Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator

by Jill Baguchinsky

  Palmetto High’s “rules of fashion” didn’t say much about jewelry, aside from a prohibition on piercings anywhere except the earlobes, so at least I could still wear my dangly purple spider earrings. I’d bought them last year from Striped Skull at the mall, mostly to annoy Aunt Thelma, who always tried to steer me in the direction of little gold hoops or pearl studs. I didn’t bother with makeup, except for a little lip gloss. I laced up my purple high-top Chuck Taylors, and glopped a coat of quick-dry purple polish on my fingernails. I always make sure to have on some purple somewhere—it’s my favorite color, and it had been Mom’s favorite as well.

  I’d heard Dad get home well after midnight, and he was in the shower when I was getting ready for school. I had already registered at Palmetto, but he’d offered to drive me on the first day and help me get everything sorted out at the front office. I’d said I didn’t need him to do that. If spending time with Aunt Thelma had given me anything, it was an independent streak. She was the kind of person who’d expect a kindergartner to find his own classroom on the first day of school. She certainly hadn’t walked me inside on my first day as a freshman at Lakewood last year, and I didn’t need anyone to hold my hand at Palmetto, either.

  Before leaving the apartment, I checked the contents of my messenger bag. I’d thrown in a couple of notebooks and pens and pencils, my cell phone and MP3 player, and the black zippered pouch I use as a wallet. The last thing in the bag was a little leather bag of gemstones and crystals. They’d belonged to Mom. She’d thought they were lucky and protective, especially her favorite: a tumbled pebble of shiny black tourmaline. I wasn’t so sure about the luck thing, but I liked having them with me.

  Aunt Thelma had lived a block from Lakewood High, so I’d been able to walk to school last year. Attending Palmetto meant riding the bus instead. After ten minutes of wilting in the stifling morning humidity at the bus stop and another twenty sitting in an unair-conditioned, slightly ripe bus, my bangs were sticking to my face and I could feel sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades. I was dragging, and I regretted skipping my coffee that morning. At that moment I would’ve just about traded five years of my life for an iced latte.

  After filing off the bus with the rest of the herd, I stared in dismay at the collection of buildings in front of me. Palmetto looked even bigger now than it had last week. Its district covered Palmetto Crossing plus some of the smaller towns nearby, and its student body was nearly four times larger than Lakewood’s. Surrounded by palm trees and spindly Australian pines that flagged slightly in the hot breeze, the campus consisted of four two-story buildings connected by covered walkways. The buildings were arranged around a big central courtyard with a few scraggly planters and a huge sundial in the middle that looked like the ideal spot for Aztec-style blood sacrifices. A row of portable classrooms sat around back.

  The bus loop was off to one side, near the senior parking lot; from there I managed to fight my way to the main office. What a freakin’ zoo. I’d probably gone to elementary school with at least some of the herd plodding around me, but I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone after I’d left the Palmetto school district.

  When I’d registered the week before, the sophomore guidance counselor explained that returning students had signed up for this semester’s electives last spring, so some classes were already full. She wrote down my preferences—Intro to Drawing and Intro to Film I, along with Pottery I and Intro to Poetry as alternates. Intro to Poetry sounded pretty dreadful, but it was still better than the other choices, most of which were gym-related. Gym and I seriously don’t get along.

  So, of course, when the secretary at the front desk looked me up in the system and printed my schedule, the first class listed was Beginning Gym.

  “No way,” I said. “This is a mistake.”

  The secretary glared at me over the rim of her glasses; I guess my complaint wasn’t the first one she’d heard that morning. “Any problems must be handled by your guidance counselor. There’s a sign-up sheet over there on the counter. Write down your name, and she’ll see you as soon as possible.”

  “But—”

  “There’s nothing I can do. Write down your name and go to class.”

  “Fine.” Judging by the eight million names already on the sign-up sheet, the entire sophomore class was just as delighted with their schedules as I was. It would take the whole semester for the counselor to go through them all.

  There was no pen on the counter, so I fished my own out of my messenger bag. I was about to write my name at the bottom of the sheet when I noticed a name in pencil, just a few lines down from the top: Emerson Bean. What kind of name was that? It sounded like it belonged to an uptight, snooty old man who signed his name with “Esq.” and spent the evenings in his study, smoking a pipe, alone.

  After glancing at the secretary and making sure she was busy berating another unhappy student, I found a pencil in my bag, erased good ol’ Emerson, and wrote my name in his place—in ink. Sorry, Emerson, old chap, I thought. But, you know…Freakin’ gym! This is an emergency.

  I loitered for a moment longer, until the secretary looked up and made a shooing motion—like I was a pesky mosquito buzzing in her ear. “Go to class,” she repeated. “You’ll be called down for an appointment as soon as possible.”

  Meh. Gym. I considered hiding in the library or the nearest bathroom until first period was over, but skipping class usually meant detention, and detention meant spending even more time at school. I could stomach gym for one day. After all, it was the first day of class, and nothing ever happened on the first day.

  Feeling like a clueless freshman, I checked the map in the school handbook and crossed the courtyard in the general direction of the gym. On the way, I looked over the rest of my schedule. At least there were no other disasters listed. I’d even gotten a fifth-period drawing class as my other elective.

  I crossed onto one of the walkways and stepped into another building, where I ended up at one end of a long hallway. One side of the hall was lined with trophy cases. The other sported the most god-awful mural I’d ever seen—a crooked, disproportionate, yellow-and-green Trojan warrior with a football impaled on his sword. Wow. Had the principal lost a bet with another school or something?

  A set of double doors, one green and one yellow, loomed ominously at the end of the hallway. Heading toward them was like making that final stroll to the execution chamber. Dead girl walking.

  Maybe it sounds overdramatic, but I don’t think it’s possible to express how much I hate gym.

  Hoping the guidance counselor was zipping down the line of discontented sophomores at somewhere near the speed of sound, I pushed open the gym doors and slipped inside.

  Immediately, a basketball came flying at my face. I screamed and ducked; the ball bounced off the top of my head, which hurt, but not as much as if it had smacked me on the nose.

  “Hey!” A beer-gutted man in a green-and-yellow cap stalked over, a whistle on a lanyard bouncing against his wide chest. “You’re supposed to come in through the locker room entrance.”

  I rubbed my throbbing scalp.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know. I’m looking for…” I paused and glanced at my schedule. “Beginning Gym with Coach…Frucile. Is that you?”

  “No, I’m Coach Perelli,” the man snarled, as though I’d committed an unforgivable sin just by approaching him. “Coach Frucile’s back there.” He jammed a thumb over his shoulder toward a group gathered at the other end of the gym. When he turned back to the tall boys, his stomach jiggled under his Palmetto High Basketball T-shirt.

  I made my way around the perimeter of the gym, keeping an eye out in case any more rogue sports equipment decided to attack. The pain in my head was down to a minor pounding, but I wondered if I should tell this Frucile person what had happened. Maybe I’d get sent to the school nurse. Regardless of whether I was actually hurt, sitting in the nurse’s office sounded a lot better—and safer—than staying here.

  Before I
could speak up, though, a muscular woman with short red hair beat me to it. “Beginning Gym? You’re late! Name!” she barked.

  It took me a second to realize she’d meant that as a question. “Um, Violet Addison.”

  “Addison.” She held a clipboard with what I assumed was an attendance sheet, but she seemed to freeze for a moment when she heard my name. She looked up, focused on me, blinked. “You’re Addison.”

  “Um, yeah.”

  She paused for another second, then made a mark on the clipboard. Weird.

  I tried for sympathy. “I just got hit with a basketball, and—”

  “Basketball unit isn’t until November. Get in line.” Behind her, the class stood in four straight, timid lines.

  “Okay, but—”

  “You’ve already missed five minutes of orientation. In line!”

  Her tone made me panicky. “Which line?”

  “Pick one!”

  If I’d had a tail, I would’ve tucked it between my legs. I left my bag near the wall with the others and retreated meekly to the shortest line. My face felt hot; being singled out always makes me blush, something that’s mortifyingly obvious when you’re as pale as I am. The coach went back to her orientation speech, yammering about attendance and doctor’s notes and gym clothes. Since I had no intention of staying in her class, I tuned out until I heard her holler, “Addison!”

  Oh, what now?

  “Get up here. I’m using you as an example of inappropriate footwear.”

  The lead weight in the pit of my stomach turned into a total cannonball. I trudged up beside her, while everyone stared at me.

  She pointed to my feet, but she addressed the entire group. “I don’t want to see shoes like this in my class. Proper sneakers only.”

  I looked down at my poor, defenseless Chucks. “These are sneakers.”

  “No arch support, bad traction, poorly padded soles,” she rattled off. “Make sure you have acceptable athletic shoes when we start dressing out next week. And those of you with long hair like this,” she continued, still gesturing toward me, “make sure it’s pulled back. Addison, back in line.”

  Fuming, I obeyed her latest command, letting my hair fall in my face in defiance.

  Ten minutes later she called over Coach Perelli, and they both walked us to the locker rooms. There the group split into girls and boys. Perelli followed the boys into their locker room, while Frucile followed the girls into ours.

  Everything was okay for about three seconds. Then I felt it. I felt it and I wanted to run. Something supernatural was in the locker room with us, and it wasn’t anything I wanted to know better. It built up around me like a storm cloud, all anger and rage, and hot, clammy fear, and the longer I stood there, the stronger it grew. It came from everywhere at once in the too-warm room. I felt its clammy tendrils wrapping around me, pulling me deeper, closer, toward a darkened alcove to the right.

  It usually takes a lot to scare me, but five minutes in the girls’ locker room did the trick.

  The presence was so strong—why couldn’t anyone else feel it? My classmates stood around looking bored and fiddling with their lockers while Frucile continued her orientation lecture, barking louder and faster than ever.

  “School-approved locks only! Locks are five dollars, which you’ll get back at the end of the semester if you return the lock in working condition. My office is over there,” she said, pointing to a closed-off space to the left of the main changing area. “And the showers are right here.” She walked to the dark alcove and hit a wall switch. A row of fluorescent ceiling lights buzzed to life, revealing a series of tiled stalls sporting meager green-and-yellow shower curtains.

  There was something so wrong in that alcove. You could’ve covered me in mud and dog crap, and I still wouldn’t have showered in there. I guess Frucile kept talking; I couldn’t hear her over the blood drumming in my ears. As the thing and its endless, invisible dread swirled around me—trapping, constricting—the edges of my vision began to go white. The air around me went freezing cold, then swelteringly hot again. I couldn’t breathe.

  I needed to get out of there. I spun around and went back into the gym. If the coach called after me, I didn’t hear. I couldn’t. There was only the roar of my pulse and that thing’s silent yet deafening rage.

  Back in the gym, I bent over, resting my hands on my knees. I could finally fill my lungs again; I had never before appreciated the simple luxury of a deep breath. I had no idea what had just happened; all I knew was that I’d never encountered anything like that before, and I was never, ever going back in that locker room. Whatever was in there, it couldn’t have been a ghost. Mom had taught me when I was little that ghosts might be scary, but they were never threatening or just plain evil. That thing in there, though? Totally evil. The lead cannonball in my stomach grew roots and became an anchor.

  I was still catching my breath when the class filed back in, chased by Coach Frucile.

  “Addison!” she said when she saw me. “I don’t appreciate you leaving in the middle of orientation.”

  “Asthma attack,” I lied. “My inhaler was in my bag.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask to see the inhaler as proof, since I didn’t have one.

  “Don’t think you’ll be able to use that as an excuse in my class without a doctor’s note,” she said. Then she clapped her hands and went back to yelling at everyone instead of just me. “Get back in your lines. These are your teams for the semester. We have just enough time for a volleyball intro before the bell rings.”

  The anchor grew big enough to ground a cruise ship.

  “Addison! You serve.” Coach Frucile lobbed a volleyball at me. I screamed and jumped aside to avoid another collision; my left sneaker skidded on the freshly varnished floor, and I fell backward onto my butt.

  “That’s why I require proper sneakers,” Coach Frucile told the class.

  Screw this. It wasn’t like I was staying in the class, so I didn’t need to play nice with Coach Frucile, especially since she was so hell-bent on picking on me. Embarrassed tears pricked my eyes as I grabbed my bag and left—through the side entrance this time. I ducked into a nearby restroom and waited until the bell rang; it took me that long to stop shaking.

  I had Algebra II second period, but I was only in class for ten minutes before a student aide from the guidance office showed up with a slip of paper bearing my name. Sweet. Meanwhile, poor Emerson Bean, Esq., sat in a classroom somewhere, miserably waiting to be summoned.

  I was ushered into the office of Mrs. Ortiz, the sophomore guidance counselor. Mrs. Ortiz already had my transcript and schedule pulled up on her computer; she smiled pleasantly but blankly across her desk, giving no sign that she remembered me from when I’d registered the week before. She had tired eyes with dark bags underneath.

  “Hi, Violet. What seems to be the trouble?”

  “I’m in the wrong class,” I said, sitting down.

  Her eyes darted back and forth as she skimmed my schedule on her monitor. “I’m not seeing a problem. Which class?”

  “Beginning Gym.” I shivered, still shaken from my freaky locker-room experience. “I was supposed to have Intro to Film.”

  “Hmm.” She hit a few keys. “Nope. Intro to Film is full. We had to place you elsewhere.”

  “I picked alternates, too. Intro to Poetry. Pottery.”

  “I’m afraid those are full as well.”

  I tried to remember the other choices. “I’ll take anything that isn’t gym. Home Ec? Chorus? Drama? Intro to Basket Weaving?”

  Mrs. Ortiz chuckled but shook her head. “I don’t see any alternatives that’ll fit your schedule. Stick with gym for now. It’s a requirement for graduation anyway, so you might as well get it out of the way.”

  Ohhhh, no. No way. “I took a semester of gym last year at Lakewood; I already have that credit.”

  She looked at my records again. “I don’t…Oh, okay. Personal Fitness. A Personal Fitness credit from the Brevard County school system
can’t be transferred as a gym credit here. They’re categorized differently.”

  “But it was a gym class! With awful gym clothes and grumpy coaches and basketballs hitting me in the head, just like here!”

  “I understand that, but the system won’t let me reclassify the credit on your transcript.”

  “So I’m stuck?”

  “It’s just a semester, Violet.”

  Yeah, a semester of drowning in horror in that locker room.

  “Coach Frucile and I don’t get along. I already left today’s class early because she threw a volleyball at me.”

  “I’ll write you a note and say you were meeting with me.” Mrs. Ortiz scribbled on a pad and tore off the top sheet. “Give her that tomorrow. She’ll excuse you for today.”

  Out of arguments, I took the note and left. Maybe Dad would be okay with me serving daily detentions for the rest of the semester. That was exactly what I’d be doing, since I intended to skip first period every day until the spring.

  Returning to Algebra II meant crossing from one building to another. There was a puddle in the walkway, probably from one of Florida’s regular afternoon showers the day before. I splashed through it without a thought, went inside, and squelched down the hallway toward my classroom.

  “Do you mind?” someone said behind me. The voice was gruff and familiar. “I just mopped that!”

  I yelped a little in surprise and spun around. “Henry?”

  Sure enough, the ghostly janitor stood a few feet away, busily mopping. “Yeah, who else? Told you I worked for the school system, didn’t I?”

  “Sorry, I was just—”

  “Look at that mess.” He jabbed his mop at my wet footprints. “And this darn thing ain’t good for nothing anymore.” Apparently the giddiness he’d felt at the thought of going back to his job instead of finding his wife had worn off.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Darn kids today don’t have any respect. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to wipe your feet?”