Ghost of a Chance (11 page)

On the ride to school I listen to my iPod and stare out the window, zoning out as I watch the houses zoom by.

I walk into school with my music still on. I'm at my locker, getting my books for the morning, when someone yanks the earbud out of my ear.

I shriek and turn around, expecting to see Mr. Jacobi or another teacher standing there. We're not supposed to be wearing our iPods in school, but since school hasn't
technically
started yet, I figured I could get away with it. But it's not Mr. Jacobi standing there. And it's not another teacher. It's Ellie.

I'm so shocked and happy to see her that for a moment I can't find my voice.

“Hi,” I say finally.

She doesn't reply. She just stands there, looking at me. I know it has only been a couple of days, but I miss her so much, it hurts. I'm used to talking to her multiple times a day, every day. Not being able to just call her or text her whenever I want has been torture.

The way she's looking at me is making me a little nervous, though. Why isn't she saying anything? Obviously, she wants to talk, right? Or else she wouldn't have come over here and pulled my earbud out of my ear.

“What's up?” I try. I pull some of my books out of my bag and slide them into my locker.

“Anything you want to tell me?” She sounds mad.

“Um, what do you mean?” I'm not trying to stall or be smart. There are a million things Ellie could be talking about. Like me seeing ghosts, me lying to my dad about going to see my mom, me—

“Oh, I don't know,” she says, all sarcastic-like. Jasmine Flavia, who has the locker next to mine, is trying to put her books away, so Ellie moves to my other side. The only problem with that is, now my locker door is in between us. Ellie solves that problem by reaching out and slamming it shut.

“Hey!” I say. “I wasn't done.”

“Maybe your new friend Madison can help you,” Ellie says. “Now that you two are besties. Or should I say ex-besties?”

I'm having trouble keeping up with this conversation. “I'm having trouble keeping up with this conversation,” I say. I reach out and start twirling my lock so I can open my locker again, but then I decide I probably shouldn't do that if Ellie wants to talk. If there's any chance we can make up, I should be giving her my undivided attention.

“So why didn't you tell me?” she asks, her eyes accusing.

Again, there's a million things she could be talking about. “Why didn't I tell you what?”

“About you and Madison Baker!” She says “Madison Baker” like it's equivalent to the devil. Which it kind of is.

“I don't think this girl likes my sister,” Lily says, sighing. She doesn't say it in an accusing way, though. She says it more like she's used to people not liking her sister, and she's bored of it. She turns around and wanders off down the hallway.

I'm glad Lily's not the kind of ghost I have to worry about. The last two I had to help? Forget it. I couldn't let them out of my sight for a second.

“Me and Madison Baker? What about us?”

Ellie's eyes look like they're going to bug out of her head. “How you went over to her house last night!”

“Oh.” I turn back to my locker and start to twirl the combination lock again, mostly because I need something to keep my hands busy while I figure out what to say. “I didn't know you cared.”

“Of course I care!” Ellie says. “You're my best friend.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” I ask softly. I slide my locker door open so she can't see my face, because I'm pretty sure I'm going to start crying. “I thought you never wanted to talk to me again.”

Ellie reaches out and shuts my locker halfway so she can see me. “I never said that.”

“You didn't really have to
say
it. I mean, you brought all my stuff over to my house and dumped it on my front porch.”

She sighs, and I can see the mental battle going on inside her. “I don't hate you, Kendall,” she says finally. “I'm just mad. And confused.”

“Ellie, I didn't mean to hurt you,” I say. “And I definitely didn't mean to lie to you.”

“Then why did you?”

Good question. “I don't know.” It's not a truthful answer, obviously. I might lose Ellie anyway, but if I tell her about the ghosts, then I'll definitely lose her. I take a deep breath. “It's complicated. But I didn't do it just to lie to you.” I slide my locker door open and finish gathering the books I need for my morning classes. I try to think if there's something I can say that might not technically be a lie, but I can't come up with anything. “Look,” I say finally, “Micah was upset about his sister who died, and I was helping him.”

Ellie shakes her head. “I don't believe you.”

I don't say anything.

“I don't understand,” she says. “If you like Micah and you don't like Brandon, then why didn't you just tell me?”

“I don't like Micah.”

“Yeah, well, that's not what Madison Baker is telling everyone.” She shifts her book bag on her shoulder and bites her lip. “And honestly, Kendall, that's not the only thing she's saying.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, a sick feeling rising in my throat.

The bell rings then, and Ellie looks over her shoulder down the hall. “We should get to homeroom.”

But neither of us moves.

“We could go talk . . .,” I offer, holding my breath.

“You mean skip?”

I nod. Ellie and I just skipped a class a few days ago, when I started having a meltdown about Brandon. It was the first time I ever skipped a class, and now here I am a few days later, suggesting we do it again. Apparently, I've gone rogue.

She leans in. “I don't know,” she says. “Last time we skipped, we ended up under the stairwell, and that was weird.” She shakes her head. “So many people walking up and down.”

I swallow. “We could leave school and then come back.
We could pretend we were just late or something.”

“Don't you need a note to be late?”

“I'm not sure.”

She thinks about it, then looks over her shoulder at the rush of kids all taking off toward their homerooms. She takes a step toward them, and I'm sure she's going to say no and head to homeroom.

But then she turns around, and her eyes soften, and I catch a glimpse of the Ellie who's my best friend, the Ellie who took care of me last year when I had the flu, the Ellie who always compliments me on my crazy hairstyles, the Ellie who would do anything for me.

“Okay,” she says, her face breaking into a smile. “Let's do it.”

*  *  *

The key to doing something wrong and not getting caught is looking confident. So when Ellie and I walk out of school, I make sure to keep my shoulders back and my head held high.

Ellie, however, apparently doesn't know this rule. Which makes sense. I mean, I have a lot more experience when it comes to doing things I'm not supposed to. (See: taking off to see my mom, lurking around Madison Baker's house, etc., etc.)

Ellie scuttles along, her head down, keeping her eyes on the sidewalk except for when she looks up to take furtive
glances over her shoulder to make sure no one's behind us.

“Where are we going?” she whispers to me.

Good question. “Um, the coffee shop on the corner?”

There's a coffee shop right across from school. I've never been there, but my bus always passes it.

“Isn't that a little too close?” Ellie asks. “What if we see someone from school?”

“Everyone from school is in homeroom,” I point out.

“Oh.” She nods. “Good point.”

The coffee shop is warm and inviting, and the delicious smell of cinnamon and coffee hits my nose as soon as we get inside.

Suddenly I'm ravenous.

“I didn't have breakfast,” I tell Ellie. “I'm going to get a cinnamon bun. You want anything?”

“Just a coffee.”

Ellie gets us a table while I stand in line to get the food and drinks. The coffee shop is busy, mostly with people grabbing their morning joe before heading off to work.

I concoct a whole story in my head about how I'm homeschooled, just in case the people working here ask why I'm not in school, but when it's my turn, the cashier, an older woman with a purple streak in her black hair, takes my money and hands me my change without saying a word.

When I get back to the table, Ellie's looking out the window, a sad look on her face.

“Here you go,” I say, setting her coffee down in front of her. “I, um, put cream and sugar in it for you. And I know you said you weren't hungry, but I got you this chocolate chip cookie because it looked good.”

“Thanks.” Her hands wrap around the oversize white mug, and she stares at the cookie blankly.

I sit down across from her, not sure how things can be so awkward with someone I was so close to up until a few days ago.

I look outside to where a few snowflakes are starting to fall.

“It's snowing!” I say happily.

“Great,” she grumbles. “Now we're in for months of cold weather and dirty, slushy sidewalks.”

Wow. Way to be pessimistic.

“So what is Madison Baker saying about me?” I ask. Maybe sharing gossip about me will cheer Ellie up, since she's apparently harboring some latent hostility.

But I'm wrong, because Ellie shifts on her chair. “What do you mean?”

“You said Madison was saying things about me.” I rip off a piece of warm, gooey cinnamon bun and pop it into my mouth. Yum. I'm going to have a huge sugar crash after this, but I don't even care. It's so worth it.

“Madison Baker loves to gossip,” Ellie says, waving her hand like whatever Madison is saying is totally inconsequential. “You shouldn't even worry about it.”

“Oh, I'm not
worried
about it,” I lie. Let's face it, no one wants one of the most popular girls in school gossiping about them. Gossiping on any level is not okay, but having Madison do it is the worst.

“Good,” Ellie says. “Because you have enough to worry about.”

I nod. I don't know what she's talking about, that I have enough to worry about. Does she think I'm crazy?

“So what is she saying, though?” I ask nonchalantly. “Just so we can, you know, laugh about it.”

Ellie reaches over and grabs a piece of my cinnamon bun, which makes me ridiculously happy. She wouldn't be sharing food with me if she was that mad, would she?

“Just dumb stuff.” She takes a deep breath. “About how you came over to her house and started snooping around in her dead sister's room.”

“I wasn't snooping around!” I protest. “I was looking for the bathroom! I
told
her that.”

“Yeah.” Ellie shrugs like it doesn't matter, then finishes chewing her cinnamon bun. “Kendall, what's going on with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just . . . I
miss
you. And I don't know why you lied to
me about Micah, or why you're hanging out with Madison.” She frowns. “And it's really frustrating, because you and I have never kept secrets from each other.”

“That's not true,” I point out. “When you got me those Taylor Swift tickets for my birthday last year, it was a total surprise.” I smile, but Ellie doesn't smile back.

She looks out the window and doesn't say anything for a moment. “The thing is, if you're having a hard time, I want to be there for you. But I'm also angry at you, Kendall. I really am.”

“I know,” I say. “But you have to believe me when I say I don't like Micah. I really was just being a friend, talking to him about his sister.”

“Then why didn't you just
tell
me that?”

Good question. “Because he asked me not to say anything. He didn't want anyone to know he was hurting. You know, because he was new here. He didn't want people to think he was a freak.” Lie, lie, lie.

She nods. “I guess that makes sense. But then why were you hanging out with Madison?”

I take a deep breath. “I just felt so alone,” I say. “No one was talking to me, and I guess I kind of freaked out. I mean, you and Kyle and Brandon had totally turned your backs on me. And so when Madison asked me over, I said yes. I guess I was in a vulnerable state.”

She wrinkles her nose. “But Madison
Baker
?”

“I know, she's awful.” I wonder what Ellie's going to think when I still have to try to become friends with Madison. Oh, well. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. “I can't believe she's telling people I was snooping around her house!”

“In her sister's old room,” Ellie adds.

“Which isn't even her sister's room anymore,” I say. “It's a gym now.”

“Oh,” Ellie says. “Then why is she freaking out so much?”

“I don't know. Because she's Madison Baker?”

Ellie laughs. “Yeah, probably. I wonder if her parents turned that room into a gym when Lily died, or when she went away to college.”

I almost choke on my cinnamon bun. “Madison's sister was away at college?” How did I not know about this? I really need to start paying more attention to the details of people's deaths. It's my professional responsibility.

“Yeah,” Ellie says. “She was going to be a freshman at Sadler State, but she'd already started some summer program there when she died. I know because I ran into Madison at the mall last year, and she was bragging about how her sister was going to take her to parties where Madison was going to flirt with college boys. As if !”

Ellie starts going on and on about how much of a liar Madison is, but I'm kind of tuning out. All I can think about is that Lily was at
college
. And that means she might
have gotten confused, and whatever it is that's keeping her from moving on might be in the room she had there.