Cara Shultz: The Dark World

By the next day, it was all over school: Paige Kelly talks to herself. Paige Kelly is a mental case. Paige Kelly threatens people. Ladies and gentlemen, step right up to stare at Paige D. Kelly, the freak of the week.

During my last few weeks at Vincent Academy, I’d kept my long dark hair pulled in front of my face, trying to hide, trying to not make eye contact with anyone as they whispered stories of my imagined conversations. Well, if I was also going to be considered a freak show at my new school, I might as well own it. I kept my hair pulled back into a ponytail and walked down the halls with my head held high as they whispered my new nickname: “Bellevue Kelly,” after the infamous mental hospital.

A few days after my first encounter with Dottie, I was in the third-floor girls’ room, washing my hands. Alone. When people saw me in the bathroom, they usually walked out so quickly I practically saw smoke at their heels.

“I’m sorry.”

The soft voice caused my shoulders to jerk in surprise, and I glanced up to see Dottie appearing over my shoulder in the mirror. She was still wearing the blue cardigan sweater over her buttoned-to-the-neck uniform shirt, her blond hair curled with bangs, like the hairstyle I’d seen on old comedies from the 1950s.

I kept my eyes downcast, trying not to meet her sad brown gaze. Maybe I could cure myself of these hallucinations if I stopped indulging them. I was tired of going to therapy, tired of being forced to try new medications, tired of my parents hovering over me and my classmates running away from me.

“I know you can see me,” she said.

I continued washing my hands, scrubbing at the skin and feeling very Lady Macbeth-y.

“I said sorry,” Dottie repeated, and I glanced up to see her tugging at the sleeves of her sweater again. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you. I was just so happy to be out of there.”

“Out of where?” I blurted, before gripping the soapy edges of the sink and exhaling in frustration. I couldn’t help it; I was curious what she meant. Or what this figment of my imagination was trying to tell me. Might as well embrace the crazy, Paige. At least it’s entertaining.

“You can still see me?” A hopeful smile spread across her face, and I nodded at her reflection. I spun around to look at her, leaning my back against the sink, ignoring how the wet porcelain soaked the back of my shirt.

“Where were you?” I asked, and she sighed again.

“You don’t want to know.” Dottie frowned, looking down at her shoes. Whatever she was thinking of caused her to visibly flinch, and when she spoke again, her voice was despondent. “It’s a distorted version of here. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s dark. It’s lonely.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And there are scary things...” she whispered, shutting her eyes tightly. But then her eyes popped open with excitement. “But out of nowhere, I felt this energy, and I had to follow it. Suddenly, I was back here. No one else could see me—but you could.”

“What kind of scary things did—” I began to ask, but the bathroom door opened, and Pepper walked in. When she saw me, she stopped short and called over her shoulder.

“Let’s go to another bathroom. Bellevue Kelly is in here having a positively enthralling conversation with the sink.” Delighted peals of laughter answered her, echoing in the hall until the door slammed shut. I gritted my teeth and stared at the white tile floor.

“You’re a figment of my imagination. You’re not real,” I stated, more as a reminder to myself.

“I’m not a figment of your imagination. I’m—well, I guess I’m a ghost.” Dottie cocked her head to one side as a look of awe flashed across her pretty face. “Wow, I’ve never said that out loud before,” she said breathily, before adding, “Then again, I haven’t had someone to talk to in a while.”

“That’s crazy,” I scoffed, folding my arms across my chest. “There are no such things as ghosts.”

“Well, would you rather that I was a ghost or a product of your fevered mind?” she countered, and I studied her curiously. There was something...different...about Dottie, now that I scrutinized her more closely.

“You do kind of glow.” Her skin seemed luminous—she exuded a faint light, as if a soft candle illuminated her from within.

“That’s probably just my sparkling personality,” she said, giving me a winning smile.

“Look, if you want proof, just look in my freshman yearbook,” Dottie said, pointing a pink-manicured nail to the door. “All the past school yearbooks should be in the library. They were when I went here, at least. Look up 1954. I was a freshman then.”

I nodded, feeling a little light-headed, before bolting from the bathroom. I felt like running home, but I ran down to the library instead. Now you’re taking orders from the imaginary people, Paige. This is how serial killers get started.

With shaking hands, I pulled the 1954 yearbook off the shelves and rested it on the nearest table. There, between Margaret Falconi and Donald Foster, I found Dorothy June Flanagan.

My eyes met the black-and-white version of her brown eyes, and I felt like I was falling—like the room had shifted. I pulled out the nearest chair and collapsed in it, gripping the edge of the table for support. My heart was pounding, and my stomach, well, my stomach was probably somewhere in the basement. Yearbook Dottie had slightly shorter hair, but it was still flawlessly arranged, with little bangs that curled over her forehead. An untroubled, pretty grin brightened her face, as she smiled at me from the page, as if to say, “See? I told you so.”

Because it was her.

Because she was real.

Coincidence. It has to be a coincidence, right? Underneath her name, her extracurricular activities were listed—Glee Club, Spring Fling Committee. My fingers fumbled as I flipped through the book, leaving small creases in the glossy photos because my hands were trembling so badly. I quickly found the page devoted to the enchanted garden-themed dance and saw a photo of Dottie. Her corsaged wrist rested on the shoulder of a boy who looked like the fifties ideal of the all-American teen idol: tall, broad-shouldered, deeply dimpled and clean-cut. She gazed up at him with a blissed-out grin as they danced under a poorly made papier-mâché flower arch.

My heart was pounding. Twenty minutes ago, I thought I’d imagined the whole thing. Now I knew my figment had a boyfriend. I wanted to know more. I needed to know more, see more—have more proof in front of me that Dottie existed. I flipped to the Glee Club page and searched it for another photo of the ghost girl. There, in the bottom left, my figment appeared again. In the picture, Dottie stood next to an older girl, who looked remarkably similar. They both held sheet music in front of them, their mouths open in song. The caption read: The Flanagan sisters, Dottie and Lorraine, rehearse for their solos in the spring choral presentation.

Whoa. My figment had a family. I set off in search of Lorraine Flanagan, finding her in the juniors section.

I slammed the book shut, the shaking that had overtaken my hands now spreading throughout my entire body.

My figments are real. They’re ghosts.

My mind reeled, thinking of everyone I’d spoken to that no one else had seen. The older woman at the bus stop. The playful young man outside the Met. The woman in Central Park. I exhaled slowly, not sure of how to feel. Was I relieved that I wasn’t crazy, or crazy because I was accepting something otherworldly as an answer? Could I at least be sure I wasn’t about to turn into a serial killer? A brief image of myself in court, passionately telling the judge, “The ghosts told me to do it,” flickered through my head.