Dreaming of Amelia (26 page)

22
.

The following event happened in Week 8 of the term.

(That's only two more weeks until the holidays, which, if you're getting tired of my story, cheer up, it's nearly over. Although, what's wrong with you? It's good.)

Anyhow, the event was this:

SOMEONE TOOK A PHOTO OF THE GHOST.

[Some space here to recover your balance.]

Yes. That is what I said. A photograph was taken of my ghost.

It was taken by the most reliable person in the history of the world, so there is no need to doubt, thank you very much: the person was Bindy Mackenzie.

That is: school captain, yearbook editor, smartest and most moral girl ever (also, coincidentally, almost-victim of a wicked murder plot last year) (but that is another story) (luckily not another
ghost
story) (as Bindy is still alive) (so therefore she is not a ghost).

Anyway, what happened was, Bindy had taken some photos for a two-page spread in the yearbook, about the renovations to the Art Rooms. Very fascinating, I'm sure. Early on the morning of this particular day, she and her friend Kee were sitting at a computer in the library, uploading the photos (which must have been extremely boring) (apparently, she'd taken over 300) (Bindy is a very thorough girl).

They were watching a slide show of the photos when suddenly they both gasped aloud. (I don't know if it's possible to gasp unaloud but never mind.)

They gasped. Their hearts careened and cantered like Kaimanawa Wild Horses. (That is a direct quote from Kee.)

They looked at one another—and then they both said: ‘Em.'

(They were referring to me.)

They ran all over the school—they were pale and breathless when they found me—and rushed me back to the computer to show me . . .

A photograph of a face.

The face was behind the window.

The face had gleaming red eyes, a manic grin, and a bright, bright glow.

The face was not attached to a body.

There is more.

What window was the face behind? Guess.

A window in Room 27B
.

Bindy remembers very clearly that this was where the window was. She also swears there was nobody there at the time. Certainly not a face without a body. She would have remembered that.

Plus, there were other photos of the same window, taken just before and after this one:
and the face is missing from those photographs
.

I looked at that photo and I felt cold with terror.

At the same time I felt fantastic.

Because, do you realise what this meant?

I had proof.

News of the photo rushed helter-skelter through the school.

Everyone who saw it blinked. At the very least, they blinked. It is not, I repeat,
not
a situation of:
Oh, yeah, maybe that's a face if I blur my eyes
?No. It is not. It is clearly, adamantly, undeniably, undoubtedly, unassuredly: A FACE.

I don't know if the ghost had hired a publicist and the campaign kicked off with that photo, or whether news of the photo opened eyes to its presence—either way, suddenly everyone was having ghostly encounters in the Art Rooms.

By recess, five different people had told me they'd seen or felt something ghostly.

By lunchtime, it was at least 20.

It was a wild and wonderful day. Everywhere I turned there was talk of the ghost. I think it would be correct to say that hysteria ran riot. Sudden noises made people gasp. Cold wind made them grasp the hand of the person beside them. You couldn't walk through the Art Rooms without hearing at least one shriek followed by pounding footsteps or bursts of embarrassed laughter (because, for example, the person realises they've just seen their own reflection in the glass of a classroom door and thought it was a ghost).

Now, this day happened to be the birthday of my friend Toby, and some people had organised a party for him. It was in the student recreation room in the Art Rooms. We had balloons, streamers, party poppers, chocolate crackles and fairy bread. (In other words, it was a ‘children's party'—people are holding a lot of ‘children's parties' this year, I've noticed . . . hmm, are others, like me, trying to ‘cling to a fading childhood'?)

Anyhow, we sang happy birthday, and when Toby went to blow out the candles, Astrid stepped forward to help. I don't know why. I think she was overexcited. Anyway, she leaned forward to blow—and her hair caught on fire!

There was so much screaming!

Don't worry. It ended quickly. I just pressed the flames between my hands and they were gone.

But everyone was sure it was the ghost. People said the ghost was probably letting Astrid know she shouldn't blow out candles on another person's cake.

Toby was in a great mood, though, and couldn't stop laughing (once he knew that Astrid was safe).

I'm not certain all of the ghost reports of that day were actually the ghost. The reports included:

•   things going missing (including a school uniform from a locker!)

•   things dropping from people's hands even though they were sure they were holding on to them tightly

•   lockers that wouldn't open

•   hair being unusually frizzy

•   toothache.

I have to admit, a lot of these things can be explained as normal day-to-day life rather than as paranormal activity.

However, there were
also
reports of:

•   the dripping in the upstairs bathroom suddenly getting heavier and splattering the ground

•   the distant sound of someone sobbing (and the people who heard that swear they could not find
anybody
sobbing even after looking very hard)

•   doors banging suddenly even though there was no gust of wind

•   a strange sensation of somebody breathing even though there was nobody there (a lot of people had this one).

So, that was more like it.

Over the next two weeks, I walked around feeling happy. I did not go directly to Mr Ludovico with the photograph. I thought it best to let the ghost encounters multiply, so that, by the time I approached him, it would be incontrovertible.

He would probably apologise as he signed the form.

I smiled at him openly in Economics classes, and thought that I saw apology and/or respect behind his eyes. He must have heard about all the sightings! Everyone was talking about them.

I tried not to gloat.

The application form was due on the last day of term, so I continued gathering encounters, and recording them in a notebook, until the second-last day.

On that day—a Thursday—I would knock on the door to his office.

23
.

The day arrived.

In the morning, my mother ran downstairs in her pyjamas, just as Dad, William and I were about to leave. (Mum sleeps in often now that she is not a frantic lawyer. It makes her even happier, if that's possible.)

‘I remembered something,' she called in a sleepy voice—and the three of us stopped at the front door and turned around. ‘Emily, you know how you asked me if someone had died when I was at Ashbury? Well, someone did.'

‘Mum,' William interrupted, ‘are you saying you saw somebody die when you were at school and you have only just remembered this now? But where is the body?' My brother looked thoughtful.

Mum was stretching her arms like a sleepy child. ‘I was just lying there half-asleep and it came back to me,' she said. ‘When I was at school, they used to
talk
about a girl who'd died back in the 1950s. She fell out of a window or something. People used to say she haunted the place.'

A huge smile exploded onto Dad's face. ‘All this time Em's been talking about a ghost,' he said to Mum, ‘and you didn't think it was relevant to mention that you'd met the ghost before?'

‘There wasn't a shred of reliable evidence,' said Mum. ‘As far as I was concerned, there was no ghost. Em's ghost is different.'

‘I was in the Art Rooms yesterday,' murmured William. ‘I closed my eyes for a moment and the strangest pinpricks of light appeared behind my eyelids.'

‘There you go,' said Mum, heading back upstairs. ‘That'll be Em's ghost.'

At school, Lyd and Cass agreed to help me follow up on Mum's story. I was trembling with excitement: it was possible that my ghost had haunted here before! It was almost too much! I was very excited about going to see Mr Ludovico.

But how do you find out about a dead girl from the 1950s?

The internet was useless. Strange, how useless it is sometimes. And it gets so much acclaim.

Anyway, Cass suggested we try looking through old yearbooks. The librarian hunted them down for us.

It was genuine research! The three of us gathered around a table covered in piles of books, trying not to spend too much time saying ‘ohhh' at the pictures of sweet historical people.

And then Lydia found it.

A two-page spread in a 1952 yearbook with the heading:
A TRIBUTE TO OUR DARLING SANDY
. There was a blurred photo of a girl with a cute smile, a long fringe, a ponytail and downcast eyes.

Cass started reading it out, and it was all about how much everyone adored Sandy, and how she herself adored vanilla ice cream and field hockey. (Hmm—selfish—she should have adored the others back.) And what a tragedy it was, the tragic accident in which she tragically fell from a tragically dangerous window and tragically died. (The editor of that yearbook was no Bindy Mackenzie.)

I had a sudden thought: This was a two-page spread about a girl who died—and Bindy was doing a two-page spread about the Art Rooms when the ghost got itself into a photograph!!!! Coincidence? Surely not! (And even if it
was
a coincidence, well, what is a coincidence if not a sign of something awry? That's what my dad always says and it kind of makes sense.)

I felt chilled to the apple of my core.

And because I was busy chilling, I did not register at first that Cass had read out the girl's name:

Sandra Wilkinson.

‘I've heard that name before,' Lyd said.

And so had I.

It was the name in the old book I had found.

Presented to Sandra Wilkinson
for Excellence in Penmanship, 1952

When I said this to Lyd and Cass—when I got the book from my locker and showed them—their faces changed.

Years ago, a girl had fallen and died. This year, her book had appeared in a corridor.

For the first time, they believed in the ghost.

24
.

It was 3.30 pm on Thursday afternoon.

My mother had promised to personally deliver the signed application form the next morning. All I had to do was get it.

I knocked on Mr Ludovico's office door.

I had a manila folder in my hands. It was labelled, ‘The Ghost of Ashbury High—Evidence.' Inside was: the photograph; twelve pages of notes recording ghostly encounters; and copies of the relevant pages from the old yearbook.

I smiled at Mr Ludovico, sat down opposite him, and placed the file on his desk.

He glanced at it then back down at his work. He continued scribbling.

‘Proof that the ghost exists,' I said, in case the word ‘evidence' wasn't clear.

Mr Ludovico kept writing.

‘In the last few weeks,' he said, still writing, ‘my school
has been overrun with hysteria about your ghost. Students are refusing to enter the Art Rooms. Teachers can't get their classes to concentrate.' Now he looked up at me. ‘You have infected my entire student body with your childishness.'

He opened a drawer and took out my application form.

‘There is no ghost,' he said firmly, ‘and yet,'—here, he laughed to himself—‘if I didn't sign this form, your parents would be in my office in an instant. Taking some kind of legal action, no doubt. Not letting me get away with it! Protecting their precious little girl!'

He got out a pen, and scribbled his name on the blank line.

‘I always intended to sign it,' he said, handing it over to me with another laugh. ‘Just thought I might try to teach you something about the real world first. Help you to grow up a little.' He flicked the manila folder across the desk. ‘But it looks like you're a lost cause.'

And he returned to his notes.

25
.

The funny thing is that I'd gone into Mr Ludovico's office expecting to walk out in tears. If he refused to sign the form, I thought, they would be tears of disappointment. If he signed the form, they would be tears of joy.

I did not walk out of his office in tears. I went straight to the bathrooms, locked the door, kept the form tightly folded in my pocket, and cried harder than I have in years.

26
.

There was a party at Lyd's place that night.

By then, Lyd and Cass had retrieved their faces. I mean, they had stopped believing in my ghost. A short-lived belief, no?

It was a trick, they said. Someone must have found Sandra's book and thought it would be funny to leave it lying around to see if we'd track down the story of her death and get spooked.

‘Yeah, probably,' I agreed.

Lyd and Cass looked surprised, and a little disappointed.

I did not tell them what had happened with Mr Ludovico. I just said he'd signed the form (which was true), and they were happy.

There was a bunch of people in Lyd's living room including Lyd, Cass, Seb, Astrid, Amelia and Riley. (Not Toby though. He'd stopped coming to parties. His absence was a small black hole in our lives, but of course, there's no such thing.)

So, it was around ten and we were lying around on the couches, eating nachos. Everyone was talking about the ghost, and about Sandra Wilkinson, and about whether the ghost
was
Sandra.

Imagine falling out of a window and dying, people were saying. How sad! But also how stupid.

That kind of thing.