Cara Shultz - The Dark World

“No one will believe you,” Pepper vowed. “You’re crazy, and everyone knows it.”

Pepper grabbed her lip gloss out of the sink and angrily wiped her chin, smearing the bright red goop all over her skin.

“That’s really not your color,” I called, and she let a creative list of expletives flow before opening the bathroom door to storm out. But before she stomped away, Pepper stopped to glare at me.

“You think you’re better than me, don’t you? Well, I’m going to meet my boyfriend and go to my friend Andie’s house to hang out with a bunch of friends,” she said, stressing the words. “But you? Where are your friends, Paige? You’re alone in the bathroom talking to yourself like a freak. Think about that when you’re feeling so superior. You’re a loser and the entire school knows it,” she barked before stalking out, slamming the door behind her. I flinched at the loud smack of the wood reverberating around the bathroom, but recovered when I saw Dottie’s mournful expression.

“Well, that was all kinds of dramatic,” I scoffed, but Dottie just shook her head rapidly, almost making her hairdo move—almost. They used an impressive amount of hair spray in 1955, after all.

“I’m so sorry. It’s because of me—” she began, and I cut her off.

“Don’t, Dots. It’s okay,” I promised her. “I’ve got a thick skin. Rhino thick. Chain-mail thick.”

“But doesn’t it ever bother you that she called you a loser?”

“She called me several things. Whatever,” I replied, shrugging nonchalantly and doing my best to alleviate Dottie’s guilt. It didn’t work: she gave me a regretful smile, reaching out her hand to grasp mine, and her fingers passed through my skin, giving me an eerie chill. We both jumped back.

“Sorry!” she apologized, her pink lips twisted in a frown. “I forget sometimes that, you know...”

“That you’re...um—”

“That I’m dead. Yeah. That,” she interrupted me bluntly, looking down at her saddle shoes.

“Eh, it happens.”

“Does it ever freak you out that you talk to ghosts?” Dottie asked, her voice small. “You can tell me. I won’t take it personally.”

I smiled at her, shaking my head.

“I did the whole freak-out thing after the accident,” I reminded her. “Been there, done that, have the souvenir T-shirt.”

I’d told Dottie all about it: the accident sophomore year, when I’d pushed some little kid out of the way of a car and gotten hit instead. I’d told her about how I’d died. I only died a little—just under a minute—but it was enough. I had a tendency to imagine the scene as if it came straight out of one of those medical dramas, where ridiculously attractive doctors with perfect touch-me hair and tortured love lives screamed, “Clear!” before shocking my still heart back to life.

But once I came back, things were...different. Not just physically, although I was pretty banged up after getting slammed by a car. And there was the little matter of me talking to people in the hospital that no one else could see. I went for brain scan after brain scan, tried little white pills, big blue pills, yellow pills—I tasted the rainbow when it came to pills—but the doctors couldn’t find anything medically wrong with me.

Since I’d lost so much time recovering from the accident—and, you know, was talking to invisible people—my parents and doctors thought it would be best if I transferred to another—easier—school and repeated sophomore year. Everyone seemed to think that I had some kind of stress-related mental illness—everyone, including me. So, I didn’t put up much of a fight when Mom and Dad plucked me out of the competitive, college-prep Vincent Academy on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side, and sent me to Holy Assumption, across town on the Upper West. The schoolwork was less intense, but the blue plaid uniforms were uglier. And possibly made of low-grade steel wool.

I had been pretty quiet at first—merely another nondescript girl in the back of the classroom, terrified of talking to anyone unless I had tangible proof that they were, in fact, tangible. I fulfilled the ultimate new-girl stereotype. I mean, I could have taught a class in it: Quiet Newbie 101. And then I met Dottie. It was October, the second month of my second sophomore year. I was in the crowded third-floor bathroom and noticed Dottie gazing forlornly through the few scratches in the painted-over window that gave a glimpse outside. She looked so sad, so lost. I couldn’t ignore her.

“Are you okay?” I asked her gently, and she turned to face me, her brown eyes wide.

“You’re—you’re talking to me?” she stammered, astonished. A timid smile spread across her face.

“Sure, why not?” I asked, glancing around the bathroom. One girl elbowed another and tilted her chin in my direction. Considering that everyone in the bathroom had ignored this girl, who stared dejectedly at whatever scraps of the outside world she could see from the bathroom window, I decided that Dottie must be the outcast—just like I had been at Vincent Academy after I talked to a figment of my imagination for twenty minutes on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That little display made me about as popular as an onion milkshake.

I wanted to reach out, be a friend—be the person no one at my old school had been to the girl who was a little messed up after a car accident. I mean, I did save a random child’s life and all when he somehow got away from his mom and ended up in the middle of Tenth Avenue. Talk about a tough crowd.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll talk to you,” I said, hopping up on the radiator and holding out my hand.

“I’m Paige. Paige Kelly. I just transferred.”

Dottie looked at my hand and hesitantly reached out to shake it, then pulled her hand back.

“Dottie Flanagan. I don’t think I should try to shake your hand, sorry,” she murmured, tugging at the sleeves of the blue cashmere cardigan she wore over her white uniform shirt. I caught a glimpse of angry red slashes on her wrists before she pulled the soft fabric over the heels of her hands.

“What is she doing?” one of the girls in the bathroom hissed to another. I realized that the once-noisy bathroom had gotten quiet—eerily quiet. You could hear every sharp intake of breath, every rustle of fabric as one student tugged on the arm of another. If jaws made noise when they dropped, we’d all have been struck deaf by the thundering sound.

“Why?” I asked, curious. “Are you sick? You don’t look sick. I’ll shake your hand.”

“She’s sick, all right—sick in the head,” one of the girls snickered, and I whipped my head to stare coldly at her. It was obvious what had caused the scars on Dottie’s wrists. I knew what it was like to be mocked, despairing, and so incredibly scared. I couldn’t imagine what had brought Dottie to the point of attempting suicide, but whatever it was, the poor girl didn’t need to be ridiculed for it.

“You should be embarrassed of yourself.” I glared at the girl angrily.

“Me?” Her eyes fluttered in surprise. “You’re the one who’s embarrassing yourself.”

“You should watch your mouth before I smack you in it.” My voice was cold, threatening as I glared at the girl—whom I later learned was Pepper. She paled and shuffled back a few steps, intimidated by me. I exhaled in relief—I’d only ever been in one fight, and that was in fourth grade, but at least I talked a pretty good game.

When I turned to continue talking to my mystery friend, she was gone. The immediate area around me was empty—not a surprise, since I’d just threatened a student in defense of...thin air, apparently. My cheeks burned as if I’d lit them on fire. It’d happened again. Again! I’d made friends with some figment of my imagination. I grabbed my backpack and ran out of the bathroom, pushing my way through the girls—some stunned into silence, others taunting me—and raced to the library to hide.