Ghostgirl

  “Have you seen my crown?” the dead prom queen asked, standing up on the red velvet high-back Gothic chair. “Oh, there it is… IN my head!” she screamed as she pressed it down into her head, squirting fake blood in every direction before being thrust into the darkness.

  Charlotte was the only one really paying attention. She wanted to enjoy every second of the evening. This was her night and she didn’t want to miss a thing. She looked over at the round tables scattered around the perimeter of the black-and-white marble dance floor. Each table had a tower of lush black magic roses stacked tight with ornate black candles throughout.

  Across the crowded room, she saw Damen. The heavens opened up and shined upon him, or at least that’s how it looked to her. There he sat, dapper and dashing, like a movie star, in a black-and-white tux, just like the one on her screen saver. He was talking to his friend Max and Max’s date, leaning over to them so elegantly, like a model in an ad ripped right out of British Vogue. She stood there, for quite some time, just taking him in.

  “Where is she?” Damen asked, rhetorically, out loud.

  “Don’t get uptight, she probably entered a Halloween contest on the way or something,” Max whispered as he stood up to leave with his date. “Well, we’re headed into the very dark haunted house,” he said with a wink.

  “Yeah, see ya,” Damen said, not really paying any attention. He searched the room for a while and suddenly caught Charlotte’s eye.

  Charlotte gasped when she realized that he was looking right at her—he could see her!—and instinctively swallowed, trying to moisten her throat, which had gotten dry and tight from nervousness. She gave a little wave to acknowledge that she saw him.

  Damen smiled and waved back.

  Max and his date were just about to enter the ride, but they stopped and looked in Charlotte’s direction too.

  The music swelled just like a scene out of an old black-and-white Hollywood movie. Charlotte could not believe what was happening.

  As she started to walk forward, she noticed that Damen’s eyes were not moving along with her. She turned around and saw Scarlet standing behind her. It was Scarlet that his eyes were fixed on.

  In fact, all eyes were on Scarlet as she entered, looking like a 1940s starlet, wearing the same dress that Charlotte had picked out of her closet when they met for the first time—a vintage chiffon, tea length, midnight blue dress dripping with Swarovski crystals. Her lips were painted in a classic orange-red matte lipstick and her black hair was swept up in a delicate twist.

  Damen’s jaw dropped to the floor as Scarlet came into full view, and so did Charlotte’s.

  Scarlet walked slowly toward Damen and took a seat next to him.

  “You look…,” Damen said, barely able to speak.

  “Normal?” she asked, finishing his sentence.

  “No way,” he said with a smile on his face.

  Charlotte watched them longingly. Her drab vintage dress blended perfectly with the flock wallpaper behind her, making her almost indistinguishable from the background. She looked and felt truly like a wallflower.

  “You know, that whole ‘across a crowded room’ thing isn’t so cliché when it’s happening to you,” Damen said, helping Scarlet into her chair. “So, do you wanna… dance?”

  “I don’t,” Scarlet replied, somewhat stunned and overwhelmed.

  “Oh, okay,” Damen responded, taking it as a rejection.

  “No!” Scarlet said. “I mean, I don’t really dance.”

  Damen and Scarlet decided to do something they both liked and made their way to the DJ booth. They crammed themselves into the tight space and chose records, laughing and spinning the whole time. They had a blast, picking lame music from the vinyl selection and mashing it with cool songs from Scarlet’s iPod. The place was rocking as mix after mix filled the dance floor.

  “You’ve got skillz!” Damen screamed, feeling every note of Scarlet’s set.

  After a while, the MC broke through the sound system with his announcement, greeting the sweaty crowd.

  “Welcome to Hawthorne High’s annual Fall Ball!

  “Magic is in the air, so don’t you miss…

  “… the Midnight Kiss!”

  Scarlet looked over at her table and saw Charlotte sitting in her seat, waiting patiently for Scarlet to get free.

  “I’ll be right back,” Scarlet said to Damen, interrupting their tandem freestyle spinning session. Scarlet stepped down out of the booth and nodded to Charlotte to follow her.

  “Hurry back, or you’ll miss my Slim Whitman and The Horrors mash up!” he yelled after her.

  “Hmmmm, let’s see, wet myself or stick around for Slim?” Scarlet joked, holding her hands out, face up, pretending to weigh each option. “I think I’ll pee.”

  Damen cracked a smile while Scarlet led Charlotte behind one of the creepy dead trees.

  “Thank you for doing this,” Charlotte said.” I can’t believe I’m going to get my… dance.”

  “Yeah, your… dance,” Scarlet said, putting her hands up to Charlotte to start the process.

  Charlotte thought she detected a note of sadness in Scarlet’s voice, but Scarlet covered it up with a smile. The possession was completed smoothly and quickly.

  “You are really getting good at this,” Scarlet complimented, realizing that she had missed the intense feeling of freedom that came with letting go of her body.

  “Better late than never,” Charlotte answered shyly.

  They each smiled and rushed off, Charlotte in control of Scarlet’s beautifully dressed body to find Damen, and Scarlet to check out the haunted house.

  23

  The Ghost of You

  When you think the night has seen your mind, That inside you’re twisted and unkind, Let me stand to show that you are blind. Please put down your hands cause I see you. Ill be your mirror.

  —Lou Reed

  I love you, but I’m not in love with you.

  This is a false distinction. Completely backward if you think about it. Love is love. What’s really meant by being “in love,” is obsession, addiction, infatuation, but not actual love. Being “in love” is a statement of your own needs and desires rather than an attempt to fulfi ll another’s. True love, on the other hand, is a bridge between two people. It had taken Charlotte most of her life, and all of her afterlife, to come to this realization.

  Charlotte was swooning as she made her way across the crowded dance floor and over to Damen in the DJ booth. The exhilarating rush of actually being there, being present in the most memorable moment of her entire life—and now, death—was almost overwhelming. This was everything she lived for and the one and only thing that she died for, and it was all happening right there before her eyes.

  “Wanna dance?” Charlotte asked, tapping Damen on the shoulder.

  At first Damen laughed, thinking that she was joking, but quickly realized that she wasn’t.

  “I just cannot figure you out,” Damen said, putting on a slow song, turning over control of the turntables to a buddy, and leading her by her delicate hand to the dance floor.

  “I think we did a pretty good job with the music,” he said, pulling her close to him.

  Charlotte changed the subject. The music may have been about Scarlet, but the dance was about her.

  “Yeah, but dancing to music is better than just listening to it, don’t you think?” she asked.

  Damen was confused once again by her schizophrenic behavior, but charmed as well. She put her head on his shoulder and loved that everyone was watching them as they made their way around the dance floor.

  “I could die now….” Charlotte sighed.

  As they danced, they passed the Wendys, who were watching like hawks from the perimeter of the dance floor. Both girls instantly sent Petula text messages and phone pictures, as much to inform her as to irritate her in that passive-aggressive way that was their specialty. Petula was waiting by her computer, and as she opened each successive message and jpeg, he
r rage bordered on psychopathic.

  “It’s on!” Petula texted back to both Wendys simultaneously.

  Hoping to avoid seeing Charlotte kiss Damen, Scarlet hopped on an empty car and began a ride through the haunted house. She stopped in front of a bunch of kids who were reenacting a scene from her favorite movie, Delicatessen. There was a girl who oddly resembled Scarlet, pretending to be chopping up popular kids into pâté and feeding them to their unsuspecting parents.

  “He remembered…,” Scarlet said, touched that Damen went to such lengths to pull this off but also sad that he wasn’t there to share it with her.

  Suddenly, Scarlet noticed that the breath coming out of the Living kids’ noses and mouths was visible, as if it were the dead of winter. The haunted house got eerily silent and deathly cold. Scarlet got a sick feeling as she noticed a peculiar silhouette farther down the track.

  “You know, we never got to have our kiss in the pool…,” Charlotte said, watching the clock as it neared midnight.

  “Yes, we did, don’t you remember?” Damen replied.

  “Right… but… we didn’t get to have our other kiss,” Charlotte said.

  “We’ve got plenty of time for anything we want,” Damen said. “We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.”

  “Right, our whole lives,” Charlotte said, sinking her head deeper into his shoulder.

  “Come here, Green Eyes,” he said, lifting her chin to face him.

  “Green?” Charlotte asked.

  Just then, Charlotte saw their reflection in a ceiling-high, hand-carved Gothic framed mirror. It was Scarlet, and not she, that Damen saw and was about to kiss.

  “This isn’t right,” she said as she pulled away.

  “What do you mean?” Damen asked.

  Before she could answer him, screams for help could be heard coming from the haunted house, and they sounded real. She sensed her friend was in danger, and that could only mean one thing. Prue.

  Scarlet looked up and saw Prue zeroing in on her. Frozen with fear, she scrunched down and closed her eyes tight.

  “Scarlet,” Charlotte whispered, departing Scarlet’s body in a flash for the haunted house.

  Simultaneously, Scarlet returned to her body, jolting it awake, just as Damen was planting a kiss, the kiss, on her. Damen liked the jolt, thinking that it was the electricity between them, and pulled her closer to him. Confused and completely disoriented, Scarlet kissed him back. For just a second, every care, every threat, every worry she’d ever had faded away. As their lips separated, Scarlet put her head on his shoulder.

  “Was that alright?” Damen asked gently, but Scarlet did not reply.

  She shook off the cobwebs and realized that she had just gotten the kiss that Charlotte gave up. And that Charlotte had taken her place in the haunted house.

  “Charlotte,” she said as she ran for the ride.

  “Who?” Damen asked, totally confused, and chased after her.

  Charlotte was caught in the middle of a nightmare as Prue began bringing the house down—literally. The dolly track and scare stations were upended, and the flimsy pressed-board walls were buckling under Prue’s will. She held Pam and the other Dead kids at bay, leaving Charlotte to face her alone.

  “Catfight,” Jerry shouted gleefully.

  “Let’s Get Ready to Rummmmbbbblllllle,” Metal Mike yelled like a boxing announcer as Pam, Kim, and CoCo shot them nasty looks, indicating they’d better shut up. Charlotte too was frightened for them as she sensed the mood was about to turn even blacker.

  “You think this is funny?” Prue scolded.

  “No, sir!” Mike and Jerry gulped.

  “Well, let’s see what they think,” Prue said, pointing to the Living kids who were confused by the invisible forces wreaking havoc all around them.

  “This is what you really want, isn’t it?” Prue said, staring at Charlotte, as she whisked herself through every one of the Dead kids, jerking each of them to and fro like a deranged puppeteer. One by one, the Dead kids became visible in all their ‘gory’: bloodied, bruised, mutilated, and decaying. They saw their reflections in the fun house mirrors, and for the first time, the ugliness and finality of their own deaths were revealed to them.

  “Prue, NO!” Charlotte wailed an unworldly cry and fell to her knees, sobbing in anguish at her friends’ distress.

  At first, the Living kids, disoriented and dazed, thought it was some kind of special effect created to scare them, but as the Dead kids began to cry and moan in shame and humiliation, they realized this was no visual trick. They were revolted and shaking with fear.

  “Don’t do this to them!” Charlotte pleaded.

  “Me? You’re ‘THE ONE’ who did this to them! This is the way they will always be remembered, thanks to you!” Prue yelled.

  “Why are you doing this?” Charlotte screamed. “What did I ever do to you?”

  “You could have helped us save the house, save our souls… but you, you only thought of yourself,” Prue shrieked. “And now it’s all over.”

  “Prue. Please, don’t!” Charlotte begged, trying to buy time for all the Living kids to get out safely. But Prue wouldn’t listen. She was hell-bent on causing as much mayhem and destruction as possible.

  “This dance is beyond saving now,” Prue said. “And thanks to you, so are we.”

  The dance floor erupted into pandemonium as the kids emerged from the haunted house, running from the awful sights they had seen.

  “Panic at the Disco!” a guy yelled on the dance floor.

  Scarlet navigated her way through the crowd, bolting toward the haunted house and arriving just as the confrontation between Charlotte and Prue intensified. Damen was still a few paces behind, held up by a crush of kids warning him to run the other way. He momentarily lost sight of Scarlet in the throng.

  Scarlet knew that Charlotte had switched places with her to save her, and now she wanted to return the favor. The big problem was how. Charlotte had closed the door between them, not because she was angry but because she was trying to protect her.

  “Charlotte!” Scarlet screamed as she entered the ride, unwittingly attracting the attention of both combatants.

  “Scarlet!” Charlotte cried, as much to warn as to acknowledge her friend. Prue sped toward the entranceway with Charlotte close behind.

  When Scarlet looked up she saw neither Charlotte nor Prue, but the Dead kids she’d seen when she first went to Hawthorne Manor, ravaged and dangling in midair, their heart-wrenching sobs as disconcerting as an ambulance siren.

  Frightened but unable to look away, Scarlet came to a new realization. Dressing up in black nail polish, brothel creepers, and gloomy vintage outfits, listening to obscure indie bands and reading Romantic poetry, that was what she loved. It was her way of defining herself and also a way of making a statement that she wasn’t just another preppy Fembot waiting for a party invitation or for some hot guy to validate her. To them, however, this was not a way to express their individuality, to make a statement about not wanting to fit in—this was their reality.

  “Care to join them?” Prue asked, motioning to the Dead kids and training her gaze on the scaffolding under the lighting rigs. Little by little, the rigging began to give way.

  Damen rushed toward Scarlet as he entered the haunted house, and Charlotte arrived just in time to watch helplessly as her friends’ Fate now seemed totally sealed.

  “Damen, watch out!” Scarlet yelled, pointing upward.

  But it was too late. The scaffolding crashed down before he could react, and he was knocked out cold. The metal, wood, and glass debris pinned Scarlet to the floor right next to him. She could not move her legs, while above her, another set of fixtures and support poles was about to drop.

  “I think I know why she’s doing this!” Scarlet yelled to Charlotte, hoping to give her ammunition for her showdown. “I read about her death online,” Scarlet went on breathlessly. “She was killed in a car accident. He was a rich kid. A track star. Trouble. Ever
ybody warned her to stay away from him, but she didn’t listen.”

  Charlotte’s mind was reeling as she listened to Scarlet.

  “They were on the way to the dance,” Scarlet continued. “This dance. And things must have gotten out of control. He left her by the side of the road. She was hit and died in a ditch.”

  “Prue! He’s not like the others! He’s different!” Charlotte yelled, now understanding what was at stake.

  Prue, meanwhile, was in no mood for such dollar-store psychoanalysis.

  “You just don’t get it. It’s not about him at all, it’s about the fact that you’ve doomed all of us just so that you could have him!” Prue said as she stared Charlotte down. “You’ve made a mockery of our home,” she went on, “of our hopes of moving on.”

  “I didn’t kiss him!” Charlotte blurted out. “You were right. I wasn’t ‘The One.’ ”

  Prue was visibly stunned by Charlotte’s confession. “Why should I believe you?” she asked, but the truth was, she did believe Charlotte.

  The change of expression on her face, from bitterness to relief, was palpable.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked her nemesis.

  “I-I think maybe I was wrong,” Prue said with surprise.

  “You were?” Charlotte asked, her voice rising.

  “I thought the only way to save the house, to save us all, was to stop you from getting to the dance,” she explained.

  “Right. No dance, no kiss,” Scarlet mumbled to herself.

  “But I guess I really didn’t need to stop you after all,” Prue concluded.

  “You didn’t?” Charlotte asked, her voice rising even higher.

  “It wasn’t me who stopped the kiss. You did that on your own,” Prue said, acknowledging Charlotte’s selfless act. “You realized who you are,” Prue continued, “and where you belong.”

  “When the time came,” Charlotte pondered out loud, “it just felt like the wrong thing to do.” Her shoulders relaxed.