As I was backing up, I noticed how quiet it was. I looked down and saw I was stepping on dry fall leaves, but they weren’t crunching beneath my feet. I kicked my foot through them, but instead of fluttering up off the ground they barely trembled. And I felt a burning pain seep through my shoes.
Something was terribly wrong.
“Help! Somebody help me!”
Nothing. No response. So I cried louder, “Help! I’m stuck out here! Somebody come help! Please!”
I collapsed onto the ground. I swung my arms and felt stinging pain as they whipped right through the dead leaves. Through them. Not possible. I paused—calmed—tried to pick up a leaf. I focused intensely. I had to pick up that leaf. It would mean everything was normal. I managed to manipulate it between my fingers, but touching it caused a burning sensation on my fingertips as if its orange-red color was actual fire. I moved it barely—almost imperceptibly. Then I dropped it and slumped over, my whole being exhausted and weakened as if I’d just carried a heavy piece of furniture up a flight of stairs.
“You fool,” a voice hissed from above. “Save your strength!”
I looked up at the massive dorm and caught a glimpse of a girl—up in the cupola, the tiny room atop the roof. Even from where I stood, I could tell she looked different, almost airy and grey.
“You! Up there? Can you help me?!” She just stared at me so I kept at her. “What are you doing? How did you get up there?” We’d been told the cupola was sealed off because of an accident many years before.
“Go away!” she yelled.
Before I could protest, she hurled herself from the cupola and came soaring down toward me. I lurched backward, stumbling, trying to avoid getting hit. My God, this girl just committed suicide. I looked away and winced, afraid to see the point of impact. I expected to hear a thud, a scream, the cracking of bones. All I could hear were birds chirping.
After a moment, I dared to look. She was as gruesome and bloody as I’d expected, but she was standing on her feet. Alert. She wore a black jumper over what was once a white blouse, with large, billowy sleeves—like out of a Mary Cassatt or Renoir portrait, except the large collar was caked with dried blood that had dripped from her ears and nose and big blue eyes. As she walked toward me, I could see, like the other girl, she was not made of flesh.
I jumped to my feet and ran, not looking back. I ran straight to Malcolm’s dorm, trying to contain my desperate fear that this was not a Wickham Hall prank. As I approached his dorm, two crew team members were heading out for rowing practice. They ignored me, as usual. But that meant Malcolm would probably be getting ready for practice, too. I slinked in the door before it closed. I rushed to his room. I knew it was in the same spot in the building as Abigail’s—on the first floor, off the central common room. His door was cracked open, a light on. I slipped in.
He was shirtless, standing close to the mirror, staring into it intently. As I got closer, I saw he was tracing the lines that I’d drawn on him.
“Something terrible’s happened, Malcolm. Something’s wrong. It’s like I’m invisible. Really invisible. And there are girls, gruesome girls—one at the well. Another at my dorm. And …”
He wouldn’t look at me.
“Malcolm.” I walked up to him, stood right behind him, and gazed into the mirror.
I was not there.
Before I could scream, he turned and walked right through me. It hurt. It stung like brain freeze but all over my body. I realized it must be a dream. Of course! That’s why I’d seen the girl from my dream, because this was a dream. A nightmare. Just like the ones I’d had as a kid. I tried my wake-up technique—blinking my eyes. Nothing. I shook my head vigorously. Wildly, even. Still nothing, except I felt dizzy. I collapsed on Malcolm’s bed.
“Am I …?” I couldn’t say it. You’re not supposed to be able to say those words. It’s against science. Against nature. “I can’t be because I’m here. Right, Malcolm?”
No response.
I could feel my head in my hands. I could even feel the hair on my head. And I was sitting on a bed, wasn’t I? For a moment I smiled—all this must prove I existed, I was alive—until Malcolm leaned down and reached through me, grabbing his backpack. Again, a burn ripped through me.
I started to panic. “Malcolm! You can hear me!” This time I yelled, certain that because he loved me, he would hear me. “You have to!”
I grabbed at his shoulders to shake him, but my hands whipped right through him—stinging, as if his body were made of flame. He slung on his backpack and left the room.
He couldn’t hear me or feel me or have any clue I wasn’t safely back in my dorm. But in my panic, I suddenly remembered I knew someone who possibly could.
THERE WAS A CHANCE I’d find Gabe in the Pit eating breakfast, so I headed toward Main. As I crossed the quad, I searched for clues that might tell me what was happening, what I’d become. I walked on the earth. I felt lighter but was still affected by gravity. I could look down and see my legs, my body, my arms—I could even see the stars that Malcolm had drawn on my forearm—and it all looked pretty much normal. I put my hands together, and I could feel myself. It wasn’t quite like before, but I could feel something. And at least it didn’t hurt.
Clearly nobody else could see me. They walked straight toward me. I kept moving out of the way, protectively, because of the pain I felt when I crossed with someone or something.
One thing I couldn’t feel was my heart. If the old me had been racing across campus, trying to figure out if I was dead or alive, my heart would’ve been pounding so hard I’d hear it in my ears, feel it in my temples. I felt nothing physically, but my emotions were rushing and raging and battling with my poor panicked brain.
I climbed the stairs to Main and approached its doors. I reached for the handle but couldn’t push or turn it. The more I tried, the more it burned and stung. I gave up. I could feel the physical world. I could walk on it, but I could not affect it, at least not easily. I waited until a Wicky bustled past, and I followed in her wake, rushing all the way back to the Pit. No Gabe. As I headed back out, I paused in the clearing in the center of the hall where Malcolm and I had danced. I closed my eyes and heard the waltz again. I felt him holding my waist. I wondered how he’d feel when he found out what had happened to me, whatever had happened. I wanted to cry, but there were no tears.
I was startled from my reverie when a Fifth Former swiped through my arm with her tray of empty dishes. I screamed from the pain. Of course she didn’t hear me. But then I screamed again, just because it felt good. Then I screamed again to see if anyone might hear me. I kept screaming, looking in every direction to see if a head cocked or eyebrow raised. They didn’t.
I collapsed on the floor.
Out of habit, I imagined what I must look like from another angle, from above. I must look like a pathetic pile of a girl on the floor in the dining hall. No, I realized. I looked like nothing. I was nothing.
I DIDN’T KNOW GABE’S schedule, so I wandered from the Science Center to the Mathematics Complex to the Language Arts Compound. I checked in at the Art Center. I knew he didn’t take studio art but thought he might be in drama or music. No luck. But there was Abigail on stage, rehearsing.
“Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty
According to my bond, no more nor less.”
Pop quiz: How do you know you go to a school full of chilly, unfriendly people? When Abigail Steers is cast as Cordelia in King Lear. She’s the best they could find for Lear’s compassionate, loving daughter? Please. And yet there was the drama teacher coddling her and complimenting her performance.
I went to the Tuck Shop. No Gabe. But I had to pause when I saw the booth where Malcolm and I had shared the grilled cheese and milk shake. I sat in the booth. It wasn’t until then I realized I felt no hunger. No lightheadedness from not eating. And when I paused, time seemed to slip past me.
Finally, I went back to Main. I’d have to wa
it until our work-study period after classes. There was no way for me to get into the catacombs until someone opened the door, and I could follow them down. So I sat in one of those big leather chairs where Malcolm and his friends congregated. Time started to blur again. Students came and went in bursts of motion like Duchamp’s Nude Descending Stairs. Two hours seemed to pass in an instant, and suddenly the lobby was flooded with the lunchtime crowd.
Malcolm’s friend Kent plopped onto the chair next to mine. He kicked back and clicked away on his phone, his persistent smile now more of a grin. I moved to look over his shoulder and saw it was just Facebook. He was posting a status update:
feeling on top of the world. psyched 4 fall fest.
Another guy, Amos, walked up and sat next to him.
“Meeting today,” Kent said under his breath, certain that none of the passing students could hear. “Four P.M. Spread the word.”
Amos nodded and disappeared into the crowd. It was only then I noticed a blonde girl had approached, peering at me from across the room. She was translucent, but she had a perfect blow out. And she wasn’t bloody like the others. Her neck was bruised, but otherwise she looked almost normal, eerily blending in with the crowd. I realized it was because she wasn’t from the past—at least not the far past—she looked like someone you’d see on Gossip Girl.
Her stare grew intense. I got up, backing away. My heart may not have been pounding, but I was no less frightened than I ever would have been. Luckily, a teacher was approaching the door to the catacombs. I raced over, barely slipping through in time.
I followed the teacher down the stairs then lingered in the hallway, looking at the bricks. Name after name. Names I’d laughed at just a few days ago now frightened me. Standing in that hallway, looking at those names, I felt surrounded by some kind of conspiracy. What was this place? Who were these people?
It was close to our regular meeting time, so I retreated to the nook where Gabe had seen Lydia. I braced myself as I approached, thinking perhaps I might see her now. After all, I’d seen those other girls. But it was quiet and empty. I positioned myself in the shadows and waited.
I could hear his feet creeping down the spiral staircase. His fear was palpable as he reached the long winding corridor.
“Gabe,” I whispered.
Nothing.
“No! Gabe, you have to hear me! Tell me you hear me!”
He turned toward me and snapped, “Stop trying to freak me out!”
“You see me?!”
“I wish I didn’t.” He turned to walk away. He was still mad at me for not believing him and for liking Malcolm. “No, Gabe, stop! You have to listen to me. Something happened to me. I need help.”
He huffed. “I refuse to discuss that guy with you. All I can say is I told you so. And can you please get out of that corner? That’s where I see her.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something happened to me. I don’t know what exactly. I was at the well. Everything went black. I saw terrible things, like I was falling into the well … and since then, I’m different. Nobody else can see me now. But I think I see those girls you see …”
“Don’t make fun of me!”
“I’m not! I need you,” I insisted as I got up and moved closer to him. As I did, his face drained of color. His eyes widened and he edged away from me—afraid—and started whimpering. Sobbing almost. Saying “no” again and again. And “not you.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“You disappeared.” His voice trembled. “I can only see you in that corner. Just like her.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“It means … you’re dead.”
Hearing it out loud hit me in the face, as if saying it made it more real. I finally said the three words one is never meant to say: “I am dead.”
Now that I’d crossed out of the nook, Gabe couldn’t see how I wilted, shaking with fear and grief at hearing those words out loud. I’d never thought I’d have to know I was dead—I just thought I’d be gone one day.
But then Gabe lurched back. I turned and saw her. I knew immediately it was Lydia. She was just as he’d described, Smiths T-shirt and all. She had a wild, raging look in her eyes.
Gabe jumped to his feet. “Run, Liv! Come with me!” And I followed.
AS WE WHISKED ACROSS campus something kicked in, a drive to figure things out. I hardly knew my adoptive grandmother, but when she died, I remember fixating on my mother. I don’t think she cried once those first few weeks. She immediately started taking care of business—making calls, folding clothes, cleaning the kitchen, posting the online obituary. She couldn’t really deal with her loss so she started doing other things instead. I felt like that.
“Can you still hear me?” I asked.
He nodded. Classes had just ended, so students were crawling all over.
“Can you see me?”
“No, I told you, I can only see the—” he started to say “ghosts” but stopped himself—“them in certain spots.”
“I need to know what happened to me.”
He nodded, with his head down. We crossed through the Art Center’s outside atrium, passing a cluster of students.
“Just follow me,” he muttered.
“Are we going to the well?”
He kept his head down as we passed another set of Wickies, then quickly ducked behind the dumpsters by the Art Center. “I can’t just talk to you out in the open. You understand? They’ll lock me up. They’ll send me away somewhere. They’re desperate to get rid of me!”
“Okay.” Of course, I hadn’t been thinking of him at all.
“And, yes, we’re going to the well. Of course we’re going to the well.”
Gabe walked so fast I had to run to keep up. I noticed I was lighter on my feet than I had been before. I could move fast, and I didn’t lose my breath.
As Gabe arrived at the well, he squinted over the edge. “Nothing. I can’t see a thing.” He scoured the ground at its base. He studied its sides and its edges, looking for any clue, peeking over his shoulder nervously. As I approached, his gaze shifted to me, and he stepped back, almost as if awed. He looked directly into my eyes.
“You can see me?”
He nodded.
I smiled. I never thought I’d feel so delighted just to be seen.
“So well, too. You look so much more real than the others. More solid. Less …” he stopped himself again.
“Don’t edit, Gabe.”
“Ghosty. You look less ghosty. And that’s a good thing. It means you’re different from them.” He heard a sound and lurched around, looking, then turned to me to explain, “Sorry it’s just there’s a girl, the one with the bloody neck, who’s always hanging around here near that tree.” He gestured to the weeping willow.
“I saw her here.” I paused. “And not just here, I saw her in my dream a few weeks ago.”
He tilted his head, puzzled. “Okay, now you sound crazy.”
He was right—he was supposed to be the insane one. “It’s true, though,” I insisted. “I mean, I think it was her.”
“Well, I don’t know. That never happened to me.”
“Tell me what has happened to you,” I said urgently. I drew closer, but not too close. I didn’t want to risk touching him, feeling that burn. “You have to tell me everything. I want to know everything you know. Why am I here?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t know why any of them are. I don’t think they know.”
“Well, what do you know?”
“I’ll tell you, but not here. I don’t feel safe.”
He glanced one last time at the well, then led me through the woods, explaining as we went. “I only see them in specific places, in charged spots. But I’ve heard them pretty much everywhere. Same way I hear you right now. But they mostly linger in the places where they died I think.”
“What do they say?�
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“I don’t listen to them. I can’t stand to. I bolt every time I hear one.”
“Can you think of anything you’ve heard them say?”
He took a deep breath. “I think Lydia’s the only one who knows I can hear her. But she doesn’t make sense. She mumbles and laughs like a maniac about being powerless and weak. Losing her strength. She says they’re stuck here—lingering, that’s the word she uses—and she wants out.”
I didn’t feel powerless or weak. Not exactly. I mean, I felt different—and there were clearly different rules and constraints—but at least I was able to talk to Gabe.
“Who did it, Liv? Why were you out there? What were you doing?”
I hesitated, and Gabe immediately knew. “You were with him. I told you about him! I warned you.”
“I was with him. But it wasn’t him.” Of course it wasn’t him.
By now we were approaching the cemetery. He looked around cautiously. “There’s another one who lingers here, so let’s hurry.”
I moved quickly, again getting that floating feeling. With little effort, I got several paces ahead of him.
He looked up, amazed.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re coming and going as you cross the graves. Appearing and disappearing.”
I couldn’t feel a thing. Nothing looked different to me; I could always see myself.
“It’s magical,” he mused, sounding almost unafraid for the first time since he saw me. “Or really creepy. I’m not sure which.”
“So you could see me in that nook, you could see me at the well where I died, and now here.” I was trying to make sense of it all. “You can see me where there’s death.”
He nodded. “I guess. Wait, stay there. So I can see you.”
I paused on a grave. He slumped down beside a headstone nearby.
“Tell me what happened last night,” he demanded. “You snuck out?”
I nodded.
“You met him?”
“In the woods near the well. Then we heard something. We ran in opposite directions. He was protecting me, distracting whoever it was so he’d get in trouble, not me.”
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