I’m not a big fan of Shakespeare, but when the lines are read with the right inflection and cadence, it’s a lot easier to understand. Miss Chaisson had neither.
“Put some life into it, you boorish twit!” the ghost shouted at her from where he stood by the window. “It’s called emoting!”
I lowered my head to hide my smile. Finally, a ghost that didn’t piss me off. Or make demands of me. Or ask for help. It—he—was a rarity.
It was only going to get worse the closer we got to Halloween. I had never seen this particular ghost before, and had no idea if he belonged to the school or Miss Chaisson, or someone else entirely.
I’d seen a few new ones today since my late arrival. One had been wandering the hall aimlessly with such a dejected look on his face that I actually risked stopping to ask him if he was okay. His name was Reggie White, and he was a former physics teacher who’d had a heart attack one day in class while freaking out on some noisy students. He didn’t know why he was there as he normally spent his afterlife watching over his widow and her new husband. When I suggested that maybe one of his kids went to this school, he perked right up. That was exactly where he needed to be, and off he went. My good deed for the day.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Halloween messed with ghosts as much as the living. I mean, it was annoying for me to see all of them, and hear them, and all that, but Reggie hadn’t even known how he’d got to the school. His love for his kid had overridden his tether to his wife. That had to mess a spirit up.
But Reggie was my only good deed. I completely ignored the guy hanging in the stairwell. And I don’t mean he was hanging out. He was hanging—by the neck. I ignored him and his attempts to get my attention because anyone who would hang themselves in a school stairway was an ass-hat. At least Dan had killed himself outside when there had been few people around.
Still, ghosts were shameless attention whores, and they usually haunted where there was the most chance of being seen. Kids—even teenagers—were more sensitive to ghosts than those over twenty; therefore, they increased their visibility profile.
As a theory, I thought it was a pretty damn good one. Still, it set me on edge, because I had to be that much more careful about who I looked at or spoke to, because there was always the chance I’d speak to a ghost and someone alive would hear me. I’d already been warned by the principal that I was on thin ice, and that it was only my grandmother’s standing within the community that got me back into the school. The ghosts of Samuel Clemens High had gotten me into trouble before.
Which led me to develop a second theory. That attention-seeking mechanism was what led ghosts to places where they might be seen. And to people who might see them. People who could interact with them.
People like me. There wasn’t a ghost in town that wouldn’t rush me if they could. Halloween upped their chances of success. Maybe the school’s increase in the life-challenged population was partly my fault.
So, there I was, trying to ignore the very entertaining ghost in my English class, when he suddenly turned his head and looked right at me with his gray eyes. He had gray hair, too, and grayish skin. He was wearing a gray sweater and gray pants. Had he never heard of blue? Maybe a little maroon to break things up?
“You,” he said in that big, booming voice.
Roxi glanced at me from her seat across the aisle. Had she heard him? Could she see him? Now that she knew ghosts existed, she was much more open to their presence. I didn’t look back at her—I didn’t want the ghost to notice her.
I ignored Mr. One-Shade-of-Gray and tried to focus on Miss Chaisson.
“You are the one!” He came at me like a charging bull. “You can see me, can’t you?”
He was standing right in Jeremy, who sat in front of me. That was rude. Any minute Jeremy was going to— Yup, there it was—he shivered.
My notebook was open to the page containing what little notes I’d been able to make during class. Carefully, in block print, my letters upside down, I wrote: MOVE.
One-Shade’s eyes widened as he read what I’d written. Almost embarrassedly, he stepped out of poor, shivering Jeremy to stand in the aisle beside my seat. At the front of the room, Miss Chaisson had finished droning and was trying to get the class to partake in a discussion of the play—without much success. I couldn’t help but feel like she was hoping we could explain it to her, because she didn’t understand it, either.
“That woman is a menace,” One-Shade sneered. “What were they thinking hiring her to teach English? She would be better suited for home economics.”
Okay, so he was a rank misogynist and hadn’t taught anything in the past couple of decades.
TRYING TO LEARN HERE, I wrote. Too bad upside-down printing wasn’t a life skill that would do me any good. WHAT DO YOU WANT?