The Haunting of Sunshine Girl (4 page)

“I
did
hear something. And not just footsteps. I told you—I heard laughter too. There was a little girl upstairs. I know it.”

“A little girl?”

“Well, maybe the ghost of a little girl.”

Mom shakes her head. She doesn't believe in ghosts. I wasn't so sure I believed in them either. Until now.

“I'm going to prove it to you,” I promise.

“How?”

I have no idea how to prove a house is haunted, so I wrinkle my nose just like she did a few minutes before.

Finally Mom sighs and says, “Do you want to come with me to the grocery store?”

“I've still got a lot of unpacking to do.” My desire to get everything in its proper place trumps my fear. Plus, how will I prove to her that something fishy is going on here if I'm not in the house to experience it?

“You sure you feel safe being left all alone in a haunted house?” Mom asks as she reaches for her car keys. “Mwa, ha ha,” she adds in a silly deep voice like the Count's from
Sesame Street,
waving her fingers in front of her.

“I'm not alone,” I say, trying to ignore the fact that my voice is shaking. “I've got Oscar and Lex to protect me.”

Mom kisses the top of my head before she heads out the door. Oscar and I climb the stairs and go into my room, where I close the door behind us. You'd think all this pink would make the room feel less creepy, but if anything, it has the opposite effect. Thunder rumbles again, closer this time. I turn to my desk, my back to the window. In Austin I kept my glass unicorns lined up in size order, tallest on the left, shortest on the right. Here I decide to arrange them by color. I've been collecting unicorns since I was five years old and my kindergarten teacher read our class a book called
The Last Unicorn.
Mom gets me a new figurine every Christmas. I have eleven total, and that's not counting the ones that broke over the years. They're made of glass, and they're all in different colors, from purple to green to blue to clear and, yes, even a pink one. I place that one front and center.

Suddenly I feel a chill down my spine, as though a breeze is coming in through the window behind my desk. But the window is closed. Not just closed—locked. I press my hands against the glass: it's icy cold, but no breeze is coming through. I guess with a climate like Ridgemont's, a house would need to be well insulated.

“What do you think, Oscar?” I say, talking to our dog like he can understand me. And like he's not color-blind. I go back to concentrating on the shelf above my desk. “Do you think the
purple should go next to the pink or the red one? The pink? Okay, if you say so.”

Again, a chill. This time the breeze is so strong that it softly blows my hair back from my face.

“Where do you think that's coming from, Oscar?” I'm trying to sound as cheerful as I did about my unicorns. I don't want poor Oscar to get scared. “It's an old house, right? Maybe there's a draft or something. You've heard about drafty old houses.”
Drafty old houses
sounds like something Jane Austen might have said. That's not so bad. I imagine that Oscar is nodding with agreement.

I adjust the pink unicorn, trying to ignore the fact that my hands are shaking. The breeze comes again, stronger this time, lifting my hair off my shoulders. I back away from my desk, dropping the unicorn. Its horn snaps right off with a sad little
ding
sound. “Oh, no,” I moan. He made it all the way from Austin in one piece, and I had to go and drop him. Suddenly Oscar dives under my bed.

“You feel it too, don't you, boy?” I ask, but Oscar just whimpers. I pull my sleeves down over my wrists, covering up the goose bumps dotting the skin on my arms.

Bang.
I spin around. My door has flown open; that
bang
was the wood hitting the wall behind it.

“Good golly!” I shout, folding my arms across my chest and balling my hands into fists. My heart is racing. Another chill runs down my spine, and then another, and another, until it feels like I'll never be warm again. I sit on my bed and shiver, my heart pounding.

Mrs. Soderberg used to say that you could capture things on film that were impossible to detect with the naked eye. Slowly,
so that I won't scare away whatever might be in this room with me—I can't catch it on film if I frighten it away—I reach for my camera. I filled it with black-and-white film before we left Austin, excited about having a new place to photograph. Now I press my eye into the viewfinder and adjust the lens for optimal focus. I take the pictures methodically, adjusting the shutter speed for a lengthy exposure, careful to hold my hands steady.

Click, click, click.
The sounds the camera makes are somehow comforting. Even Oscar sticks his head out from under the bed.

Mom was just teasing when she asked whether I felt safe being left alone in a haunted house. But now I know: once you move into one, you're never really alone again.

CHAPTER THREE

School Daze

By the time school starts
I'm totally exhausted. I haven't slept through the night once since we moved here a week ago. And we've had literally one sunny day! I'm thinking of asking Mom to get me one of those UV lights that are supposed to simulate the sun for Christmas, though that seems a million years away. Don't get me started on what all this fog is doing to my curls either. I've never understood girls who complain about having straight hair. Try living with frizz for one day, and you'll change your tune. Between the rat's nest on my head and the bags under my eyes, I'm not exactly looking hot these days.

Every night I get into bed hoping for the best. Maybe tonight will be the night I don't hear footsteps or laughter or a tiny little voice wishing me good night. Maybe tonight will be the night I don't feel a phantom breeze wafting across my room, lowering the temperature so that I'm cold no matter how many blankets I pile on the bed.

So far, no such luck.

I never minded being home alone when we lived in Austin, but since we moved to Ridgemont I get nervous every time Mom leaves the house, like I'm a little kid who still needs a babysitter. Two days ago she had to work an overnight shift. I lay in her bed with the door closed so that Oscar and Lex had to stay in the room with me. I called her at, like, three in the morning to report the latest, but I couldn't get her on the phone because she was with a patient. When she finally called me back she seemed more exasperated than concerned. She said that the sound of a door creaking open was “just the old house settling on its foundation,” that footsteps were “probably branches hitting the windows,” that laughter was “just the wind howling through the trees.”

There's no such thing as ghosts, Sunshine
is quickly becoming her mantra. She must have said it a dozen times in the last week alone. I mean, I know she's a skeptic, but it's not like her to just dismiss me like that. When I was little she stayed up with me after every bad dream I ever had, rocking me back to sleep when I was convinced there were monsters under my bed and letting me sleep in her room when I was too scared to be alone in my own.

Now she explains away every sound, every breeze, every drop in temperature. I'm starting to worry that it's only a matter of time before she decides I'm going nuts and sends me to sit on some psychiatrist's couch. Even Ashley thinks I'm losing my mind; at first she laughed every time I mentioned our haunted house, but last night she said I sounded nuttier than a fruitcake.

But I don't think I'm crazy, and I'm determined to prove it.

I've been putting my camera to good use, taking pictures of the breeze blowing back the curtains in my room when the
window is closed. A few days ago I caught a shot of the door swinging open. Two nights ago I slept with my camera in my bed so that when I heard the laughter I could take a picture of my room; the flash was superbright, and I had the shutter speed on the slowest setting possible, hoping that a long-exposure photograph might be able to pick up something I couldn't see with my eyes alone.

I'm walking to school this morning with two rolls of film in my bag. All I need is a darkroom, and maybe I'll finally have some proof to show my mother. My backpack feels like it weighs a million pounds.

The fog is so thick that from our driveway, about halfway down the street on either end, I can't see the dead end to my right or the next street over on my left. The streetlights on our block are spread out even more than the houses, and what with the near-constant rain and the shadows from the randomly placed Douglas firs everywhere, it's always dark here. None of the other houses on our street look quite as creepy as ours, not even the two vacant ones across the way. We live near the hospital, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person under thirty living on our block. There are no tricycles on the front lawns, no swing sets. Just the pine needles covering every surface and the occasional sound of sirens from the ambulances going to and from the hospital where my mother spends most of her days (and nights). A siren wails now, so loud that I literally jump.

“Doesn't exactly make for the coziest neighborhood in America,” I say out loud, kicking the ground with my sneakers.

At least some of the houses are painted pretty colors: peach and yellow and even pale blue or, even better, plain wood or brick. The other homes are ringed, like ours, by ancient-looking
trees, as though a long time ago they carved this street out of a pine forest. Mom thinks that most of the sounds I'm hearing are probably low-hanging branches batting against the roof when the wind blows. Walking down our street, I can actually see why she'd think that. But I know the difference between a branch and footsteps, and I certainly know the difference between the wind and laughter.

To be honest, I'm sort of upset that my mother isn't taking this more seriously. I have literally never lied to her. I know, that's superlame for a teenager to say, but it's the truth. (See? I never lie!)

As I get closer to Ridgemont High, more cars appear on the street. A few kids on bikes whiz past me. Everyone looks so excited for the first day of school, hugging each other hello and wearing bright, shiny new outfits that practically glow in fog. It may be the first day of school, but I'm clearly the only new kid. Everyone else seems to know each other, and no one seems as bothered by the cold as I am. They're all wearing T-shirts and jeans, nothing like me in my long skirt and sweater, but it's not like anyone dressed like me at my old school either. I tighten my blue owl-print scarf around my neck and pull my sleeves over my wrists, patting my hair into something that looks less like a frizz helmet. Ashley would tell me I should smile, so I plaster a grin onto my face.

In homeroom the teacher makes me stand at the front of the room and introduce myself. I probably blush as pink as my bedroom carpet. Most of the kids in the classroom don't even look up from their cell phones when I say my name. It's junior year—looks like everyone has had the same group of friends for a while now, and no one is looking to befriend the
new girl. People aren't mean or anything. I mean, a group of cheerleader-type girls don't even acknowledge me, but a few of the girls smile and wave before looking away, and at least two boys wink at me. Ashley would say that I should wink back, but just the thought makes me want to hide behind my hair.

First period is algebra—not exactly my favorite subject—but I'm relieved to discover that the teacher is covering equations my old school introduced last year, so I allow myself to zone out a little bit and count the minutes until third period, the only class I really care about: visual arts.

Finally I walk into a room that looks more like a camp arts-and-crafts tent than a high school classroom. Three long wooden tables crisscross the center of the room; splotches of paint dot the linoleum floor. Various student projects hang on the walls—everything from collages to charcoal sketches to an enormous quilt. But no photographs.

I scan the room anxiously, looking for the black door that indicates a darkroom is on the other side, the telltale red light that photographers mount outside to let visitors know whether the room is in use.

But the only doors inside this room are wide open—one that leads to a supply closet and the other that leads to what must be the art teacher's office, a cramped little alcove with a messy desk inside.

“Darnit!” I say out loud.

“What was that, dear?” a woman's voice rings out behind me, clear as a bell. I adjust my scarf.

I turn around and face a strikingly pale woman with long hair that's so dark it's almost black. If it weren't for the purple circles beneath her eyes, she'd actually be quite beautiful.
But instead she just looks like she doesn't get much sleep. Her clothes are as dark as her hair, a long, black sort of caftan over a long black skirt. If she were a student and not a teacher, she'd fit right in with the Goth kids.

“I'm Sunshine Griffith. I'm new here. I was just looking for the darkroom . . .” My voice lifts hopefully at the end of the sentence.

The woman eyes me carefully. I tell myself there's nothing creepy about that. Usually art teachers are artists themselves, so maybe this is just how she looks at people. In case she might want to draw them one day or something. “I'm sorry, dear, we don't have a darkroom here.”