by Linda Nagata
Ian’s room had always been neat and uncluttered, utterly unlike his sisters’. His dresser was lined with soccer trophies, and his sneakers stood in matched pairs beneath his bed. The clock still blinked midnight from a late-summer power outage. His bed was made. It looked like a display room.
“Anything?” Brigid said, nodding toward Sinead’s tools. Sinead shook her head in what she imagined was a curt, professional manner. The thermometer did not reveal any strange differences in temperature, and the compass did not point anywhere but a woozy north.
Sinead remembered reading somewhere, or maybe seeing in a movie, that you had to ask ghosts what they wanted. They went into Brigid’s room, where Sinead had first seen Ian’s ghost. Brigid’s bed lay bare, and a few of her stuffed animals were piled to the side of it, wounded with tomato-sauce stains. Sinead took this in and finally offered a mumbled “Sorry about that.” Brigid shrugged and said nothing, trying to hide the anger over the lasagna and guilt over the mango juice warring inside her.
Not that Sinead was paying attention. She seemed satisfied by their stupid exchange and had turned her full attention to the mirror.
Sinead stared for a long time. Her eyes glazed over, which blurred her features, but she never saw her brother’s face looking back. Occasionally Brigid would ask “Anything?” and Sinead would blink her eyes, rub them, and say, “Nothing.”
Sinead and Brigid went to the kitchen next, the site of Ian’s second appearance. Brigid opened and closed the refrigerator door a few times, making sure that didn’t summon him, but she was too terrified Sinead would ask why she was in the kitchen to keep up the investigation for very long. Sinead blithely assumed Brigid was sneaking snacks.
For lunch they microwaved giant chunks of Mexican lasagna and leftover caterer chicken fingers. Their mother was home, but it didn’t even occur to them to ask her for lunch. During Ian’s last few months, their mother was usually busy taking care of him. When he died, they had briefly hoped she would recover her interest in their well-being, but instead her caring engines shut down completely. She spent whole days in her room; the girls had no idea what she did in there. If they put their ears to the door, they heard the television, but they had the eerie feeling it wasn’t being watched.
When the leftovers were ready (re-ready?), Sinead opened up her laptop and logged on to Facebook. Sinead never used her account, since she was already sick of everyone at their school and couldn’t imagine spending her free time reading their stupid updates. But Ian had been obsessed with Facebook, forever adding friends and commenting on pictures and taking polls. None of his own status updates ever had to do with chemo, or the hospital, or his family, which were just annoying distractions from being normal and popular. His updates were bizarre hypothetical questions about Batman or The 300 or Boondock Saints. Any comments pertaining to “good thoughts!” or “HUGZ” were deleted, unless they were posted by someone really hot.
“I’m going to send him a message,” Sinead announced.
“On Facebook?” Brigid said.
“Ian loved Facebook,” Sinead said. “Maybe he’d rather communicate that way.”
Ian and Sinead were not Facebook friends, but he let anyone who went to their school see his profile. Even though his last update was weeks old, his page was full of activity. New wall posts filled in the top. Someone had posted a picture of Ian with his arms around two girls Sinead didn’t even recognize, sitting in a hot tub at someone’s pool party. He was grinning like he’d gotten away with something. Was he already sick by then? Or did he still think he was in remission? There were also messages on the page, “IANO WELL MISS U!!!” and “I KNOW UR A REAL ANGEL NOW!” The “angel” messages were a million times worse than “good thoughts!” or “HUGZ.” Sinead felt an overpowering urge to tell these kids exactly which species of idiot they were, but the most insightful commentary she could come up with in her blind fury was “FUCK U.” She moved to post it, but she felt Brigid staring at her. She looked at Brigid, who shook her head.
Sinead sighed and started a new message. She typed, “Ian, r u haunting the house?” She pressed send. Then she opened another one and added, “Why?”
They ate their Mexican lasagna very slowly, watching Sinead’s Facebook inbox like it was extremely boring television. No new messages arrived.
The girls were in Sinead’s room creating an altar out of Ian’s trophies when they heard their mother banging dishes in the kitchen. If it had been their father making angry sounds, they would have stayed put. But with their mother, it was better to get the confrontation over with.
“You’re not on vacation,” their mother said as they came down the stairs. She wore glasses, a rumpled blue sweat suit, and, weirdly, makeup. She shoved their dirty dishes across the counter. “What if Daddy came home?”
Brigid immediately pulled her stool in front of the sink and started scrubbing the lasagna pan. Sinead stared very hard at her mother, trying out her telekinetic powers. She had just hit puberty, right? Maybe Ian wasn’t Ian at all, but a poltergeist that had been unleashed by her hormones.
Her mother stared back at her, looking both dazed and furious. The side of her neck quivered, and there were huge circles under her eyes. Her mouth tensed, like she was about to say something nasty. Instead, her thin face collapsed, like a building imploding, and she started to cry.
Shame burned Sinead like poison. She snatched a dish from Brigid and rubbed it dry with a towel. Their mother went into the bathroom and both girls pretended not to hear her sob. When Ian was home, their mother never acted like this. It was only when he was at the hospital. Now, instead of Ian’s death breaking the spell, he would be at the hospital forever. Brigid kept washing dishes, which Sinead dried and put away. They took a long time doing this, to kill time until their mother finally emerged from the bathroom.
That night, the sisters convened in Sinead’s room to watch clips from Real Ghosthunters, a YouTube show Sinead had found. They were huddled in the dark around the laptop, taking mental notes about plasma, when they heard the garage door open. They held their breath, praying for their father to just come upstairs. Instead, his footsteps stomped around the kitchen. The master bedroom door opened, and their mother rushed out. After a moment of loaded silence in the kitchen, their voices exploded. The girls made out single words: “pigsty,” “brats,” “son.” Their father pounded up the stairs, thundered past Sinead and Brigid, and slammed the bedroom door. Their mother’s footsteps came next. They were slow and quiet. They heard her go into Brigid’s room; then there was a knock at Sinead’s door.
Their mother’s arms were full of Brigid’s white sheets, which Sinead had put in the wash and then forgotten. She had only added detergent, not bleach, and the soggy sheets were still covered in smears of red tomato sauce and greasy faux-cheese blots.
“What is this?” she said. Her voice was tight and quiet, the worst possible tone.
Sisterly solidarity was running strong, but it was still vulnerable to attack. If neither of them said anything, both would be punished. Traditionally, this had been the route the siblings took, because Ian believed in, and enforced, a no-ratting policy. The one time Sinead ever bucked it, Ian told everyone at school she wet the bed. For a month, everyone called her “Pee-nead.” But the one time Brigid had told on Sinead, both Sinead and Ian conspired to punish her, first by locking her in the attic, then by tricking her into eating a bag of their father’s favorite cookies. When he found the bag in Brigid’s room, she lost snacking privileges for a month. As a result, Sinead had come to view the policy as a necessary evil, but Brigid hated it. If there was a moment for Brigid to change the status quo, this was it. It didn’t matter how nice Sinead had been to her today; she had spent every other day being mean, and if Brigid did nothing things would go back to the way they’d been.
“Sinead put lasagna in my bed,” Brigid said.
Sinead stiffened next to her sister, and Brigid shrank away. The instant the words were out of her mouth,
she regretted them terribly. Their mother stared at Sinead with murder in her eyes, but the look she gave Brigid was not much kinder.
“Your father will speak to you tomorrow, Sinead. Brigid, come with me.”
Their mother led Brigid out of the room, and Sinead was left alone, equal parts terrified and furious. She couldn’t stop imagining all the terrible things that would happen now that her father knew. She also couldn’t stop thinking about hitting Brigid, or kicking her, or pulling her hair. Sinead got up and started pacing, but this only made her anger worse. Brigid’s insubordination could not stand, and since they weren’t going to school, the only way to punish her was with another prank at home. But if her father caught her doing something bad again . . .
She needed a quick, deniable solution.
Sinead rooted through her desk drawer until she found a stiff, moldering stick of gum and chewed it until she couldn’t even remember what flavor the gum had been. She found Brigid lolling facedown in a fresh set of sheets, her hair tousled against the pillow. Sinead’s fingers delicately removed the gum from her mouth and nestled it into Brigid’s hair.
Sinead marched out into the hallway, flushed with triumph, only to find Ian staring forlornly at the door to his room. The sight was so sad that her adrenaline-and-anger high crashed, and shame surged in its place. What was she doing torturing her sister when their brother needed help? Ian turned to face her and cocked his head, as if he sensed her regret. She’d never received such a look of understanding from her brother. People had told them they’d get along when they were older, but Sinead had always written that off as the same kind of adult bullshit as telling her that she’d look prettier after the braces came off, or the kids would be nicer next year. Now, under the weight of Ian’s look, she felt the loss not just of her brother, but of their friendship. Their future.
Tears spring to Sinead’s eyes. She hadn’t cried since Ian went back into the hospital, and even then she had been crying for poor Sinead, who had to endure Ian’s disease ripping her family apart. Now she was crying for her brother, who’d been bludgeoned by cancer and rewarded with a confused, silent afterlife.
This was no time for emotions, however. Ian needed her help. She swallowed her tears and whispered, “What do you want?”
She wasn’t sure what she expected. He was waiting outside his room. Maybe he needed her to open the door? Instead, Ian looked at her with hurt confusion. He mouthed something at her, but there was no sound. She wondered how long it took to learn to read lips. Probably more than twenty-four hours.
“I can’t hear you,” she whispered.
Ian mouthed it again. And again. When Sinead shook her head, his face colored with unfamiliar anger. Ian had a temper, but Sinead had never seen fury like this. Ian spat a silent evil phrase at her, then disappeared.
A loud thump came from the kitchen downstairs, then a rustling. Something soft hit the floor, over and over. There was a crash, then the sound of footsteps, running.
Sinead rushed to the kitchen. When she flipped on the light, she found the entire floor covered in lasagna. It was strewn on the floor in messy goops, stuck to the cabinets, mashed on the fridge. The trash can had been tipped over, as if by a dog they didn’t have; the rest of the lasagna lay inside in one red mass. The pans were still stacked in the sink and on the counter, crusted with burnt cheese products. One of them had shattered on the floor.
Her mother must have thrown the lasagna in the trash, though Sinead couldn’t imagine her doing it—she hoarded food like a squirrel. Or maybe their father had decided he didn’t like it filling the fridge. Their father wouldn’t like all the dirty dishes in the sink, either, but perhaps her mother had staged her own tiny rebellion and refused to clean up after him.
But now, the lasagna was smeared across the entire kitchen, which definitely wasn’t her parents’ doing. Brigid was fast asleep, and anyway, she never would have made a mess like this. But blaming it on her angry ghost brother wasn’t going to cut it with her father, so it was up to Sinead to fix it.
Sinead got out a mop to push all the lasagna toward the trash can. It slithered along the floor, leaving a streak of sauce behind it. Sinead scooped the lasagna into the trash with a dustpan and thanked God that her mother took sleeping pills and her father drank whiskey. Then she reminded herself that she didn’t believe in God. Praying was a hard habit to break, though. She wished she could ask God to explain her brother to her. Why was he so angry? What was she supposed to learn from his punishment? But God wasn’t listening, and she had to mop the floor.
Brigid marched down the stairs the next morning and threw the clump of her gum-wadded hair at Sinead. There were perhaps more sophisticated or more covert ways of handling her anger, but Brigid did not want to employ them. She hated her sister, and she wanted her to know it.
“Bitch,” Brigid said. Ian had taught her all the curse words when she was five, but she’d never used one before. The anger behind it burnt her mouth.
Sinead flinched at the word, but also seemed strangely impressed. “I’m sorry,” Sinead said. She didn’t do the looking-away-and-shrugging routine that usually accompanied her apologies. But she didn’t seem that sorry, either. Or, she seemed to feel she’d already paid the price.
Brigid stood there, fuming. Then she turned on her heel and marched into the pantry to look for something to eat.
“I saw Ian last night,” Sinead called to her. “After I did it. He tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear him, and he got mad.”
“I don’t care,” Brigid said. This was not true, but she was sick of doing things Sinead’s way. She took an entire box of cookies and marched back up to her room.
Brigid spent the entire day in her room, making herself sick on Chips Ahoy and reading through every book she owned that featured ghosts. But the ghosts in these stories were either too evil, or too good. The kids had friends, or adult helpers, or siblings who didn’t put gum in their hair. None of them told you what to do when you were alone, and scared, and haunted by your mean, sick brother.
Brigid was sitting on her floor, staring at her pile of useless books and tugging on the newly gum-shortened chunk of hair when an epiphany broke: They had only seen Ian when they were pulling a prank.
She found herself perversely glad that Sinead had put gum in her hair. That meant she needed to get revenge on Sinead. And when she did, perhaps she could finally help Ian.
When Brigid heard her mother go downstairs to start dinner, she stole down the hallway into her mother’s bathroom. She enjoyed spelunking in the cabinets when her parents weren’t home, and the dusty bottle of Nair was right where she remembered. She’d seen a commercial that suggested it had something to do with summertime and shorts, but people also made jokes about using it for pranks on TV. Brigid was used to not understanding things, but she’d filed the idea away for when it was needed.
Brigid took the Nair into Sinead’s bathroom and got out her honey-vanilla-mango shiny-hair shampoo. She unscrewed both caps and prepared to pour the white Nair into the conveniently white shampoo. But in the bright bathroom light, the clamor of words on the bottle—“patch test” and “doctor” and “burning”—gave her pause. Burning? Brigid was furious with Sinead, but was she furious enough to set her hair on fire—which, as far as she could tell, was what this concoction would do?
Brigid unscrewed the cap and watched herself in the mirror as she raised the bottle. She moved in slow motion, raising it, then placing it over the shampoo bottle, then tipping it in. When the first bit of Nair poured out, Ian was standing next to her.
Brigid set the Nair bottle down on the counter without taking her eyes off her brother. In the mirror, Ian snatched it up and tossed it between his hands in the languid, confident way he’d moved when he was alive. Her throat tightened; this bottle-tossing was the most Ian-like thing she’d seen the ghost do, and it made her ache for her brother. Brigid sensed he was waiting for her to do something.
“Hi,” Brigid said.
>
Ian nodded in response and continued to toss the bottle back and forth.
Brigid tried to remember the plan she and Sinead had come up with for this encounter. “Do you . . . W—what do you want?” she said.
Ian’s face darkened at that question, and Brigid fumbled for a new, non-angry-making one. She couldn’t think of anything. Instead, she blurted out the only other question she had. “Is it better? Now that it’s over?” she said.
Ian snatched the bottle out of the air and froze.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say it like that. But, I just . . . people said, when you died, that it was a blessing, because you were suffering but now you’re here, and I don’t understand—”
Ian’s face had changed when Brigid said the word “died,” but she couldn’t stop herself from talking, even as he looked at her with angry confusion, like Brigid had just told him a lie out of spite.
“Don’t you know?” Brigid said. “Ian, you’re—”
The scary anger returned to Ian’s face, and his hands began to twitch. They flew up to his head and grasped the tufty blond hair that grew there. He pulled on it, and a chunk came away in his fist. He opened his hand and watched it float to the ground. Then he pulled out another chunk. And another. The chunks of hair floated down all around him, like the leaves of a dying plant.
“Stop!” Brigid said. His eyes darted between his head and Brigid’s, then to the bottle of Nair. He snatched up the bottle and poured it all over Brigid’s head. The thick liquid gushed down in a white stream, covering Brigid’s messy brown hair, her forehead, eyes, nose, and mouth. Her eyes burned and she choked for breath. She watched her reflection in horror as Ian pulled her long brown hair from her head in sickly, dripping strands.