Ghosted Page 3

  I cannot believe they let me fall. My committee is full of morons. I can’t decide who I’m going to scream at first, but I know it’s going to be ugly. I ball up my fists and open up my eyes and spring to my feet.

  “What is wrong with you people?” I shout. “Who let me fall? You guys are idiots and I hate you all!”

  I scream and rant and pace back and forth, but, oddly, everyone ignores me. It’s like they don’t even hear me. Like they can’t even see me.

  That’s when I realize that every single one of them is huddled around the spot where I fell.

  “What is going on?” I shout, marching back over. I stop short a few feet away. Suddenly I feel cold, an intense chill that radiates out through my limbs from my chest. It’s because I see something in front of me.

  Something crazy that makes no sense whatsoever.

  It’s a body.

  Inching closer, I realize it’s not simply any old body. It’s my body. Even though I’m standing up, somehow I’m also still lying there on the gym floor, just a little to the left of the half court line. My eyes are closed. I’m on my back. Legs and arms askew, body motionless. Nails still perfect.

  Except, I’m also standing here outside of my dance committee’s huddle.

  I am standing up and I feel fine, which makes no sense at all because I happen to be staring at my own body on the ground.

  It’s like I’m two people now.

  But how can that be?

  Unless …

  Wait a second …

  Have I died?

  chapter two

  “You’re not dead, stupid.”

  This from the girl who is suddenly standing next to me. She has appeared out of nowhere and she’s got radiant black hair, bright blue eyes, and freckles across the bridge of her pert little nose. She’s dressed completely in black: black tank top, black pants, black shiny high-heeled boots. She’s even wearing a skinny black scarf around her pale, white neck. Unlike the theater geeks, on her these clothes look amazing. Maybe it’s because she’s older and gorgeous. Or maybe it’s the slash of red lipstick, her long, thick eyelashes, and the mischievous glint in her eyes.

  She also looks familiar somehow. Was hers the face I saw in the disco ball? I am so confused. My brain actually aches. And this entire scenario is completely nuts.

  “Then what’s going on?” I ask, my voice warbling and shaky with nerves. “Am I a ghost?”

  “Not exactly,” she tells me. A know-it-all, this one. “You’re simply … invisible.”

  She says this last bit in a spooky voice, except not true spooky—more like an exaggerated spooky voice, the kind you’d use on a little kid. She’s making fun of me, but only subtly. This girl is tough and sharp as nails and rude with a capital R. She reminds me of someone: myself. And I don’t like it. I put my hands on my hips and give her my best evil eye.

  “But how? And why? And who are you, anyway? How come you can see me? And how come they can’t see you?” I ask.

  Because I’ve just noticed that we are having a very loud conversation while everyone else in the gym is acting as if we do not even exist. My entire committee is still standing over my body. The one that remains on the floor, I mean.

  “And why are there two of me?” I ask, more softly this time.

  She shrugs, as if bored by my torrent of questions. Then she gestures toward my Winter Holiday Semiformal Dance committee. All those kids now milling around, whispering to one another, worried expressions on their faces. “As far as they’re concerned, we aren’t even here,” she informs me.

  “How is that possible?” I ask, letting my guard down for a moment because I am genuinely curious.

  “It merely is,” she replies.

  This makes no sense, and now I’m annoyed again. “That’s not really an answer,” I tell her pointedly.

  She smirks. She couldn’t care less if she tried.

  Normally, I would almost respect that kind of behavior, but now? There is no way. There’s too much at stake.

  I gesture toward my body on the floor and ask, “Is my soul still in there?”

  The girl in black shoots me a sharp look and raises her finger to her lips. Then she nods toward the committee. “Hush up and listen!” she says.

  So I do. Watching this scene unfold is kind of like seeing a movie of my life.

  As far as the dance committee knows, the girl in black doesn’t exist. And the only Ellie in the room is the one they are standing over.

  I turn my attention to them, wondering how this is going to play out. Why aren’t they doing anything?

  Is it because my living, breathing, invisible-to-them body is about to fuse back to my dead-looking body so I can stand up and do some yelling? I hope so. The list of people I want to scream at keeps growing. This entire committee is looking so dumbfounded, and it is no coincidence that the word dumbfounded starts with dumb. I am so annoyed. “You guys are complete morons. Someone do something!” I scream, waving my arms frantically.

  Not one of them even flinches. They are all so quiet. The only sound I hear is this girl in black, who stands off to the side, quietly giggling.

  This is so frustrating. “Come on, people,” I try, softer this time.

  And then, finally, Maddie snaps to attention. “Someone call 911,” she says.

  “But she told us not to use our phones,” Lily reminds everyone.

  “That was before, and this is an emergency,” Jack reasons. He’s already got his phone in his hands and he’s punching in numbers.

  I’m glad someone has enough sense to know what to do in this situation.

  “Thank you,” I tell Jack. I’m standing right next to him, but he doesn’t answer me or even look my way.

  I tap him on the shoulder, but my hand goes right through his body. Creepy! Next, I try grabbing him by the shoulders, but the same thing happens. I’m grasping thin air. I’m like a hologram. Or maybe he’s the hologram.

  I put my hands in front of my face and wiggle my fingers. They look normal, solid, and lovely, of course. But then, when I try to poke Jack in the stomach, I can’t. Instead I stumble forward, lose my footing, and fall into him. Except—surprise—I don’t exactly bump into him. I move right through him and fall to the ground.

  “What is going on?” I ask, scrambling to my feet.

  I look to the girl in black. She rolls her eyes and says, “I told you so, dummy.”

  “What did you tell me and who are you calling a dummy?” I ask.

  “If they can’t see or hear you, then obviously they can’t feel you, either,” says the girl in black. “I thought it was obvious, but I guess I have to spell out everything for you.”

  I want to respond but I also don’t want to miss what’s happening, so I turn around in a huff.

  Meanwhile, Reese is hunched over my body asking, “Do you think she’s dead?”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Darcy says, kneeling on the ground so she can get a better look. “She has to be fine.” I hear true distress in her voice, which is somehow comforting.

  “She came down so hard,” says Adam, shuddering. “The whole gym seemed to vibrate.”

  “Wait, is he calling me fat?” I ask. “I’ll totally get him for that later.”

  The girl in black glares at me yet again. “What part of ‘hush up and listen’ don’t you understand?” she asks.

  “Why do I have to be quiet when no one can hear me?” I ask her.

  “I can hear you,” the girl in black replies, and her voice could not be any snootier. “And I find you incredibly irritating.”

  Wow, this girl is brutally honest.

  I don’t love it, but I do respect it.

  And it’s probably a good idea to listen to her, at least for now. She does seem to know what’s going on. I turn back to the scene.

  “Is she breathing?” Harper asks.

  Darcy lowers her ear to my chest and her eyes widen with panic. “I can’t tell…”

  Jack walks away fro
m the crowd as he talks into his phone. “Yes, someone fell off a ladder in the Lincoln Heights Middle School gym. She’s unconscious. Please send help. And fast!” Jack pauses for a minute then responds, “Okay, I’ll wait on the phone.”

  Good old Jack.

  “Do we cancel the dance?” Maddie asks.

  Lily shakes her head. “No way. She’ll kill us if we cancel the dance.”

  “She’ll kill us if we have the dance without her,” Dezi points out.

  “That’s true,” Lily chimes in.

  “But, guys…,” says Reese. “What if she’s already dead?”

  My shoulders tremble because I suddenly have the chills.

  No one has answered Reese. Everyone on my committee is staring at one another, wide-eyed with fear and confusion. Except for Maddie, who is checking her Instagram account, and Lily, who is sneaking M&M’s from her pocket and eating them, right over my possibly dead, and definitely unconscious, body.

  “How can you eat chocolate at a time like this?” I scream in her face, but the words don’t even register.

  “Um, have you already forgotten that they can’t hear you?” asks the girl in black.

  “No, I’m not stupid,” I reply.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” she mumbles under her breath.

  I don’t argue because I need the girl in black on my side. She’s the only one who understands what’s going on. And things keep getting creepier by the minute.

  Everyone is too silent.

  Darcy hasn’t confirmed that I am breathing. No one has.

  I hear sirens in the distance.

  This is too intense. I can’t watch. I head away from my body, toward the girl in black. Except she isn’t even looking at me anymore—she’s staring down at her phone, texting.

  “Um, excuse me,” I say.

  She looks up. “Yeah?”

  “Are you my guardian angel?” I ask hopefully.

  “Hah!” she replies, staring back down at her phone.

  “Okay, from your mocking tone, I guess I’ll take that as a no,” I say, pausing and trying to process everything. I should’ve known. Sure, this girl is pretty and well dressed, but she is also way intimidating and rude. Any guardian angel of mine would at least pretend to like me. Isn’t that the whole point of having a guardian angel?

  I continue to puzzle this over and then suddenly it comes to me. I snap my fingers. “I know—you must be the Grim Reaper. That’s why you’re dressed in all black, right?”

  She shakes her head, bored. “Look, if you really don’t know who I am yet, and you’ve got to put a label on me, you can call me the Girl in Black.”

  Now I’m excited. “Wow, can you read my mind? Because that’s exactly how I’ve been referring to you inside my head, which is so crazy. Do you have other powers, too? Because I—”

  Before I can finish my thought, the Girl in Black holds up her hand and cuts me off.

  “Hey, I’ve got a brilliant idea: Stop asking questions. Actually, stop talking completely. Keep your mouth shut and follow me.”

  She strides past my committee, past my lifeless-looking body, to the double doors of the gym, which she throws open. Then she turns around and motions for me to follow. “You coming?” she asks.

  I glance at myself on the floor one last time. This is so creepy, so crazy. I am momentarily paralyzed, with no idea of what I should do.

  The sirens are getting louder. Pretty soon the ambulance will show up, and I don’t want to see what happens next.

  I turn back to the Girl in Black. “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “You’ll see,” she replies.

  I’m scared to go with her, but I’m terrified to stay. So I follow.

  chapter three

  I’m close at her heels, but I don’t bother asking any more questions of the mysterious Girl in Black because I know she won’t answer me. Not now, anyway. She’s made that clear. I’ll simply try again later, once we’re outside.

  That’s my plan, anyway.

  Except when I walk through the double doors of the gym, I’m not outside and I don’t even seem to be on campus. I am somewhere else—nowhere I’ve ever been before, I don’t think, although it’s hard to tell. Everything in front of me is so foggy, I have no idea where I am.

  It’s also warm.

  Actually, it feels sort of toasty.

  And the smell is a little too familiar. I inhale deeply, trying to figure it out. I’m not sure at first, but then it hits me. The air smells like freshly baked sourdough bread.

  I know because my mom and I used to bake sourdough bread when I was little. Like on a weekly basis. For ages—since before I can remember. It’s her thing. And it became my thing, too. Our thing. For a while, anyway.

  As I’m remembering this, the wall, or whatever it is in front of me, opens up and now I can see through it. Sort of like a window. I’m looking at a kitchen with yellow plaid wallpaper.

  The place is familiar. Something inside of me stirs. I sense that I have been here before, but a long time ago. And then it dawns on me—this is the wallpaper we used to have in our kitchen when I was a baby. My memory isn’t that great, but I have seen a bunch of old pictures from those days.

  Someone walks into the room. It’s my mom. A younger version of my mom, that is. She’s in jeans and an old ripped, blue T-shirt. Her hair is pulled into a messy bun on top of her head and she’s wearing tortoiseshell glasses. She’s carrying something on her hip. Someone, I mean. A baby with fuzzy blond hair and big greenish-blue eyes and chubby rosy cheeks. It’s me.

  My mom puts me in a high chair and kisses me on the forehead.

  Then she bustles around the kitchen happily, unloading the dishwasher and wiping the counters clean and pulling some things out of the pantry: flour and an old mason jar. She puts them both on the counter and faces me, beaming.

  “Guess what, Ellie? Today, we are going to start a new tradition. Are you ready? We’re going to make sourdough bread. From scratch.”

  My mom is talking to baby me like I understand. I am watching, wide-eyed. I’m not even old enough to speak. Not really. Although I am banging a spoon against the table chanting, “Ba, ba, ba…” Which must be “bread.”

  “Can you say ‘sourdough starter’?” my mom asks sweetly.

  Baby me smiles up at her and says, “Ba!”

  “Close enough!” my mom says, clapping. “Here is how you make sourdough starter: You mix flour and water. Then you wait. Tomorrow it’ll start to grow and bubble. After twenty-four hours we throw away half and add more flour.”

  She looks at me to make sure I’m paying attention. I am rapt, but who knows what I actually comprehend. I guess it doesn’t matter. She goes on explaining. “Then we wait some more. Then we split the starter, toss half, and feed the remaining part every twelve hours. It’ll foam and bubble and start to smell tangy. And as it grows, it’ll start to double in size every four to six hours. That’s when you know it’s done. We use half. We save half. We feed it once a week. And we will keep this starter forever. It’s that simple. Every single loaf of bread we bake from now on will come from this starter. It’ll take a week to grow and mature. And this is the beginning of us. Our family in this house. You can take this starter with you when you grow up and have your own house. It’s hard to imagine, right? But that’s what we’re going to do. This is our beginning.”

  My mom puts the starter in the mason jar. It’s got a blue top. Then she puts it in the fridge—in the door below the butter compartment. I know that container and I know that spot—it still lives there to this day. If I’m about one in this scene, and I’m thirteen now, that means this starter has been growing for twelve years.

  Is this a memory or a dream? I wish I knew. It seems so real.

  And just as I have that thought, the images disappear right before my eyes. The window closes up, and I’m in a strange tunnel.

  I breathe in again. The scent is delicious and yet, alarming. Because what is this place? Why woul
d it smell like the bread from my childhood? And how come everything in front of me is cream colored?

  Also, everything around me feels kind of thick and slightly moist, which makes no sense. Unless …

  Wait a minute.

  It seems that I am not simply smelling sourdough bread, I am actually, somehow, in the middle of a freshly baked loaf. But how can I be motionless on the floor of the gymnasium, while at the same time, walking around and talking in the middle of what is apparently a loaf of bread? It makes no sense.

  “Hello?” I shout.

  No one answers. The Girl In Black is nowhere to be found. It seems that I am all alone. I keep walking through the loaf of bread because I don’t know what else to do.

  Have I shrunk to the size of an ant?

  Or is this bread loaf gigantic?

  This is the craziest dream I’ve ever had.

  At least I hope I’m dreaming.

  Soon an opening appears before me. It seems to be some sort of passageway and it’s glowing.

  Not knowing what else to do, I follow the path. And then suddenly I see a glint of light. Many glints of light, that is. I move faster, closer, until I can make out their forms completely.

  I’m now standing at the end of the tunnel in front of something sparkly and familiar: a pink and purple and silver beaded curtain. But it’s not simply any old curtain. It’s the one I had in my room a long, long time ago. When I was little. Before, well, before my whole world blew up.

  It’s been years since I’ve seen it. I scrapped the thing back when I turned ten, deeming it cheap and babyish.

  Except here it is now: my beloved beaded curtain. I can tell it’s the original one because there is a small gap near the end. The week I got the curtain, soon after I turned seven, I cut off several strands. I wasn’t trying to destroy it—I loved that thing. It’s more like the opposite—I wanted to have it with me always, not simply at home in my doorframe. I felt the need to wear it around my neck, all the time, as a necklace. For some reason, I didn’t think anyone would notice the missing strands, but of course it was obvious. The curtain never looked the same, never looked as good. But I loved that thing despite its flaws. Even after I tore it down, I still missed it.