The Girl and the Ghost

by Hanna Alkaf

  It was never anything that couldn’t be blamed on bad luck or carelessness, never anything big enough like the last time, for Suraya to glance suspiciously at Pink and his antennae.

  Or so he thought.

  It was a perfect Saturday afternoon, the kind with blue skies dotted with fluffy white clouds, the kind sunny enough to bathe everything in a warm glow, but breezy enough to make venturing outside for more than five minutes actually doable.

  Are you not spending today with . . . your friend? Pink asked as Suraya made her bed, her hair still damp from the shower. He couldn’t bring himself to say her name.

  “Not today, Pink,” she said, smoothing the sheets down neatly, folding her blanket into a perfect rectangle. “I thought it could just be you and me today.”

  Just you and me? He felt light suddenly, as though someone had lifted an invisible stone from his back.

  “Like old times.” Suraya smiled down at him, and he smiled back, nodding.

  All right then, he said. What shall we do?

  “What we always do,” she said, grabbing her sketchbook and clipping her favorite pen to the loop that held it shut. “Head to the river.”

  The river was a small one, just barely big enough to avoid being called a stream, and its appearance was governed by its moods. Sometimes it was calm and flowed at a sedate pace between its grassy banks; sometimes it grew swollen with the rains and flowed fast and furious, sweeping up everything that crossed its path and swallowing it whole.

  But there was no danger where Suraya and Pink sat, on a rocky overhang that jutted out a little over the water, perfectly shaded by the trees overhead. Sunlight streamed through the leaves and dappled the water in pretty patterns of light and shadow. Suraya sat cross-legged and bent over her sketchbook, her pen flying busily over the page, and Pink curled up in a warm patch and dreamily watched the dragonflies play over the water. That’s how he would have been content to stay all day, until Suraya opened her mouth to speak.

  “Pink.”

  Hmm? He looked over at her, still feeling warm and altogether too comfortable; he was about to fall asleep.

  “I want to talk to you about something.” She set her pen down now and looked right at him. The page was covered in trees; a pathway leading into a forest, the branches closely woven so no light could get through, each leaf meticulously inked into place.

  Oh? He sat up then, shaking himself awake. What about?

  “It’s about Jing.”

  Pink’s ears prickled at the mention of her name. Even the sound of it was enough to set off tiny sparks of anger in his chest. Oh? She sounded serious, and for a moment he thought she might say she didn’t want to be friends with Jing Wei anymore, and he felt almost giddy with delight at the idea.

  There was a long pause before she continued, as though she was trying to find the exact right words. “I know what you’ve been doing to her, Pink.”

  He frowned. I don’t know what you mean.

  “Yes, you do.” She looked steadily at him, holding his gaze until he had to turn away from her big brown eyes. “You do, Pink. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  He fiddled with a blade of grass, not saying anything, not meeting her eyes.

  “You have to stop, Pink. She’s my friend and you have to stop.”

  I used to be your friend, he said sullenly. Your only friend. He knew that last bit was nasty, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  “I know. And you are still my friend. But Jing is too, and what you’re doing isn’t nice.” She sat back and sighed, sweeping her hair off her neck and tying it into a messy ponytail. “I tried to let it slide, those first few times. But losing the money—that made her so sad. She was really looking forward to buying that figurine, you know. She’s been saving forever.”

  Pink said nothing, crossing his grasshopper arms tight.

  “Will you stop?”

  If she expected an answer, she certainly wasn’t getting one.

  She sighed again. “Come on, Pink. Don’t make me do it.”

  Still he refused to answer, or even look at her.

  “Fine,” she said, standing up and brushing the dirt from the bottom of her jeans. “Fine. You forced me into it.” She towered over him, her eyes glinting with anger, and he couldn’t help shrinking slightly. “I am your master,” she told him, her voice hard and cold. “And I command you to stop playing your tricks on Jing Wei. Do you understand?”

  There was no disobeying her when she used that tone, and Pink nodded. “I understand,” he muttered.

  “Good. Then that’s settled.” She picked up her sketchbook and turned to go. “Come on. I’m getting hungry.”

  Pink hopped along slowly in the grass behind her, and with every minute that passed, his anger grew and grew until he thought he might burst in a brilliant explosion of fire and rage.

  Jing was a poison, a virus that had worked herself into Suraya’s life and taken root. It was only his duty, he told himself, to cut her out before she did any real damage. No matter what he’d told Suraya. No matter what he promised.

  A pelesit protects his master. And that girl would get her due. He would see to that.

  Twelve

  Ghost

  PLOTTING HIS REVENGE was, in the end, the easy part. Pink had plenty of time to lay down his plans, plenty of time to think and scheme as he rocked and swayed in the pocket of Suraya’s school uniform. The hard part was figuring out how to make sure Suraya wouldn’t find out. But even that, in the end, wasn’t that hard. Between school and Jing Wei and her books and her sketches, there was plenty in her life to keep her happy and occupied. She was content. She was also distracted, which made his plan easier even as it sickened him. She didn’t even think about Pink or what he was doing. And he needed to put a stop to it. He needed her to go back to needing him—almost as much as he needed her, though that last bit he refused to admit even to himself.

  In the end, it was the bullies that were the key.

  He’d promised to leave Jing alone, after all, and a pelesit would never disobey his master. But there was a way. There was always a way.

  And it was simple enough. Simple to have red paint fall just so on the seat of Kamelia’s chair, so that she sat on it unawares.

  Simple enough to use a little notice-me spell as he clung onto her ballet slipper shoes, something that made everyone turn to look at her as she walked to the canteen from her classroom, the last one in the farthest block. Simple enough to make sure everyone noticed the bright red stain on her pinafore, looking for all the world like fresh blood blooming freely into the turquoise cotton, every girl’s nightmare.

  Kamelia was usually the one whispering and giggling at others behind their backs—and to their faces, for that matter—so suddenly finding herself on the other side of things must be incredibly unpleasant, Pink surmised from the way she quickened her pace, the way her hands clenched and unclenched themselves as she walked. She quickly found Divya in the canteen and gripped her arm. “What is going on?” Pink heard her hiss as he clambered quietly up the rough weave of her white socks to get a better view. “Why is everyone looking at me like that? Do I have a pimple or something?”

  Divya scanned her face, frowning. “No lah, where got? I don’t see . . . oh my god!” She clapped her hands to her mouth, and Kamelia’s eyes widened.

  “What? What? What’s going on?”

  “Come with me to the toilet. Right now.” She steered Kamelia over to the nearest bathroom, walking behind her to try to shield her from the amused gazes of the others and shoving the two girls who happened to be washing their hands at the sink roughly outside before locking the door.

  Minutes later, there was an agonized shriek from behind the closed door.

  Pink smiled. In just a few moments, the two girls would come storming out, red-faced and raging, determined to find out who had committed this dirty deed, and who would they find with red paint on their hands? Who else but Jing Wei, who had been charged with the task
of decorating the classroom for Chinese New Year, which just happened to be that month; Jing Wei, who had come early to school to finish painting an enormous cloth banner with red firecrackers and the words HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR; Jing Wei, who had chosen the exact shade of red paint that currently adorned Kamelia’s skirt.

  It was simple. So simple.

  All Pink had to do was sit back and wait for his revenge to be complete.

  Thirteen

  Girl

  IT WAS SURAYA who found her in the end, at the bottom of the stairs farthest from the hall, whimpering, blood trailing from her nose. Her right arm stuck out from her body at an angle so unnatural that Suraya had to look away. By her knee were the shards of her black-rimmed glasses. Someone had stomped on them hard, grinding the lenses into powder.

  She knelt down quickly, bending over Jing, her eyes wide with concern. “Jing. You okay?” It was a stupid question, she knew it even as the words were spilling out of her mouth. But what else could you say in the face of such obvious pain?

  “I can’t move my arm, Sooz,” Jing whispered. “Everything hurts.”

  Suraya touched her friend’s face gently, pushing back the hair that fell into her eyes. “Don’t worry,” she whispered back. “I’ll go get help, okay? I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

  Then she ran off down the corridor, yelling for a teacher with a strength and volume she never knew she was capable of.

  They took Jing Wei away in an ambulance, the sirens blaring, the red and blue lights casting weird shadows on the beige school walls.

  The official story was that she fell down the stairs.

  But as Suraya was ushered away by the school nurse, who gave her a cold, sweet chocolate drink to sip and made her lie down in the sick room “for the shock,” she saw serious-faced officials take Divya and Kamelia into the principal’s office across the way and shut the door, both girls pale and frightened and curiously deflated. Just as they passed, Divya had grabbed Suraya’s hand. “We didn’t mean to do it,” she’d whispered hoarsely, her palm sweaty, her voice laced with anxiety and regret. “It just happened. It was an accident.” Later, peeking out of the sick room window, she saw their parents. Kamelia’s mother was dainty and fair, and wore high heels and a haughty expression; Divya’s mother was plump and worried-looking, her hair streaked with gray and making its way out of the loose bun she wore low on her head.

  Suraya lay there for what seemed like hours on the lumpy mattress in the sick room’s single bed and thought about faces: Jing’s sweaty face, contorted in pain; Kamelia’s face and Divya’s too, looking more scared than she’d ever seen them; Pink’s face and its wicked grin upon seeing hordes of mosquitoes descend on playing children. Each face came with a different emotion: first worry, then anger, then frustration, then fear. With every passing minute each emotion grew bigger and more tangled up with another, until she thought she might burst from trying to contain so many feelings.

  When the school day was finally over, just before they boarded the bus, Suraya took Pink out of her pocket and brought him up close to her face, so that he got a good look at her hard eyes, her flared nostrils, her gritted teeth. Her grip was suffocating.

  “We will talk when we get home,” she told him, dropping each word like a stone.

  Then she put him back in her pocket and they rode the bus in silence, all the way back to the little wooden house by the paddy fields.

  Fourteen

  Girl

  THERE WAS A familiar tall thin figure waiting for them when they got off the bus, and Suraya blinked in surprise. Her mother had never met her at the bus stop like this before.

  “Hello, Mama,” she said, then paused, unsure of what to say next.

  “Hello.” Mama’s pale face was illuminated by the glow of the setting sun, which was busy setting the sky on fire as it plunged below the horizon. “Your school called. They told me about your . . . friend.”

  “Oh.” Suraya looked down, thinking of Jing’s pale face, her blood-spattered uniform.

  “She will be fine.” And Mama reached out a hand and patted Suraya stiffly on the shoulder, twice.

  Jing’s mother might have gathered her up in a hug, she thought, held her close, let the warmth seep into her tired, heavy limbs, kissed her aching head. But Suraya knew that this was the best she could hope for, and she appreciated the gesture for what it was.

  “Yes,” she said, with a confidence she didn’t feel. “She will, I’m sure.”

  “Well then.” Mama turned and began to walk toward the house. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “I made gulai lemak ikan and sambal belacan today. You need a bath before you eat, you have blood on you.”

  Suraya looked down, confused. There were blood stains on her knees, and another running along the length of her forearm. She hadn’t even noticed.

  Her stomach growled and she realized that, despite everything, she was hungry.

  Slowly, she followed her mother into the house.

  In the darkness, Suraya searched for the right words.

  She had been looking for them for a long time. Through her shower, staring at the water as it dripped down the pale blue tiles into the drain at her feet. Through dinner, where the silence was punctuated only by the sounds of mealtime: chewing, water sipped from glasses, the clink and scrape of metal against ceramic as Suraya and Mama scooped food onto their plates. Through prayers as she went through the motions, bending and bowing.

  Until now.

  Suraya was in bed. The only light in the room came from the crack under the door, and from the weak moonlight that straggled in through the window.

  And then, finally, she spoke.

  “Pink.”

  Yes?

  A pause. “Why did you do it?”

  He paused, as though thinking about this. I do not know, he said finally. I do not like the girl, and I wanted to see her hurt.

  “Why don’t you like her?”

  I do not know, he answered. I just do not.

  “You do know.” Her voice was quiet. “Tell me why you don’t like Jing, Pink.”

  It was a long time before he could speak again. Because you like her, he said sullenly. I do not like her because you like her.

  “I do like her. She’s my best friend, the first real friend I’ve ever had. She’s the reason I’ve finally been HAPPY. For the first time in my whole life.”

  The watery moonlight caught his little grasshopper eyes, and in the darkness they seemed to flash. And me? Have we not been happy together, you and I? What have I been to you, then, all this time?

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “You’re just . . . you. You can’t be the kind of friend Jing is, Pink.” It was hard to get the words out.

  And so what kind of friend must I be?

  “The kind that doesn’t hurt my other friends, for one thing.”

  There was a long silence. Suraya stared out of the window at the lights in the distance and prayed for the strength to say what she knew she must.

  “I’ve been thinking, Pink.”

  The nerves almost choked her, making it hard to get the words out. Suraya paused, and it was as if the whole world paused, waiting for the words that would change everything. When they finally came, they came in a rush, as if they were relieved to finally escape her tongue.

  “I think it’s time you stopped following me around.”

  There was a hiss, like air escaping a balloon. But Pink said nothing.

  “I’m twelve now, almost thirteen. I’m making my own friends. I have my own life. I don’t need you tagging along and destroying things whenever you feel like it.”

  I am bound to you, Pink said then, his voice barely above a whisper. I am bound to you, until the end.

  “Then this is the end, Pink.”

  The words were hard to get out.

  You dare dismiss me? Just like that? After all I have done for you?

  “Done for me?” She felt a spark of rage. “So you’re saying I sh
ould be grateful?”

  I have done nothing but protect you. I have done nothing but be your friend. He paused. For a long time, your only friend. The slight, sneering emphasis was faint, but it was there, and Suraya heard it.

  “And I never asked for that protection! I never asked for any of this! You took my blood without my consent, and now you think I should bow down and throw myself at your feet? You never gave me a choice!” She threw off the covers and sat up in her bed, glaring at him. “I am your master, and I command you to leave.”

  Then I will, he snapped. I will. But you will find you cannot be rid of me so easily.

  And with a sound like thunder, he disappeared.

  Suraya leaned back on her pillows, exhausted. Her heart pounded hard in her chest, a steady rhythm that echoed in her head and made it ache. But despite all of this, what she felt most was relief. Pink, she thought hopefully, would soon come to see that this was best for both of them.

  In the meantime, for the first time in a long while, she would face the world tomorrow without her ghost on her shoulder. And there was so much of it to explore.

  Fifteen

  Ghost

  HOW DARE SHE? HOW DARE SHE?

  He had done nothing but watch over her. Protect her. Be her companion, her guide, her family.