Ghostgirl

“As long as you want it to,” Charlotte reassured her.

  “Here’s to good chemistry then,” Scarlet joked nervously as Charlotte crammed the possession incantation in her book.

  “My book says we only have to do this ritual at the beginning of each session.” Charlotte instructed. “After that, we’ll be able to switch at will.”

  Scarlet was willing, but anxious.

  “Don’t worry,” Charlotte said. “I set it all up. I signed you, well me, up to be Damen’s ‘Physics Friend.’ He’s going to meet me on the football field for his tutoring session,” Charlotte continued with all the precision of a covert FBI operative.

  “I hope this works because…” Scarlet let the preposition hang in the air, not wanting to add any of the predicates describing what might be. “… I don’t know a thing about Physics.”

  “Once I’m inside you, you will,” Charlotte said reassuringly. “Trust me.”

  But the floodgates of Scarlet’s imagination opened anyway. She didn’t want to even entertain the thought that she might get stuck on another plane and be lost forever. Maybe she would end up in a narcoleptic state where she knew what was happening but couldn’t communicate. A kind of hell where no one could hear her and she couldn’t quite die or couldn’t quite live. Maybe she’d get trapped for eternity. That could be a very long time.

  “I still don’t get why you care if he passes or not,” Scarlet asked, as much to delay the moment as satisfy her curiosity.

  “It’s my unresolved issue to help Damen. That’s what was about to happen when I died,” Charlotte said sincerely, knowing that Scarlet had a built-in bullshit detector and taking every precaution not to sound any alarms.

  “Tutoring a guy in Physics is your big unfinished business?” Scarlet asked, sensing something was up.

  “Look, you’re Petula’s sister… so you being able to see me makes sense,” Charlotte said as she set up her Deadiquette book on the lab table so that she could read and face Scarlet at the same time. “You are my only path to resolution.”

  “I’m glad you think so… my body is headed to the football field to tutor a popular guy,” Scarlet said sarcastically.

  “No one will even see you,” Charlotte said. She took Scarlet’s shoulders and began to position them in line with her own. “Our hearts have to be in perfect alignment,” she said, reading out of her book and manipulating Scarlet as delicately as she could.

  “I don’t want to hear any details,” Scarlet said, wincing at the thought of her blood-filled beating heart being messed with.

  “Hey, your first time is always the most memorable, right?” Charlotte said, trying to divert attention from what was happening.

  “Yeah, ’cause it’s always the most awkward and horrible,” Scarlet replied.

  “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, and we can stop at any time,” Charlotte said, trying to put Scarlet at ease so she didn’t feel trapped and out of control.

  “That’s what they all say,” Scarlet joked nervously, signaling for Charlotte to begin the ritual.

  “Hey, you can’t get any more punk than possession,” Charlotte said, trying to ease her fears. “Ready?”

  “Go for it,” Scarlet said.

  Charlotte began reading the incantation aloud from her Deadiquette book, silhouetted against the colored beakers.

  “ ‘You and me, our soul makes three….’ ”

  Scarlet took in a deep breath and looked into Charlotte’s eyes as they clasped hands tightly, drawing strength and courage from each other.

  “ ‘Me and you, our soul makes two…,” Charlotte said as her delicate pale hands started to meld into Scarlet’s as if they were hot candle wax. They were both startled at what was physically transpiring in front of them. Their bodies continued to merge in a kind of otherworldly osmosis, from their feet to their torsos.

  “ ‘We are me…,” Charlotte said, pushing her heart into Scarlet’s as she faded into her body.

  Glimpses of Charlotte inside Scarlet’s body could be seen periodically through Scarlet’s eyes like a series of misfired synapses.

  “ ‘… inside of YOU,’ ” Charlotte said as her mousy brown eyes rolled back and sank deep down into Scarlet.

  Scarlet’s eyes were now absent. Two dark voids replaced the pretty hazel hue in each of her sockets.

  With a final blink, Scarlet’s translucent soul departed from her own body, leaving it entirely to Charlotte. Scarlet’s eyes reappeared, but with a much different gleam in them. Her body language now reflected Charlotte’s personality, not her own.

  Realizing the possession was a success, Charlotte took a deep breath and felt her new body. Scarlet floated up to the ceiling, where she paused momentarily and looked down to see Charlotte running her hands all over her body.

  “Hey, quit feeling me up!” Scarlet yelled as her spectral form began to pass easily through the white ceiling tiles.

  “Sorry…,” Charlotte said distractedly, just as Scarlet passed completely through the ceiling and out of earshot.

  “I just feel so… alive.”

  12

  Busy Bodies

  Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle—Why not I with thine?

  —Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Inside out.

  Being inside of someone else’s body could be equated to getting your stomach stapled to treat obesity. You lose a whole bunch of weight, but there’s still that insecure little fat girl inside. The same nut, just inside a different shell. Charlotte was still a geek. Still unsure of herself. Still wanted to get noticed, but in Scarlet’s body, that didn’t quite compute.

  Charlotte opened the Chem Lab door and gingerly stepped out into the hallway, She was thrilled to be “alive” again, and it showed. Scarlet’s typical glower was softened now into a hopeful grin closer to Charlotte’s, with students doing a double-take as she helloed her way down the hall, greeting total strangers with unexpected warmth. It was not just her personality that had morphed, but Scarlet’s body also began to look and move differently in Charlotte’s control. Her posture became more upright, her gait became less plodding, and her demeanor—heaven forbid—even became more feminine.

  Charlotte was pleasantly surprised that she was having a much easier time inhabiting Scarlet than she had Petula. She recalled Brain’s lecture and the importance of willingness in this whole possession process, and silently thanked him.

  “He knows everything,” she thought, running Scarlet’s fingers along the painted cinder-block walls.

  She felt each crevice and chip in the wall like a blind woman reading Braille, drinking in the sensation she had been deprived of for what felt like forever.

  Despite the new lease on “life” Scarlet had so generously provided, Charlotte was not entirely confident in her plan yet. Possessing Scarlet was, after all, Plan B. Hers was not the body, the hair, the clothes, the look Charlotte had hoped for and certainly not one that many guys, let alone the most popular guy in school, found, to put it kindly, welcoming. Besides, this takeover was a temporary thing and—moral issues aside—it was surely going to take a lot of time and effort to get a guy to leave his super-hot girlfriend for her Goth younger sister.

  Still, Damen had come to Scarlet’s rescue in the shower, she recalled. At least that was something to build on. Charlotte’s attitude came full circle and she started feeling some gratitude. Who was she, after all, to be critical of Scarlet’s appeal in any way? Oh yeah, she was the stupid geeky girl who choked to death on a candy, according to Petula.

  Charlotte continued down the hall, being quite the social butterfly, leaving blank, confused faces in her wake as she headed out the back doors and toward the football field.

  Scarlet, meanwhile, was enjoying herself too. Having floated up through the ceiling and into the crawl space above with surprising ease, she drifted along aimlessly for a minute until she heard the booming, uptight voice of her arrogant literature teacher in
the classroom just below. Mr. Nemchik seemed more interested in humiliating students than teaching them, and self-importantly wrote out each topic on the board as if he were delivering the Ten Commandments. She could not resist the opportunity to screw with him, just a little.

  “Today,” Mr. Nemchik began, “we will be comparing C-h-a-r-l-e-s D-i-c-k-e-n-s and H-o-m-e-r.” He was careful not to speak more quickly than he wrote, which was incredibly irritating.

  When he turned from the board to begin discussion with the class, Scarlet changed a few letters in their names so that they now read “Charles Dickhead” and “Homo.” The class burst into laughter, and Nemchik stood there totally humiliated and quite baffled.

  Next, Scarlet passed through a wall into Health class next door, where two knucklehead football players, Bruce and Justin, were mocking Minnie, a shy, defenseless girl sitting next to them. Scarlet feverishly scribbled on a piece of paper and stuck it into Bruce’s hand, in plain view of the teacher.

  The teacher snatched it out of Bruce’s sausage fingers and proceeded to read it to the whole class.

  “Justin, I love sticking my…” Ms. Bilitski paused, not wanting to carry on.

  “This classroom’s policy has always been, ‘if you pass a note and get caught, it gets read aloud to the whole class,’ ” Minnie confidently reminded her, knowing that the note was incriminating.

  Unable to argue Minnie’s point, Ms. Bilitski continued. “… I love sticking my hands between your thick, hot, sweaty legs when you hike the football to me. I will savor your smell on my hands until we are able to be together again. See you after practice tonight. Love, your ball-boy, Justin.”

  “No way!” Bruce cried in disgust as Justin leaned as far away from his buddy as anatomically possible.

  “Maybe you boys might want to explore ‘Repressed Homosexual Urges in High School Athletes’ as your essay topic?” the teacher asked as their stunned classmates spun around and stared accusingly at the red-faced jocks, who slowly shrank beneath their desks.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Minnie’s quiet voice echoed in the uncomfortable silence, highlighting the boys’ much-deserved humiliation. Scarlet laughed with satisfaction, reached for an unreciprocated high five with Minnie, and moved along.

  She then headed to the bathroom, the next stop on her vengeful path. There on the counter she noticed a latte, which obviously belonged to the girl who occupied one of the stalls. Scarlet looked underneath the stall and noticed that the girl was actually a snob who always picked her last in gym class.

  Scarlet calmly made her way over to the open stall next to her and picked up a pubic hair off of the toilet seat. She walked back over to the girl’s coffee and dropped it in.

  It was a perfect fall day for football practice—cool and brisk. The late afternoon sun prepared to set as the coach’s whistles rode the crisp breeze that blew past the players’ ears and scattered crimson leaves across the field. There were groups of kids at all ends of the complex, running drills, stretching, a few hard cases even running laps around the track instead of taking detention.

  Charlotte walked along the edge of the track and found a quiet spot under a secluded bleacher, where she spread out the tartan plaid blanket she’d tucked into “Scarlet’s” backpack and waited for Damen to show. She obsessed over the best way to position it, like a sun worshiper looking for the best angle to catch optimal rays, which was ironic, because Scarlet’s porcelain skin looked like it hadn’t seen the sun in years.

  In the end she decided just to let the blanket fall where it might, which turned out to be the right decision. It alighted on a sea of bright wildflowers that grew unattended in the shade, creating a perfect little island of wool and blooms, patiently waiting for a couple to strand themselves. Charlotte sat down slowly on her knees just as Damen stepped down the bleachers above her.

  She reached up through the gap and grabbed his leg.

  “What the…?” Damen yelled, jerking his leg away in surprise.

  He looked down, saw that it was Scarlet’s hand gripping his ankle, and relaxed.

  “You scared me half to death,” Damen said as he jumped down onto the ground and crouched under the bleachers.

  “Hey, I hadn’t thought of that,” Charlotte said, almost to herself.

  “What?” Damen replied, obliviously.

  “Oh, I mean, then you, ah, wouldn’t have to take the Physics test,” Charlotte said, thinking fast. “Just a little ‘inside’ joke,” she finished, desperate to change the subject. “Anyway, sorry about the leg thing. I wasn’t sure if you’d see me,” she added, trying to start over.

  “I see you,” Damen said, unsure how anyone could miss Scarlet; she stood out so blatantly.

  “So let’s begin,” Charlotte instructed, getting all professional. “I’ll be your ‘Physics Friend.’ ”

  “Um, this is another joke, right?” Damen said. “I mean, we know each other. Kind of, anyway.”

  “Oh right, of course,” Charlotte responded. “Petula, the shower, etcetera.”

  “Yeah…,” Damen said, thinking that she was indeed admitting that this was all a joke.

  “Yeah, I mean, no, I needed the extra credit, and you were the first name on the list. I signed up before I even read your name, and then I noticed I signed in ink, so…,” Charlotte said, realizing she was babbling.

  “Why don’t we start over and try this a little more informally, okay?” Damen asked politely. He grabbed her upper arms and applied the tiniest amount of pressure to them, guiding her down to the blanket. It was a gentle but firm motion that had Charlotte totally gobsmacked. Damen slumped down after her.

  “Nice blanket. I thought you’d bring a black towel,” Damen said, attempting a joke of his own.

  Charlotte, confused about what he was referring to at first, finally caught on. “Oh… the black towel from the bathroom…,” she said, laughing just a bit too loudly.

  Damen laughed at his towel joke for a second, made himself comfortable, and opened his book. He looked over to see that Charlotte’s book was covered with a brown bag and a gravity is a downer bumper sticker.

  “Let’s begin,” she said, pointing to the sticker.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, looking at it really hard.

  The whooshing sound that followed might have been the wind, but Charlotte would have sworn it was the sound of irony flying right over Damen’s head.

  “You must think I’m the most uncool moron,” he said, showing surprising self-awareness that, although he might have been worshipped by most at Hawthorne, there was a small percentage of kids, very small he liked to think, like Scarlet, who would mock him mercilessly behind his back. The fact that this tutoring session took place under such covert circumstances proved that Damen felt he had at least a little something to hide.

  “Not at all,” Charlotte said sympathetically.

  “It’s kind of weird being tutored by my girlfriend’s little sister,” he said sneaking peeks through the bleachers at Petula in her cheerleading outfit, who was stretching in preparation for tryouts on the field.

  “So would it be cool if we just kept this, you know, between us?”

  “Anything we do will be kept strictly confidential…,” she said, leaving a door open for, well, for her wildest dreams to come true. “Anything,” she repeated.

  The niceties complete, Charlotte and Damen got down to business. Charlotte might have been in awe of Damen, but she was no-nonsense as she began the tutoring session. The Fall Ball was on the line, and she was determined to keep her eyes on the prize, refusing to be sidetracked even by her own passions.

  Damen was struggling, and within a short period, his eyes began to glaze over and wander. Sensing that he needed a break, Charlotte looked up to see what was distracting him. Of course, it was the cheerleading tryouts happening downfield.

  “You know, I was thinking of trying out,” Charlotte blurted, trying to reclaim Damen’s attention.

  “Yeah right.
You wouldn’t be caught dead trying out for cheerleader,” he replied, totally dismissing her comment.

  Without warning, Charlotte slammed her book shut and headed to the football field. Damen was dumbfounded at first, but then started to laugh, thinking that Scarlet was just playing or that she was going to pull off some kind of prank.

  The Wendys were running cheerleading tryouts like prison guards, checking names on the list against school IDs and looking candidates over for any bleached hair out of place. They were primping and prepping everyone in line so that they’d be perfectly presentable for when Petula analyzed them.

  Watching from the bleachers, Damen eyed the line of newbies, placing bets with himself on which girls he thought would make the cut, when he saw Charlotte-as-Scarlet take a place at the end of the line. She did not look like a good bet. Positioned next to the future Miss Teen USAs, she looked more Goth and out of place than ever.

  Charlotte ripped material from Scarlet’s skirt to make pom-poms, shredding it with a single-edge razor that Scarlet always kept in her pocket. It was definitely innovative but hardly guaranteed to win friends or influence the Wendys. The rest of the girls in line were indistinguishable, wearing the school-mandated candidate apparel of plain white tops and skirts—a parade of perfectly coiffed heads and perfectly fit bodies.

  The Wendys saw Charlotte as they approached the end of the line. They cringed at her custom-made outfit and pom-poms, but rather than reject her immediately, they decided to have a little fun with her first, seeing a perfect opportunity to humiliate her once and for all.

  “Look at that,” Wendy Thomas giggled. “Satan has spirit.”

  Both girls broke their clinch and turned to the potential candidates.

  “Anyone here ridin’ the cotton pony?” Wendy Anderson asked, seeing if it was anyone’s “time of the month.”

  “No!” the girls yelled back in unison as they giggled.

  “No? Aw, sorry Gothlet, no blood here,” Wendy Thomas said with fake disappointment.

  “I’m here to try out,” Charlotte said firmly.