Seventeen
“Hey, Calloway. Check this out.”
Mark London set a stack of books on my desk with a thump. It was the following Friday morning. A second excruciating week of the exchange had gone by.
On the one hand, I could congratulate myself on the fact that no new crises had occurred, though things between Elaine and me were still a little awkward. There’d also been no new proposals for Jo O’Connor memorials. On the other hand, I still hadn’t figured out the way to get rid of the ghost. Maybe I’d get lucky and ghost-mania would die down on its own.
Actually, during the second week of the exchange, the biggest thorn in my side had been Mark London. He’d insisted on picking me up at lunch every day. And every single day he’d shared some new background tidbit on Jo O’Connor.
The irony of this did not escape me, by the way. As far as I could tell, the only person genuinely interested in who Jo had been when she was alive was the last person I wanted to know about her.
“These,” I corrected now as I pushed my hair back over my shoulder. I regarded the stack of books Mark had just deposited on my desk with what I sincerely hoped was something other than a look of extreme alarm.
“This is singular. These is plural, a term which means more than one. You’re never going to succeed as a journalist if you can’t keep the basics straight.”
He gave me a cheeky grin. “I love it when you get snotty,” he said. “Now guess what those are.”
“I don’t have to guess,” I said calmly, though my stomach was flopping like a fish out of water. “I know what they are. Yearbooks. This may come as a surprise to you, but I have actually seen them before.”
“Not these, you haven’t,” he said.
That’s what you think, I thought. Unless I was very much mistaken, the pile currently resting on my desk represented all the high schools attended by Jo O’Connor before she’d met her unfortunate demise.
Mark pulled up a chair and sat down beside me, sliding the top yearbook off the pile.
“This,” he said. “Check this out.” Quickly he flipped through the pages until he came to the freshman class pictures. “There,” he said, stabbing his finger down against the page. “Right there.”
I looked, my brow wrinkling. “You want me to look at a picture of William O’Brien?”
“Don’t be dense, Calloway,” Mark said. “She should be next, only she isn’t.”
“Where who should be?”
“Jo O’Connor. There’s no freshman picture of her. Not in either of the yearbooks for the schools she attended freshman year. And there’s none for sophomore year either.”
Briskly he pulled another yearbook from the stack and performed the same demonstration. This time he pointed to a picture of Paul O’Dell. A couple of books later, there were no O’ names at all. The pictures went right from Lyla Obritsch to Daniel Oda.
Not pictured, the listing read. Jo O’Connor.
“It’s like she doesn’t exist,” Mark said. “Like she never existed.”
“Of course she existed,” I said. “She died. You pretty much have to exist before you can do that.”
“Okay, well, how about this?” Mark said. He pulled a manila envelope from his backpack and slapped it on the desk beside the yearbooks. “She isn’t in any grade school class pictures either.”
“What?” This was a thing not even I had realized. “You mean none at all?”
“Not a single solitary one,” Mark said. “Though, given the number of schools she attended, I suppose that’s not surprising. The point I’m trying to make here is this: There is absolutely no photo documentation of Jo O’Connor. What if there’s something really weird going on here? There’s no way to verify that the Jo O’Connor pictured in the Beacon paper really is her. What if she’s not the one who died?”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “I’d make an appointment with the school counselor to have that conspiracy theory problem checked, if I were you. Maybe there’s a designer drug for it.”
“Claire,” Mr. Hanlon’s voice’s interrupted.
I jumped, then sucked in a deep breath. Easy, girl, I thought. Mark was on the wrong track. But the fact that his mind had leaped right to the conclusion that something wasn’t quite right was still unsettling.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hanlon. I didn’t see you,” I said.
He smiled. “And I’m sorry to interrupt. I just wanted you to know I think you’ve done an excellent job on these rough drafts. I particularly like your take on why so many students seemed to fixate so quickly on the possibility that there could even be a ghost.”
“What’s your theory?” Mark asked at once.
“That believing in a ghost helps ease the transition,” I said.
“In what way?”
“Well, at first glance, the possibility of a ghost may seem farfetched,” I said. “But believing in something that seems impossible, or at least unlikely, may actually be easier in the short run than accepting the truth: that someone you know has suffered a tragic accident.”
Mark considered for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll buy that.”
“That’s a relief,” I said.
“Keep up the good work,” Mr. Hanlon said as he handed me back my drafts. I was pretty sure he was holding back a smile. “I pencilled in my comments. I look forward to reading the rest.”
“Thanks again, Mr. Hanlon,” I said.
He ambled away, leaving Mark and me alone.
“I have a ghost theory too,” Mark London suddenly said. “You wanna hear it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He gestured to the yearbooks, the envelope filled with grade school class pictures, all with a blank spot where Jo O’Connor should be.
“Jo O’Connor didn’t have to die to become a ghost,” Mark London said. “She’s been one her whole life.”
That night I dreamed again.
This time I knew it was a nightmare, right from the start. Everything was dim and foggy, like those scenes in a horror film when the heroine decides that, even though no girl with an ounce of sense would wander around in a graveyard at night, she’s going to be overcome by an attack of the stupids and do it anyway.
In my dream I’m standing on a sidewalk. Fog obscures my feet, just like it always seems to obscure the ground in the movie graveyard, disguising unseen pitfalls. I don’t quite know how I got to where I am, and for sure I don’t know how I’d get away if I suddenly decided I needed to run. For just a moment, the fog obscures my vision too. Then it begins to clear and I can see what it is I’m standing in front of.
It’s a school. Made of brick, tall and imposing. As I watch, students begin to rush toward it. I can hear shouts of joy as they recognize and greet one another. Then, suddenly, I’m in the scene itself, and the students are all around me. Their momentum carries me up the steps to the school, then inside it. Abruptly, in one of those strange time-shifts that sometimes occur in dreams, I’m standing outside a classroom without ever having walked down the hallway. I’m clutching a school schedule in my hand.
This is where I’m supposed to be, I think in my dream. Room 103.
I open the door and go in. I find a seat in the back of the classroom and slide into it. From her desk at the head of the room, the teacher begins to call the roll. One by one, the students respond and raise their hands. I wait for my turn, tense and nervous. Identifying yourself as the new kid for the very first time is always hard, even if you’ve done it over and over.
“Jo O’Connor,” the teacher calls out.
I raise my hand. “Here,” I reply.
The teacher’s brow furrows in some emotion I can’t quite identify. Confusion. Annoyance. A combination of both. She gazes around the classroom, her glance sweeping like a searchlight.
“Jo O’Connor,” she calls once more, a little louder.
I raise my hand a little higher, waggling it in the air. “Here!” I cry.
This
time I can tell the teacher is annoyed. She makes a mark in red pen beside my name in the roll book, shaking her head back and forth. At this, I actually get to my feet.
“Here! I’m Jo O’Connor, and I’m right here,” I call.
Not one student turns her or his head. It’s as if I don’t exist, as if I’m not there at all.
Now the time in the dream seriously speeds up, like watching a video on fast-forward. Only in the movie that’s suddenly become my life, it’s the same scene playing over and over. I sit in the back of classroom after classroom as roll is called. Each and every time the teacher comes to my name, I respond and raise my hand. Each and every time, not one person notices.
Finally I can’t take it anymore. Hurling myself out of my seat, I run from the classroom and dash down the hall. I run straight to the nearest girls’ bathroom. There, heart pounding, staring into the mirror above the sinks, I discover the terrible truth.
I no longer exist. I’ve succeeded so well in blending in that I’ve erased myself entirely. Not even I can see myself.
I woke up with Mark London’s voice ringing in my ears. I think Jo O’Connor’s been a ghost her whole life.
No, I thought. It isn’t true. You weren’t there. You don’t know how it was.
But no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to convince myself. Not entirely anyhow. All I could think of was that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest. If there’s no one to hear it, does its falling still make a sound?
If the only proof of her existence lay in Jo O’Connor’s heart, a thing she’d never really shared with anyone, who was to say she’d ever existed at all?
Eighteen
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Elaine said.
“I didn’t talk you into it. You volunteered.”
“Only because I knew you’d do it without me if I didn’t go along.”
“I have to do this. It’s the only way,” I said.
It was Monday morning and we were in the Little Theater, right before Drama class. Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning following my conversation with Mark London followed by my nightmare, I’d finally figured out what I had to do. The way to lay Jo O’Connor’s ghost to rest. Paradoxically, I’d decided it wasn’t to finish her off, as I’d originally envisioned.
It was to bring her back for one last appearance instead.
Along about four a.m., I’d come to the inescapable conclusion that the only way for Jo’s ghost to fade away was to have her show up again. She could talk to Alex, tell him how much she appreciated everything he was doing for her, but relate how all the memorials in her honor were keeping her tied to the mortal plane. A thing that wasn’t healthy for anyone.
The trick was making sure Alex was in the right place at the right time for the ghostly manifestation to occur. And making sure he was alone. Arranging this was something I didn’t feel I could do all on my own, so I’d enlisted Elaine’s reluctant help. Extremely reluctant help.
“Are you out of your mind?” she’d all but yelled early that morning when I’d put our secret contact plan to work and managed to reach her on the phone. “That’s insane. It’ll never work. It’s a terrible idea. In fact, it may be the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Stop exaggerating,” I’d said into the phone. “I’ve been thinking about this all night, Elaine. I can’t be just a ghost. There’s got to be more to me than that.”
I could feel my voice rising hysterically.
“Of course there’s more to you than being a ghost,” Elaine said, her own voice calming. “Who put that ridiculous idea into your head?”
“Mark London,” I confessed.
Elaine gave a snort. “I knew that guy was bad news,” she said. “I wouldn’t take any action based on his opinion, if I were you.”
“Look, Elaine. I really have thought about this all night,” I said. “This obsession with Jo’s ghost has got to stop. She’s the only one who can make that happen, but she can’t do it on her own. She needs your help. I need your help. Please don’t let me—us—down.”
“That was an extremely low blow,” Elaine said. “And stop talking about yourself as if you’re more than one person. You’re creeping me out.”
“I am more than one person,” I said. “And they both have the same question: Was that a yes or a no?”
Elaine was silent for a moment. “Yes, I will help. No, I won’t let you down,” she finally said. “But I want to go on record as officially saying I think this idea completely bites and you’ll live to regret it.”
“Look on the bright side, then,” I said. “You’ll get to say I told you so. Okay, here’s what I need you to do. . . . ”
A few sentences later the plan was in place. Elaine would ask Alex to meet her in the Little Theater before Drama. It would actually be easier for them to be alone than it sounds. The Beacon schedule called for this sort of mini-break to occur between second and third periods. Students got an extra fifteen minutes. Most used the break to grab a mid-morning snack before ambling along to the next class.
When a deplorable tendency toward lateness for third period had developed, the school authorities had threatened to cancel the break entirely. This had resulted in to-the-minute promptness. In fact, it had become something of a schoolwide contest to see who could cut it the closest and still officially be on time. It was a pretty safe bet that no one would be heading to the Little Theater early.
Even Mr. Barnes would be assisting the plan, although he didn’t know it. Like clockwork, he used the break to go for a quick latte. He’d be out of the building for those fifteen minutes. The combination of circumstances wouldn’t buy me a lot of time, it was true, but I was hoping it would be enough to convince Alex it was time to let Jo O’Connor go.
“How do I look?” I asked Elaine now.
She studied me for a moment. “Like a cross between a cat burglar and a Kabuki performer,” she said. “Without the white makeup.”
“That’s very helpful. Thanks so much,” I said.
Since there wasn’t a lot of time to put my plan into action, I’d decided to make use of Claire Calloway’s fashion sense to help Jo’s ghost show up. The theory was that I, Jo, would materialize from between the black masking curtains that hung at the back of the stage. To that end, I hadn’t changed my clothes, but I had tucked Claire’s long hair up inside a black nylon stocking.
The idea was to get Alex to focus on the most recognizable thing about me: my face. Elaine had already made a quick trip to the light booth to supply suitable ghostly illumination. The auditorium lights were off. Only the lights at the back of the stage were on, down low.
I’d make my appearance, plead with Alex to let me move on, then disappear with a little more lighting help from Elaine. If that didn’t work, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do.
Don’t think like that. Think positive, I thought. This is going to work. It’s got to.
“Okay, I think I’m set,” I said. “You’d better get up to the booth. Alex should be here any minute.”
“All right,” Elaine said. She turned to go, her expression stony. I knew that look. It’s the look Elaine’s face gets when she’s really upset about something and either can’t or won’t talk about it.
“Elaine,” I said.
She turned back. “What?”
“I know you don’t want to do this, but you’re doing it anyway. So I just want to say, thanks.”
Her expression softened. “You’re welcome. Just remember, you owe me one.”
“As if you’d let me forget.”
A quick smile flitted across Elaine’s features as she turned toward the booth once more.
“Elaine? Are you there?” we suddenly heard a voice call out.
For one split second both Elaine and I froze. “Omigod. That’s Alex,” I said. “Get up to the booth. Hurry. Go.”
Elaine sprinted up a side aisle toward the tech booth while I dashed to the back of the stage. I’d just made it behind the
curtains when I heard Alex’s voice once more.
“Elaine?”
All of a sudden I could hear the stage lights start to make the funny humming sound that sometimes happens when the levels change. I knew Elaine had made it safely to the booth. From there she’d literally set the stage. The rest was up to me.
“Alex,” I moaned. “Aleeex.”
“Elaine, what’s going on? Where are you?” Alex asked. “And by the way, that isn’t very funny.”
Great, I thought. My less-than-sterling impersonation of my own ghost had so far succeeded only in making Alex annoyed. If I couldn’t do better than that, I’d really be sunk.
I pulled in a deep breath to steady my nerves.
“I’m not Elaine,” I said in my own voice.
“What’s going on?” Alex said.
I eased my head out from between the curtains, sincerely hoping I looked like a face floating in the air. I could just make out Alex’s form. He was standing in front of the first row of seats, gazing up at the stage. I knew the moment he saw me. He sucked in an audible breath.
“Jo!”
He put his hands flat on the stage as if to hoist himself up.
“Don’t come any closer, Alex!” I said. “I won’t be able to stay if you do.”
Slowly Alex dropped back down. “Jo, is that really you?” he asked.
“It’s really me, Alex,” I said. “I don’t have much time, but we have to talk. I had to see you. There’s something I have to try to make you understand.”
“Understand?” Alex said. “I don’t understand any of this. How can this be happening? How can you be here at all? I mean . . . I thought that you were . . . ” His voice trailed off.
He doesn’t want to say it, I thought. He doesn’t want to say the word “dead.”
“That’s why I’m here. To explain,” I said. In his confusion, Alex had given me precisely the opening I’d wanted. If I could convince him the reason I was still around was because he hadn’t let me move on . . .
“Alex, I know you . . . care about me,” I began. “But you’ve got to listen. You’ve got to let . . . ”
How Not to Spend Your Senior Year Page 10