The Girl and the Ghost

by Ebony McKenna

  ‘You’re a sly one.’ Rachelle interrupted. ‘The prank was one thing and I still can’t work out how you did it. But sneaking a boy into your room and pretending he’s a ghost? Making me think our beautiful house is haunted. I’m under enough stress as it is.’

  ‘This is not all about you, Mum. Dr Bhavani, I don’t have a real boyfriend at all. Just an impossibly perfect ghost. Can you hypnotise me back to sanity or something?

  Dr Bhavani gave a sympathetic smile. ‘That would imply you’re not sane now.’

  ‘I have mentioned he’s a ghost, yeah?’ Morgan retrieved her phone and showed the doctor the clearest picture she had of George. Daylight, sitting near the lake. It hadn’t helped he was sitting in front of a tree, so his features blended in with the marbled whorls of the bark.

  Rachelle snatched the phone. ‘It’s like looking for Jesus in a pizza.’

  ‘It’s the best shot I have.’ Morgan shrugged. ‘I’m not lying either. I have a ghost in my bedroom. A real, live ghost who has fallen in love with me. And wants to marry me. That’s why he showed up in the kitchen. It wasn’t a trick. He wanted to meet my parents and ask their permission.’

  Rachelle’s mouth dropped open.

  Dr Bhavani pursed her lips and made more notes. ‘And how do you feel? Have you fallen in love with him?’

  Fiddling with her ring she confessed, ‘Yeah. A little bit. I mean, I’ve never been properly in love or anything so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but . . . it’s getting pretty intense.’

  Mum leaned over and gave Morgan a smile. ‘It’s a very pretty ring.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Bhavani chimed in. ‘Rather sweet.’

  ‘I'm wondering if I bought it and I’m only pretending it came from George.’

  Dr Bhavani said, ‘Maybe you feel under pressure to have a boyfriend. Pretending to have one keeps real boys at a distance?’

  ‘I’d go along with that.’ It might even be true.

  Dr Bhavani adjusted her glasses. ‘There is, of course, another explanation.’

  Morgan crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I’d love to hear it.’

  ‘George could very well be real.’

  When a mental health professional can’t help, what’s a girl to do? Morgan sat on the tram and rested her head against the foggy glass.

  ‘You may lean against my shoulder should you require it,’ George said.

  She didn’t even jump at the sound of his voice. Maybe she’d been expecting him to show up. A permanent fixture in her life now. Even though she’d completely cleaned out her school bag – to the point of vacuuming out the dust from the roof tiles just to be sure.

  Maybe she was going completely mad.

  Maybe she’d only imagined the visits to Doctor Bhavani as well. Because wealthy or not, if a psychologist was booked out, they were booked out.

  In a strange way, imagining her visits to a mental health care professional made total sense.

  Because the sessions themselves sure hadn’t.

  Her mind jumped the tracks as she looked at George sitting beside her. ‘I cleaned out my school bag. How can you be here?’ Unless he’d slipped a piece of roof tile in when she wasn’t looking? Or worse, she’d put a section of roof tile back in and blocked the memory out.

  With a knowing smile he caressed her left hand, then brought her fingertips to his lips in a soft kiss. The coral and diamond heirloom took pride of place on her ring finger.

  ‘The ring?’

  ‘Is this not wonderful?’

  Ordinarily his words would provide comfort, but it only served to remind Morgan how inexplicably perfect he was. The dream boyfriend. There for her whenever she needed him.

  They were on a crowded tram, but they had a strange kind of privacy. Oh the joys of public transport, where passengers diverted all their energies into ignoring everyone.

  OK, not everyone. As Morgan looked around, she saw a couple of people perform double takes. They must have recognised her. They must have seen her lift her hand up to the air for no reason. Talking to somebody who wasn’t there.

  I’m losing my mind . . . and it feels . . . kind of wonderful. She shook her head against the wry grin forming.

  The woman sitting beside Morgan turned her body forty-five degrees to look away. The action gave Morgan a clear view of the magazine she was reading.

  GOSS Mag.

  Gossip, Outrage, Scandal.

  The other S is anyone’s guess!

  On the pages, a D-list celebrity showed off her newborn son. Seriously cute baby. Morgan couldn’t help but read over the woman’s shoulder.

  Darn, she turned the page before Morgan was finished. No worries, she pulled out her iPad, then subscribed to the mag to keep reading behind the paywall. The four-page spread had the celebutard’s bub in a sailor costume. Gag!

  ‘Why do they traumatise their young in such a way?’ George said, reading over her shoulder.

  Morgan chuckled. She loved George’s hot takes.

  A few page clicks later –

  ‘– isn’t that?’

  Her brother, Gareth, being a media tart promoting himself. Loads of pictures as well, because too many words must tax the website’s readership. Oh look, here he is in a panto costume, here’s one from his high school years and here’s another as a baby . . . oh dear Lord above, he’s wearing a sailor costume too.

  ‘No matter how they dress them up, all babies end up looking the same,’ George said.

  Sudden, inexplicable dread charged up Morgan’s neck. She swallowed it down hard. The celebri-bub and baby Gareth looked eerily familiar.

  Horribly, horribly familiar.

  I must be wrong, I must be wrong, I must be wrong.

  Nausea swirled through her as the bus reached their stop. With shaking legs she dragged herself out the rear door.

  George followed her. ‘Why are you so upset my love?’

  Icy wind sank its teeth into her cheeks as she leaned against the back of the tram shelter. ‘Look at these.’ She tagged back and forth between the two stories. ‘They don’t just look the same by coincidence. They’ve done this deliberately.’

  ‘Oh dear. They do look terribly similar, do they not?’

  Her knees trembled so much she had to lock them to stay upright. It sapped her strength to speak past the boulder-sized betrayal in her throat. ‘I think my dad . . . had an affair. I think the magazine is trying to say this baby is his.’ She dragged her sleeve over her face, breathing hard. Students walking past her looked at her funny. Any minute now a pap would jump out of a car, tell her to smile and take a photo.

  ‘Oh my dear, dear Morgan. Until this moment I thought my father was the master of all scandal.’

  Sarcasm came to her rescue. ‘My dad’s nothing if not competitive.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure it’s his child?’

  Fat tears spilled out, icing up the moment they rolled down her face. ‘He’s always working late. He’s hardly ever home . . .’

  George’s tone changed to upbeat. ‘My dear. I do not wish to alarm you, but others are observing your distress. You cannot show the public how upset you are. Please, look at me, this is important.’ He placed his hands on her upper arms and angled his face so she had to meet his gaze. ‘Whether anyone else has made the connection is moot. You must behave as if you have not seen any of this. To appear upset will invite questions and inquiry.’

  Looking into his face, she expected to see pity, but instead found care and understanding.

  ‘Be strong, dearest Morgan. Remember that I am here for you whenever you need me.’

  A few deep breaths gave her a little courage for now, but George’s pep talk gave her the key to surviving the whole day. He was right, nobody else except the magazine had made the connection. Yet.

  ‘If someone asks you why you appear so troubled, you could always lay the blame at your mother’s feet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I do not mean it’s her fault about the affair. That
is completely your father’s responsibility. If indeed that event comes to pass. But I suggest if you need an excuse for your emotional state, you could claim some disaster of the culinary variety. Merely as a way to mask the true cause of your distress.’

  ‘George, that’s brilliant!’

  Fresh light shone into her life. How clever of George to be able to talk her down from the ledge like this. Which had to mean he only wanted what was best for her, surely?

  He took a bow. ‘At your service, my love.’

  Maybe – and it was a pretty thin maybe – this was all an overreaction on her part. Just because a magazine featured two babies in sailor costumes didn’t mean those babies were related.

  Did it?

  Doubts gnawed her insides but she had to ignore them and get through the day.

  She could get through one day, couldn’t she?

  14

  Chain Reactions

  Chemistry was the first lesson of the day. Such was her stress, Morgan ate a layer of skin off her bottom lip.

  Olivia stood up the front of class with Miss Khan as they announced her new project. Everyone could be involved. Miss Khan handed out the consent forms and gave Morgan The Eyebrow of Truth.

  Her spirits sank. Oh God. She must know about the magazine.

  Everybody knows by now

  My life is over.

  ‘This is a survey for Olivia’s major assignment. There will be no personal information collected so nobody will be identified in any way. You are free to excuse yourself from it, although the more samples we have, the lower the margin for error and the greater the accuracy of the results.’

  ‘I’m testing for the presence of stress chemicals in saliva,’ Olivia said as she rested her sights on Morgan. ‘Morgan gave me the idea.’

  As one, the students turned to look. She could only sit there, mute with surprise and horror. They’re blaming me?

  Olivia kept on. ‘We’re all pretty relaxed, it’s early in the day, so this first sample will give us our baseline results, so we can compare later results against them.’ At that, she walked around the room and gave everyone a sealed testing kit and a pair of disposable gloves. ‘They’re all numbered, so please take note of your number and make sure when we do this again, you take the same number. That’s how I can compare results when they come back from the lab.’ She reached Morgan’s desk and deposited the vinyl gloves and the plastic-wrapped test kit and instructions. Then Olivia made her way to the front of the class and demonstrated putting the gloves on. ‘The kits are all sterile, so please handle with care. Now, the next part is pretty gross. You need to fill the vial up to the line with spit. That way the lab gets enough of a sample.’

  While everyone else was grossed out by having to spit until they half-filled the vial, Morgan felt utterly trapped. If she didn’t sign the form and do the test, the rest of the class would wonder why. And then if they wondered why Olivia’s best friend wasn’t doing it, they might not want to do it either. If too many people pulled out, the experiment would circle the drain. All eyes on her, Morgan picked up her pen and signed the form. Thanks to her trembling hand, it wasn’t her usual confident scrawl.

  Then she made a note in her workbook that she was number nineteen and she’d make sure to collect the same number next time. As she flicked the lid off her spit tube, morbid curiosity had her wondering just how high her stress chemicals would be in this ‘baseline’.

  Cries of ‘gross’ and ‘urgh’ and other general noises of disgust filled the classroom. Dutifully, Morgan followed the rules and did her level best to fill the vial without throwing up into it. She couldn’t back out now, not after she’d promised Olivia she’d help her with chemistry. But surely she was the most stressed-out student in the class. Her results would blow out the experiment. When the numbers came back, Olivia would want to know why. Morgan wasn’t ready to share her family’s looming catastrophe with anyone. Not even her best friend.

  ‘Spit in your own tubes please, Anton and Liu Yung, I’m looking at you,’ Miss Khan said.

  Once all the samples were sealed in their tubes, then in zip-lock bags and placed in the tub, Miss Khan smiled at the whole class. ‘Brilliant, thank you for supporting your fellow scientist. Now, I’m going to spring an chemistry test on you.’

  Everyone groaned and glared at Morgan, as if this was her idea too. Olivia positively beamed as she stood at the front of the class. ‘Straight after the test we’ll take another sample, to see how much your stress levels have changed.’

  Morgan dropped her forehead onto the desk. The day had only started, but it couldn’t end soon enough.

  So many times in the past few weeks, Morgan had wished people were able to see George. After all, if they could see him, it would mean she wasn’t entirely crazy. But that afternoon as she walked out the front gates of school to the bus stop, she had never been so glad for his invisibility.

  A forest of camera lenses surrounded her.

  Voices.

  Clicks.

  Flashes.

  Jostling.

  Suffocating.

  Smothering.

  ‘Allow me,’ George said, his hand passing right through one of the cameras and into the photographer’s face. The man behind the lens yelped in fright and batted away something he couldn’t see. George kept moving through the crush. Tugging shirts, pulling out ponytails, detaching bag straps. One of the photographers got a great shot of Morgan laughing as one of them tripped over his untied shoes.

  ‘Oi!’ One of the paps leapt in the air as George yanked his underpants half way up his back.

  The media scrum fell over itself in chaos, giving Morgan a clear path to the tram stop to catch her ride home.

  ‘I can’t believe you gave that bloke a wedgie. Where did you learn that?’

  ‘A documentary series by the name of The Simpsons.’

  Morgan laughed so hard she snorted. This earned strange looks from the other passengers and students, but by this point she was beyond caring.

  The full catastrophe of it all lay waiting for her at home.

  A swarm of media – Morgan would look up the proper collective noun later – blocked the front gate. George ran through them, creeping everyone out and once again clearing a path for her to walk through.

  ‘They can hear you out in the street,’ Morgan said as she stepped through the mudroom. Gareth was here, yelling at her father.

  Whoa, Gareth was here? Of course he was, there were cameras present. In fact, he was standing pretty close to the window, so they’d likely get a great shot of him.

  The fact her father was home this early in the afternoon was an even bigger surprise. Sickness weighed in her stomach. Her fears about the celebribub being a half-sibling were bang on target.

  ‘It’s not bad enough my cooking show will be dead because of this, and the council is threatening to demolish the house because you bullshitted on the permits. How dare you put us through this utter betrayal!’ Her mother said plenty more before she ran out of breath and collapsed in a crying and coughing fit.

  Gareth added, ‘Do you know how many favours I had to do to get them to run some PR for me, and now you’ve shat all over my moment!’

  Morgan rolled her eyes. Of course, it’s all about Gareth.

  Dave stood away from the action, behind the island bench and far from the windows, quietly making individual pots of tea. Morgan raised a finger to indicate she’d love a cup. In the corner, Mum kept crying. Morgan pulled up a chair, sat beside her and gave her a hug.

  Only now did she notice the camera crew in the room with them. They must have been here to shoot the cooking show. The complete lack of food smells told Morgan they hadn’t achieved any of that.

  George whispered to Morgan, ‘If we are to judge from your father’s expression, the pictures in the magazine were no coincidence. It appears your earlier assumptions were correct.’

  One thing for sure, if she did the saliva stress test right now, her results would be off
the grid.

  Her older brothers arrived, confirming Morgan’s absolute worst, worst fears that their father had indeed Done The Wrong Thing. No way would they be visiting on a whim.

  ‘Hey Mum, everything will be all right,’ William, the eldest by two minutes said. He embraced Rachelle and nodded to Morgan. ‘We got here as soon as we could. How’s she holding up.’

  Morgan shook her head and mouthed, ‘bad,’ before embracing her other big brother Robbie. So sad they only gathered for Christmases and calamities.

  Robbie tilted his head towards the mass of media at the gate. ‘Did you have to run the gauntlet too?’

  ‘Twice. They were waiting for me outside the school gates.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  Morgan brightened. ‘Don’t worry, George sorted them out.’

  ‘George?’ Robbie asked, ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

  ‘My ghost. I’ll fill you in later.’

  Robbie gave her a weird look. Morgan waved her hand as if to say, ‘it’s no big deal.’

  Gareth splayed his hands in the air and said. ‘Get in line. This is my nervous breakdown, not yours!’

  William, forty going on fourteen, grappled Gareth in a headlock and rubbed his knuckles on the top of his head.

  Gareth screamed and flailed his arms about. Morgan cracked up laughing.

  Rachelle leapt out of her chair and slapped her hands about her sons’ shoulders, wind-mill style. ‘Stop fighting, please!’

  ‘We should be punching Dad’s lights out, not Gazza’s,’ Robbie said.

  ‘Not the hair!’ Gareth screamed.

  Standing pale and alone, their father Richard stared at the cup of tea going cold in front of him. He locked eyes with Morgan and shook his head, mouthing the word ‘sorry’.

  Oh God. Then it really, really had to be true then. The realisation blindsided Morgan. Hindsight told her she should have seen it coming. But she’d been so caught up with her own troubles she hadn’t noticed anyone else’s. And they were huge compared to hers.