He stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m supposed to take you home.”
The girl glanced at me, and for a second her eyes widened. Then she smirked at her brother. “I can go back in if you want to wait a little longer.”
What was that supposed to mean? Keanu’s cheeks flushed, but he didn’t look away from her. And he didn’t look impressed. “Let’s go.”
She flashed that smirk at me before flouncing past. Her brother gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry you have to follow that.”
I laughed. “And here I was feeling bad for you.”
He smiled. “See you around, I guess.”
I nodded, and he was gone.
The door to the principal’s office opened again. “Miss Noble, please come in.”
Principal Grant was about six feet tall and imposing. I wouldn’t call her pretty, but she had an interesting face and curly dark hair. I was nervous as I crossed the threshold into her office.
“It’s only your second day back, Miss Noble,” she said as she closed the door behind me. “It’s not good that you’re in my office already.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I told her.
She gestured to a stiff-backed chair in front of her desk. “Sit, please.”
I did.
She sat down behind the desk and folded her hands on the top. She looked like a judge with her black suit and severe expression. I tried to keep my attention focused solely on her. “You were allowed to return to this school because of your grandmother’s ties to the community and her promise that you wouldn’t be any trouble. Are you going to make her break that promise?”
The mention of Nan yanked on my temper. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why did a young man have to leave school after an altercation with you?”
My eyebrows shot up. “What?”
She wasn’t buying it. “Do not play coy with me, young lady. What did you say to Andrew?”
“He was the one doing all the talking,” I replied hotly. “He insinuated that I was a lesbian, and then he made every joke he could at my expense. I told him to shut up. Then the fire alarm went off and we all left the room. Ask Roxi Taylor. I was with her the whole time.” Except for those few minutes with Wren...
“I will,” Principal Grant promised. And then she surprised me. “He called you lesbian?”
I shrugged. Again, I tried to keep my gaze focused on her, and not what was behind her. “A dyke. He was just being a jerk.”
“I take that sort of harassment very seriously, Miss Noble. This school has zero tolerance for bullying.”
“When did that happen?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Because it certainly didn’t the last time I was here.”
She looked embarrassed. “That was before I took over as principal.” Yeah, she’d been the vice principal then. “Things are different now, I promise you. If Andrew returns to school, he won’t speak to you in that manner again.”
If? Huh. “You kicking him out for picking on me won’t make my life any easier. I don’t care if he comes back, so long as he leaves me alone.”
Ms. Grant stared at me for a few seconds—enough to make me nervous. “I’ll take that under advisement. You’d better get back to class.”
That was it? “Okay.” I stood up and made for the door.
“Oh, Miss Noble?”
I stopped, hand on the doorknob, and turned. “Yeah?” Don’t look. Don’t look.
“Victim or instigator, I don’t want to see you in my office again. Am I understood?”
I nodded. “No offense, Principal Grant, but I don’t want to see you again, either.”
Or the ghost of the former principal standing behind her, his brains blown all over the wall.
* * *
“What did you do to Andrew?”
I glanced up as Roxi fell into step beside me on the walk home that day. My heart gave a little skip. After my “talk” with Principal Grant I was paranoid that everyone was out to lynch me.
“Nothing.”
“Okay, what did your sister do to Andrew?”
Huh. Grant hadn’t thought to ask me that.
“Nothing permanent,” Wren answered from her place beside me. She had changed clothes since this morning and was wearing a long boho skirt, peasant blouse and a floppy hat. Her feet were bare. Who needed shoes when your feet didn’t actually touch anything?
I was going to miss shoes when I died.
I barely looked at the living girl walking beside me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen him since the fire alarm this morning.” When we’d come back to class he was gone. I hadn’t asked Wren what happened and I didn’t want to know. My sister was normally quite gentle, but she was dead, and the dead took offense easily. Andrew had screwed himself when he’d suggested I should have been the one who died.
“Come on, Lark.” Roxi stopped on the cracked sidewalk. Weeds poked up through the concrete near my feet and I nudged them with the toe of my secondhand pink-and-red Fluevog shoes. “I’ve known you since we were five. I know you’re not crazy, and I know Wren is real. I’m not the only one, either.”
My eyes narrowed. “Could have used you when everyone else thought I was a liar...or nuts.”
Wren stood behind Roxi, studying her. “She seems sincere.” She didn’t care who I told about her. She only cared about me. But I cared about us.
“I told everyone who would listen that I didn’t think you were crazy.”
I looked her dead in the eye. “Gotta think that wasn’t too many people.”
Roxi blushed. She was even pretty with her face all red. “No.” She started walking again. I fell into step beside her. “Still, I wanted you to know I believed you.”
“A little late coming.” Wren walked on Roxi’s other side, still studying her as though the girl was a dress she’d like to try on. “Nice thought, though. I think she means it.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking straight ahead. My grandmother’s house was just down the block. I could feel relief loosening my shoulders. I’d only been out of some sort of care for the past few months, and being back to school had exhausted me with all the noise and bustle. All those bodies conditioned to respond to the sound of a bell reminded me a little too much of the “hospital” my mother had abandoned me to when I had refused to say that Wren was all in my head.
When I had tried to die to be with her.
I didn’t think Mom believed I was crazy, either, but it was easier than saying she hated me because Wren talked to me and not her.
“Is she with us now? Your sister?”
I cast a distrustful glance at her. Was she trying to trick me into saying something wrong? You give people messages from dead relatives, fight a few ghosts on school property, try to kill yourself and all of a sudden you’re Trouble. Huh.
“What do you think?”
I tried not to laugh as Wren jumped in front of her and shouted, “Boo!” My thoughts were getting too morose, and she knew it.
Roxi shot me a shrewd glance as she walked right through my sister—and