ghost noun: a mere shadow
There’s a tin shed at the bottom of the oval, on the edge of where the team practises. It’s never locked. If I leave the door open a little and stand inside the door, I can see the whole field, but no one can see me.
I watch Martin running, arms held out for balance, his legs already kicking before he’s at the ball. I watch and it hurts. I can feel it like a slow tearing across my chest.
Without soccer, life is a long Sunday afternoon with nothing to look forward to. It’s weeks and weeks of not seeing Dad or Jane. It’s nothing. Slowly creeping inside me. Filling me up. I hate the team for making me feel like this.
I want to run out onto the field, dots of mud flecking my legs, wind blowing at me like a sharp breath across a dusty shelf. I hate that I’d have to ask to come back. ‘I hope they lose the Championships,’ I murmur to the tin around me. My voice sounds thin and I’m glad that no one can hear me say it.
I see her watching us, her face half hidden by the door of the old tin shed. Just ask, Faltrain. Why won’t you just ask to come back?
There’s another reason I go to that shed. To be alone without anyone seeing me. There are people I can hang out with, but I feel like I’m on the edge of them. Like looking out at the ocean and knowing it’s too rough and cold to swim. After all the talk about my underwear and kissing technique, I’m just not sure what they really think of me. I miss Jane. She’s always on my side.
I watch Alyce in the library today. She’s laughing at a book she’s reading. I haven’t done that since before Jane left. I want more than anything to laugh with Alyce right now.
It’s weird. Up until a few weeks ago, if you’d told me I’d be standing in the library, watching Alyce and thinking, she looks like she’s having fun, I would have said you were crazy. ‘Life’s unexpected, Faltrain,’ I can hear Jane saying, and just as I’m nodding in agreement, Alyce catches me staring at her. And she smiles.
I’ve decided there’s another category of kids. We’re like those guys who go to jail but are really innocent: the wrongly accused loner group. I’m not sure where we belong, but we don’t belong here.
As the bell goes for the end of lunch I raise my hand, and give Alyce a little wave.
Annabelle is sitting at my bus stop after school this afternoon. Life would be so much easier if people who hated each other got together and compared diaries. You wouldn’t run into them outside of class. You’d never have to sit next to them.
I mean, what do you say when you’re faced with a person who’s made the colour of your undies the hot topic of school conversation for weeks? Talking about your undies says more about her than you, Faltrain, Jane wrote to me last week. She’s right, but what does right and wrong matter when you’ve developed a nervous habit of walking with your hands gripped to the back of your skirt?
I lean against the side of the glass shelter, cracked and covered with graffiti. If I move forward a little I can see Annabelle’s face in line with mine, reflected in the glass. Part of me expects her to speak, to fill the space around us with all of the things that she has been saying behind my back. Part of me is dying to say something too.
She doesn’t. I don’t. We’ve seen the enemy out of uniform. Up close. What’s there to say?
She folds her arms. Bends forward to see if the bus is coming. A woman sits in between us and blocks Annabelle’s face. I listen to her feet shuffling, her hands rubbing together to fight off the cold.
I think of Alyce and her shaking hand, of making her cry in class and not caring. And then I go over all the things that Annabelle has said about me. And how they cut. Deep. Jagged.
I squash myself further into the corner of the shelter. There’s only a seat length’s difference between Annabelle Orion and me. And I hate that.