Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_03 (11 page)

She was all warmed up and wanting to run through something exciting, but she wasn’t feeling any of her own stuff. The freshest music she’d heard in a while was Eric’s, so she skipped to his demos, looking for some inspiration.
She was tentative at first, but soon the adrenaline was coursing through her veins again as forcefully as the current that powered her amplifier. She twisted the volume up to ten so that she could hear herself playing over Eric’s song.
As she was getting really into it, when the energy was about to reach fever pitch, she noticed a guitar solo that she hadn’t heard on the track before. She brushed it off, figuring she’d missed it on her first listen. Then, it happened again, only this time it sounded much more… live.
Scarlet looked around and realized that she was the only one in that dark, open space and that if someone was actually there, it would be hard to escape. All the doors were so far to the front and the windows didn’t open. She jumped up, and just as she was about to run toward the door, a figure stepped out from behind the amp.
Scarlet raised her guitar over her head and readied herself to defend her life.
After her pit stop at Dead Ed, Charlotte felt compelled to continue her nostalgia tour at a place where she’d never been but, ironically, would never leave either: the cemetery.
She headed directly for the unmarked section of the graveyard, it being the most likely location for her earthly remains. She needed to see it for herself, the finality of it, and she wanted to know if she had a real memorial—her name carved in limestone—or if she was just marked by a state-issued plate.
She walked through the patch, which was mostly dirt with a few islands of weeds sprouting here and there, looking downward to read the index card-size nameplates in each gray metal stake. For most of the inhabitants in the cemetery, these were temporary place keepers, marking the gravesite until a headstone could be engraved and delivered.
She walked row after row without spying a single name, just numbers, which kind of made sense, she thought. Anonymity was pretty much a prerequisite for burial in this section. She just didn’t realize there were so many—what was the diplomatic phrasing here?—of the “unclaimed.” The longer she perused the field the more disappointed she became, until the even more disappointing thought that she might not even be here at all crossed her mind.
Maybe they just cremated me, Charlotte thought. Charlotte had all these horrible visions of being incinerated, then scooped out of an oven and flushed down the toilet, or even worse, being “spread out on the waters” and blowing back into the hairy nostrils of some grizzled old barge skipper. She quickly did the math on the water content in the human body, determining how much of her would burn off, how much convert to ash, and what percentage of that might be permanently lodged in the snotty sinus of some sea captain, playing patty-cake with all kinds of nasty rhinoviruses.
She’d just about resigned herself when she arrived at the last row of placards. Once again, she was nowhere to be found. Having come to the conclusion that she wasn’t even important enough to be anonymous, she found herself at the fountain, which was shaded by the only tree in the section. A nice place to rest her soul. As she looked up slowly to eye the elaborate stone sculpture before her, she found herself face-to-face with… herself.
“It’s me,” Charlotte whispered, for no particular reason. “I think.”
She couldn’t be absolutely sure because the sculpted bust of her head was so idealized and perfect it bore little resemblance to the way she remembered herself, even considering her overhaul before senior year. It was breathtaking, she thought, even though she no longer had any breath left to give.
She read her name over and over and ran her fingers along each deeply etched letter. The ring of still fragrant and blooming roses hung around her sculpted neck added a burst of life and beauty and was proof positive that she was not just remembered, she was missed.
“Scarlet,” she said, knowing full well who would have made such a gorgeous, lush gesture.
It reminded her that their relationship was something permanent, eternal. They had been so close, closer than friends, closer even than family. It was hard to know where one stopped and the other began.
Charlotte lay down on the ground, in the same position her body was buried, and stared up at the glorious sculpted monument and the sky above. It looked even bigger when viewed from below, which was both good and bad. She felt around for her nose, trying to gauge whether it was really as big as it seemed from this angle. Apparently, it wasn’t just old habits that die hard, it was body image issues, as well.
That’s what’s so strange about all this, Charlotte began to think as she used her thumb and index finger to measure the distance between her face and the tip of her nose. No matter how much progress she thought she’d made, it was very fragile and frighteningly easy to reverse. Perhaps that was why she was so ambivalent about being sent back to Hawthorne. She felt human there, vulnerable to all her past weaknesses and grievances and much less in control of her heart, if not her soul.
Charlotte felt the pressure of reality returning to challenge her emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually as the shadow cast by the sunset behind her monument fell over her. She did her best to fight it. If there was any place to seek peace of mind and of spirit, she thought, this was it.
It was so peaceful to lie in her very own place of rest. To close her eyes and feel her life as a distant memory. To just “be” and reflect. No worries, no obligations. She was a spirit, a part of the earth and the sky, or at least she had been before she had to return to Hawthorne. But now, the compulsion to be present, to be seen again, if only by herself, was too powerful to ignore. She looked around and saw that no one was watching, at least no one currently breathing.
Charlotte gazed up at the ring of roses and raised her invisible hand toward them, coaxing the velvety petals from the stems. They floated down, first one or two at a time and then a veritable cascade of garnet rained down on her, dusting her face and hair and legs like confectioner’s sugar on a gingerbread man. She raised each limb into the floral typhoon and watched the petals cling to them; whether by the force of her own ghostly will or electromagnetism made no difference to her.
“I’m still here,” Charlotte whispered to herself, satisfied.
As the last rose petals dropped through the moist air, Charlotte noticed a weathered plastic bag that had been tucked behind the flowers but hidden from her view until now. She sat up and reached for it, quickly opening the baggie, and was shocked to see her name scribbled on the envelope inside, in the same troubled handwriting she’d seen on Damen’s wall. Charlotte could feel the sheet of folded paper inside the envelope.
She removed it and started unfolding the letter slowly and a bit tentatively. As the piece of paper grew larger and larger in width and length in her grasp, Charlotte expected to see a torrent of words and emotions spill from the damp page. But each upturn of the tightly creased flaps only revealed more blank space, leaving Charlotte even more anxious and confused. That is until the sheet was completely opened and three small, faintly written words in the very bottom corner of the page were detected.
Who am I? was all it said.
It was left with her, Charlotte thought, but it was not for her.
This kind of soul-wrenching uncertainty was really familiar territory for Charlotte, but not for Scarlet. Scarlet’s confusion about herself, her past, her future, even about Damen. It was all in those three words. Charlotte’s intuition about the photos in Damen’s dorm room had been right on, she thought.
Without Charlotte, Scarlet literally had no one to share herself with. Maybe that’s why Scarlet was reaching out to the point of leaving a letter dangling from her headstone. Charlotte knew Scarlet would say a therapy session was just like talking to a brick wall anyway, so she might as well confide in a piece of stone with her best friend’s face on it. It was flattering but disconcerting, just the same.
Charlotte came looking for her place of rest and found anything but. The reasons for her return were becoming clearer, but there was only one problem: if Scarlet was in such distress, why wasn’t she assigned to help her?
She kissed her granite self goodbye gently on the cheek and walked out of the cemetery to find Scarlet.
Charlotte approached Hawthorne Manor, which was as stately and gleaming as ever in her eyes. Before entering the ground-floor café, Charlotte felt a wave of anxiety surge through her. She had forced herself to bury how much she missed Scarlet, as a kind of self-defense mechanism. But now, having shed the peaceful ambience of the Other Side, however temporarily, she was free to feel the anticipation of seeing her kindred spirit, her soul mate. Charlotte needed Scarlet more than ever, and if Scarlet couldn’t see her, sense her, or feel her, it would be devastating.
Charlotte walked up to the door and paused. She was curious about so many things, including what Scarlet would be wearing. How superficial was that, she admonished herself? Charlotte peeked excitedly through the glass-paned door, and her jaw dropped. Scarlet was in full attack mode, wielding her guitar overhead, ready to strike at Eric. There wasn’t much potential for harm since Eric was already dead. So, the main issue Charlotte was having was seeing them together, her best friend and her boyfriend. And the fact that Scarlet could see Eric only made things worse.
“Careful with that ax, Scarlet,” Eric chuckled, raising his hands in front of his face and pretending to be afraid. “You could kill someone.”
“You’re the one who ought to be careful,” Scarlet chided. “I’m pretty good with this thing.”
“You sure are,” he said, acknowledging both her guitar playing and her swordsmanship. “I thought you told me you played a little.”
They both smiled. Scarlet was impressed that Eric had kept his cool and brushed the whole thing off, even managing to compliment her guitar playing in the process. But she still had questions, like what was he doing there in the first place.
“How did you get in?” she asked. “It’s hard enough for me to get that huge door open with a key.”
“I have my ways,” he said vaguely.
She was sure that he did.
Her mind started to flood with jailhouse scenarios about how some veteran criminal might have schooled him in the art of breaking and entering. After all, she really didn’t know Eric. He could be some deranged stalker, not just a killer guitar player but a plain old killer. Horrible news reports started broadcasting live from her brain and everything started to go in super-slow motion, except for her racing heart.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” Eric asked.
She raised her eyebrows, showing neither worry nor confidence.
“Relax,” he said, sensing her tension. “I came in through the bathroom window. You said you’d be here, and I didn’t want to wait in the rain.”
“I said I’d be here when the place was open,” Scarlet said, making a mental note to check the shutters from now on.
“I wanted to try out the PA system with no one here,” he explained. “That’s the only way to really gauge the true sound of a room.”
She could totally relate to that, seeing that she lived for playing in that empty space. It was almost as if he could read her thoughts. Anyway, he seemed to have a good answer for everything; so either he was clairvoyant, a genius homicidal maniac with an acoustics fetish, or… he was telling the truth.
“Well, no point in wasting a good opportunity,” Scarlet said, slinging her guitar back around her shoulder. “Can you teach the song to me?”
“I guess,” Eric agreed, strumming the intro chords to his song with Scarlet watching his hands closely and following along.
They thrashed away, trading solos and screaming lyrics, lost in the music and the moment.
Charlotte couldn’t believe it was Scarlet up there jamming with her boyfriend. She was cool as ever in leggings and a vintage tee dress. Her super-straight do bounced along to every head-banging power chord. Eric head-banging alongside her in his black denim drainpipes and red high-top Chucks. In Charlotte’s eyes, they looked like the perfect couple—a seasoned punk duo making a beautiful noise.
She genuinely didn’t want to be angry, but it was hard to keep her insecurities from running wild any longer. She was nearly crushed by the sight of them, laughing and having fun. They were so original and unique, but they seemed to belong together like two drumsticks on a snare.
The last few notes sounded from their amplifiers, and Scarlet looked up at the clock to see that opening time was fast approaching. The expression on their faces confirmed that they’d both had a blast, so much so that there wasn’t even a need to say it.
“Let’s do this again sometime,” Eric said, half-joking.
“Great,” Scarlet responded, on a total melodic high. “What about coming back to play during business hours?”
“With you?” Eric asked, putting her on the spot.
“Maybe,” she answered coyly.
Their banter made Charlotte feel sick inside, like she’d just been told she had some fatal, incurable, drug-resistant virus that would eat the flesh off her bones. If she had any color, it would have drained from her face entirely. Then Eric uttered the words that pushed Charlotte over the emotional edge.
“Cool,” he said. “It’s a date.”
Chapter 12 Burning from the Inside
Who’s going to make me forget you
And get you off my mind?
I could be out breaking other people’s hearts
If you weren’t still breaking mine.
—Kirsty MacColl
None the wiser.
Wisdom is overrated. The enemy of excess and haste, it purports to be the key to what is true, right, and balanced. Without intemperance or impulsivity, however, it would be completely unnecessary, and in fact, we can only acquire it by behaving badly. So, if you ever expect to be wise, you need to spend your life acting stupid.
"I see you’ve set aside time to humiliate yourself in public,” Petula said to Wendy Anderson as she came traipsing down the hallway in a vintage punk tee.
At closer inspection, Petula realized that it was a tee that Scarlet had thrown out and that she had given to someone on the street. Her heart sank. The Wendys were about to become wet-gloss whistle-blowers.
“Like my new or, I mean, my old shirt?” Wendy Anderson said, looking Petula straight in the eye, something she rarely did.
“The jig is up,” Wendy Thomas said. “Soon everyone will know that you’ve been slumming it.”