Once upon a time, Trina was a very pretty girl with red hair and bright blue eyes.
She liked to wear her hair in braids. That was the easiest way to keep it out of her face. When she fell off the horse, her hair was plaited as usual. They carried her out of the ring and up to the infirmary. The doctor had left her as she was because there was really nothing to do for her. There had been no blood. “A very clean break,” the doctor said. “A very clean break, indeed.”
Trina’s parents came to collect the body, and she was still in her riding habit and boots. Her mother thought she looked like a little angel. Her father cried.
And ever since that day, she had been here at New Newbridge. Waiting.
Trina hadn’t changed much in death. She still liked to talk a lot and bother people when she felt it was her business to. That’s why she got so annoyed at Henry when he was in one of his moods. He behaved like a big old baby. And when she tried to cheer him up, well, he just got nasty.
He didn’t want to be cheered up. He liked wallowing. That was the problem, as far as Trina saw it.
The real kids were gone for the summer, and only the ghosts lived there now. Trina liked it better when the realies, as they were called, were around. It made her feel better about things. She could follow the girls around and get all the gossip just like when she had been alive.
But during the long summer months all she had for company were the others like her. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded. For the most part, they were very nice. She even counted a few among them as her friends. Nelly, a girl about her age who had gone into anaphylactic shock after a bee stung her during a nature walk, was sweet. They shared a room together in the disused West Wing dormitory.
The West Wing dormitory had been partially destroyed when a boy who shouldn’t have been smoking had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette. Luckily, no one had been killed. But the West Wing was now uninhabitable. The school was always meaning to have it refurbished, but somehow there was never enough money. Sometimes an adventurous student or two would make a hideaway of the place, but so far no one had caught on that a whole gaggle of ghosts was living there.
Nelly was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. Her dark hair was cut short and made her look more boy than girl. She had on a pair of hiking boots and a yellow T-shirt that said have a nice day on it. She was reading a book—probably something about bugs. They were her favorite. She had planned to be an entomologist before the bee had killed her.
“So?” Nelly had her head cocked, waiting for an answer.
Trina shook her head. “It was a no-go,” she answered.
Trina sat down on the second-to-bottom stair and dejectedly put her chin in her hands. Nelly patted her shoulder.
“It’s all right. Henry will snap out of it in a few days.” Trina appreciated Nelly’s pragmatism, and usually shared it herself, but she just had this peculiar feeling that Henry was getting worse, not better.
“But every time he gets in a funk, it’s always just a little bit worse and lasts a little bit longer.” Trina sighed.
She put her chin in her hands and sighed again. This time even louder. Realizing that Nelly wasn’t going to answer her, she changed the subject.
“By the way, have you seen Thomas? We were supposed to play chess today, but I can’t find him anywhere.”
“Who?” Nelly said quizzically.
Unlike Nelly, Trina knew practically everyone at New Newbridge. She made it her business to know everyone else’s business, so that way there were never any surprises.
“You’ve met Thomas a million times. He’s the one who likes to hang out in the kitchen and watch Mrs. Marble bake pies,” Trina added helpfully.
Nelly began to shrug, and then suddenly her eyes lit up. She had remembered something important about Thomas.
“I saw him come inside the West Wing earlier,” she said, then squinted her eyes and bit her lip. “But he never came back out.”
“That’s strange,” Trina replied. Unlike Henry, Thomas was extremely well mannered, never yelled, and was always exactly where he said he was going to be. Trina wondered if something bad had happened to him, then quickly put the thought away. Once you were dead, well, there really wasn’t that much bad stuff left to happen to you anymore.
“Oh, that reminds me, I met a new girl today,” Nelly said casually, her nose partway in her bug book again.
Trina almost hiccupped with excitement, the big news immediately making her forget about Thomas and the missed chess game.
“A new girl! We haven’t had a new girl in forever,” Trina said. “How do you think she died?”
Nelly shrugged her shoulders and went back to her book. Trina opened her mouth to say something else, but realized that Nelly was no longer paying attention.
Suddenly something white and fluffy blew across the lawn, catching Trina’s sharp eye.
“What in the world… ?” Trina said as she put aside her excitement about the new girl and floated toward the object. Nelly, her nose still in her book, didn’t even notice Trina leave.
But before Trina could get close enough to see what the white fluff was made of, she was interrupted by the unexpected appearance of a tall, lanky man with dark hair, one of the teachers at the school, she remembered. She watched as he ran out from behind the West Wing, passed through Trina like she wasn’t there (she wasn’t, as far as he was concerned), and stopped short when he reached the place where the white fluff waited. When he was sure no one was watching (Trina didn’t count because she was a ghost), he scooped up the fluff, stuffed it into his pocket, and ran back the way he had come.
“Hmm… that’s strange,” Trina said to herself as she watched the teacher’s retreating back. When he had finally disappeared behind the burned-out building, she floated back toward the stairs. Sitting down on the step beside Nelly, Trina let her mind return to the important issue at hand: the new girl.
A new girl was something special, Trina thought happily, not including Nelly in her thoughts this time. She was going to have to meet the new addition as soon as possible and find out everything about her. Nelly might not care that there was a new ghost in town, but she certainly did.
“Oh well, it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me,” she said with excitement to no one in particular.
At least, she thought she did.