on the door says ‘Open,’ ” Ellie says. “You’d think that if they’d stepped out for a minute, they would have at least locked the door.”

  Lyra shakes her head like she can’t believe how ridiculous the whole thing is. “I can’t believe my mom left the cash register unattended. Doesn’t she know she could get robbed?”

  I want to tell her there’s probably not that much money in the cash register to begin with. I mean, honestly, what’s a thief going to take? Ten dollars and a few bottles of nail polish?

  “Hello?” I try again. “Hello? Is this place open?”

  “I guess not,” Ellie says happily. “We should probably go.”

  But I’m not giving up that easily. “Hello! Hello? Is anyone here?” I lean over the counter and raise my voice. From behind the set of double doors in the back wall comes the sound of something rustling. “See?” I say. “They’re probably just busy in the back.”

  “Busy doing what?” Ellie looks around at the empty salon.

  “I dunno. Opening shipments of nail polishes or something.”

  “Yeah, well, hopefully they’ll bring them out soon.” She gives a pointed look toward the sparse nail polish shelf.

  “Ellie!” I say. “Be nice!”

  The rustling noise has stopped, but it’s soon followed by the sound of a huge crash and a male voice shouting, “Oh, crap!”

  Then we hear Sharon say, “Micah, are you okay?”

  And then the first voice, which I guess is Micah’s, yells back, “I’m okay, Mom.” Then the doors to the back come flying open and Micah appears. At least, I assume it’s Micah. “Oh!” he says, a big smile appearing on his face when he sees us. “We have customers!”

  He sounds half excited and half bewildered, like he can’t believe there are actual customers in the store.

  “Mom!” he yells. “We have customers!”

  “We do?” More rustling, and then Sharon finally emerges. She’s wearing a pair of white capri pants and a pink-and-blue-plaid shirt. Her hair is pulled back in a bun, and she has a smear of nail polish on one cheek. When she sees that it’s us, her smile falters for a moment, but she recovers quickly. “Ahh! Repeat business. How wonderful.”

  “My God,” Lyra says, looking at her mom. “She looks like a mess.” She tries to poke me in the shoulder, but her finger goes right through me. “Tell her if she wants to run a successful business, she’s going to have to give off an aura of success at all times. And that includes dressing well.”

  I’m not telling her that. I’m just a customer.

  “Yes, hello,” I say. “We’d like to get our nails done, please.”

  “Wonderful,” Sharon says. “Did you notice that we got some new nail polishes in?” She sounds so hopeful and excited.

  “Yes, we did,” I say. I hold up the purple one I picked. I elbow Ellie, and she sighs and then holds up this really pretty blue-green color. See? Who says you need tons of choices? Everyone knows that people pretty much pick the same ten or so colors anyway.

  “Good choices, girls,” Sharon says. She tilts her head toward the two nail stations. “Did you notice that we now have the ability to do several manicures at once?”

  “Several? Try two,” Lyra says, and snorts. She shakes her head like she can’t believe how ridiculous her mom is being. She’s kind of a brat for a ghost. I’d like to see her try to run a successful business. I’ll bet it’s not as easy as it looks.

  “Yes, we’re very excited to be able to sit together while we get our nails done,” I say. “Aren’t we, Ellie?”

  “Thrilled.” Ellie looks around. “Where’s the other nail technician?”

  “What do you mean?” Sharon frowns, confused.

  “You said we could both get our nails done at the same time. So you’ll do one of us, and who will do the other?”

  “Micah,” Sharon says, like it should be obvious.

  Micah beams.

  “Micah?” Ellie’s aghast.

  “Yes.”

  “Is Micah certified to do that?” Ellie asks. “Like by some nail tech school or something?”

  Micah and Sharon look at each other nervously. I can tell that Micah isn’t certified. Obviously. I mean, who in their right mind is going to certify a fourteen-year-old boy to do nails? I don’t even think you’re allowed in nail school if you’re only fourteen.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I say quickly. “I’m sure Micah knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  “I doubt it,” Lyra pipes in helpfully. “One time my mom put him in charge of painting the bathroom, and he made a huge mess.”

  “Of course he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Ellie says. “He’s probably never even painted nails before.”

  “Of course he has,” Sharon says. She holds up her hand. “He just did mine.”

  “Oh, perf,” I say, pushing Ellie back toward the chairs. “Your nails look fabulous, Sharon.” And they do. At least, from far away they do. And honestly, who’s really going to be looking at Ellie’s nails up close? Well, I guess Kyle, Ellie’s boyfriend, might. But he’s definitely not the type to notice things like that. One time Ellie took him to the movies, and he ate popcorn and spilled it all down his shirt and he didn’t even care.

  “If they look so fabulous,” Ellie says to me, “then why don’t you let Micah do your nails?”

  “Because I�
��m going with Sharon,” I say.

  “Why?”

  Because I want to ask her about her daughter who’s a ghost so that I can get information about why she can’t move on? “Um, because . . .”

  “Exactly,” Ellie says. “So you go with Micah.”

  She pushes me over to the chair where Micah is sitting behind the nail table. He gives me a smile. I feel bad for him. I mean, here he is, just trying to help his mom at her salon, and he’s being subjected to ridicule. He probably doesn’t even want to be doing nails. He’s probably just doing it to be nice. And he’s probably perfectly good at it.

  “Hi,” Micah says.

  “Hi.” I sigh and sit down.

  “Your friend is kind of bossy,” Lyra says as she watches Ellie sit down in the other chair. Hmmph. Takes one to know one, I feel like saying. But I don’t. Besides, Ellie isn’t really bossy. She just knows how to take control of a situation. And honestly, if she didn’t, who would keep me in line? Without her I’d be all over the place.

  “So, this is a nice color,” Micah says, picking up the bottle of purple polish. He looks at me for confirmation, like maybe he doesn’t really know if it is or not. “It’s, ah, pink.”

  “It’s purple,” I correct.

  “Right. Ah, first I’m going to soak your cuticles,” Micah announces. He sets my hand into a yummy-smelling bowl of water. Mmm. The warm water feels good on my skin. Then Micah starts to massage my hand.

  Huh. I’m just noticing exactly how cute Micah is. I mean, if you like that type. And by “that type” I mean, you know, good-looking. Because it’s not really a matter of opinion. He has floppy blond hair and blue-green eyes and a really nice smile. And he’s tall. I think it’s very hard to find a tall boy these days. It seems like everyone is a lot shorter than they used to be. Or it could just be that—

  The sound of the bell tinkling on the door echoes through the salon.

  I hardly notice it, because this hand massage is kind of mesmerizing me, if you want to know the truth. In fact, it feels so good that when Micah finishes and lifts my fingers out of the water, I’m actually kind of disappointed.