No. There was no effing way I was going to leave there without yanking that stupid flower from the ground.
I tried again, this time pounding and pounding until I was sure my fists would bleed from the force, but nothing happened. My hands were clean and blood-free, and the flower looked as if no one had ever touched it. It didn’t seem fair. How could it still sit there like that? How was it that my actions had no effect on it?
As if that wasn’t strange enough, I realized that all the jumping and tugging and pounding wasn’t making me tired. I used every ounce of strength I had to try to smash the flower, but I hadn’t so much as broken a sweat. In fact, I didn’t think I’d felt winded since arriving on the stairs—not even when I ran to catch up to the source of the voice.
The obvious answer to the riddle was probably that I was dead. It’s not like dead people needed to breathe or use their lungs. But I didn’t feel any different. To prove it, I tried sucking a breath in and out to see if I could, and sure enough, I breathed like I always did. So why wasn’t I getting tired?
I kicked at the flower again and lost my balance, tumbling forward onto the steps so that the plant was locked behind me where I couldn’t reach.
“God, if you’re up there, I want you to know that this sucks. Can you hear me? This place sucks!”
I didn’t know why I bothered saying the words out loud. No one was listening.
I stood and started to brush myself off until I realized there was nothing to brush off. Everything was as it had been, because nothing ever changed on this godforsaken staircase.
Two hands touched my back, their fingers splaying out against my skin in a comforting gesture. They reached around my shoulders and neck until they were holding me in a tight hug, and I felt a warm cheek press against my back.
A sigh escaped my lips. It felt nice to be held. It made me think of my mother’s warm arms, always willing to give me an encouraging embrace when I was younger. Somewhere along the way a rift had formed between us. I wasn’t even sure what started it, but one day I started to feel like she wanted me to be someone else, like I wasn’t good enough for her.
I leaned into her arms, happy and sad all at the same time because I suddenly missed her so much; because I wanted a chance to close the distance between us and be the daughter she wanted me to be. I would study harder. I would be better. I would do whatever she needed me to do, if I could just get another chance.
“Mom?” I looked down at the hands that were folded against my heart, hoping to see the familiar curve of her unpolished fingernails.
Instead I saw Sunny’s signature French manicure.
No.
“Get off me,” I snapped, shaking myself free from her claws. Tears pricked at the corner of my eyes. I pressed my thumbs into my tear ducts, trying to keep the wetness from seeping out. She would not make me cry.
Sunny launched herself in front of me to block my path. In her hand, she held the sunflower, its roots dropping clumps of dirt onto the ground in front of me. An amused grin split her face as she held it out to me, as if to say, “Look what I so easily pulled out of the ground. Jealous much?”
God, she was such a bitch.
“I don’t want it,” I said, trying to knock it from her hands and push my way past her. She stepped in front of me again and shoved her lower lip out into a pout.
“Why are you wearing our gym uniform?” I asked her, scanning the navy blue shorts and gray-and-blue Morris High T-shirt. She shrugged and looked down at her ensemble, like she’d forgotten she was wearing it, then smiled and held up the flower again. Instead of offering it to me, she plucked one of the yellow petals and mouthed the words, he loves me. Then, he loves me not.
“Stop it,” I said, as a pile of petals fell to her feet. She pulled them off one at a time, each one fluttering to the ground like a snowflake. “Stop, you’re ruining it!”
When the flower was almost completely bare, she bent down and collected the pile of petals with a final, wicked grin.
He loves me, she mouthed.
“He doesn’t,” I said, but my voice was shaky and unsure.
I opened my mouth again to argue, but she tossed the pile of yellow flakes into my eyes, and I was racked with the same nauseating sensation I had the first time my hand made contact with one of the ghosts.
The petals fell all around me, thickening until there was nothing but a wall of yellow. Everything was blinding, like I’d stared too long at the sun, until finally it all fell away and pulled me down with it. Down, down, down until I was no longer on the steps, but somewhere else entirely.
“He doesn’t,” I managed to whisper one final time, but I knew it was useless. The ghost Sunny had faded with the wall of petals, revealing a Sunny from several weeks before.
Then the blackness set in, and I forgot where I had been only seconds before.
*
“He’s gone,” Sunny said, her eyes trailing towards the door leading to our high school’s gym. “You can stop running.”
We’d been sent outside to run laps for talking, but it was more of a reward than the punishment our gym teacher intended. Mr. Thomas was proof that you didn’t need much going on between the ears to teach a gym class. He only watched us long enough to make sure we started running, then left us unattended for the rest of the period under the assumption that we’d keep running even though he wasn’t there. Stupid.
I slowed my pace, my feet slapping against the black tarred surface until I finally came to a stop next to Sunny. My breath fought for space inside my lungs even though we’d barely run a full lap around the track, yet Sunny hardly seemed winded.