TOGAS

Speaking for the dead was not my choice. I was a normal kid who only wanted what normal kids want, like a new phone, being left alone, a pool, being left alone, a butler. Was a butler too much to ask for? Shall you have your ice cream now or after your swim, Ms. Webster? No, a butler was not too much to ask for.

Did I have the butler? I didn’t even have the pool.

Instead, about three months ago this headless ghost started calling my name in the middle of the night. It all went back to my bizarre family history, which till then I hadn’t known anything about. That might seem careless of me, like I had misplaced old family stories along with my house key, but do you know who your great-great-great-granduncle was and what promises he wrestled out of the Lord Demon of the Underworld? Neither did I!

Yet somehow it all resulted in the family law firm—Webster & Spawn: Attorneys for the Damned. I’m the spawn. And because of that little detail, the dead keep asking for my help. And here’s the frightening thing: if you’re going to speak for the dead, you have to first speak to the dead.

I’m not complaining, mind you. There are cool things about talking to ghosts you might never imagine. For one, there is no small talk with the dead. No How was school today, Elizabeth? No Are you really going to wear that outfit? And even better, they don’t have that annoying urge to tell you what your problem is.

No dead person ever said to me, like my mother, “Enough of this messing with ghosts, Elizabeth. It’s time for you to choose to get serious about school.”

And no dead person ever told me, like my father at the office, “Show some patience, Lizzie Face. You’re always in too much of a rush.”

And no dead person ever pointed out to me, like my stepfather, Stephen, at dinner, that I should stop being so moody. “Come on, Elizabeth. Turn that frown upside down.” This last bit was so him it always made me want to scream. I’d try to stifle it, at least until my little brother, Peter, put his fingers in his mouth and yanked the edges of it up, turning himself into the Joker to hammer home the point. Then screaming would usually commence.

Truth is, if my parents had given me something to smile about, I would have smiled plenty. If they had given me the pool or the butler—or even better, if they had just left me alone—I would have been like JoJo the clown-faced girl. But they gave me none of those things. All they did was tell me all the ways I wasn’t making the right choices. And it’s not like I didn’t know they wouldn’t like my outfits, or my pink hair, or the way I chewed my pencils. There was a mirror in my room, after all. They might not have forked over the butler, but they didn’t stint on the mirrors.

When you think about it that way, talking to the dead was in many ways better than talking to my parents.

And then, sometimes, talking to the dead could turn into something fun. Like the February night we were all dancing in Young-Mee’s basement while we waited for some Irish ghosts that were haunting her house to appear and tell us what they were complaining about.

Banshees? You bet!

I thought it would just be another chat with the dead, but it turned out to be the first step of a perilous journey that would take me from the story of that late-night carriage ride straight to the edge of the Portal of Doom. Just by the sound of it you know it’s not a vacation destination. There are no character breakfasts at the Portal of Doom. And that trip, dangerous as it was, started with a toga party because, well, of course it did.

“Should Charlie turn the music down?” said Natalie Delgado, wrapped in a pretty blue sheet with red flowers because white sheets were just so ordinary. “We want to be able to hear the ghosts when they come.”

“Oh, you’ll hear them,” said Young-Mee. “And when you do, you’ll wish you didn’t.”

“Would you like it louder, Ms. Kwon?” said the DJ of our party, Master CF Vici, which was Charlie Frayden’s DJ name. Charlie had come in a fitted plastic sheet that made him look like a pale-faced chipmunk wrapped in wax paper and bound with rubber bands. To set the mood he was playing Halloween pop songs like “Rather Be a Zombie” and “Secret Vampires.”

“Any louder and it would wake the dead,” said Young-Mee.

“Isn’t that the point?” said Henry Harrison.

At the party there were six of us from good old Willing Middle School West, a crew sworn to secrecy about the whole I-talk-to-the-dead thing. There was Young-Mee, of course, since it was her basement and her ghosts. Then there was Natalie, my best friend since kindergarten, along with Charlie and Doug Frayden, two sixth graders who were my teammates in Debate Club. Henry Harrison, the eighth-grade swimming star and king of our middle school hallways, was also there, still recovering from being visited by his own personal ghost. And then there was me, moi, the teller of this tale.

“Will our ghosts want some snacks?” said Natalie.

“Snacks?” said Doug Frayden, Charlie’s twin, who had become our resident ghost and ghoul expert after being given my grandfather’s copy of White’s Legal Hornbook of Demons and Ghosts.

“It could be all they want is a snack,” said Natalie. “I brought some caramel popcorn.”

“I don’t think banshees eat popcorn,” said Doug.

“Just souls,” said Master CF Vici.

Young-Mee’s parents, gone for the evening, had been only too happy to let their daughter host the crew for a Shakespeare-themed educational event in their basement. That’s why we were pretending to throw a Julius Caesar party taking place on the fifteenth of the month, the date that Julius was poked to death and the only night each month the ghosts appeared. The fruit punch was dark as wine, the music was punk, and a square was marked by tape in the center of the floor. Within that square we danced like a pack of Roman fools while we waited for the ghosts to come so I could ask them what they wanted.

It seemed a simple enough plan.

“Maybe they won’t come at all,” said Henry in the quiet between songs. “Maybe we scared them off just by being here.”

“Nothing scares them off,” said Young-Mee. “Not the dog, not my parents being upstairs, and certainly not the Fraydens.”

“The Fraydens would scare me off if I was a ghost,” said Natalie. “No offense, guys.”

“None taken, Natalie,” said Doug. “I think.”

“But if these ghosts are Irish banshees, like Doug says,” said Young-Mee, “why are they haunting us?”

“Maybe they’re not haunting your family,” said Natalie. “Maybe they’re haunting the house. The place of some long-ago tragedy. A dead boy. A girl still in love from beyond the grave. How romantic would that be?”

“Pretty romantic, actually,” said Young-Mee.

“So, what’s the plan, Webster?” said Henry.

“You do have a plan, Elizabeth, don’t you?” said Charlie.

“Sort of,” I said, before turning to look at the corner of the room, where the seventh member of our party sat alone in one of a row of chairs. No toga there. “I’m kind of following his lead.”

“Barney doesn’t look very happy to be here,” said Natalie.

“His name is Barnabas,” I said. “And that’s the way he always looks. But I’ll go talk to him. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

I was wrong.