Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

“You like Gavin as much as I do.”

“Because he’s hot.”

Oh, little girl, I thought. Look deeper than that.

Wendy was gagging at her friend’s comment.

“Anyway,” Torrey continued, “when we graduate, you can get out of that house, room with me, and Gavin can visit all you want. That way, you won’t have to ever see Farah or Noah or deal with your cuckoo family dynamics ever again.”

My ghost ears perked.

“Nobody’s cuckoo here,” Wendy said.

Except for maybe your brother.

Wendy added, “It’s just that I feel like they’re one family and I’m another. Except for Gavin. I’m not sure I know Dad well enough to include him.”

A touch of energy seemed to spin out of me, extending toward Wendy.

Lonely. A kindred soul. She wasn’t as glamorous as her older sister or as cool as Gavin or as seemingly party-popular as Noah.

They were one set of Edgetts; she was another. What a way to live.

A voice off-camera on Torrey’s side made her look away from Wendy. Then she turned back to her.

“The tutor’s here,” she said. “See you tomorrow?”

“I suppose.”

They signed off, but Wendy just sat there on the couch, like she didn’t know where to go now.

So it seemed that Wendy did have a few adolescent issues to work with, poltergeist-wise. Bottled anger at Gavin for not being around when he’d promised to be. Anger at Farah and Noah for not accepting her. Anger at the dad, wherever he was.

I felt so bad for Wendy that I even started to think dumb things—ways to show her that I was already sorry for the haunting that’d be taking place.

Empathy. Hallucinations.

I’d been so fixated on haunting Gavin this whole time that I hadn’t extended my thoughts beyond that. But with these powers Sailor Randy had told me about, couldn’t I do more than just scare someone?

Rashly, I floated away from the wall and touched Wendy on the cheek.

It’s okay, I thought.

A tiny lightning flash struck me, and it must’ve done the same to her, because she flinched. But she didn’t pull away.

And in that fleeting second, I got a peek into Wendy Edgett’s mind.

Looking up at the grand staircase of this house, a feeling of absolute anxiety splitting down the middle as a beautiful woman with long blond hair and clear blue eyes bent down, smiling, saying, “Welcome to your new home, Wendy.”

Then a grave marker shaped as a marble angel.

Then yelling from a room down the hallway, a girl’s voice…

Gavin yelling, too…

Then Wendy’s gaze looking around her new room with its new furniture. This room. A new place that made her feel safe…

By the time the last image faded away, I realized that Wendy had sensed that something was wrong around her now, and her thoughts had turned to questions.

What’s going on?

Why is it so cold?

I scrambled to distract her, and out of sheer panic, I did something really stupid.

You know how there’re some babysitters who give a crying kid booze from Ma and Pa’s liquor cabinet just to quiet him down?

Without thinking, I did the ghost equivalent of that, pressing more of my essence against Wendy’s cheek, intensifying the contact. It was almost like I was reaching past her skin and into her face, putting my energy into something that would mellow her out for now.

I started to think of something relaxing to get her mind off my presence.

Hallucinations, right? The beach. That would do it.

I wasn’t so sure what happened next.

I started to sink into her, tumbling, going past the act of just giving her a few light images to enjoy. Somehow I became a part of Wendy, feeling her experiences and her thoughts, as the room itself filled with…

Waves, washing up to our feet, lapping at them before the water retreats. A blue sky and warm sun take the place of the bedroom ceiling, sand covering the floor.

As the roar of the ocean calls out, we smell salt, feel its heaviness on our skin. Our heart thuds even as everything around us makes us think of summer vacation.

Waves pounding, hissing away from the shore until another comes to take its place… God, we miss summer. It’d meant we didn’t have to go to school, with all those assholes calling us a bore and an arty farty.

A seagull flies overhead, skimming the ceiling.

We bend down, digging our hand into the sand, coming up with a fistful and letting it sift away, blown by a coastal wind… .

When I strained out of Wendy’s conscious with a jarring pop, the room was back to normal—comic book art, school uniform hanging on the closet, girl sitting on the couch with an open mouth and wide, unfocused eyes. She was shivering, like my touch had caused a freeze in her.

Around me, there was no more beach. I definitely wasn’t in Wendy’s head anymore as I hovered nearby, my essence rushing back together as I became me again.

That had been more than weird. I’d known that I wanted to show her the beach, but I hadn’t been thinking about the images, just experiencing them as they came. And I hadn’t taken over Wendy’s body so much as…

What? Had I mind-melded with her? Become a part of what was going on inside her head even as those beach images played out in front of her in this very room? Because that’s what hallucinations are, right? Mirages?

It sure hadn’t been like using empathy, where I was fully in control while I watched what was going on in her head. With hallucinations, only a small part of me had been aware that I still existed while I’d been in her head. I had been implanted in there, experiencing the water, sand, and sun as they appeared in this room.

That’s right. I had experienced everything, right along with Wendy… .

She rubbed her arms, blinked her eyes, like she was only now recovering from what I’d created for her. She’d thought it was real. Her breathing was even beach-day smooth and peaceful until it starting speeding up as reality hit her.

Bafflement took over her face while she sat up and rapidly glanced around the room.

Damn, when would I get the hang of “subtle”?

Her gaze landed on me. Almost like… No, she couldn’t see me. Or, more to the point, she didn’t get a look on her face that confirmed she did. There was only a bewildered expression there.

She was off the couch before I could inch too far back. Swiveling her gaze around the room some more, she crossed her arms over her chest, trembling.

“Hello?”

I hovered, waiting.

“Hello?” she said with more force this time, like she was half afraid and half exhilarated at the possibility of something in her room, messing with her mind.

Her gaze landed on the bed, on her phone. She made a dive for the device, but I didn’t whoosh to the door and confirm everything she was probably thinking with a huge show of my ghostliness.

I would just creep out of here, saving the big tricks for another day when Gavin was around.

So I stayed in place, rising to the ceiling as I’d done with Gavin, hoping I could hide in plain sight until she lost interest.

But then she aimed the phone toward me, just like she could feel where my coldness was coming from, and a camera-type flash blinded me.

Too late, I remembered that Amanda Lee had once mentioned that there were cameras on these new phones.

Wendy was already taking more pictures by the time I decided to cut my losses and scram, zipping down to the door and underneath it, then out of the mansion, fearing I’d already screwed up the haunting and all those higher ideals about justice that had been filling me with a purpose.