Ghost Girl in the Corner

by Daniel José Older

  Slardibardfast wrapped up their set with an uninspired rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Izzy shook her head. “This is trash, man. This whole stupid day. Like … what else —”

  “Yuh got my text that BimBop can’t show, right?”

  Izzy boggled. “What? Who’s gonna DJ for me?”

  “You a go haffi use di songs on yuh phone. I left a message to let you know, you didn’t get it?”

  Izzy pulled out her cell and swiped to turn it on. Nothing happened. “What the …” She tried again. And again. Her heart slowly turned to goo. “The battery … shit.”

  Desmond’s eyes went wide. “You have no music? You on next, Iz!”

  Izzy made a gurgly noise. Tee was out there somewhere, with her faraway heart, and so was basically the whole entire world. The crowd stretched way into the darkness of the beach. Some corny MC asked if they were having a good time and a huge roar erupted.

  Izzy whirled around, scanning the backstage area for a friendly face, and glimpsed a familiar spiky hairdo. “Juan?” She almost burst into tears as Sierra’s older brother turned around and flashed his goofy grin.

  “Izzy? Oh, snap!” He came running over and hugged her. The rest of his thrasher-salsa band stood in a circle by the refreshments table, laughing at some inside joke. “What’s good?”

  “Juan, listen, man. I’m up next and, like … everything’s going wrong.” Hold it together, Izzy warned herself, hearing her own voice quiver. “Like everything. You know these fools don’t want us to swear?”

  Juan rolled his eyes. “I heard. Good thing all our songs are in Spanish so they won’t know. We adding a couple ‘coños’ and ‘chingas’ in for good measure, actually.”

  Izzy laughed and felt some of the shakiness leave her body. “Can you … I have no DJ and my phone’s dead, man. Where my tracks are. Do you guys think you could maybe …”

  Juan lit up. “Back you up? Back up the mighty King Impervious? At a huge cheesy summer fest where we can’t swear? We would literally love nothing more. Hey, Pulpo, Kaz! C’mere!”

  Izzy almost burst into tears right then and there, but she had a show to do. Desmond nodded approvingly as Juan ran off to gather his crew. “Nicely done, Iz. Dat’s why dey call yuh di King, I guess.”

  “It ain’t done yet,” Izzy said. “Now comes the hard part.”

  Slardibardfast agreed to lend Culebra their gear, so Juan and the guys made a big show of strolling onstage real slow and badass-like. Then Kaz ripped into a rackity-clack marching beat and Pulpo dropped a bassline so deep and dance-demanding it seemed like the whole ocean might get up and shake its ass. Juan kept a cool wukka-chikka warbling from his Stratocaster, Shaft-style, and then Izzy took a deep breath and walked out into the lights.

  She didn’t know what would come out of her mouth. All she knew was the day had been long and impossible — downright evil, dammit — and the world seemed to be plotting against her, and all she had to fight back with were her words.

  The crowd applauded as she took the mic, probably more for the grandiosity of the whole entrance than because any of them knew who the hell she was.

  “What the hell is up, Coney Island!” Izzy yelled. Her voice boomed out across the sky. “Oops. Does hell count as a swear?” The crowd erupted into laughter and cheering for real now, and she knew they were hers. She closed her eyes, let Kaz’s clackity-clack and Pulpo’s thunder rolls burst through her. Clutched the mic. Began:

  “I treat this / Like Imma beat this.” The crowd fell into rhythm beneath her, hands raised. “You just hors d’oeuvres / I’m the main meat, sis.” They roared.

  “I’m seamless / you teamless / you change shapes when you excited —” With a sharp snare hit, the whole band ground to a halt. Even the crowd was quiet. “— like a penis.”

  The whole beach exploded.

  “Imma complete this / you can’t delete this,” Izzy rapped as Culebra fell back in behind her. “I got a whole lotta ships / you fleetless.”

  Beside her, Juan laughed and signaled Pulpo; they both went into overdrive, smashing out note after note in a static-laced deluge. Izzy took a breath, then let loose on the mic: “Mosta these fools ain’t a friendta me / Talk trash then find out they gotta bendta me / See I’m the king and you can never bring an endta me / I’m in the end zone, every move you make’s a penalty.”

  Izzy stopped to catch her breath and take in the hugeness of the crowd, who now bopped as one gigantic writhing snake.

  “Y’all feeling this dish I cooked up fresh for ya?”

  The roar was damn near deafening.

  But Tee wasn’t out there. Izzy felt it in her gut. The whole world had shown except the only girl that mattered. Izzy grabbed the mic, closed her eyes, and released.

  Later, she walked along through the darkness of the beach, sneakers in her hand, the cool sand streaming between her toes. The roar of the crowd became a distant hush beneath the crashing sea; the moon hung low and sent sparkling fractals of itself dancing across the night waves.

  Up ahead, someone stood facing the water. Izzy woulda recognized that big ol’ pile of hair anywhere. “Sierra?”

  She turned, wiped her face. “Hey, Iz! Amazing show!”

  “You cryin’, Si?”

  Sierra shrugged. “Nah, I’m alright.”

  “And my name is Leonardo DiCaprio.”

  They both laughed. “You right,” Sierra said. “But I don’t even know how to talk about it.”

  “Good,” Izzy said. “I don’t know how to talk about my shit either. Can we be noncommunicative and salty together or you want some space?”

  “Nah, join me, sis!” Sierra plopped her butt into the sand and Izzy sat beside her, leaning back on her elbows. They let the crashing waves fill the silence between them for a few minutes.

  “It’s Tee, isn’t it?” Sierra finally said.

  Izzy made a face at the sky. “I don’t think she …” She shook her head. The words were there, but they wouldn’t come out. “She didn’t come, did she?”

  “Didn’t see her,” Sierra said. “But she coulda been somewhere else. It’s a lotta folks here.”

  “Nah. She didn’t make it,” Izzy said. “I can feel it.”

  “Alright, Luke Skywalker.”

  Izzy let a little chuckle out.

  “You really did kill it, though. And Culebra was in rare form, even for them. You and my brother should collab more often.”

  “You know, I think we might. That beat the hell outta playin’ with a prerecorded track, to be honest.”

  “BimBop gonna be mad.”

  “BimBop shoulda showed his ass up.”

  Izzy heard soft footsteps and jingling keys coming toward them through the sand. She knew that walk. She closed her eyes.

  “Iz?”

  “Hey, Tee,” Sierra said.

  Izzy swallowed hard.

  “Izzy?”

  The waves, the wind, the world.

  She took a deep breath. “What, Tee?”

  “I’m … I’m sorry, babe. I tried to get here on time, I just —”

  Izzy was standing, pointing a finger into Tee’s chest before she even realized she’d opened her eyes. “You tried, Trejean? It’s been two hours since I rocked the mic, and now you wanna show up talkin’ ’bout you tried?”

  “I’m so —”

  “Don’t even disrespect me by apologizing, Tee. Don’t do it. If you were really sorry, you’da shown up on time.”

  “Iz, I’m sorry!”

  Sierra stood up. “I should go. You guys —”

  “Nah,” Izzy said. “You stay, Sierra. Imma go. This ain’t the place for me.” She started to walk away.

  “Wait,” Tee said. “Iz, seriously, wait!”

  Izzy spun around. “You don’t love me anymore, Tee. It’s obvious. And you couldn’t even respect me enough to be the one to tell me. I had to say it first.”

  Tee’s eyes grew wide and watery. “Iz … listen … I’m … I’m sorry.”

>   Izzy shook her head and stormed off, letting the night wrap around her.

  “Don’t follow,” Sierra said.

  Tee whirled around. She’d taken four steps after Izzy. Her mouth was open but nothing had come out. Sierra stood with her arms around herself, the dark ocean behind her, the moon just over her shoulder; she had heartache etched all over her face.

  “But … why not?” Inside Tee, a little vision of Izzy became smaller and smaller in the darkness. Soon she’d be gone.

  “Because she just told you you don’t love her anymore and you didn’t disagree.”

  “Because I … I mean …”

  “Exactly,” Sierra said. “You have no idea what you feel and so you’re just gonna stand there starting sentences that don’t have an ending, and then what’ll that get ya? Everyone’ll just be more confused than they already are.”

  “Damn.” Tee let her shoulders sag. The tiny Izzy inside her vanished into the night. She sighed. “I … I just …”

  Sierra raised her eyebrows, her lips pressed together. “That’s alright, Tee, you can get out all your nonsensical half-formed thoughts here. This is the place for that.” She turned back to the ocean and sat.

  Tee let her breath slow down. Took a step toward the water. “I just … I can’t even … and, like …”

  “Girl, I know exactly what you mean.”

  A part of Tee was still poised to run after Izzy. She squelched it. Sierra was right: She had no idea what she’d say. None of this was going like it was supposed to. She was gonna show up, apologize, take her razzing, or at worst, Izzy might catch some feelings and have one of her tantrums and then Tee would take care of her. They’d go for a romantic night walk on the beach and that’d be that. Tee and Izzy in full effect again.

  But this?

  Tee shook her head. “You know how like … but then sometimes … and you’re just … ya know? Without any kinda … whatsoever.”

  Sierra nodded sagely. “Precisely.”

  The moon dipped behind a cloud.

  “Sierra, can I ask you something unrelated to relationship-drama stuff?”

  “Sure, Tee.”

  “It’s, uh, about shadowshaping.”

  Sierra just stared out at the water.

  “When you see the spirits, right? Do they have, like, faces and stuff, or they just glowing shadows?”

  “At first they was just shadows. Then as I got better at stuff, I started to differentiate them. Especially after —” She nodded out at the darkness over the waves, where her late grandma had appeared to her one night like some kinda Puerto Rican cigar-smoking Obi-Wan Kenobi, bathed in golden light and full of wisdom and secrets.

  “Musta been hard,” Tee said quietly. “Being passed the mantle of Lucera, but not having anyone to show you the ropes.”

  Sierra nodded, her face tight. “Still hard.”

  Tee let a few moments of just crashing waves and screaming night birds pass. Then she asked, “You can hear ’em?”

  “Who, the spirits? Yeah, I guess so. Some of ’em don’t speak, or don’t know how yet. Some are loud and clear, though. At first it was just their song. Once I, you know …” Her voice trailed off.

  Became the supernova sun in a spinning shadow spirit galaxy, Tee silently finished for her. “Yeah.”

  “After that, everything got much clearer. I can see through the spirits’ eyes, hear ’em like they talkin’ inside me,” Sierra said. “Some of ’em. Some don’t or can’t do much; they just hang there. If there’s logic or rules to it all, I ain’t figured it out yet. I don’t think they have either, to be honest. And when they died violently, usually they can’t remember their lives, or only have scraps of them. It can mute their powers, especially if they don’t know who they are, their own names.” She shook her head. “It’s a lot, sometimes, I … I’m still learning how to balance it all out.”

  The moon emerged from behind the clouds, and Tee realized how sad her friend looked. She wanted to hug her, tell her everything was gonna be alright, but it felt like a lie and Sierra didn’t seem to want to be hugged.

  “Why you askin’ all this stuff anyway?”

  Tee shrugged. The ghost girl had entrusted her with the secret of her existence, and that truth hung in Tee’s mouth for a second before she swallowed it. “Just realized, you know, doing this newspaper stuff, and with Manny and all, it got me thinking how little I know about shadowshaping, even though it’s in me.”

  Sierra made a noncommittal grunt. It always scared Tee how easy it was for her to lie. She halfway wished Sierra would call bullshit and they could just talk about what was really going on, but that still felt like a tiny candle inside her, one that would be blown out as soon as she let anyone else know it existed.

  “Manny never really got into shadowshaping, right?” Tee asked.

  “He was part of the original shadowshaper crew with my grandpa,” Sierra said. “But he kinda moved on from it along with everyone else when all that bad shit went down with Wick and them. I don’t really know how skilled he was as a ’shaper, cuz he never wanted to talk about it with me. You sure nothin’ going on?”

  “It’s just so much loss,” Tee said. “Your grandpa’s out of it, and Lucera gone. Manny dead. The rest of ’em that Wick got. And all that knowledge with each one of them. All that shadowshaping wisdom, on top of all the other stuff they had and were …”

  Sierra nodded, then shook her head, eyes closed. “Girl, I know. It’s been on me, that very thing. Cuz here I am just trying to put together what few puzzle pieces we got, and ain’t nobody around to ask even. Shit’s troubling.”

  “But there’s you, Sierra. And you may not have a lot of info but you got skills. And there’s Robbie …”

  Sierra rolled her eyes, and Tee knew enough to let that one go.

  “Anyway, there’s you! And I know we keep saying we’re gonna learn, but, like, for real, let’s do a practice session. So we can get good and figure out what we gotta figure out as a team, you know?”

  “I’m down.” Sierra stood up, threw a last look out at the sea, and turned toward the boardwalk. “When you wanna start?”

  “Tomorrow,” Tee said, probably a little too quickly. “I just gotta check in with these intrepid young reporterlings I’m the boss’a now and try’n catch up with Ol’ Drasco for an interview. I should be free in the afternoon-eveningish.”

  Sierra raised an eyebrow as they made their way across the beach. “You gonna make nice with Miss Iz?”

  “Girl,” Tee drawled. “All I do is make nice.”

  Sierra rolled her eyes. “If you say sooo.”

  The next afternoon, emptiness filled the basement. It took over everything; the ghost girl’s absence was everywhere. Tee had tried to ignore her pounding heart as she opened the rusted metal door and walked down the short cement stairway. She’d entered into the cool darkness, hands outstretched for the light switch. No blue glow simmered in the corner. No ghost girl awaited her. And now, two whole hours filled with not-getting-much-done later, Tee, still alone, pulled out her phone for, like, the eightieth time.

  Still nothing.

  Tee had sent Izzy a late-night I’m sorry and hoped that would at least smooth things over enough to get a convo going. Izzy’s furrowed brow and watery eyes kept surfacing in Tee’s mind, and then she’d go back to halfway doing whatever she’d been doing, and then she’d remember that the ghost girl was gone too, and then she’d want to cry, and then she’d pretend to get stuff done again, and then —

  “Whaddup, T-killah!” Coruscant called from the doorway.

  Tee damn near hollered from shock, but recovered her composure before he’d come all the way downstairs. “My name’s Tee, bruh. Tee or Trejean, those ya options.”

  “Damn, alright. I came to check in.”

  “Have a seat.”

  “In the fancy barber chair?”

  “Nah, that’s the editor throne. There’s a foldout by the printing press.”

  “Cold world
.”

  Tee shrugged and shook her head once at the empty screen in front of her, the blinking cursor that just seemed to mock her. She put the plastic tip of Manny’s still-unsmoked Malagueña mini between her teeth, crossed the room, and sat in the barber chair. Coruscant had spun his foldout backward and straddled it. “Soooo …” he started.

  “Oh boy.”

  “Shut up, I got something for real.”

  “Go on.”

  “Pom-poms.”

  Tee stared at him.

  “You think I jest, but it’s a thing. Well, it’s gonna be a thing.”

  “Pom-poms like sis-boom-bah?”

  “On hats, though.”

  “No.”

  “Whaddya mean no? I’m the fashion correspondent and I’m tellin’ you, it’s gonna be a thing, Tee. I swear.”

  “Have you actually seen anyone wearing these pom-pom hats on the mean streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant or did you just check your fashion Magic 8 Ball?”

  “Nah, I mean, I’m calling it. I’m saying, they the next big thing, know what I mean?”

  “I don’t, and I plan to keep it that way.”

  “Tee —”

  “Coruscant, man, you’re a reporter. Your job is to report on what’s happening, not make some shit up and call it a trend.”

  “But —”

  “That’s not how this works. Now go walk the streets some and look around you and interview some kids and see what’s hot. Got it?”

  “What’s poppin’, mi gente?” Rafael called as he walked in and closed the door behind him.

  “Not pom-poms,” Tee said.

  “Huh?”

  Coruscant sighed. “Alright, alright. I’m on it.”

  “Don’t make this more complicated than it has to be. You got my coffee, Raffi?”

  “Claro que sí.” He passed her a warm blue-and-white paper cup. “Extra cream and sugar like you said, mi jefa.”

  “Did you just call me a heffa?”

  “Jefa! Jefa! Boss-lady.”

  Tee side-eyed him. “Alright, I’ll allow it. What you got? Later, Coruscant. Go get some good stories!”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Coruscant traded an overcomplicated high five with Rafael on his way to the door.