Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

She thinks, They aren’t supposed to do that! She’s so angry she isn’t even scared.

Immy’s fingers are under that wriggling tongue and in that compartment and she’s got hold of the hair ring. She yanks it out of Mint’s mouth and like that, the girl ghost is gone and the Ghost Boyfriend is just a thing standing there, its hands loose at her neck, its mouth slightly open.

Immy sticks the hair ring in her pocket. Her fingers are really throbbing, but she can bend them, so not broken. They’re just a little mangled.

She’s alone with the Ghost Boyfriend looming there, like he’s just waiting for her to turn him on again. And those two lovebirds? Those ghosts? Are they still around? She gets out of there as fast as she can.

She rides her bike down dark streets, crying the whole time. Snot all over her face. What an idiot. Worst of all, she’ll never be able to tell anyone any of this. Not even Ainslie.

She washes her hands thoroughly once she gets home. Takes the nail scissors and a pair of tweezers out of the cabinet in her bathroom. She holds the hair ring under the magnifying glass and uses the tweezers to tease out the blond length of hair. Are they here? She hopes so. Cuts through the blond hair with the scissors, and tweezes out every last strand. Now she has a ring of black hair, and a very small pile of blond. The black hair goes back into the locket on the choker she got for Ainslie. Next she goes through her jewelry box, looking for the necklace she used to wear all the time last year. A kind of medicine bag thing on a leather strand. The blond hair goes in it. Every bit.

After that, she gets in bed. Leaves the light on. When she falls asleep, she’s in that car again on the moonlit road. Mint is in the passenger seat. Someone else in the backseat. She won’t look at either of them. Just keeps on driving. Wonders where she’ll be when she gets there.

In the morning, she explains things to her dad. Not everything. Just the part about the Ghost Boyfriend and the storage locker. She tells him it’s all part of a joke she and Elin and Sky were going to play on Ainslie, but now she’s realized what a bad idea it was. Ainslie would have really freaked out. She explains that Ainslie is really fragile right now. Going through a bad breakup.

He’s proud of her. They drive to the You-Store-It and retrieve the Ghost Boyfriend. When he’s back in his coffin in the closet in the basement in Ainslie’s house, her father takes her out for frozen yogurt.

Ainslie comes back from her ski trip with a tan because Ainslie is a multitasker.

At lunch they all sit out in the sunshine in their coats and scarves, because it’s hard to be back inside, back in school again.

“Here,” Immy says. “Happy birthday, Ainslie. Finally found it.”

It’s a little tiny box, hardly worth it, but Ainslie does what she always does. Unwraps it so carefully you’d think what she really likes about presents is the wrapping paper. She takes out the choker and everyone oohs and aahs. When she opens the locket, Immy says, “It’s probably not true, but supposedly the hair is Bam Muller’s hair.” Bam Muller is the lead singer of O Hell, Kitty! She checked. He has black hair.

“Kind of gross,” Ainslie says. “But also kind of awesome. Thanks, Immy.”

She puts on the choker and everyone admires how it looks against Ainslie’s long white neck. Nobody has noticed the little bruises on Immy’s neck. You can hardly see them.

“You’re welcome,” Immy says and gives Ainslie a big hug. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Be more lesbian,” Elin says. Sky has spilled the beans on Elin and Justin. The weird thing is that Elin doesn’t seem that much happier. Probably the whole kissing thing. Although the way it turns out, Elin and Justin are still together when school gets out. They’re together all summer long. And when Halloween rolls around and Ainslie has a party at her house, Elin comes as a sexy Red Riding Hood and Justin is a big bad wolf.

Oliver and Alan and Mint are all at the party. Ainslie brings them out for the first time in a long time. Immy dances with all of them. She dances with Mint twice. They don’t really have anything to say to each other.

It’s a great party.

Sky has made another batch of absinthe. She’s a cowgirl. Ainslie’s mother is a sexy witch, and Ainslie isn’t in costume at all. Or if she is, nobody knows who she’s supposed to be. At some point, Immy realizes that Elin is wearing the choker, the one Immy gave Ainslie. So maybe she borrowed it. Or maybe Ainslie got tired of it and gave it to Elin. Whatever. It’s not a big deal.

Immy’s wearing her medicine bag. She wears it a lot. Take that, ghost girl. Immy is looking pretty good. She’s a succubus. She has to keep explaining what that is, but that’s okay. The main thing is she looks amazing.

Justin, for one, can’t take his eyes off her. She looks at him once in a while, smiles just a little. All of that practice, she bets Elin has taught him a thing or two about kissing. And he was Immy’s boyfriend first.

Wake up, wake up.

Portia is having a birthday party. The party will start without you. Wake up, Gwenda. Wake up. Hurry, hurry.

Soft music. The smell of warm bread. She could have been back home, how many houses ago? In her childhood bed, her mother downstairs baking bread.

The last sleeper in the spaceship House of Secrets opened her eyes, crept from her narrow bed. She rose up, or fell, into the chamber.

The chamber, too, was narrow and small, a honeycombed cell. Soft pink light, invisible drawers, chamber and beds, all of them empty. The astronaut Gwenda stretched out her arms, rubbed at her scalp. Her hair had grown out again. Sometimes she imagined a berth crammed with masses of hair. Centuries passing beneath the strangling weight.

Now there was the smell of old books. A library. Maureen was in her head with her, looking at books. Monitoring her heart rate, the dilation of her pupils. Maureen was the ship, the House and the keeper of all its Secrets. A spirit of the air; a soothing subliminal hum; an alchemical sequence of smells and emanations.

Gwenda inhaled. Stretched again, slowly somersaulted. Arcane chemical processes began within her blood, her nervous system.

This is how it was aboard the spaceship House of Secrets. You slept and you woke up and you slept again. You might sleep for a year, for five years. There were six astronauts. Sometimes others were already awake. Sometimes you spent days, a few weeks alone. Except you were never really alone. Maureen was always there. She was there with you sleeping and waking. She was inside you, too.

Everyone is waiting for you in the Great Room. There’s roasted carp. A chocolate cake.

“A tidal smell,” Gwenda said, trying to place it. “Mangrove trees and the sea caught in a hundred places at their roots. I spent a summer in a place like that.”

You arrived with one boy and you left with another.

“So I did,” Gwenda said. “I’d forgotten. It was such a long time ago.”

A hundred years.

“That long!” Gwenda said.

Not long at all.

“No,” Gwenda said. “Not long at all.” She touched her hair. “I’ve been asleep…”

Seven years this time.

“Seven years,” Gwenda said.

A citrus smell. Lime trees. Other smells, pleasant ones, ones that belonged to Mei and Sullivan and Aune and Portia. Sisi. All of their body chemistries adjusted for harmonious relationships. They were, of necessity, a convivial group.