Ghosted Read online

  “Um, is that all?” EE asks.

  “That’s a gorgeous art set, Ellie,” Dave says, putting his arm around my mom.

  EE looks down at it. Then she looks at Marley’s bike. Then back at her measly art set. She is close to tears, but trying hard to bite them back.

  Well, of course the art set is beautiful. But not as spectacular as a violet bicycle. EE doesn’t even need to say it. No one does, because this fact is so obvious to every single person in the room.

  Joe is shaking his head, feeling bad. He didn’t mean to upstage my mom. He leans down and whispers to her, “I thought you were going to get the bike, too. I’m sorry, I never would’ve brought it out.”

  Except he’s too loud, and the room is too quiet, and everyone hears him.

  “There’s a bicycle?” EE asks hopefully. “Is it violet, too?”

  My mom looks like she wants to disappear.

  From my spot in the corner, I bury my head in my hands.

  Next, my mom bites her bottom lip and stares at me with pity and shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. The rest of your presents were hidden in your dad’s trunk. And when he left, well, he took his car. I’m sure he didn’t realize. I have been trying to call him—that’s what took me so long—but he won’t pick up.”

  EE nods, trying to understand. Okay, there’s no bike tonight, but who cares. It’s dark out. She wouldn’t be able to ride, anyway. EE is giving herself a little pep talk, silently in her own head. She’s doing her best to keep it together.

  EE reconsiders the art set, and then she looks back up at her mom and asks, “Did you get me any paper so I can actually draw stuff?”

  Mom sighs and her shoulders slump. Tears spring to her eyes but she sniffs them back in a show of bravery. “I did. I got you three new beautiful pads. But they are also in the trunk.”

  She hates to disappoint me—I can tell by the agony in her voice. And I hated to be disappointed.

  Sure, EE feels bad for her mom, but now she feels even worse for herself. Annie and Alice got iPads. Marley got a bicycle. And what did EE get? A father who disappeared with her best Christmas present? A mom who is now crying in Marley’s living room?

  What is she supposed to do with one lousy art set and no paper? She tosses it to the ground, and it lands upside down. That’s when EE notices that her mom forgot to take off the price tag. The entire set cost $12.99 marked down from $18.99.

  “You didn’t even spend the full price on my only Christmas gift?” EE asks.

  She sounds bratty—I can see that now, clear as day. In fact, I even knew it at the time. But knowing it didn’t change anything. I couldn’t control myself.

  And now I’m witnessing EE unable to control herself.

  Her mom tries to calm her down, diffuse the situation. She speaks carefully, slowly. “It’s not about how much money I spent. It’s the thought that counts. Ellie, I know this is hard. Believe me. But let’s focus on the positive. We are healthy. We have each other. And we’re making the most of the holiday. I’m sure, eventually, your father will return with the presents. None of this is your fault, sweetheart.”

  “Why would you even say that? Of course it’s not my fault!” EE is not a yeller, but she is yelling now. She can’t help it.

  Her mom cries harder and this makes EE so sad, and so mad. This whole scene is pathetic. After all, EE is the kid, the one who was wronged on Christmas Eve. So why is her mom the one bawling her eyes out? It’s not fair.

  “Cut it out!” EE screams, having forgotten that they aren’t alone. They are across the street at Marley’s, performing in front of her whole family.

  Marley with her perfect family. All of them smiling. At least they were. Now they seem horrified. EE can see their shocked expressions.

  And it makes her feel like a monster. She has ruined everyone’s holiday.

  “Your dad will bring you the bike, Ellie.” Joe tries to reassure her. “He probably hasn’t gotten your mom’s messages.”

  “Right. Maybe his cell phone died, or maybe he lost his phone,” Dave adds.

  Joe nods, wanting to believe this. “Yes. I’m sure he’ll come back with your bike and then everything will—”

  “I’m not talking about the bicycle!” EE shouts. Her fists are balled and tears stream down her face. She’s hysterical, embarrassed, and ashamed.

  I felt it at the time, deep down, underneath the rage. And now I am feeling that shame all over again.

  “Please calm down, sweetheart.” My mom speaks quietly, looking at the ground. She can’t look me in the eye. Is it because she’s embarrassed? Because of me or for me? I suppose it doesn’t matter.

  “How can I calm down? My Christmas is ruined!”

  I hate watching this. I’m so sad for my mom. She’s suffering. She’s in pain. She’s a single mom. It’s Christmas, and her eight-year-old is acting like a spoiled little brat.

  I take a deep breath. I don’t want to watch this.

  I close my eyes, will myself to be somewhere else. And somehow, I am.

  I’m in a dark room with the Girl in Black standing right next to me.

  “Why am I here?” I ask.

  “You asked to leave,” she replies. “You said you couldn’t stand to see another moment of that nonsense.”

  “And now you actually listen to me?”

  She shrugs. “What can I say? I was bored, too. You were awful. A monster. I don’t want to witness that scene again, either.”

  “What do you mean, ‘again’?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer me. Appears to be filing her nails, which are painted bright red. I like the color, but I am not going to ask her where she got it, what it’s called. I still have my pride. But I am so curious …

  More than that, though, I am angry.

  “Well, of course I acted horrible,” I tell her. “I had just lost my dad, I didn’t get a bike, and we were surrounded by Marley’s gigantic, perfect family. She had everything, and I had nothing. It wasn’t fair.”

  The Girl in Black isn’t responding, which is making me more annoyed. Why doesn’t she get it? Do I have to spell it out for her?

  “Okay, I was jealous. Is that what you wanted to hear? I was insanely jealous. And how could I not be? Watching Marley’s family made me feel more alone. And more pathetic. Marley got everything—perfect parents, cool cousins, four whole grandparents, this big, happy family where everyone gets together for fun holidays, and she even got the violet bicycle with a heart-shaped bell. And me? My heart was breaking, and I got nothing.”

  “Or maybe you had a lot, but you didn’t even see it,” says the Girl in Black. “And maybe Marley’s life wasn’t so perfect. Especially not later. Well, you certainly had a lot to do with that…”

  “It’s not that simple!” I shout.

  Rather than answer me, the Girl in Black snaps her fingers and I am back in my room. It’s the same night, though.

  I can tell because of the quilt.

  It’s still on my bed.

  Not much time has passed. After my big outburst, my mom and I left Marley’s.

  EE is alone, the art kit in the middle of her bedroom floor. She opens it up. There are scissors inside and they are sharp.

  She looks at the quilt on her bed. She loves that quilt. But she hates it, too, with a blinding, red-hot rage. Her mom worked so hard, with painstaking effort, to sew that quilt, hand stitching each and every square. She did that for EE. Out of love.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Why didn’t she make Dad stay? Why didn’t she stop him, put her foot down? Is it because she was too nice? She let him go and for whatever sad, twisted reason, EE blamed her.

  And the pain was too much. It overwhelmed her. Made her want to lash out and hurt someone the way she’d been hurt. And the blanket was right there. It seemed to beckon her.

  EE picks up the scissors and starts to cut.

  She’s surprised at how easy it is, how fragile the fabric is. The scissors are sharp and
strong, the blades pointy. They glide right through that soft, beautiful fabric.

  First EE cuts the quilt in half and then she halves one of the halves. She cuts out each individual square but it’s not enough. She has a need to destroy it more. So she cuts through the rainbow. She cuts through the ladybug, the unicorn, and the ballet slippers. She does not stop until she has cut the entire blanket into shreds.

  Then, feeling better, she looks at her bed. The faded blue and pink striped sheets underneath. It looks so bare. Stripped of the covering. Not right. Well, it’s how she is feeling at the moment—not right. Incomplete, like her new family.

  She pushes the pieces into a pile and then scoops them up and throws them into the wastebasket in the corner by her desk.

  Then she falls asleep.

  When EE wakes up the next morning, her wastebasket is empty. She is draped in a new blanket—one that is plain and blue.

  My mom never mentioned the quilt and neither did I. Is that weird? It seemed so at the time. But now it makes perfect sense.

  Why would we talk about it?

  How could we possibly?

  There was nothing left to say.

  chapter six

  I am in the bread tunnel again, running as fast as I can. I pretend I’m in track, doing the four-hundred-meter dash. It’s a race I always win handily, and I’ve got the medals to prove it. I’m thinking maybe I can find the end of this thing, finish my “journey” or whatever it is early, race my way to safety. And I do see some double doors up ahead. They look just like the ones I walked through when this nightmare began. So I push them open and walk on through and find myself in the school gym.

  Yes! At first I think: Finally this lousy nightmare is over and I can go back to my hard-earned and much-deserved position as the most awesome eighth grader ever to walk the halls of Lincoln Heights Middle School. And I hope I have time to take a shower before the dance starts because sourdough perfume is not my aroma of choice.

  But now, mere seconds later, I realize I am in a different gym. I’m still at a school dance, but it’s not the one I expected to go to tonight.

  I have been in this room before, however. I guess that should be obvious by now. The Girl in Black keeps taking me to scenes from my past.

  This whole thing is so annoying, but at least we’ve moved beyond Ellie Charles at age eight. Those were awful times! EE was like a wounded puppy dog: weak, painfully shy, confused, stunned, and heartbroken.

  Now I am witnessing myself at age eleven, and a lot has changed. My dad has been gone for years, the divorce finalized long ago. And although it’s not ideal, I’ve found ways to cope. Namely, my stuffed unicorn named Ursula. I couldn’t explain it with words, and it always embarrassed me at the time, but she was kind of like a security blanket, I guess. I slept with her and I carried her around, too. No big deal. I didn’t take her out at school or anything. But she was always with me—hiding in my backpack. Sometimes when I got stressed out, or lonely, or sad about my dad or whatever, I’d reach down and pet her.

  No one knew about Ursula except for Marley. She understood and would never betray my secret.

  Anyway, here I am. I’ll call this version of myself E@11.

  Tonight is the annual Father-Daughter Dance at my elementary school. It started out so fun! Getting ready for the dance seemed like a party in itself. Marley and E@11 went to the mall and picked out matching dresses. They are silky and violet with puffy sleeves and lacy, ruffled skirts. Their shoes are black patent leather and they both have violet ribbons braided into their hair.

  The two girls wear matching patent leather purses. At the last minute E@11 stuffed Ursula into hers. The bag bulged in a way that was telling to anyone who knew about her existence, but Marley was the only one who did, and she’d never tell anyone.

  Marley never betrayed me.

  It’s so weird being back in my elementary school. The gym is so much smaller than the middle school gym, but that makes sense because the kids are so much smaller, too. I wander around, past a table set up with rows of juice boxes and bowls of chips and pretzels. Large potted plants are set up at each end. String lights twinkle from above and the rest of the lights are dim. Trendy pop music is playing.

  Everyone is decked out in fancy clothes. Most fifth-grade girls wear dresses or skirts and fancy blouses or flowy pants. Some have their hair woven into braids, like Marley and E@11. A few are wearing buns or pigtails, or have simply blown their tresses out, silky and shiny. Dads are freshly shaved. Their faces beam with pride and joy. They wear dark suits, or khakis and blazers, or pressed jeans and shirts and ties.

  Other people’s dads, that is.

  My own father isn’t here. He has a business meeting in Taiwan, so he can’t attend. It’s been three years since he left, and I haven’t seen much of him. He’s got an important new job that usually gets in the way. If he’s not in Taiwan, he’s in Bangkok or Dubai or São Paulo or Qatar.

  He doesn’t go to dance recitals or parent-teacher conferences or school plays, but I don’t expect him to. Even when my parents were married, he wasn’t the type of dad to show up to stuff like that. He always traveled a ton for work. And now that he’s living in another city, three hours’ drive away? Well, it’s been hard to see each other. But E@11 is used to his absence.

  And tonight she’s too excited to care that much because she’s at the Father-Daughter Dance with Marley and her two dads.

  Joe and Dave are the sweetest. In their navy suits and checked shirts—Joe’s is lavender and Dave’s is blue—they kind of match, too. And they even bought us corsages—a clump of petite, pale pink roses that we wear on our wrists.

  It strikes me from the outside how we look like one big happy family. At this point in my life, Marley’s dads do seem like family to me and my mom. The five of us spend tons of time together. We have dinner practically every Sunday. And we’ve invented all sorts of fun traditions: pizza night on Tuesdays, game nights every other Thursday or whenever we happen to be free and have a hankering to play Monopoly, Sorry!, or Clue. Sometimes Marley and I help Joe in his bakery. He’s teaching us how to decorate birthday cakes. I’m really good at making frosting-roses. Cake calligraphy is harder than it looks, but I am making progress.

  The four of us have just arrived and we are wandering around, taking everything in. I trail behind them, invisible to everyone.

  When an old Amy Winehouse song comes on, Marley says, “I love this song.”

  “Me too,” E@11 replies.

  “Well, then we’d better dance,” Dave says. He offers his hand to Marley, and she takes it. They go out into the middle of the dance floor, and Joe leans over to E@11 and asks, “Shall we join them?”

  E@11 nods, smiling. “Sure,” she says.

  I stand right next to them, so I can hear their conversation. E@11 closes her eyes and sways along with the music. She is pretending, not for the first time, that Joe and Dave are her dads, too, that this is her regular life and Marley is actually her twin sister.

  I laugh to myself, because the old fantasy is so clear in my mind. My mom would fit in there somewhere, too. Maybe we’d buy a bigger house, and the five of us would live together. Why not? We were best friends, a family of our own invention, and isn’t that the best kind?

  The song ends too soon. “Thank you for this dance,” Joe says to E@11 with a slight bow.

  E@11 giggles and says, “Thank you.”

  Then she and Marley trade dance partners. Now it’s E@11 and Dave swaying together. He asks her how school is going, how she did on the math test she was stressing about. Who she and Marley ate lunch with. If the cafeteria still served the icky square kind of pizza. He knows more about her day-to-day life than her actual father. E@11 is keenly aware of this. She loves spending time with Dave.

  Still, when a fast song comes on, E@11 says she’s taking a break.

  I remember how I was feeling that night. On the surface I was excited. But a little deeper down, I was self-conscious and shy an
d afraid that I was going to do something stupid. I was also wishing my dad were there because he never worried about stuff like that. He had this confidence, was so bold and sure of himself. He wasn’t afraid of anyone. I admired him and longed for his company. Everyone else’s dad managed to show up.

  Even though E@11 loves Joe and Dave, she knows they don’t belong to her. She’s thinking about the difference and starting to get mopey when, just in the nick of time, Marley grabs her hand.

  “I’m thirsty. Let’s get some juice,” she says.

  E@11 is relieved to have something to do. They head toward the drinks, and I follow them. They are moving fast but stop so abruptly that I almost run into them.

  Ugh! Of course. The Girl in Black has plunged me into another one of those awful memories. I was so excited to see myself dressed up at the dance, I’d forgotten about this moment. But now I have to watch.

  Marley and E@11 are standing there frozen, afraid to get too close to the drinks table because the cool and confident popular girls are already there. It’s Lily, Harper, Maddie, and their fearless leader, the most intimidating girl of all: Nicky Braun.

  Nicky was particularly awe-inspiring because she had moved to town six months ago and somehow, maybe it was her looks or her attitude or the fact that she had the greatest wardrobe that anyone in Lincoln Heights had ever seen, somehow she became more popular than a celebrity. Everyone at school wanted to hang out with her. And it was Lily, Harper, and Maddie who she chose. Well, of course she did.

  They were everything, these girls. The opposite of me: loud and brash and bold and comfortable in their own skin. And back when I was eleven, I wanted to be just like them. It’s painful watching the desperation on E@11’s face. She is shy and nervous, longing to be accepted by these girls, but afraid to get too close. Intimidated. She feels inferior.

  E@11 grabs Marley’s hand and pulls her behind the giant potted plant at the end of the table. She knows their place: these two nice girls, sweet and innocent and meek.

  Nicky and her friends don’t notice us. Well, of course they don’t. We are not the kinds of girls they would notice. So that means we are listening in on their conversation. Eavesdropping, if you will. Except that wasn’t our intention. All we wanted to do was wait for them to leave so we could get drinks ourselves. Because the sad fact was, we were afraid to exist in the same space.