I awake on Halloween morning in the same old bed, in the same old dingy, dusty room in Uncle Lenny’s falling-apart farmhouse in Oak Leaf, Wisconsin. I still miss my home in the suburbs of Chicago, the comfort of being part of a bustling town and close to the city. But no longer am I depressed and desperate. No longer does the fact that I am missing out on Aaron Rydell’s Halloween party back home with all of my friends, including my best friend in the world Whitney, bother me.
Since last night, I am a changed person. A new and improved Harper Johnston. I struggle out of bed, regretting leaving the warmth of the ancient mattress, however lumpy it may be. I feel so different, so light and airy, new and improved, that I have trouble believing that the reflection I see in the mirror this morning will really be me.
I walk over to the old oak dresser in the corner (I cannot wait to set up my own furniture from home in this place) and survey my face in the tilting mirror. The tilting-mirror aspect is the only cool thing about the dresser. The rest of it is nicked and scraped and banged-up, as though it’s been through a couple of wars. My grandparents bought this farm house decades ago; it’s where Mom and Uncle Lenny grew up, and I guess money was always tight, because Grammy sure didn’t bend over backwards when it came to furnishings and décor.
The mirror glass itself is slightly wavy with age, but it gives a clear enough picture of me, my long tangle of chestnut curls, my pale face still rosy in the cheeks from sleep, my bleary blue eyes. I’m wearing a hoodie over the flannel p.j.’s I dug out of one of my suitcases the other day. It’s always freezing in the farmhouse, and Uncle Lenny still hasn’t gotten around to caulking the cracks in the window sills.
But what really hits me right now is that I still look exactly the same as I looked yesterday morning and probably every other morning of my life. Nothing in my face, my expression or demeanor, betrays the fact that last night was the single most amazing incident to occur in my entire sixteen-and-a-half years on earth. This is such an ordinary morning, the beginning to such an ordinary day, that I want to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
I quickly wash up and get dressed, put on a little makeup, and tug on two pairs of socks for extra warmth, all the while wondering whether Danny Benson really could have been a product of my imagination. That explanation is almost more feasible than what I know deep down to be the truth—that last night, out in the quiet of the woods and the dark, surrounded by the soft glow of tall white candles and plump orange jack-o-lanterns, I fell in love with the ghost of a boy who was born in 1955, died in 1972, and has dwelled in limbo ever since, taking up residence in the woods of Oak Leaf.
Danny told me that I, Harper Johnston, was the first person he’d ever willingly revealed himself to since the car accident that killed him that rainy, slick night four decades ago as he drove home drunk and crashed his car through a guard rail, skidding down a steep embankment to his untimely death at the age of seventeen. He said he chose me because he could tell I was intelligent, perceptive, feeling. He also thinks I’m beautiful.
And now, whirling down the stairs toward the kitchen, permeated with the aroma of Uncle Lenny’s typical Saturday-morning breakfast of eggs and bacon and biscuits with butter and jelly, I feel alive and beautiful. I feel that moving to the rinky-dink Hick Town of Oak Leaf has all been worth it because I’ve met Danny. I can still feel his kiss on my lips, almost alarming in its magical passion, and the pressure of his fingers twined around mine—the mystical sparks of heat and cold that dart back and forth between our skin.
I can’t wait to see him again. Who needs costumes and best friends and living, breathing boys and Aaron Rydell’s wild Halloween party in a huge, un-chaperoned mansion when there’s the ghost of Danny Benson around? I wheel into the kitchen, all-smiles, sliding across the linoleum on my socks.
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