Girl Meets Ghost (5 page)

“Yeah,” I say grumpily, brushing my notebook off. “Any chance you also remember Jen's last name?”

She shrugs. Yeah. I didn't think so.

“So what are we doing here?” she asks. I fill her in on what I found out earlier, about her team and the accident. “Wow,” she says, her eyes wild. “That's, like, so dramatic.”

She stays quiet as I plow through the crowd and into the school. Once I'm inside, I follow the sound of sneakers squeaking, figuring that since Daniella was a gymnast, it's a safe bet that I can learn something if I go to the gym. There's a boys' basketball team in there practicing, but I barge right in.

“What are you doing?” Daniella asks. “You can't just go—”

“Yoo-hoo!” I yell. “Excuse me!”

Daniella starts flipping out. “Stop!” she shrieks. She tries to bat my hands, but she just goes floating right through me. It's kind of funny, actually. “Stop! You can't just go around and yell at boys' basketball practice!”

Actually, she's wrong. Completely wrong. I've been on enough of these spy missions to realize that you have to go in and start yelling and getting your hands dirty, otherwise you'll never get anything done. Also, it's always better to talk to boys when you need information. Girls get way too suspicious and start asking all kinds of questions.

True to form, a guy wanders off the court toward me. He's all sweaty and wearing a basketball uniform. Gross.

“Oh my God,” Daniella says. “I remember him! That's Mitch Huntsman. Do not talk to him, Kendall! He's a total jerk.”

“Hello!” I say to him. “You're Mitch, right?”

“Yeah.” He looks at me. “How did you know that?”

“My sister goes here,” I say. “And she has a crush on you.” I lower my eyes to the ground, like it's some big secret I shouldn't be talking about.

“Who's your sister?”

“I'll tell you,” I say. “But first I need some help.”

He looks back over his shoulder to the basketball practice in progress, but the thought of my older sister liking
him must be too much to resist, because he turns back to me. “What do you need help with?”

I feel almost bad that my sister is fake. “Well,” I say, “I'm supposed to give a message to this girl named Jen. From, uh, my sister. But I forgot Jen's last name, and the only thing I know about her is that she's on the gymnastics team.”

At least I'm hoping she is.

“You mean Jen Higgins,” he says. “She should be across the hall in the other gym. They practice at the same time we do.”

“Thanks!” I say. He's nice. Daniella's totally wrong about him.

“He's only being nice to you because he thinks your fake sister likes him,” Daniella mumbles. “He's totally girl crazy.”

“Hey,” Mitch calls after me when I'm almost out of the gym. “Who's your sister?”

“Umm . . .” I rack my brains. “Ellie Wilimena!” Ellie's the closest thing I have to a sister, so it's not exactly a lie, right?”

“Ellie Wilimena,” Mitch says thoughtfully. “I think she's in my math class.”

“God, what a jerk!” Daniella gets all up in Mitch's face. “You were a jerk when I was alive, and you're still a jerk now. Jerk, jerk, jerk, jerk, jerk!” Wow. Talk about being judgmental and over the top.

“Later!” I call to Mitch. Daniella follows me out of the gym, but she's still muttering under her breath.

“What's so bad about him?” I ask. “He seemed nice to me.”

“Nice?” she says. “You think he was nice? He's totally self-absorbed. He always wears tight shirts to show off his muscles.”

“Maybe he's just proud of his body,” I say, shrugging.

“Ugh,” she says, looking me up and down. “I weep for the future.”

“You know what?” I say. “I'm getting kind of bored of this. I think I'm going to go home now. I have a lot of math homework anyway, so . . .”

“No, no, no. I'm sorry.” She bites her lip. “I know I'm being a brat. This is all just . . .” She looks around. “A little overwhelming.”

“Whatever,” I say. I'm at the other gym now, and I peek in. There are about ten or twelve girls, all in their gymnastics uniforms, flipping around. Wow. They are really flexible. Now I just have to figure out which one Jen is.

“Good job, Jen!” an older woman with curly hair, who I'm assuming is their coach, yells as a pretty girl with long blond hair goes tumbling down the mats.

“Oh my God,” Daniella says. “It's Jen.” She starts to say something else. But before she can, she disappears.

Whatever. I mean, I'm kind of used to that. Ghosts disappearing when they get all overwhelmed. It's like their brains can't handle it or something, and so instead of
fainting like a normal person would do, they just kind of . . . fade away. It's actually better for her. That she's gone. And better for me, too, since now it'll be a lot quieter.

I have to hang around until practice gets out, which almost gives me a heart attack, because I need to get back to school so that I can take the late bus home, or else my dad will definitely ground me.

I sit on the floor outside the gym (which is actually surprisingly clean—the custodians at this school must be way better than the ones at my school, since the floors there are super-disgusting) and work on my homework until the practice lets out. When it finally does, I'm totally ready for Jen. Jenny? Should I call her Jen or Jenny? Probably just Jen. No need to get cute.

“Hey, Jen!” I yell as she walks by, her backpack bouncing against the back of her dark purple hoodie. She turns around and looks at me. I haven't really figured out what I'm going to say to her. Which is okay. I'm always better on the fly.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“I just . . . um, I'm a gymnast.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize I shouldn't have said them. I mean, I know nothing about gymnastics. I mean, I'm not
totally
unprepared. I did some quick googling, so I know a few of the basic moves. And I've used some of the equipment, like the balance beam and uneven bars, during our
gymnastics unit in gym class. But that's about it. “And I was wondering if you could give me some pointers? Some very basic ones,” I add quickly. “I'm kind of just starting out, so nothing too, ah, technical.” Hmmm. So much for being better on the fly.

“You're a gymnast?” she says, shaking her head. She sounds confused. Which makes sense. After all, I'm just accosting her outside of practice, telling her I'm a gymnast looking for pointers. Not to mention that I really don't look like a gymnast. I'm short, at least, like gymnasts are, so that's good. But I think they wear their hair in ponytails a lot. Or buns. How boring.

“I'm sorry. What is it you're asking?” Jen asks, still sounding confused. She looks over her shoulder, like she's late for something.

“Yeah,” I say. “I'm, um, a gymnast. I used to go and watch your meets all the time. I really admired your teammate Daniella.” I look down at the ground like I'm all sad about her dying, but I'm looking up at Jen from below lowered lashes so that I can see her reaction.

“You watched Daniella Hughes?” Jen asks. Her voice softens, and I know I have the right Jen. Her whole face looks like she's longing to have Daniella back. I think about Ellie, about what I would do if anything ever happened to her, and my heart catches in my throat. This is the difficult part about what I do. Dealing with the dead people is easy,
because they're all fine. Happy, even. It's the people that are left behind that are the ones that are hard to talk to.

“Yes,” I say. “She was amazing on the beam.” I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm taking a guess, and also since I know hardly anything about gymnastics, this is the best I can come up with.

Jen just stares at me.

“Wanna walk together?” I ask, forcing my voice to sound all friendly and not like I'm going to pump her for info about Daniella. “I have to be back at the middle school to catch my late bus, but I would really just love to talk to you.”

“I can't,” she says, looking over her shoulder again. “Sorry, but I don't have my mom's car today and I'm about to miss my own late bus.”

“Oh. Right.” I force myself to sound really disappointed. She's afraid of missing her late bus? She's sixteen. I'm sure her dad isn't going to freak out if she comes home late, like mine would. “Sorry, I just . . . I really was hoping to get some pointers from someone I admire.” I look down at the ground like I'm devastated, and then turn and start walking away.

My gamble pays off, because I hear her sigh, and then she yells after me, “Wait! Where do you live?”

“In Briarwood,” I say, turning around.

“Well, you'd be on my late bus,” she says. She bites her
lip and thinks about it. “I could probably get you on. The driver doesn't even know who's coming or going half the time.”

I think about it. It's a risk, because if for some reason the driver doesn't let me on, I'll miss my middle school late bus, and then I'll be stranded. Of course, I guess I could always just walk back to the middle school and then call my dad and tell him I missed the bus. But I don't know if he'd believe that after the whole fiasco in the mall yesterday.

I hesitate, but then Daniella comes back. “Oh my God,” she says, her voice full of sadness. “It's Jen.”

And her face looks so sad and her eyes fill with tears. And so when Jen says, “What's it going to be?” I follow her out the door and toward the bus.

Wow. The high school
late bus is kind of crazy. I cannot believe that this is what I'm going to be dealing with in a couple of years. No one's even
pretending
to sit in their seats, they're talking super-loud, and there are three kids in the back that are bopping a soccer ball around with their
heads
. I'm really not surprised that Daniella's bus driver got into an accident if this is how the kids were behaving. Talk about distracting.

“So,” Jen says once we're settled into a seat in the middle of the bus. Someone's iPod goes flying over my head, followed by the sound of a kid yelling, “RYYYAAAN! THAT WAS MY IPOD, AND IF YOU BROKE IT, YOU'RE GOING TO PAY!” I clutch my bag a little tighter against
my chest. “What do you want to know about gymnastics?”

Right. Gymnastics. Crap. How am I going to figure out what the heck happened between her and Daniella if we're talking about
gymnastics
? More importantly, how am I going to talk about gymnastics when I hardly know anything about it?

“Well,” I say slowly, “I used to come to your meets and watch Daniella. She was my favorite gymnast.” I pull out of my bag the picture of their team that I printed off the internet. “I wanted to have her sign this, but I always chickened out before I could ask her. She was so good that it was just . . . It was intimidating.”

God, Daniella would love this if she were here. Even though I've never actually even seen her do any gymnastics (except for the splits and stuff she does to show off), she seems like the type that would eat up every compliment. But she left again when we got on the bus. I think she was afraid to hear what Jen would say. I don't blame her. I'm kind of afraid of what Jen might say too, especially if it's going to be “You're a liar, and you don't know anything about gymnastics, so leave me alone, you psycho.”

Jen takes the picture and runs her hand over the printed faces. “You shouldn't have been intimidated,” she says. “Daniella would have signed it. She loved her fans.”

“Yeah, I'll bet she did,” I say without thinking. Jen looks at me funny, so I quickly add, “She just seemed like
she would be really nice, you know? I looked up to her so much.” Wow, I'm really laying it on thick. So thick that for a second I wonder if I've gone too far.

But Jen just nods and hands the picture back to me. “A lot of people did. Daniella was amazing. Did you see her at the Central Square meet?”

“Yes,” I lie. “She was awesome.”

Jen looks at me and frowns. “That was the meet where she fell off the beam and had to be taken to the hospital.”

“Oh,” I say, smacking my forehead like I just got confused for a second. “That's right! I'm always getting her meets mixed up, since I went to so many.”

“Anyway,” she continues, “Daniella was right back out there as soon as the doctor said it was okay. I would have been scared, but not her.”

“She was daring,” I say, nodding my head.

“She was,” Jen says. She smiles, remembering. “So what was your favorite move she did on the beam?”

“Oh, I liked them all,” I say. For some reason my voice cracks. I really should have done a little more research on gymnastics before I came here. But I was assuming Daniella would be around to feed me info. But I guess not.

“Yeah,” Jen presses, “but which one was your favorite?”

The bus is getting closer to my house now, and so I start to panic. Not only haven't I gotten any good information, but somehow Jen is the one who's interrogating
me.
“I liked
her cartwheel,” I try. Daniella was doing cartwheels the first time I saw her, so I'm hoping maybe it's, like, her signature move or something. Plus who can really mess up a cartwheel?

“Daniella's cartwheels on the beam were horrible,” Jen says quietly. Oopsies. “And the beam was her weakest event.”

“Yeah,” I try, “but that's why I liked Daniella so much as a gymnast. She never gave up trying to make those cartwheels better.”

The bus is getting closer to my stop, and I'm starting to lose it. I have to get back on track here. But something's telling me I need to back off talking about Daniella and abort this mission, fast. “So we never really got a chance to talk about your gymnastics goals,” I say in an effort to change the subject. “Are you hoping to get a college scholarship?”