Ashes to Ashes

I’M ASLEEP MORE THAN I’M AWAKE NOW, IF YOU can even call it sleeping. It’s not restful, and I don’t have dreams. It’s just darkness.

When I’m awake and alert, I put everything I have into reading Aunt Bette’s books, hoping they’ll tell me something. Tonight I got about halfway through a book about how ghosts interact with the living world.

I don’t have enough energy to finish it. But I need to understand how I’ve been tricking myself. I use what little energy I can muster, and then I close my eyes and focus.

When I open my eyes, it’s morning. I’m no longer at home. I’m standing in front of Jar Island High School, in the fountain. It must still be winter, because the water is shut off.

A bell rings in the distance. I walk to one of the heavy steel doors. Once the school day starts, the janitors lock them so outsiders can’t get in. It’s a security measure. Through the window I watch a few last stragglers sprint down the hallway to their classrooms.

If I were a real girl, a living girl, I’d have to go to the main office and sign in at the front desk. But I’m not. I pass through the door like it’s nothing. Like it’s air. And I’m on the other side.

I’ve probably been doing that all along. Only I didn’t let myself notice. I think back on the days I spent here this school year, going to classes I thought I was enrolled in, doing homework I thought was assigned to me. Even dreaming of where I’d apply for college next year.

Except I’m not a student here. I never was.

The clock says 10:35. If this were a normal day, I’d be in Spanish class with Señor Tremont, so that’s where I go.

Señor Tremont’s door is wedged open, so I walk right in. He’s sitting on top of his desk. The fluorescent classroom lights are off, and he has a video going on the TV. It’s a Spanish soap opera called El Corazón Late Siempre. It means “The Heart Always Beats.” Señor Tremont normally has us watch an episode on Fridays.

Okay. It’s Friday. And it’s winter. But January? February?

I have no idea.

I glance out at the room, at the desk where I used to sit. It’s an empty desk in the back, one that was probably never assigned to anyone. I just sat there. I pretended it was mine. Just like I pretended I was alive.

That’s why whenever I raised my hand, Señor Tremont never once called on me.

That’s why I never got a report card sent home, or a test handed back, or my name up on the bulletin board.

No one could see me.

I feel so completely stupid.

A fiery anger begins to simmer inside me. I used to hate feeling angry. I used to fear it. Except now . . . it feels good. It feels like something.

I take a couple of steps so I’m standing in front of the television, blocking everyone’s view. But not everyone is watching the show. A few girls are whispering behind a notebook. Alex Lind has his forehead down on the desk, but I know he’s not asleep, because his left leg is bouncing up and down. Another kid is drawing black circles over and over again on the sole of his sneaker.

I open my mouth and scream. Scream as loud as I can.

And no one hears me.

Shaking, I press down on the channel buttons. I can actually feel them underneath my fingertips.

The channels start changing, and everyone in class snaps to attention.

“Ay, diosmío,” Señor Tremont says. He stands up and comes over to the television with the remote. I move my hand to the power button and click the television off and on. “This . . . I don’t understand.”

I’m laughing now; I can’t help it. Señor Tremont looks so confused, and the rest of the kids do too.

And then, with every last bit of strength I’ve got left, I push my body into the television cart and knock the entire thing over. The screen bursts into a million pieces on the floor. And the crazy thing is that doing it doesn’t make me feel tired. It’s the opposite. It has filled me back up with energy.

Just then the bell rings. I walk out into the hallway like everyone else.

“Mary?”

Her voice comes from far behind me, from the other end of the hallway.

Kat.

“Yo! Mary!”

I take off, keeping my back to her, and then step through the door of the janitor’s closet and wait to hear if she calls my name again.

She doesn’t.

Lillia and Kat have always been able to see me. They believed I was real, that I was seventeen. They were able to see the things I’d imagined too. But why?

A minute or two later I sneak back out of the classroom. I see Lillia and Kat talking at the end of the hallway. Lillia’s holding a folder, maroon and embossed with gold foil letters. Boston College. I wonder if she’s been accepted. Lillia will be gone in a few months. Kat, too. Then I won’t have to hide from them. That’s a relief. But it also breaks my heart.

When they leave, there won’t be anyone left who can see me.

Then I’ll truly be gone. Gone for good.