The Blue Girl (6 page)

We’re sitting on the library steps on a spring morning, sharing an apple and watching the pigeons, when Imogene turns to me.

“Do you remember the first day we met?” she asks.

“Of course. You were determined to make friends with someone no one else liked so that you could be sure of at least one friend in your new school.”

“Is that how it seemed?”

I smile and shake my head. “No. I’m just teasing.” I have another bite of the apple and pass it back to her. “Why were you asking?”

“Remember I told you about my imaginary friend?”

I nod. “It was the first thing you said. He had a monkey face or something.”

“Tail, actually. With rabbit ears and a body like a skinny hedgehog.”

“I can’t imagine a skinny hedgehog.”

“Many people can’t.”

“So what about him?”

“Well, he’s back.”

“What do you mean ‘he’s back’?”

She shrugs. “I keep dreaming about him and these ... other things. Little root-and-twig creatures made up out of fairy tales and nursery rhymes.”

I look for the smile that’s usually in her eyes when she’s spinning one of her stories, but it’s not there.

“And he keeps saying these weird things to me,” she says. “Like ‘I’ve missed you sideways’ and ‘Be careful. Once you open the door, it can’t be closed.’ ”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that once you’ve imagined an imaginary friend, you can’t unimagine him again.”

“Okay, that’s creepy.”

“I
know.
”

“But it’s just a dream, right?”

She nods. “Except it’s freaking me out a little because first, I never remember my dreams, and second, I keep having it. There’s even a soundtrack.”

“Trust you to have a soundtrack.”

“I guess. Except it’s not a very good one.”

“Dream soundtracks never are,” I say, trying to lighten her mood.

It doesn’t work.

“The funny thing is,” she says, “in my head he
is
real.”

“I’m not following you.”

“I mean, the memories I have of him and the memories I have of things that really happened are all mixed up. Like they’re all real. But I know they can’t be. Like the time we went chasing the Clock Man to try and get back some of Jared’s spare time.”

I smile. “Because everybody knows that the very concept of spare time is a made-up thing.”

That got me the smallest twitch of a smile in the corner of her mouth.

“Some people do have it,” Imogene says.

I nod. “Except none of them have a dragon mom like I do, overseeing every part of their life except when I get away with you.”

“Point taken.”

“Thank you.”

“But I was talking about Pelly and the Clock Man,” she says. “Things like them can’t be real. The Clock Man was ... well, he was all made of clocks. A big old-fashioned alarm clock for a head, and then the rest of him was cobbled together from all sorts of bits and pieces of other kinds of clocks.”

“And Pelly?” I ask.

“That was my imaginary friend. It’s short for Pell-mell.”

“That figures.”

She gives me a look. “What do you mean?”

“Well, being who you are, he’d have to have a name like that. Or Chaos. Maybe Pandemonium.”

“But the
real
thing that’s so weird,” she says, “is that it’s all scary now. Pelly never scared me before, but he does now.”

It’s so odd seeing her like this. She’s a great listener—she really is, especially for someone who talks as much as she does. But she’s also kind of like a boy who has an answer for everything. She told me once that it was because of the way she and Jared grew up, wild and free on the commune, gender traits mixing. She was always a tomboy, and Jared ended up being way more sensitive than a lot of guys are.

That tomboy part of her is what makes her so sure of herself and so fearless. It’s what makes her Imogene. So to see her like this, nervous and so at a loss, it’s ... well, just weird. It makes me feel like I should have the answers for her, the way she always does for me.

I think back to something she said near the beginning of this very strange conversation we’re having.

“Maybe he’s here to warn you,” I say.

“By scaring me.”

“I don’t know about that. Sometimes things that don’t scare us at all as kids totally freak us out when we get older. And vice versa.”

“Well, what would he be warning me about?”

“Didn’t you say that he said something about doors? About how once they’re open, they can’t be closed? Maybe the door’s got nothing to do with him coming back. Maybe it’s something else you did—some other door you opened back when you knew him.”

Imogene shakes her head. “Now you’re getting as bad as me. Talking about him like he really exists. Like he
ever
existed.”

“It’s just  ...”

“I know. I’m making him sound like he’s real.”

I nod, but don’t bother saying that she’s always like this. She’s forever making the implausible seem real. I’m not saying she lies to me—at least I don’t think she does, though she does get evasive sometimes about parts of her life before she met me. She just likes to make sure that life stays interesting. Whenever it’s not, she seems compelled to say or do something to get it back on an oddball track.

“By the time I was nine or ten,” she says now, “I realized what he was, I wasn’t
playing
with him anymore. I
knew
he wasn’t real. But I’d tell stories in my head—mostly at night, staring up at the ceiling as I was falling asleep—and he’d be in all of them.”

“Your point being?”

“That I used to know the difference. I’m not so sure anymore.” She gives me a look that’s as much amused as unhappy. “I’ve even got
you
half believing in him. Or at least talking like you do.”

I shake my head. “I’m just going with the flow like I always do.”

“Well, I need you to be the hardheaded, rational-brain part of our friendship right now.”

I give her a slow nod. “Okay. Except, even big brainy me isn’t entirely unconvinced that dreams aren’t messages of some sort, if only from our subconscious.”

“So what’s the message I’m supposed to be getting?”

“Who knows? It’s about as clear as any fairy-tale riddle. But I’d say there’s something you’re supposed to be remembering. Some door you thought you’d closed, but it turns out you forgot to turn the key.”

“The key,” she repeats.

“I mean, there’s unfinished business happening here,” I say.

“I guess  ...”

She sounds unconvinced, and I don’t blame her. I’m not so convinced either.

We sit there on the steps for a while, watching the people go by on the sidewalk below, the pigeons doing their synchronized air show. We finish the apple we’ve been sharing. Imogene sets the core on the ground by her knapsack.

“What if it’s the dead kid?” she finally says.

I’d been going to my new school for a little over three weeks when I realized that someone was watching me— and it wasn’t Ken or Barbie, or any of that crowd of theirs.

Well, really, why would they bother? Sure, they liked to rag on people like me, but it was only when we invaded their sphere of influence. It wasn’t like they needed to go stalking the people they considered to be losers. One or another of us was forever stumbling into their proximity to be tripped or mocked.

No, this was someone else, and I wasn’t imagining it. I have a sixth sense for that kind of thing. I just know where people are, if they’re checking me out, and I never get lost. It’s one of the reasons Jared always hated playing games like hide-and-seek with me. He felt I had an unfair advantage— which, let’s face it, I did.

So anyway, I knew I was being spied on, but for the longest time, I couldn’t get a fix on who it was. That feeling would come to me and I’d turn to look, fast, but there was never anyone there. Or at least no one who seemed to be paying any particular attention to me.

I thought I was losing my touch until, a week or so later, I finally spotted him not too far from my locker, right near the hall to the gym and auditorium.

He was this pale, nerdy guy—sort of like a tall Harry Potter, the way the character is pictured on the books and in the films, you know, with the black glasses and the kind of messy hair, but gawkier and with a narrower face. Actually, Jared insists the image was stolen from a Neil Gaiman comic book, the one about the kid who discovers he’s this great magician—wait a minute, that’s the basic plot of the Harry Potter books, too, isn’t it?

But I digress.

I dumped my math book in my locker and grabbed what I needed for my next class. Closing the door, I gave the combination lock a spin, acted like I was going to go the other way, then quickly turned and headed for my stalker.

He ducked down the hall, and by the time I got to the corner, he’d disappeared. Not
poof,
disappeared. He just managed to slip off before I could see where he’d gone.

I wanted to ask Maxine about him, but I didn’t see that much of her during the day except for lunch and after school.

It took another week before I spotted him again—while Maxine was with me, I mean. I’d caught glimpses of him, but he always managed to duck away before I could confront him.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

I nodded to where a line of kids were waiting to be served what passed for food in the cafeteria. And Jared was right. The music they piped in here really did suck. But the Barbie girls really seemed to like the old Backstreet Boys song that was playing, at least judging from the way they bobbed their heads to the beat.

“Who’s who?” Maxine replied.

“The tall, pale guy with the Harry Potter glasses?”

“I don’t see a tall, pale guy, with or without glasses.”

I glanced at her, then looked back, but he wasn’t there anymore.

“Though I’m surprised,” she went on. “I would have thought you’d reference Buddy Holly. Or at least Elvis Costello.”

“That’s funny.”

“It wasn’t that funny.”

“No, I mean, funny-strange,” I said. “He’s gone. But where could he have gone? He was right by the end of that line, and it’s too far to the door for him to have slipped out. I only looked away for a second.”

Maxine got an odd look. “You must have seen Ghost.” This was good, I thought. A nickname was a start. “How’d he get the name?” I asked, though I could guess from the way he kept disappearing on me.

“Because he really is a ghost. People have been seeing him for years.”

I waited for a punch line, but it didn’t come.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“Why would I joke about something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t believe me,” she said, “ask somebody else. Though I should warn you, popular wisdom has it that only losers ever see him.”

“Oh, great.”

Maxine smiled. “I’ve seen him, too.”

“Really?”

“But only once. It was last year.”

“Well, I see him all the time. He’s always lurking around, spying on me.” I sighed. “And now you’re telling me my stalker is a ghost.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

I looked around the cafeteria, but I still couldn’t spot him.

“So how’d he die?” I asked when I turned back to Maxine.

“I don’t know the whole story,” she said. “I suppose nobody except Ghost really does.”

“What’s his real name?”

Maxine shook her head. “I’ve never heard him called anything but Ghost.”

“That’s okay,” I said. I could find out. “So what happened?”

“I heard he was like us—got pushed around by other kids—except it was worse for him because
everybody
ragged on him. Even some of the teachers.”

*    *    *

That night, while we were making supper—Mom was staying late at the university again—I asked Jared if he’d heard about the ghost haunting our school.

“Yeah, Ben told me about him.”

Ben Sweetland was on the football team, and that didn’t particularly endear him to me at first. But apparently he loved music as much as he did sports, which explained how he and Jared had hooked up. And to be honest, once I got to know him a little bit through Jared, I found myself liking him. He didn’t fit my jock stereotype, but then most people don’t fit their stereotypes. Oh, he had the look, all right, big and strong, but he had a good mind and a sharp, sly wit.

When I asked him how he put up with guys like Brent and Jerry, he just shrugged and said, “There’s always going to be assholes. When I’m around them, I just focus on the team and the game.”

“They piss me off.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I can see how that would happen when you get on the wrong side of them.”

“I don’t want to be on any side of them.”

“So avoid them,” Ben told me. “They’re on the top of the heap right now, but that’s only going to last another couple of years. Then we’re all going to be out of school, and while your life is going to get way better, all they’ll have while they work at some dead-end job is memories of their glory days.”

“They’ll probably all get scholarships.”

Ben shook his head. “We have an okay team, but no one on it’s going to get picked up by any colleges. Why do you think Brent loses his temper so much when we lose a game? He
knows
football’s his only shot at something better, but he also knows it’s never going to happen for him. Or if he doesn’t, he should.”