On the Fringe

by Courtney King Walker

  There was real terror in that memory. However, I felt compelled to move on until something felt strikingly familiar, pulling at me like déjà vu.

  I am straddling a bike, speeding along as fast as possible. It’s dusk, and I’m riding through a little park lined with shoebox houses trapped between narrow driveways. As I weave in and out of parked cars like I’m leading an obstacle course, my new black and tan beagle, Oscar, runs alongside me as I clutch his leash. We swerve around the towering trees in wide angles before stuttering along the bumpy grass and then on to the bike path leading up a huge, green hill.

  Dad and little Addie dawdle together way down at the bottom of the hill. They are much too slow for Oscar and me. Impatiently, I race ahead, feeling an oversized smile overtaking my face. Oscar breaks free from my grasp, and before I know it, he’s so far ahead I can’t keep up with him. That means trouble. For him and for me.

  Oscar is only a few months old and very naughty. Now his leash trails behind him as he yips and yaps at everyone, probably bragging about how he just got away from his owner. I pedal even faster, trying to catch up, thinking I’d better get to him quick—especially after that peeing accident last night (his, not mine).

  Without looking or caring where I’m going, I pedal as fast as I can, wondering what’s taking Dad and Addie so long. Like a rocket, I fly off the curb and into the street, my eyes focused on catching that crazy Oscar. He’s a lot less trouble when he’s asleep.

  Before making it across the street, I skid to a stop at the sound of a loud screeching. It completely drowns out Oscar’s howls. When I realize what’s happening, that the horrible noise is coming from a motorcycle headed straight for Oscar, I lose my breath along with the ability to think, or even scream. All I can do is watch the hazy headlight turn in circles around us just before I jump off my bike and run. As fast as I can. For Oscar.

  The motorcycle and I reach Oscar at the same time. I pull him into my arms and squeeze my eyes shut at the exploding noise. The motorcycle skids across the pavement as the metal and rubber screech in protest, but somehow miss us. A stinging pain rips into my knee, and I hear the sound of breaking glass and crunching metal behind me as the driver flies off his bike, straight into a tree. I can’t see because my eyes are too blurry from tears and my shaking head.

  The world goes quiet until Oscar whimpers.

  Even though I don’t want to, I have to look at the driver all crumpled and mangled beneath the oak tree. Everything about him looks wrong. His head is twisted sideways even though the rest of him is turned the other direction, and his black eyes are wide open, staring straight at me. I see the blood. There’s too much of it oozing out through the thick pile of black hair on top of his head, like a slippery sauce spilling all over the ground.

  Dad, who has been yelling my name for a long time now, rushes over to me, picking me up in his arms and asking if I am all right. I can’t stop crying, even after he keeps telling me everything is okay, and reassuring me that I’m not in trouble.

  ‘Shhhh,’ he whispers in my ear over and over again, his warm hands smoothing my head and tickling the back of my neck. It seems like I will never stop shaking or crying. Ever…

  Stop.

  Wake up.

  The sirens faded along with the memory, until everything around me was dark and I was sliding forward through a speeding tunnel of light and color to the present, to Hidden Lake. I felt like I was suffocating, and sunk to the ground, burying my head in my knees, trying to grasp what I’d just seen.

  The ghost was right. I had killed him, and I thought I was going to be sick. I created a monster. My anger suddenly felt much more complicated.

  The nausea along with the spinning memory subsided as I scanned the neighborhood, eventually focusing on the glassy water of the lake reflecting blue, dotted with a couple of stray cotton ball clouds. More than anything I felt a sense of relief to be back in the present, away from the contorted, bloody face of the victim I now recognized too well. But I couldn’t move. Not now. I’d killed someone.

  I wondered what it meant for Claire.

  As soon as her face registered in my mind, I felt the pull toward her, and shifted to wherever she was—which by then happened to be at school. Great. Reluctantly, I followed her around most of the day, mulling over what to do about her, and more specifically this slowly unfolding nightmare.

  Claire and Addie ate lunch outside on the quad while I watched everyone hanging out in their little groups and cliques, all talking and laughing, like what they had to say was the most important thing in the world. Just stuff like last night’s sitcom or next week’s party. I’d never noticed it before, but everyone here seemed so young, so naïve. Crap, it wasn’t like I was even that much older than these guys. Is that what death did to you? Turn you into a philosopher?

  I had to get away from here.

  As I made my exit, a spidery chill crawled up my arms—this time more subtle, but definitely still there. When it reached my shoulders and tingled down my spine, I peered through the crowd of familiar faces, trying to find one that didn’t belong. But there were too many bodies everywhere, making it impossible to pick out a ghost among a sea of mortals. I focused on my feet as the crowd traipsed through me, and a light wind blew, scattering a mixture of leaves and wrappers and debris until it was impossible to tell the leaves from the garbage.

  The bell rang, prompting everyone to get on with life and file back to class. I scanned the vacated quad and spotted the trespasser—the ghost lady with the crazy hair who seemed to be stalking me. She was leaning against the vending machines outside the cafeteria. Everything clicked, and I realized she was the ghost I had seen here just after I’d died. She wore the same pink robe and fuzzy slippers as before, with messy hair that had never met a comb.

  Had she been following me around this whole time?

  Her lips turned upward, and she looked me in the eye, like she had something on her mind. I drifted nearer, making a point to keep my distance. With a long, bony finger, she motioned at me. “Over here,” she said, her voice deep and mellow.

  I stopped a few feet from her. And, whoa—up close she was a real mess. Her face was caked with an orangey-glow powdery substance, her eyelids a bright purple like she’d used crayons to color them in, and her lips varied between dark and light pink, each horizontal line on her lips obscenely magnified. Even I could do better than that.

  She batted her eyelashes, which looked like black, hairy spider legs. “I know something you don’t,” she said.

  “Okay. Anything different than what you told me the other night?” I asked.

  “It’s about Aden.”

  “Who?”

  “Aden.”

  “Who’s Aden?” I tried not to stare at her peeling face. Seriously, as a ghost she had so many options. Why choose that?

  “You don’t know much, do you?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Well, let me break it down for you.”

  “Okay?”

  “Do you mind if I have a smoke first?”

  I wondered if she were as mental when she was alive as she appeared now. “You do realize you don’t have any lungs, right?”

  “Habit,” she said, fishing a cigarette from her pocket and lighting up. She even went through the motions of the whole thing—one big, fake production. I was curious if she also imagined the poison seeping into her non-existent lungs, too. One time, I’d tried eating a hamburger but thanks to my lousy imagination it didn’t taste all that great.

  She finished. The cigarette vanished into her magenta lips at the same time her pink robe getup disappeared. Now she was all dressed up in heels and a black, sparkly dress, her hair done up, her makeup no longer sliding down her face, her fingernails long and red. It was definitely an improvement. I was speechless.

  “That’s much better,” she said with a deep, throaty breath. “Well, hello there, Daniel. I’m Nico. I don’t think I introduced myself last time.” She extended her sle
nder, bare arm. I pretended to shake her hand, but it seemed weird. Probably not something I wanted to repeat.

  “You know my name,” I said, wondering how, but not enough to ask.

  “Let’s just say I’ve been around.”

  Okay.

  “Like I said, I have crucial information for you.” She looked over my head and behind me, her eyes roving. “But we need to make it quick before he finds out, or I won’t be able to follow him around anymore,” she said.

  I pretended to sit on a nearby bench while Nico paced back and forth in front of me in ridiculously high heels. “How do I even know I want your information?” I asked.

  “Believe me, you will. But hold on…if I give you this information—new information, mind you—then you have to agree to something in return.”

  “I’m not sure I’m interested,” I said.

  “That ghost who’s been haunting your girlfriend? You don’t want to know more about him?”

  Fine. “Okay, what do you want from me?” I asked, wondering what her request might be. How bad could it be?

  “What are you worried about, kiddo? I just want a little companionship.”

  My face must have shown the shock I felt because she made a gesture like she was slapping my back. “Oh! I’m not that kind of woman. Crimony. I was only talking about a little outing. As friends. In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t a whole lot of us around.”

  An outing? Was she serious? I wasn’t looking for more friends.

  “I like movies,” she said.

  “Movies. You want me to go with you to a movie.”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “I guess not.” This better be worth it. “Why do you care about me…or Claire, anyway? I don’t even know you.”

  She paced to the vending machine and back. “Let’s just say I don’t like it when our kind interferes with their kind,” she said, clasping her hands together. There were about twenty rings and bracelets there now that I hadn’t noticed before.

  “Our kind? Their kind? We’re not aliens, you know.” This lady made my sister look… well…kind of boring.

  “So you’re that type, huh? No imagination, whatsoever. You’re not going to get very far here, you know.”

  “Um, that isn’t really my goal. And I thought you said you had new information. I already stopped connecting to Claire like you told me to, so unless you’re here to tell me you made a mistake the first time you warned me, then I think we’re done talking.”

  She sidled up next to me on the bench, her eyes scanning the empty quad. “I thought for sure that would stop him. Really, I did. But Aden figured a way around it. A way to hurt Claire.” Her eyes stopped on mine, like they were frozen.

  “How do I even know you’re telling the truth?” I asked. “Maybe you’re working with Aden, trying to keep me and Claire apart. Come to think of it, last time you weren’t exactly helpfulby leading me all over the place. He haunted her while I was away, you know.”

  Nico looked guilty. Her eyelids dropped and she turned her head away from me, studying a pink-flowered bush, like it was a mirror. Suddenly, she zoomed to the other end of the bench. “I admit it. That was my mistake. For a while now I’ve been trying to figure out how he haunts her, which, come to find out, is because of YOU. You just happened to catch me following him that night. But you shouldn’t have left Claire. That was your fault, not mine.”

  “Why didn’t you just come clean instead of running away from me like you were up to something?”

  “I was still figuring everything out. Really. I still am—which is why you need to trust me,” she said weakly.

  “Trust you? You’re like a circus act. How do you expect me to take you seriously?”

  Her eyes bulged. “Ha! That hurts, you know. Have you always been so judgmental and cruel? I wonder what she sees in you.”

  “Just tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “Fine. But, for future reference, you should work on your people skills. You’re not making any friends here with this kind of attitude.”

  I stared long and hard at her, waiting for her “so-called” information. Finally, she spit it out. “Aden got someone to help him. Someone mortal.”

  “Come on. Who could possibly be helping him? He’s a ghost.”

  “He’s done it before,” she said.

  “Done it? What does it mean?”

  “Worked with a mortal.” Her eyes grew wide, and she whipped her head back and forth, like she was looking for something. And then she was fading, the vending machines behind her beginning to show through. “Just keep a closer eye on your girlfriend for now,” she said, growing dimmer by the second. “And keep that mortal away from her, too. I have to go.”

  Back to her pink robe and slippers, to the nutcase look, she slowly disappeared into the lit-up rows of candy bars behind her.

  “Wait. You never told me—why do you want to help me?” I asked as the opaque version of her lit up yet another cigarette and inhaled.

  Her eyes drooped, as if she were sleepy. “I don’t.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I want to help Claire, not you.”

  “Why Claire, then?”

  “If you must know, Claire-bear happens to be my niece and let’s just say I’m not exactly thrilled with all the attention she’s been getting lately...especially by some ghost with a vendetta who’s out of his mind. Now start thinking of a movie you want to see. And make it a funny one.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BLIND DATE

  Daniel

  Claire had a date tonight—a mercy date Addie guilted her into. Mrs. James was probably already sending out the wedding invitations (wait, that wasn’t funny). The whole thing annoyed Claire. Me, too.

  The sun was just starting to set, but it was still light enough that Claire couldn’t see me yet. She had already started getting ready for her date, and I was sitting behind her on the bed, watching as she sat in front of her mirror. She started in on her mascara, her fingers gripping a neon-orange plastic wand as she meticulously dabbed black stuff along her eyelashes. I watched intently—more so than I’d ever watched her do anything…

  And then I lost focus to the memory of the motorcycle accident, wondering how I could’ve blocked out something so traumatic. Over the years I remember a few sporadic flashes of a barking dog or screeching tires, even the sick smell of blood…that’s right… as a kid, a bloody nose made me nauseated though I never knew why. Until now, I figured those random memories were just bits and pieces of a recurring nightmare…had no idea they were flashes of truth.

  My parents probably kept quiet about it, hoping I’d forget.Lucky for them I did,because the memory as a whole was horrifying now. The thought that I’d been the cause of someone’s death made me sick, but what could I do about it now? Did he expect me to somehow change the past? Maybe tell him sorry?

  I wondered how old I was when it happened. How old was I now? When you stop having birthdays, do you stay that age forever, or do you keep counting the years like everyone else?

  “Oh my… Daniel!” Claire yelled, turning around to face me.

  Oops. Who, me? I smiled, shrugging my shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded quietly, a pointed finger pushing through my chest. I could tell she was mad, excited and annoyed, all rolled into one. “Where have you been?”

  I wanted to explain everything to her. But right now, all I could do was smile because of the huge black smudge that marred her otherwise adorable face.

  “What?” she asked.

  Laughing, I motioned to the mirror behind her. She finally understood and turned around.

  “It’s your fault,” she said, slightly grinning, before disappearing out the door. A few minutes later she returned with a wet towel, carefully dabbing at her face until her eyes were perfect along with the rest of her. I wandered up behind her, resting my chin at her shoulder as she finished up and put on her glasses. Black on
es this time.

  “I’ll be right back.” She pushed her chair backwards and walked through me to her closet, closing the door.

  I waited on the bed until she emerged dressed in a long black shirt and dark jeans, a green scarf hanging around her neck. Her strawberry-auburn-gold-who knows what color it really is–hair fell in waves across her shoulders and her big, brown eyes watched me strangely. I was thinking her lips looked irresistibly tempting, and realized I was staring at her like an idiot…and turned away.

  “Where have you been?” she asked quietly. “Do you realize it’s been over a week? I’ve been wondering this whole time when…if…I was ever going to see you again. You can’t just disappear like that, Daniel. Not without telling me first.”

  Overa week, really? I must’ve missed a couple of days somewhere in there.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but remembered it wouldn’t do any good. The fact that she couldn’t hear me was especially unfair, because I had no way to defend myself.

  “You” she whispered, shoving her finger in the middle of my face, “are in trouble.”

  “Sorry,” I mouthed.

  Addie barged in. “You ready, Claire?”

  Claire spun around to face her. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”

  “Come on, it’s just one date.”

  Claire gaped at her, and I could feel her frustration. I floated over to the bed and hovered across it, my arms behind my head, my ankles crossed. It seemedlike a relaxing pose—too bad I couldn’t really tell.

  “I’m sorry, really, I am,” Addie pleaded, instantly insecure. “I promise to do whatever you ask, for like a week straight.”

  “A week?”

  “Come on, Claire. I owe you, I promise. It’s just I already told Josh you’d go out with him if he got Landon to ask me out.”

  “I know what you promised, but you didn’t ask me first, Addie.”

  “I know, I’m sorry, really. Josh is nice, anyway. I don’t know what the big deal is.”