The promise of July: sunglasses and
cut off shorts, feeling the warm blades of grass between your toes, trips to
the brook at the edge of the woods, short nights that seem to go on
forever—smothering you with oppressive heat until you wake up gasping for
breath, your hair plastered to the back of your neck.
The
long days provide freedom from school and parents, and often even friends. It’s
a time to be alone, to let yourself grow, to shed another layer of skin as you
progress through adolescence. Each summer tracks your maturity with the flakes
of skin trailing your footsteps. Those layers are childhood husks. You know
that when you go back to school, passing notes in class will become a thing of
the past; too immature for us now. Crushes become relationships. Gossip turns
from who snogged who to who shagged who.
We
are in the midst of that rarest of things—a warm and sunny English summer. It
has lasted for almost two weeks and even the old ladies at the bus stop have
stopped talking about the weather. No one wants to jinx it. No one wants to
frighten the sun away. We treat it like a bird in the garden, tip-toeing our
way through the lawn, trying not to startle it into taking to its wings and
abandoning us.
I’ve
been waiting for this moment. Since the fire, my burns have taken time to heal.
Now the bandages are off, and I can go out in the sunshine. I want to enjoy the
rest of my summer before it fades into September and brings the school term with
it. The thought of exams and coursework make my abdomen clench with anxiety.
Right now, I want to forget about all that, enjoy being alive, enjoy my
well-earned freedom.
But
as soon as the opportunity is within my grasp, it’s snatched away by those
who-think-they-know-best. I find myself pouting like a little girl, regressing
into the stereotypical teen, whinging away at my parents.
“You’ll
enjoy it, Mary.” Mum has her back to me, folding clean clothes into three neat
piles. One of those piles is mine. “It’s nice to get away from here. There will
be plenty of people your age.”
“Camping?” I say again. “I shouldn’t be
going camping with my parents anymore. I’m seventeen.”
The words it’s not fair are within
dangerous proximity. I’m a cliché.
She
turns towards me and seizes a t-shirt from the basket. “It’s a static caravan
on a campsite. It’s not like you’ll be in a tent. Discos every night—”
“For
children.”
“—entertainment—”
“For
children.”
She
purses her lips. “The holiday will be what you make of it.” Her eyes dart to
the door and back again. She lowers her voice. “It’s all we can afford this
year. You know, since your father lost that job.” She mouths the last words as
though she’s ashamed to say them.
Dad
used to teach at a private school. It was a good job, bringing in a high
salary. But they decided to cut back in the science department and now he’s had
to take a job at a comprehensive school in Leeds. It’s an hour’s commute and
less pay. I see less of him, and he spends a large portion of his salary on
petrol. Mum’s a full time office manager, but her firm has had a freeze on
pay-rises for the last three years, due to the recession.
“You
should be proud of his new job,” I say. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I
am,” she replies. “But your father isn’t. That’s why it’s easiest to avoid the
subject.” A silence hangs for a moment. No matter what she says, I hear that
tone in her voice, the one that speaks louder than her words. Now she can’t
turn her nose up at the riff-raff at the office, or attend the Christmas prom
at Dad’s old school wearing her one diamond necklace. She’s back to being a
regular wife. “Mary, take these clothes up to your room and start packing.”
The
bundle of clothes is thrust into my arms and I pull it to my body, inhaling the
clean scent. My feet pad across the carpet.
When
I’m halfway to the hall, Mum calls out, “Hey, you never know, you could have a
holiday romance.” She waggles her eyebrows for emphasis.
“In
Nettleby, North Yorkshire? I’d be lucky to find anyone under sixty,” I reply.
But somehow the tension fades and we both laugh at the same time.
She
pauses before she says, “You know, I hope there is a nice boy in Nettleby. It
would do you good.” Her eyes drift to the scars on my neck and the smile fades
from my face.
I
shake the uneasy feeling away, the one that tells me my mum wants someone to
make me feel attractive again. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it won’t be so bad.
After everything that has happened in the last few months, it’ll be nice to
spend some time with my parents. And to be honest, Nettleby does sound peaceful,
and peace is what I could do with, right now.
My
fingers fumble with the door handle to my room. My room. The one place in this
house I can call my own.
The
summer has turned it into a hot house, with sunlight streaming through the
attic window. Tiny specks of dust are illuminated as they hang in the air like
daylight stars. I flop down on the bed, the motion wobbling the mirror-ball I
keep on my bedside table where it catches the light from the window. Squares of
gold move along the pastel blue curtains, dance over my dressing table, and
travel shakily across my MGMT poster.
I
bury my head in the duvet, inhaling the scent of lavender from Mum’s brand of
washing powder. As much as we clash with each other, if she was hurt or died, I
would come into my room, smell the lavender, and have the world pulled from
under my feet. She’s a rock, and I have to remind myself of that, even when
she’s really annoying.
She
helped me get better.
Well,
she tried.
As
my mind drifts from daylight stars to daylight monsters, the temperature of the
room dips, and my muscles tense. A prickling cold spreads over my skin. Someone
is here.
A
light film of sweat forms on my forehead as I inch myself up on my elbows. At
the end of the bed stands a girl, about my age, and most definitely dead.
Not
that you can tell.
Her
blond hair falls into her eyes, which are ringed in black. She wears a grey
hoody, with the hood down, and grey jogging bottoms without a cord or belt. Her
blue eyes bore into mine. Her jaw opens to speak…
“’Sup,
Mares? Give you a fright did I? Couldn’t knock or owt, what with the… you
know.”
“Inability
to take corporeal form?” I say.
“That’s
the one.” She grins at me. “So what’s the news? The afterlife is boring as
hell.”
A
shiver of guilt passes down my spine.
Did
I forget to mention that my best friend is a ghost? Well, it’s complicated. I
was in a mental institute at the time—so was Lacey—and we had a murderer to
find. The day that he found us, I had expected to die; instead, he killed
Lacey. He stabbed her in the back. Since then she’s stuck around.
“We’re
going camping,” I say with a groan. “Can you believe it?”
Lacey
leaps forward to grab my arm, but her form crackles like electricity and fails
to make contact. “Damn it, stupid ghost form. Camping though, mate. That’s
awesome! I used to love camping. Can I come?”
I
laugh. “Sure, you can come. You know the drill though, right?”
Lacey
chuckles. “You mean I’m not allowed to stand next to people pulling faces and
twerking on them?”
“Oh
man, I got thrown out of that cinema but it was so worth it.” I can’t keep the
grin off my face as I remember Lacey dancing around the cinema, rubbing her bum
against the unsuspecting people on the front row. I almost choked on my
popcorn. Unfortunately, my then boyfriend didn’t find it so amusing. “Mo still
hasn’t called. I can’t believe he ended it like that.”
“Fuck
him,” she says. “Actually, no, don’t. Delete him. Delete his number, burn the
photos—get him out of your life. He’s not worth it. You would think after
everything he’s been through he’d have more of an open mind.”
I
met Mo on Magdelena Ward. I was in for schizo hallucinations, he was in for
paranoid schizophrenia. I guess it was always doomed to fail, but the final nail
hit the coffin when I told him about Lacey. He reckoned my “negativity” and
inability to “see the truth” could tip him over the edge when it came to his
mental health. I don’t blame him, to be honest. But that doesn’t mean I’m not
disappointed in him. Why couldn’t he trust in me?
Lacey
leans forward and my skin chills again. “Seriously. Forget about him. He’s not
worth it. He’s not worth you.”
Lacey
Holloway, the one-woman-ghost committed to bolstering my self-esteem. It’s a
tough job, but someone’s got to do it. A hesitant smile forms on my lips, but
then I remember how Lacey will never have another relationship and that smile
is replaced by a heavy feeling of guilt: like a woollen blanket, familiar but
itchy.
“Mum
said I might have a holiday romance,” I say.
“That
is a perfect idea. You need to get over Mo.” Her eyes widen with excitement. “I
can be your wing-ghost.”
I
start laughing, but then catch my reflection in my dressing table mirror. My
hair is long, thick and dark. Destined to never be tamed, it falls over my eyes
and ripples down to my collar bones. But from the laughter, I’ve shaken it away
from my pale, oval face.
My fingers rise to my throat, which has become
exposed from me tipping my head back. There I trace the lasting reminder from
the fire at Magdelena. There I trace the translucent white marks left to me by
Dr. Gethen. My nightmares are filled with that night. I replay it over and
over. My skin warms beneath my fingertips, as though I’m there again. I pull
myself away, move my hair over my neck, and try not to think about it.
“You’re
coming camping with me, then?” I ask Lacey. “Because there’s no way I’m getting
through the week on my own.”
She
winks at me. “Do ducks fart underwater?”
I
frown. “Eh?”
She
laughs. “I dunno, my dad used to say it. Yes, Mary, of course I’m coming!”
To
drown out the sound of me talking to a ghost, I put on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at
full blast. Before long we’re wailing along with Karen O. Lacey dances around
the room, crackling and sparking like a broken television. My suitcase fills up
and I don’t even care about camping, anymore. At some point, I forget that
Lacey is dead. I forget about how her body is in the graveyard three miles
away, off the main road heading north. The Lacey I know is the vibrant, dancing,
singing girl pogoing up and down with her arms spread wide. A rush of
something—I don’t know what—fills me up from my toes to my ears. Maybe it’s
that freedom I wanted.
*
The smell of exhaust fumes sneaks in
through the open car window. The leather seats stick to my bare thighs, and the
sound of honking horns is my soundtrack as everyone decides to try to travel on
the motorway at the same time. In the front of the car, my parents argue while
holding the AA road map across the dashboard. I lean back against the head rest
of the back seat in our stationary vehicle, and zone out the traffic jam,
parental swearing, and fumes by plugging in my iPod and escaping into the
music.
A
few hours later—after a greasy meal at the motorway service station—we leave
the major roads behind at last, and navigate the twisting rural lanes of North
Yorkshire. It’s moorland here, heather growing amongst the spongy grass,
stretching out for what feels like forever. Jagged rocks peek out of hillsides.
The occasional sheep looks up and stares at our car, chewing its grass in a
languid, deliberate motion, as though its mind is occupied elsewhere.
I
lean forward, hitting the back of Mum’s seat with my shoulder. “There’s nothing here. What are we going to be
doing?”
“We’re
not there yet,” Dad reminds me, grinning at me in the rear view mirror.
“Positive thinking, Mares.”
I
sigh and lean back into my seat. I guess he’s right. I let my head swing to one
side, watching the world go by. This bit—I like.
I
love the way the greens and browns merge together as the car travels through
the countryside. Beneath me the car rocks like a cradle. I used to read
wherever we went somewhere, but now I follow the landscape with my eyes,
picking out the occasional stream, the flowers in the grass verge, and the
black and white splodges of cows.
A
fleeting memory pops into my mind—driving through the countryside with Dad, him
slowing the car to a crawl so I can reach out of the open window and pick the
long flowers swaying above the reedy grass. He had one of those ‘Dad’
smiles—the ones where their eyes are sad because you’re growing up so fast.
Then he whispered, “Don’t tell your mum. If she knew you’d had even a finger out
of that window…” I’d giggled. Knowing that we were breaking Mum’s car-rules
made it even more fun.
But
then the world changes. That safe feeling is pulled out from underneath me, as
though I’ve leapt high into the air before glancing down to see the trampoline
disappear. My heart freezes before it quickens and the hairs stand up on the
back of my neck. My throat tightens. I clutch the edge of the seat so hard I
feel the blood drain from my hands.
You
would think I’m used to seeing them now, but I’m not. I never will be.
Standing
like a scarecrow in the middle of a crop field, is one of them. Its skull shines through its face, and haunting sunken eyes
stare at me, dark as night. A chill passes over my body.
This
is a warning.
