Ghost Hand (2 page)

“Mr. Giannopoulos, sir, I think this girl fainted,” New Guy said, putting his hand on her back, the picture of concern.

I stared at his hand—his normal hand—but there was nothing else there, no elongated tendrils of PSS or gaping hole to indicate where they had been.

I looked down in my lap. My ghost hand was back, normal as could be, glowing gently and nicely formed into a palm with four regular-sized fingers and one thumb. And there was something else in my lap—a clear plastic baggie full of a something grey and shiny. I had never seen it before, didn’t know what it was or where it had come from. Maybe New Guy had put it there—slipped it under my desk when he’d grabbed my wrist.

“What the—?” Mr. G said in alarm, jumping up from his chair and rushing over. “Passion, can you hear me?” he asked loudly, gently taking her by the shoulders and restoring her to an upright position.

Passion’s head lolled to one side.

Mr. G looked at New Guy and said, “Call 911.”

“She’s breathing,” Mr. G said as New Guy dialed, and I realized I hadn’t been. I’d been holding my breath, waiting for someone to discover I’d killed Passion Wainwright in Calc class. But she wasn’t dead. Mr. G said so. I took a deep, shaky breath.

When Mr. G pulled Passion’s long white sleeve back, perhaps to check her pulse, he sucked in air between his teeth, like a reverse whistle. He quickly yanked her sleeve back in place, but not before I’d seen the long white scars and the fresh pink cuts crisscrossing the surface of her inner arm.

Mr. G and I looked at each other. He knew I had seen it, and I could read the conclusion written all over his face; Mr. G thought he’d just discovered the reason Passion had fainted.

I looked up to gauge New Guy’s reaction, but he was on the other side of Passion, oblivious, phone to his ear, apparently still waiting for emergency services to pick up.

Passion gave a weak moan.

Mr. G seemed to come to a decision. “Hand me the phone,” he said to New Guy. “Someone get Passion some water,” he ordered toward the crowd of students gathering in the hall outside the door. There was no class in Mr. G’s room last period, so at least students weren’t streaming in.

New Guy handed his phone over to Mr. G just as the school nurse came pushing through the crowd. News of Passion’s faint had obviously made it to the main office at the other end of the building. Some random freshman brought in a Dixie cup of water. Passion was sitting up a little and seemed to have revived enough for the nurse to dribble some of it into her mouth. Coach Edmunds was doing crowd control in the hall, shooing kids to their next class. “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along,” his voice boomed down the long hallways. And Mr. G was on the phone with the 911 operator, talking them out of sending an ambulance.

I felt like I was watching all this from a distance, like there was some kind of screen between me and everything that was happening.

New Guy looked down at me, his eyes full of concern, as if I were the one who’d just been shish-kabobbed.

In a groggy, slurring voice, Passion asked the nurse, “What happened?”

Out in the hallway, the bell rang, signaling the start of the day’s last class.

It was my chance to get away. I started to shift out of my desk, forgetting the baggie which began to slide off my lap. I caught it with my left hand and felt a sudden bite of pain. I looked down. One of the shiny grey things was poking through the plastic, its sharp-edged corner digging into my index finger. When I pulled my finger away, I could see the wound; a thin precise line of red where the blade had cut me. Cut me. And cut her. Cutter. Passion Wainwright was a cutter. That was why she wore long sleeves and didn’t change for gym. It had nothing to do with her religion. She’d just been hiding her scars. Passion Wainwright, the pastor’s daughter, was a cutter and my ghost hand had reached into her. I looked down at the baggie in my lap—a bag full of sharp, thin-edged razor blades. They hadn’t come from the New Guy. He hadn’t put them in my lap.

“You two,” Mr. G said, looking at both of us. “Join me at the back for a minute.” It wasn’t a request.

As soon as they turned away, I slipped the bag of blades down into my pack and zipped it up. Then I made my way to the back of the classroom.

“Thank you both for your help,” Mr. G said, arms crossed, his face serious. “You acted very maturely, especially you, Marcus. Quite a first day you’ve had.”

“I just noticed she was slumped over, that’s all,” Marcus said.

New Guy’s name was Marcus then. He didn’t look like a Marcus. Marcuses went to private schools and had trust funds and traveled to Europe for their family vacations. He looked and smelled more down-to-earth than that.

“You stayed calm,” Mr. G was saying, “and I’m sure you can both understand the need to keep this incident from becoming a major topic of conversation amongst the student body. I think Passion would appreciate your discretion,” he finished, nodding toward the front of the class where the nurse was helping Passion gather her things.

“Of course,” Marcus said.

Passion, finally lucid, was protesting weakly that she was fine; she didn’t need to go to the nurse’s station, but the nurse wasn’t taking no for an answer. She guided Passion firmly out the door. Did Passion’s parents know she was a cutter? They must. They were the ones who’d written her the note so she wouldn’t have to change for gym. But how could they know and not get her help?

“Olivia?” Mr. G said.

I looked up to find Mr. G and Marcus both staring at me.

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “I won’t say anything.”

“Good,” Mr. G nodded, looking at us pointedly one last time. “You’ll need passes to your next class,” he said, heading down the aisle toward his desk.

“You’re in shock,” Marcus said, his voice low. “Just hold it together long enough for us to get out of here.”

I barely heard him, barely noticed him move away from me. Mr. G had stopped at my desk and was looking down at something.

“Olivia, is this your test?” he asked, pointing.

“Uh, yep, it is,” I said, moving numbly toward him, trying to act normal, be normal.

Mr. G scooped up my test paper and added to the pile on his desk. Then he began digging in a drawer for his pass slips.

Marcus was gathering up his things.

I walked to my desk, picked up my backpack, and put it over my shoulder. My arms were doing what arms do. My legs were moving my body around. My eyes were seeing things. But it didn’t feel like it was me doing any of it.

Marcus was already at Mr. G’s desk getting his pass. He took it and headed out the door, not even giving me a backward glance.

Maybe I’d imagined what he’d said. About me being in shock. About us getting out together. No, holding it together. That’s what he’d said. He’d told me to hold it together.

I found myself at Mr. G’s desk holding out my hand for a pass. Not my ghost hand. It was tucked behind my back, my body a solid barrier between it and him. At least, I hoped.

He finished scrawling his messy signature on the little yellow slip but, instead of handing it to me, he looked up. “Passion will be okay,” he said. “We’ll make sure she gets some help.”

“Yeah, I know,” I nodded, staring down at the pass, wondering why he wasn’t giving it to me.

“Gossip could really hurt her though.”

“Mr. G, I won’t say anything.”

“Good,” he said, finally handing the pass to me.

I slipped it into my pocket and moved out into the hallway.

A shadow separated itself from behind the door and Marcus said, “Come on,” taking my arm and steering me down the hall in the wrong direction, away from my Honors English class.

I stumbled along next to him, trying to keep my body between him and my ghost hand, trying to understand where we were going and why we were going there.

We rounded the corner to the Science Wing and he pulled me toward the south exit doors which opened onto a patch of asphalt and the school’s collection of trash dumpsters. It was also the favored place for stoners to smoke during lunch hour.

Just shy of the doors I stopped in my tracks, planting my feet shoulder-width apart like I’d learned in self-defense class.

“Let’s go,” Marcus said, tugging my arm.

“I’m not leaving with you,” I said. “I don’t even know you.”

“What do you mean? I just helped you back there,” he said, letting go of me.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I know you.”

“Fine. I’m Marcus,” he held out his hand.

I didn’t shake it.

“Listen,” he said, obviously frustrated. “You’re in shock and you’re in danger, especially after what you just did. That’s all you really need to know.”

“In danger?” My mind was beginning to clear, but I still had no idea what he was talking about.

“Trust me,” he said, glancing up and down the hall. “We need to get out of here now.” He turned toward the doors again, apparently assuming I’d follow.

“Wait,” I said. This time I was the one grabbing his arm. “My hand—I—just tell me what you did to fix it.”

He stared down at me.

I became aware of the roundness of his bicep through his shirt, of its smooth solidity under my fingers. He was taller than I was, but not by much. My mouth was about even with his chin, and I could feel the warmth of his body radiating toward me, perfumed with his wood-smoked scent. The phrase “smoking hot” flitted through my mind like a moth, and I batted it away. It was very warm in the hallway. Or I was warm. Shit! My ghost hand was warm.

“It’s happening again,” I said, letting go of him and backing away. I couldn’t help looking down at it. It was shimmering around the edges, just like before.

“I can help you,” Marcus said, “if you come with me.”

“Help me now!” I cried. Searing heat blazed up my arm as my fingers stretched away from me, twisting and straining towards him.

“We’ve got to get out of here first,” he insisted. “If they see us together, I’ll never get you out.”

He wasn’t making any sense.

One of my PSS fingers was almost touching him.

He extended his hand toward it, completely unafraid.

Was he crazy? Hadn’t he seen what I’d done to Passion?

I tucked my ghost hand in toward my body, whirled away from him, and ran.

RESCUE FROM THE RESTROOM

I charged into the girls’ restroom at the end of the hall, glancing under stall doors and checking for feet. Thankfully, they were all empty, so I chose one with a working latch and locked myself in. I sat down on the toilet seat, trying to catch my breath, and looked down at my hand. It still had tentacles instead of fingers. If anyone saw that, I was screwed.

I dug Mr. G’s pass out of my pocket. As usual, he’d neglected to fill out the time on it, which gave me a few minutes to play with. But if I didn’t show up for English soon, I’d get reported to the office, and my mother would find out. And I could not explain any of this to my mother.

I stuffed the pass back in my pocket and tried not to freak out. Part of me wanted to run. Run and keep running. But another part of me knew that was stupid. I couldn’t run from my own hand. Maybe I should have gone with Marcus. He had made my hand go back to normal, but I was pretty sure of one thing; leaving school with some guy I didn’t know without telling anyone was a very bad idea, no matter what he was promising.

Still, I wasn’t done with Marcus. He had a lot of explaining to do.

First though, I had to make it through the school day without my hand going postal again. And for that I needed help. Help I could trust. I needed Emma.

Emma Campbell had been my best friend since third grade when we’d discovered we both had a crush on Eric Meyers. Emma’s mom, Charlotte Campbell, was Greenfield High’s drama teacher, so Emma always spent last period helping backstage with whatever school play was in the works.

I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans. The battery was low, but I tapped out a text to Emma and pressed send.

Four minutes later, my phone chimed a return message. Good. Emma was already on her way with a hall pass from her mom.

I looked down at my ghost hand. It was still all blurred around the edges, like someone had attacked it with a crimping iron. Why was it doing this to me? An image flashed in my head from some bad horror film—a severed hand with a bloody stump dragging itself down a long hallway by its fingernails. Except this was worse. My evil hand was still attached to me.

The restroom door banged open, and I yanked my legs up, listening while Brittany Randolph and Leah Hodge used the toilets, washed their hands, and shared a quick cigarette and some mindless chatter. They were freshmen, so I didn’t pay much attention to them until they mentioned Passion Wainwright.

“Maybe she’s pregnant,” Leah said, “That can make you faint and shit.”

“You actually think the Virgin Mary screwed someone?” Brittany sneered. “Not likely. I don’t think she’s pregnant. I think she’s schizo.”

“Well yeah, but—”

“No, I don’t mean just praise-Jesus crazy. I mean so messed up in the head she needs a shrink. My dad saw her coming out of Dr. Black’s office the other day.”

Dr. Black’s office
. The way she said it made my mother’s workplace sound like a crack house. So, Passion had been seeing my mom and, as usual, I was the last to know. Dr. Sophie Black, psychologist extraordinaire, took her doctor/patient confidentiality very seriously. She never told me anything, which was pretty ridiculous in a town so small and nosey you couldn’t take a crap without the neighbors overhearing and asking you how it had all come out. Still, that meant Passion’s parents did know about her cutting and had gotten her some help.

After Brittany and Leah left, I lowered my aching legs, only to hear the door open again. I left my legs where they were and hoped for the best.

“Olivia?”

“Emma, I’m in here.” I wagged my foot under the stall door. My backpack zipper was undone a little, so I slipped my phone into it. Then I opened the door and ushered Emma in. “What took you so long?” I asked. There wasn’t much room. It was a challenge just getting the door closed again.

“I got here as fast as I could,” she said, looking concerned. “What’s wrong?”