FOR SIXTH PERIOD, I had Trigonometry with Allie and Macie. They spent every minute of the group activity eagerly filling in our other classmates on how my phone had gone off, and how McDaniel had swooped down on me like a hawk. This was, of course, a gross exaggeration, but that didn't stop their dramatic reenactment. It made me wish Valerie was a poltergeist. They would stop laughing real quick when she flung a math book at their heads. And yes, we had definitely tried. More than once.
“Good afternoon, Warriors,” the secretary interrupted over the intercom.
“Progress reports on Friday,” Mr. Gilbert shouted over the noise of the class packing up. Excellent. Yet another reason for Mom to be disappointed.
The announcements were nothing exciting, but everyone was unusually quiet as the secretary read the daily reminder to move cars out of the main parking lot before band practice. When she finished, there was a series of crackles and bumps as she passed off the microphone.
“Hey guys, this is Taylor Brown, your junior class president,” a female voice said. “It's my pleasure to announce this year's Fall Court. As you know, juniors and seniors are nominated for the Fall Court. We had a lot of great folks nominated, but we had to narrow it down to seven.”
Now the uncharacteristic silence made sense. As Taylor read the nominees for Fall King, Allie grabbed her new best friend Hannah's hand and squeezed her eyes shut dramatically.
Gag me, I thought. Like there was any question Allie would be nominated. There was always at least one junior girl on the court, and while the junior girl never won, it was almost as good as winning to be the one nominated. That had been Allie’s fate since kindergarten just as it had been Valerie’s.
“And now for the Fall Queen nominees: Kristen Chang—” Allie shushed a couple of boys in the back of the room. “Madison Dailey, Vanessa James, Sierra Lewis, Katie Rivera, Aisha Townes, and—”
I glanced over to see Allie already grinning. Her eyes cut to me, and I could have sworn that her smile widened.
“Bridget Young,” Taylor finished.
Allie’s grin melted into a look of shock. Suddenly she realized everyone else was staring at her, and she forced the fakest smile I’d ever seen. “Congratulations, Bridget!” she chirped.
“Wait, what?” I asked, staring up at the speaker like the announcer was there to answer my questions. Surely they meant I needed to come pick something up. But judging by the murmurs and stares, I’d heard perfectly. The guys Allie had shushed were grinning, but everyone else looked surprised.
Join the club.
“All nominees need to report immediately to the front office for their information packets,” she finished. “Congratulations to all nominees!”
If it had been one of those mean girl movies, Allie would have shouted “Freak!” or something equally mean as I walked out with a chorus of hysterical laughter behind me. She'd definitely be gossiping about me, but she wasn't going to be that obvious.
“Congratulations, Bridget,” Mr. Gilbert said as he opened the door for me.
“Uh, thanks,” I said, shuffling out the door. My head was spinning as I walked down the math hall. This had to be a mistake. They had grabbed the wrong file, that was all. Allie and I had been next to each other on class rosters since we were in kindergarten.
“Congratulations,” Valerie said as I walked up the empty hallway. I looked over at her, and she was wearing the smile of a cat who had recently dined on the mouse du jour.
“You didn't,” I said.
“I so did,” she replied. “Let's just say the spreadsheet with the votes had a little malfunction.”
“Val, what the hell were you thinking? Everyone's going to know.”
“No they won't,” she replied. “You actually had a few votes.”
“Whoa, really?” I said, completely distracted. I was about as unpopular as you could get. I mean, people weren't calling me Idget Bridget and throwing milk cartons at me, but my Friend Request tab on Facebook didn’t get a lot of action.
“Yeah,” she replied. “A bunch of the boys in your history class think you're cute. They were drawing a picture of you—”
“Gross,” I interrupted. “There are things better left unknown.”
“This is a good thing, Bridget,” she said. “It's going to be fun.”
“Yeah, it's going to be really fun when Allie starts up with her shit again,” I said. “I can’t wait.”
“Screw her,” Val said. “She's a total bitch anyway.”
She really was. Right after Val died, I was in and out of the hospital for months. In the car accident, I’d gotten a pretty serious concussion on top of the destruction of my left knee. I used to get migraines so bad I couldn't have any lights on, so I had to stay home a lot. I missed most of the spring of my freshman year, but I went back for a while in January, so I had a chance at making up the work. Then I made the epic mistake of telling Mom I had seen Valerie.
She instantly withdrew me from school and homeschooled me for the rest of the year so I could go to weekly therapy sessions, both emotional and physical, and support groups for grieving teenagers. It wasn't like I got locked up in an institution, and even if I had, it wasn't any of Allie's freaking business. As my former BFF, she should have been the one to stave off nasty gossip and set the record straight.
Instead, Allie translated “homeschooling and therapy” to “she's lost her freaking mind.” If you could chart popularity on one of those stock market graphs, you'd find a huge spike that coincided with Allie becoming the number one source of gossip related to me and my family.
Mom told me to give her the benefit of the doubt back then, and I had tried. Maybe Allie really was so mind-numbingly stupid that she didn't know how people would react to her version of the story. Maybe she was born without the part of the brain that allowed her to behave like a human being.
But even if that was the case—and it wasn't—it hadn't been her story to tell. Since then, I hadn't had much to say to Allie. At least not after I punched her in the nose and gave her a black eye right before the Spring Fling freshman year. That might have had something to do with the rapid deterioration of our friendship and my ever-shrinking social circle, but I was no expert.
“So now I have to walk across that stupid football field and have everyone laugh at me,” I said. “Thanks for that, Val. I'm ecstatic.”
“They won't laugh,” she said.“If you quit hiding from everyone, you'd have a ton of friends. You're not as much of a freak as you think you are.”
I stopped in front of a water fountain and looked at her dead on. “First, I don’t hide.”
“You do so. You avoid everyone but Emily.”
Whatever. “Second, I'm walking down the hallway talking to my dead sister, who just rigged the Fall Court nominations in my favor. Freak doesn't begin to describe it.”
“Okay, that’s fair enough,” she said, raising her translucent hands in surrender. “But you'd be surprised.”
Detention was mind-numbingly boring, which I guessed was kind of the point. It was in Mrs. Purdue's classroom on the science hall. The apple-cinnamon air freshener couldn't quite cover that special science classroom blend of formaldehyde and rotten eggs from the gas lines. The room was full, and I was surprised that Emily wasn't here for once. I was always waiting on her to get out of detention, usually for dress code violations.
While I waited for the hour to be over, I thumbed through the info packet I'd picked up at the office. Printed in a cutesy font on orange paper, there was a whole list of rules about campaigning, guidelines for propriety on dresses, and fundraising information, including sample letters for local business. Part of the Fall Court was soliciting donations for the school. What a crap deal—I had to buy a fancy dress and raise money to give to the school? The fun factor just kept coming.
Valerie read the packet over my shoulder. My right arm prickled with goosebumps from her proximity, but I was mostly used to that. That was part of the reason I wore her old UGA hoodie all the time. “I went to all the local restaurants. Everyone goes to the big box stores, but the little guy is where it's at. Try Giavino's,” she said. “They'll give you at least a hundred bucks.”
“Ms. Young, put the papers away,” Mrs. Purdue snapped as she looked up from her grading. “This is not your personal study hall.”
I sighed and closed the packet, then leaned over to slide it into my backpack. As I did, a flash of bright pink caught my eye. Sticking out of a black messenger bag across the aisle, I saw the top halves of bold black letters printed on pink paper. The owner of the messenger bag was staring blankly out the window, so I grabbed the pink paper and slid it up a little. It said “HAVE YOU SEEN ME?” It was the same as the poster I’d seen the day before. My heart thumped as I tried to inch it up a little further.
The faded boat shoes next to the bag shuffled, and someone cleared their throat. Following a pair of artfully-ripped jeans up slowly, I saw the bag's owner bent over looking at me. He didn't look amused. I snatched my hand away like a hairy spider had run across it and sat up fast enough to make my head spin.
Flyer Boy looked vaguely familiar and more than vaguely attractive. He had thick dark hair and pretty lashes framing brown eyes. A plain gray t-shirt hugged sporty muscles, and he had a nice tan. A faded line around his elbows said he must have been a football player.
After checking him out, I became keenly aware of my appearance. Minimal was the nice word for my daily look, although Emily preferred lazy and plain. Those were the kindest of her descriptions. Ponytail, blue jeans and a plain colored t-shirt were my usual uniform, and the only time I wore anything except a coat of mascara was when Emily cornered me to try out some makeup thing she found online. I didn't usually care about my appearance, but I suddenly felt ugly next to Flyer Boy.
“That's Michael Fullmer,” Valerie said appreciatively. “Cute, right?” I nodded a little, and she smiled. “You should have seen him when he was a freshman. Chubby, glasses, bad skin. He had a crush on me back then. He's definitely dateable now.”
She continued to talk about the eligible bachelors of detention, but I wasn't really listening. I was still stuck on Michael, who was obviously Natalie Fullmer's brother. I wanted to ask about her, but I didn't want to overstep my bounds. I also didn't want to get into trouble for talking in detention, which would earn me the door prize of two more days of detention.
Detention passed at a snail's pace, but Mrs. Purdue finally dismissed us at 3:47, two torturous minutes late. The silence shattered in an explosive burst of conversation as everyone finally got a chance to talk. Michael grabbed his bag and shoved past a cluster of girls lingering by the door. One of them called “Congratulations, Michael!” after him, but he ignored her. Right—he’d been nominated for the Fall Court too.
“Follow him,” Val said. “Unless of course, you’d rather avoid him.”
“You’re on,” I retorted.
With my backpack bouncing, I dashed out of the room after him. I yanked the elastic out of my hair and ran my fingers through it quickly, hoping I didn't have that annoying ponytail crease around my head. Val grinned and called, “Saucy girl.”
“Shut up,” I hissed as I ran after him. “Hey, Michael?”
“Thanks,” he said without turning around. Instead of heading to the commons area and out the main doors, he hurried down to the exit halfway down the science hall, which led to the senior parking lot.
“Huh?” I caught up to him and grabbed his arm. He whirled and glared at me. I might have been intimidated, except I'd seen enough nasty, bloody ghosts that a cute guy trying to look mean didn't have much of an effect on me.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“I was going to ask you about Natalie.”
His face softened for a moment as he stared at me. Then his eyes went hard again, like a bank vault slamming shut. “What about her?”
“I saw your flyer yesterday,” I said. “She's missing, huh?”
“Congratulations, you can read,” he said.
“Look, you don't have to be so rude,” I said. His cuteness? Rapidly disappearing.
“Don't waste your time, okay? I know how the rest of this conversation goes,” he snapped. “She probably ran away just like this summer, because she's a total screw-up.”
“Whoa, defensive much?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.
“Get him,” Valerie said, raising her spectral hands like brandished claws. “Rowr.”
“What?” he snapped.
“I didn't say anything like that. I did—” I stopped myself, correcting myself for using the past tense. As far as we knew, she was still alive. “I don't know her at all. I was just curious when I saw the posters.”
“Oh,” he said, frowning suddenly. “Well.” He stared at me, his brow creasing, and I realized he didn't know what to say. It made me a little angry—on his behalf, this time—that he was surprised because someone wasn’t badmouthing his sister.
“If you want some help, I'm pretty good at research,” I said.
“It's not a school project.”
“No, but there's a lot of public records you can get into pretty easily. You never know what you might find,” I said.
I was always searching newspapers and public police records for information on my different ghost cases. I was also good at faking voices and sticking my nose where it didn't belong, which also came in handy for ghost research. I wasn't sure how much I could find on Natalie, but I could try.
“Really?” he asked, looking interested for the first time. “Why do you want to help me?”
I shrugged and glanced at Valerie. “I know what it's like to lose a sister.”