Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

As it was a Saturday night and just before dinner, there were only a handful of people in the library, and those who were weren’t the kind who paid much notice to other people. They were all deep in their zones—headphones, computers, books. Boo walked the floor quickly, weaving in and out of all the stacks downstairs, then going upstairs and doing the same thing. Alistair was sprawled on one of the wide windowsills at the end of the literature section, authors Ea–Gr row. He had one leg stretched high, his Doc Martens boot planted flat against the side of the window, the other hanging down. He seemed to be the focus of Boo’s search, because she walked right up to him.

“She knows now,” Boo said.

Alistair lazily lifted his gaze from the book.

“Congratulations,” he said drily.

I still had no idea what we were doing. My thoughts were moving very slowly. They both looked at me, and when I didn’t respond, Boo explained.

“What we just talked about,” Boo said. “Alistair is . . . like that.”

“Like . . .”

And then I realized why Alistair was looking at me like I was so stupid. The eighties look he was rocking—that was no look. That was his actual hairstyle from the actual eighties.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You’re . . .”

“Yeah! He’s dead.”

Boo said it like she was telling me it was his birthday. Alistair looked . . . like a person. The spiked hair and the rolled jeans and the big trench coat . . . I reached up and touched my own hair—longish, straight, very dark—and was suddenly very glad that I hadn’t dyed it pink, like I’d been considering. Pink hair for a few weeks, fine. Pink hair for eternity, that I wasn’t so sure about.

Which was not a good or decent thought to be thinking. I should have been thinking about the nature of life, the idea of dying at eighteen at school, the idea that for some people, death wasn’t the end. But those were all big thoughts, too big for me right now. So I concentrated on his hair. His eternal hair. His eternal Doc Martens.

I started laughing hysterically. I laughed so hard, I thought I was pretty much going to throw up in the middle of the literature section. Someone came into the end of the aisle and stared at me in annoyance, but I couldn’t stop. When I finally got it under control a little, Alistair slipped down from his perch.

“Come on,” he said. “Might as well show you.”

He walked us down to the ground floor, to the research section, by the librarian’s desk. There was a shelf full of The Wexford Register, the school newspaper, bound in green leather.

“March 1989,” he said.

Boo pulled the 1989 volume down and set it on one of the nearby tables. She flipped through to March. The paper looked weirdly cheap and cheesy, roughly typed. We found a large photo of Alistair on the front of the issue from March 17. He was smiling in the photo, his hair particularly large and obviously bleached blond even in black-and-white. The headline read “Wexford Mourns Death of Student.” “‘Alistair Gilliam died in his sleep on Thursday evening,’” Boo read softly. “‘He was the editor of the school literary magazine and was well-known for his love of poetry and the band the Smiths’ . . . in your sleep?” “Asthma attack,” Alistair said.

I started to giggle again. It rose up in my throat. The librarian looked over with an annoyed expression and put his finger to his lips. Boo nodded, replaced the book, and we returned to the privacy of the upstairs stacks. After checking to make sure we were basically alone, she continued the conversation.

“You didn’t die here,” Boo said quietly. “So why do you come here?”

“Would you want to stay in Aldshot all the time? At least here I can read. Got nothing else to do. Read everything in here—twice. Well, most of it. Lots of it’s shite.”

“It’s great how you can pick up the books and turn pages,” Boo said.

“It took time,” he said. “But what about you two? You usually don’t come in pairs.”

“You’ve met people like us before?” Boo asked.

“One or two over the years. But they’re always alone, and always a bit mental.”

Not a great endorsement of my kind. And from the way Alistair was looking at me, I could tell that he hadn’t quite put me in the nonmental category yet.

“We’re a bit special,” Boo said. “I’m a police officer.”

“You’re a rozzer?” Alistair laughed properly for the first time.

“ Yes, me,” she said. “We’re working on the Ripper case. The Ripper is . . . like you.”

“What do you mean, like me ? You mean dead?”

Boo nodded.

“Dead, but nothing like me. We’re not all alike, you know.”

“Course!” Boo said. “Sorry!”

“I’m not into killers,” Alistair replied. “I was a vegetarian. Meat is murder, you know.”

“I’m really sorry.”

Boo reached out and touched his arm. He looked solid enough.

“How are you doing that?” I said. “I saw someone walk through that other woman.”

“Oh,” Boo said. “It depends on the person. Some people are really solid. Some are a bit more like air. Alistair is more solid. Can you pass through things? Doors, or walls?”

“I don’t like to,” he said. “I can. It takes time.”

“The more solid, the longer it takes and the harder it is. The ones who are more like air, they can do that more easily, but they’re not as physically strong. It’s harder for them to move things. But all ghosts are people, and you just respect them, no matter what they’re like, yeah?”

Alistair seemed mollified by this ghosts’ rights speech.

“Rory is needed for the investigation, see?” Boo said. “And she’s just found out what she can do, and it takes some time to adjust to that. She has this assignment to do, and obviously, she can’t do it. So, I was thinking, maybe you could help?”

Alistair didn’t, to my surprise, walk away or simply evaporate in disgust (because, for all I knew, he could do that).

“What is it?” he asked.

“Six to eight pages on the major themes of The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ” I said automatically.

“ The Diary of Samuel Pepys is massive,” Alistair replied.

“Oh . . . I mean, just the part about the fire.”

“The major theme of the part about the fire is the fire.”

“Also . . . rhetorical technique, or something.”

“Could you help us with that?” Boo asked. She had an alarmingly huge smile. “I mean, you’re obviously clever, and we have a murderer to stop. Can you type, or—”

“I don’t type.”

“Or write,” she said quickly. “Can you hold a pen?”

“I haven’t practiced in a while,” he replied. “I used to be able to do it. When do you need it?”

“Tomorrow morning?” I replied.

Alistair tapped his mouth with his fisted hand and thought for a moment.

“I want music,” he said.

“Music!” Boo nodded. “We can get you music! What music do you want?”

“I want Strangeways, Here We Come by the Smiths and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me by the Cure—”

“Wait, wait . . .”

Boo hurried off. I heard her making her way down the steps. While she was gone, I just stared at Alistair and he stared back at me.

“Pen,” she said as she returned. She held up a pen as proof. “Say those again.”

Alistair repeated his album choices, and Boo wrote them down on her palm.

“And London Calling, ” he added, leaning over to make sure she was getting the names right. “I want London Calling by the Clash.”

“I’ll get you these albums tonight,” she said, holding out her hand so he could see what she had written. “And something to play them on. Deal?”