3
One time in high school, I was walking down the hallway. It must have been during class, because the hall was deserted, and when I passed the staircase, I heard someone crying. I turned and saw this girl crumpled on the steps. She tried to cover her face, but I could see her skin was bright red, and her sobs sounded really snotty. I didn’t know her. She was sort of fat, and her clothes were dorky. I wondered if she’d been bullied. I should have said something, but I didn’t know what. So I snuck away before she noticed me.
Memories.
They strike when you least expect them.
Jenny is still crying, and I haven’t said anything. I don’t know how to deal with crying girls, even when they’re ghosts. And I don’t get why she’s crying. I mean, crying is a physiological reaction. A way for the body to relieve stress. But ghosts don’t have bodies. She doesn’t have to breathe, yet I hear her choke and gasp. I watch her shoulders shake. Does she have to think about doing that?
I wonder if she died recently.
Jenny’s sobs subside, and her body grows still. It looks like she’s sleeping. Not in a normal way. Like a toddler, butt in the air, face pressed to the floor. I hover near her and sink into the floorboards until I’m close to her ear.
“Are you finished?” I ask.
She jerks straight up. She slowly turns to face me, like a girl from a horror movie who’s just realized the monster was behind her the entire time.
“Boo,” I say.
Jenny doesn’t jump or scream or laugh at my lame joke. Instead, she wrinkles her forehead and makes one of the corners of her lips go down, not quite a frown. Wiping her eyes, she climbs to her feet.
“You’re still here?” Her face is red around her eyes, though not nearly splotchy enough to look ugly.
“Where would I go?” I reply, popping up to look her in the eye. “I’m trapped. Are you going to cross over, or do you think you’ll be here for a while?”
Jenny peers at me out the side of her eyes. “Who are you?”
“I told you. I’m Curtis, the ghost of Thornfield Manor.”
“Yes, but… are you real?”
Well, that’s a question and a half.
Are ghosts real?
I didn’t used to think so. In fact, I distinctly recall dying with the great and terrible knowledge that I would soon be extinguished into absolute nothing, not going to heaven or hell, but slipping into a permanent sleep from which I’d never wake.
And then I became a ghost.
Am I real? I wonder this all the time. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If you can’t fall over because you have no body, and if no one sees you fall or hears you shout, do you exist?
But I’m spacing out. Jenny waves her hand in front of my face.
“Curtis?”
“Define real,” I say.
“Were you ever alive?”
“Yes.”
“And you died?”
“You know what a ghost is, right? It’s what you are.”
“I’m not a ghost.”
“I hate to break this to you, but--”
“I’m Charlotte’s imaginary friend,” she cuts me off.
That’s… unexpected.
The movement in Jenny’s face has gone still. All her intensity is funneled into her unblinking purple eyes. She stares at me like she’s challenging me to a fight. Like she’s expecting me to say, “Ha, ha, but no, what are you really?” or else wag a finger in her face and tell her, “That’s ridiculous. Imaginary friends aren’t real.”
I’m not going to say that.
Who am I to say what can and cannot exist? Reality, I’ve come to accept, is a matter of perception. You wake up every day, and every day you think you know what reality is, and every day you’re wrong. Reality is nothing more than what you have observed, what you have been told, and what conclusions you draw. The minute something changes--the minute you take in new information--reality shifts. And so, inevitably, the reality you live in one day is never quite the reality you live in the next.
Imaginary friends don’t exist outside the imagination of the person who created them. That is my understanding of reality.
Jenny is not part of my imagination, yet I see her.
Jenny does not fit within my notions of reality, so now I have a choice--to shift my perception or to dismiss her.
I’ve been dismissed often enough. I won’t do it to her.
“Huh,” I say at last. “That’s interesting.”
Jenny blinks and tilts her head.
“You believe me?” she asks.
“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.” I circle her, taking in the details anew. The face like Charlotte’s, the long twin braids, the hopelessly out-of-date dress, the unnerving purple eyes. She could be the product of someone’s imagination. Maybe.
“How do you know you’re an imaginary friend?” I ask.
Jenny hunches her shoulders. I think my prowling has made her uncomfortable.
“Charlotte created me.”
“How?”
“She just… created me. She said, ‘Your name is Jenny. You’re my little sister, and you have brown hair and purple eyes like my doll.’ ” Jenny points to bottom shelf of the cabinet, where the ragdoll lies partially buried under paper flowers. “And then I appeared.”
She looks at me. I say nothing.
She licks her lips. “Charlotte was around five at the time. No one else could see me. Her dad pretended, but we both knew he couldn’t. Charlotte told me who I was, what I liked, how I felt. Whatever she said, that’s what I was. She molded me.”
“And she just… kept you around?” I ask.
This makes no sense. How can I remember Charlotte and not Jenny? I wander to the cabinet and stare through the glass door. The doll’s face is stained with age, and the yarn hair is fuzzy. How did it look when it was new? I can’t picture it.
“I don’t remember this doll,” I say.
“Her mother put it in the attic. Charlotte grew out of it. She grew out of me, like any normal child would.” Jenny crosses her arms over her chest. “It wasn’t until after her parents died that she started thinking about me again. Life had gotten too hard, and she needed a friend. So she brought me back.”
“Is that the reason for the therapist?” I wave my hand at the cabinet. “This shrine, the poem, driving up here--it’s all some New Age ritual for dealing with the talking voices inside Charlotte’s head.”
Jenny stiffens. “Charlotte’s not crazy.”
“Says the imaginary friend.”
“She’s not crazy!” Jenny yells. “Sure, Charlotte struggled with depression, but that’s normal considering the circumstances. She didn’t know she was depressed, she didn’t have access to medication. What was she supposed to do? She needed a way to cope.”
“That’s what the therapist says you are? A coping device?”
Jenny’s expression goes from defensive to… well, like a dog that lost its owner. She looks down at her hands.
“I’m Charlotte’s creation. I’m part of her… but also… I’m not. Everything I am, I owe to Charlotte. But I can do things without her. Sometimes Charlotte worries that… with her family history… she thinks…” Jenny swallows. “But she’s wrong. I would never hurt her.”
I wait for clarity, but it seems that Jenny has said her piece. She walks to the edge of the balcony and places her hands on the railing, one on top of the other, leaving me to fill in the blanks. I try, but my mind is old and fuzzy. Charlotte must be afraid that Jenny is a symptom of a full-on psychotic break. Clearly, that’s not the case. I mean, can you still be considered crazy once other people see your delusions?
“Are you sure you’re not a ghost?” I ask.
“You have to be alive first.”
“And you never were?”
Jenny shakes her head. “Everything I’ve experienced--ice cream, dancing, music--it all comes from Charlotte. They’re her memories, I just sort of absorbed them. I’d know if I had any memories of my own.”
“Unless you forgot.”
“I’d know,” she insists.
Maybe she’s right. I forget things all the time--but I know the difference between what I’ve forgotten and what I never knew in the first place. I know I was alive. I don’t doubt that.
Suddenly Jenny whirls on me. “How do I know you’re really a ghost?”
“What else would I be?”
“Maybe Charlotte created you. Maybe you’re also an imaginary friend, and you just don’t realize it.”
I consider it for a second, then dismiss it. I’m too vast to come out of some girl’s imagination.
“No,” I say. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would Charlotte create another imaginary friend? She’s trying to get rid of her coping devices.”
Jenny flinches.
“She may have put you here to keep me company,” she says softly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She felt bad about abandoning me. In the car, Charlotte asked if I’d be lonely. She wondered if she could make me a friend. I told her not to bother. When I heard you screaming, I figured she went ahead and did it anyway.” Jenny puts her thumb to her chin, pinching it in her hand. “I’m not entirely sure you aren’t a figment of Charlotte’s imagination. A ghost who happens to be haunting Charlotte’s old house—awfully convenient, don’t you think?”
“Not for me. Besides, I’ve been a ghost longer than you’ve been alive.”
“I’m not alive.”
“Whatever.”
“Can you prove you’re a ghost?”
“How would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Tell me a little about yourself.” Her lips flick up into the slightest of smiles. “How’d you get here?”
“I don’t remember.”
The almost-smile vanishes. “You don’t remember?”
I point to my temple. “No brain. Memories leak out.”
“Were you from around this area?”
“No idea.”
“Who were your parents?”
I shrug.
“Do you have a last name?”
“Probably.”
Jenny shakes her head. “Seems suspicious to me.”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve never felt the need to prove my own existence.
Jenny drifts back to her old position overlooking the balcony.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m going to die soon, anyway.”
“Die?”
“Whatever you want to call it.” She rests her chin on top of her hands. “Charlotte’s going to forget me, and once that happens, it’ll be like I never existed.”
I creep beside her. “How do you know that?”
“She’s done it before.” Jenny stares straight into the sun, just beginning its descent down the sky. “The first time, when she was five, Charlotte’s mother started to worry, so she took Charlotte to a therapist. She told Charlotte it was time to let go of imaginary friends. And she did. Charlotte willed me out of existence.”
“What was it like?”
“Like being ripped apart.” Jenny’s voice is soft and low. “My name, my voice, my personality—all gone. I tried to hold on, but I couldn’t. I was nothing. It was dark, very dark. I was in the darkness, but I was also part of the darkness. I became the darkness, because there wasn’t anything else for me to be. And then I waited. I waited for a long time.” She turns to me. “Is that what it feels like to die?”
“No,” I say. “Not like that.”
I only lost my body when I died. Not my soul.
I look past balcony. The pine trees are slim and straight, with the greenest branches hiding the sickly ones beneath. Sparrows hop between the living and dying limbs, cheep-cheeping the afternoon news. Somewhere in the distance, a mockingbird replies.
If day in and day out, no one sees or hears or acknowledges you, do you really exist? The answer is yes. I acknowledge myself, even if no one else does. But to have that taken from me… to lose all that I am… to become nothing….
I can’t imagine it.
I won’t imagine it.
I look at Jenny. Her eyes are glassy and muted, not an electric purple, but a dull and dusty violet. And I don’t know why, but suddenly the stillness is too still, the quiet is too quiet, the beauty of the forest is oppressive, and I can no longer stand this heaviness growing in my soul.
“Hey,” I say to Jenny. “Want to see something cool?”
She turns. “What?”
“Come here, I’ll show you.”
I hop through the balcony.
The railing feels warm as I pass through it. I pause mid-air and spin around, so I can see Jenny as I float down onto the carpet of pine needles. She leans over, her pigtails hanging over the hand guard. She bites her lip.
“It’s a long drop,” she says.
“Two stories. What are you worried about?”
She frowns. “Hold on a minute.”
She runs back around the porch. A few seconds later, Jenny sprints down the hill, sliding through low bushes and dodging granite rocks. I half expect to see her kick up clouds of dust. I’m not sure why she’s decided to go the long way around. I know she can pass through objects. She went through a truck.
“Are you afraid of heights?” I ask.
“No. I just can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
She leaps off a rock and lands beside me. “Fly--float--whatever you do.”
“It’s easy.” I glide over a fallen log.
Jenny goes around. “Not to me.”
“Well, this may be a problem,” I remark. “We need to get to the top of a tree.”
“I can climb.”
“How? You don’t have hands. It makes no sense.”
Jenny shrugs. “Easier than flying.”
I give up trying to figure out this girl.
I fly ahead. About twenty feet up a butterscotch pine, where fire or disease carved a cavity into the thick orange bark, two baby owls huddle in a nest. They are white puffballs. One is sleeping. The other is awake and looking straight at me. Its round black eyes, sliver of a beak, and abundance of fluff reminds me a kid bundled up for the snow. Mommy owl perches nearby, also asleep. She’s a little larger than a raven, and her feathers are brown with streaks of white.
One good thing about being a ghost--I can go right up to animals without scaring them away. I try to remember that whenever I start feeling too sorry for myself.
“Jenny,” I call.
“Coming.”
The pine is too high for her, so she climbs a nearby oak instead. I see flashes of her checkered purple dress underneath the canopy of spiky leaves and spider webs. Jenny emerges from the debris and stands on the top of the oak, like a wingless Christmas angel. She leaps for the nearest branch of the butterscotch pine. She catches it and pulls herself up. Branch by branch, she climbs to where I’m hovering. By the time she catches up, she is red-faced and out of breath.
“Now, what’s this--oh!”
Jenny spies the owls, and her eyes go bright and crinkly. She smiles so wide I can see her teeth.
“They’re so cute,” Jenny squeals.
She crawls toward them, bringing her face centimeters from theirs. Jenny sits on her knees and leans on her hands.
“How did you find them?”
“Their parents nest here every spring.”
“You watch for them?”
“I know every inch of this forest.”
“I guess you really are a ghost. Charlotte didn’t know about this.”
“There used to be three of them,” I say. “But the third one fell off the nest.”
“It died?”
I nod. I don’t know why I brought it up.
“You have to expect that sort of thing. At least with the owl, I knew what happened.” I gaze at the nest. “So often, you see a bird on this one particular tree or a snake on this one particular rock, and it keeps coming back. And you don’t mean to, but you get attached. Like it’s your pet. Then one day it disappears. You never see it again.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenny says.
So much for lightening the mood.
“It’s okay. Hey.” I jump from the pine tree. “I have something else to show you. Can you come over here?”
“Over where?”
“By this juniper tree.”
If I’m going to be depressing, I might as well go the whole hog. I skim across the forest and arrive at the juniper before Jenny can even climb down from the pine.
Part of the juniper tree is dead. The center trunk is as gray and smooth as driftwood, and its branches are stiff and bare. Part of the juniper tree is alive. Shaggy orange bark twists over the gray skeleton and sends off shoots of scaly leaves. Clusters of powder blue berries ripen underneath. I wait in the shade while Jenny dashes through yellow wildflowers.
“I’m here,” she puffs.
“Glad you made it.”
She glances at the juniper. “Now what’s so special about this tree?”
“This is where I died.”
Memories.
They strike when you least expect them.
Jenny is still crying, and I haven’t said anything. I don’t know how to deal with crying girls, even when they’re ghosts. And I don’t get why she’s crying. I mean, crying is a physiological reaction. A way for the body to relieve stress. But ghosts don’t have bodies. She doesn’t have to breathe, yet I hear her choke and gasp. I watch her shoulders shake. Does she have to think about doing that?
I wonder if she died recently.
Jenny’s sobs subside, and her body grows still. It looks like she’s sleeping. Not in a normal way. Like a toddler, butt in the air, face pressed to the floor. I hover near her and sink into the floorboards until I’m close to her ear.
“Are you finished?” I ask.
She jerks straight up. She slowly turns to face me, like a girl from a horror movie who’s just realized the monster was behind her the entire time.
“Boo,” I say.
Jenny doesn’t jump or scream or laugh at my lame joke. Instead, she wrinkles her forehead and makes one of the corners of her lips go down, not quite a frown. Wiping her eyes, she climbs to her feet.
“You’re still here?” Her face is red around her eyes, though not nearly splotchy enough to look ugly.
“Where would I go?” I reply, popping up to look her in the eye. “I’m trapped. Are you going to cross over, or do you think you’ll be here for a while?”
Jenny peers at me out the side of her eyes. “Who are you?”
“I told you. I’m Curtis, the ghost of Thornfield Manor.”
“Yes, but… are you real?”
Well, that’s a question and a half.
Are ghosts real?
I didn’t used to think so. In fact, I distinctly recall dying with the great and terrible knowledge that I would soon be extinguished into absolute nothing, not going to heaven or hell, but slipping into a permanent sleep from which I’d never wake.
And then I became a ghost.
Am I real? I wonder this all the time. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If you can’t fall over because you have no body, and if no one sees you fall or hears you shout, do you exist?
But I’m spacing out. Jenny waves her hand in front of my face.
“Curtis?”
“Define real,” I say.
“Were you ever alive?”
“Yes.”
“And you died?”
“You know what a ghost is, right? It’s what you are.”
“I’m not a ghost.”
“I hate to break this to you, but--”
“I’m Charlotte’s imaginary friend,” she cuts me off.
That’s… unexpected.
The movement in Jenny’s face has gone still. All her intensity is funneled into her unblinking purple eyes. She stares at me like she’s challenging me to a fight. Like she’s expecting me to say, “Ha, ha, but no, what are you really?” or else wag a finger in her face and tell her, “That’s ridiculous. Imaginary friends aren’t real.”
I’m not going to say that.
Who am I to say what can and cannot exist? Reality, I’ve come to accept, is a matter of perception. You wake up every day, and every day you think you know what reality is, and every day you’re wrong. Reality is nothing more than what you have observed, what you have been told, and what conclusions you draw. The minute something changes--the minute you take in new information--reality shifts. And so, inevitably, the reality you live in one day is never quite the reality you live in the next.
Imaginary friends don’t exist outside the imagination of the person who created them. That is my understanding of reality.
Jenny is not part of my imagination, yet I see her.
Jenny does not fit within my notions of reality, so now I have a choice--to shift my perception or to dismiss her.
I’ve been dismissed often enough. I won’t do it to her.
“Huh,” I say at last. “That’s interesting.”
Jenny blinks and tilts her head.
“You believe me?” she asks.
“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.” I circle her, taking in the details anew. The face like Charlotte’s, the long twin braids, the hopelessly out-of-date dress, the unnerving purple eyes. She could be the product of someone’s imagination. Maybe.
“How do you know you’re an imaginary friend?” I ask.
Jenny hunches her shoulders. I think my prowling has made her uncomfortable.
“Charlotte created me.”
“How?”
“She just… created me. She said, ‘Your name is Jenny. You’re my little sister, and you have brown hair and purple eyes like my doll.’ ” Jenny points to bottom shelf of the cabinet, where the ragdoll lies partially buried under paper flowers. “And then I appeared.”
She looks at me. I say nothing.
She licks her lips. “Charlotte was around five at the time. No one else could see me. Her dad pretended, but we both knew he couldn’t. Charlotte told me who I was, what I liked, how I felt. Whatever she said, that’s what I was. She molded me.”
“And she just… kept you around?” I ask.
This makes no sense. How can I remember Charlotte and not Jenny? I wander to the cabinet and stare through the glass door. The doll’s face is stained with age, and the yarn hair is fuzzy. How did it look when it was new? I can’t picture it.
“I don’t remember this doll,” I say.
“Her mother put it in the attic. Charlotte grew out of it. She grew out of me, like any normal child would.” Jenny crosses her arms over her chest. “It wasn’t until after her parents died that she started thinking about me again. Life had gotten too hard, and she needed a friend. So she brought me back.”
“Is that the reason for the therapist?” I wave my hand at the cabinet. “This shrine, the poem, driving up here--it’s all some New Age ritual for dealing with the talking voices inside Charlotte’s head.”
Jenny stiffens. “Charlotte’s not crazy.”
“Says the imaginary friend.”
“She’s not crazy!” Jenny yells. “Sure, Charlotte struggled with depression, but that’s normal considering the circumstances. She didn’t know she was depressed, she didn’t have access to medication. What was she supposed to do? She needed a way to cope.”
“That’s what the therapist says you are? A coping device?”
Jenny’s expression goes from defensive to… well, like a dog that lost its owner. She looks down at her hands.
“I’m Charlotte’s creation. I’m part of her… but also… I’m not. Everything I am, I owe to Charlotte. But I can do things without her. Sometimes Charlotte worries that… with her family history… she thinks…” Jenny swallows. “But she’s wrong. I would never hurt her.”
I wait for clarity, but it seems that Jenny has said her piece. She walks to the edge of the balcony and places her hands on the railing, one on top of the other, leaving me to fill in the blanks. I try, but my mind is old and fuzzy. Charlotte must be afraid that Jenny is a symptom of a full-on psychotic break. Clearly, that’s not the case. I mean, can you still be considered crazy once other people see your delusions?
“Are you sure you’re not a ghost?” I ask.
“You have to be alive first.”
“And you never were?”
Jenny shakes her head. “Everything I’ve experienced--ice cream, dancing, music--it all comes from Charlotte. They’re her memories, I just sort of absorbed them. I’d know if I had any memories of my own.”
“Unless you forgot.”
“I’d know,” she insists.
Maybe she’s right. I forget things all the time--but I know the difference between what I’ve forgotten and what I never knew in the first place. I know I was alive. I don’t doubt that.
Suddenly Jenny whirls on me. “How do I know you’re really a ghost?”
“What else would I be?”
“Maybe Charlotte created you. Maybe you’re also an imaginary friend, and you just don’t realize it.”
I consider it for a second, then dismiss it. I’m too vast to come out of some girl’s imagination.
“No,” I say. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would Charlotte create another imaginary friend? She’s trying to get rid of her coping devices.”
Jenny flinches.
“She may have put you here to keep me company,” she says softly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She felt bad about abandoning me. In the car, Charlotte asked if I’d be lonely. She wondered if she could make me a friend. I told her not to bother. When I heard you screaming, I figured she went ahead and did it anyway.” Jenny puts her thumb to her chin, pinching it in her hand. “I’m not entirely sure you aren’t a figment of Charlotte’s imagination. A ghost who happens to be haunting Charlotte’s old house—awfully convenient, don’t you think?”
“Not for me. Besides, I’ve been a ghost longer than you’ve been alive.”
“I’m not alive.”
“Whatever.”
“Can you prove you’re a ghost?”
“How would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Tell me a little about yourself.” Her lips flick up into the slightest of smiles. “How’d you get here?”
“I don’t remember.”
The almost-smile vanishes. “You don’t remember?”
I point to my temple. “No brain. Memories leak out.”
“Were you from around this area?”
“No idea.”
“Who were your parents?”
I shrug.
“Do you have a last name?”
“Probably.”
Jenny shakes her head. “Seems suspicious to me.”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve never felt the need to prove my own existence.
Jenny drifts back to her old position overlooking the balcony.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m going to die soon, anyway.”
“Die?”
“Whatever you want to call it.” She rests her chin on top of her hands. “Charlotte’s going to forget me, and once that happens, it’ll be like I never existed.”
I creep beside her. “How do you know that?”
“She’s done it before.” Jenny stares straight into the sun, just beginning its descent down the sky. “The first time, when she was five, Charlotte’s mother started to worry, so she took Charlotte to a therapist. She told Charlotte it was time to let go of imaginary friends. And she did. Charlotte willed me out of existence.”
“What was it like?”
“Like being ripped apart.” Jenny’s voice is soft and low. “My name, my voice, my personality—all gone. I tried to hold on, but I couldn’t. I was nothing. It was dark, very dark. I was in the darkness, but I was also part of the darkness. I became the darkness, because there wasn’t anything else for me to be. And then I waited. I waited for a long time.” She turns to me. “Is that what it feels like to die?”
“No,” I say. “Not like that.”
I only lost my body when I died. Not my soul.
I look past balcony. The pine trees are slim and straight, with the greenest branches hiding the sickly ones beneath. Sparrows hop between the living and dying limbs, cheep-cheeping the afternoon news. Somewhere in the distance, a mockingbird replies.
If day in and day out, no one sees or hears or acknowledges you, do you really exist? The answer is yes. I acknowledge myself, even if no one else does. But to have that taken from me… to lose all that I am… to become nothing….
I can’t imagine it.
I won’t imagine it.
I look at Jenny. Her eyes are glassy and muted, not an electric purple, but a dull and dusty violet. And I don’t know why, but suddenly the stillness is too still, the quiet is too quiet, the beauty of the forest is oppressive, and I can no longer stand this heaviness growing in my soul.
“Hey,” I say to Jenny. “Want to see something cool?”
She turns. “What?”
“Come here, I’ll show you.”
I hop through the balcony.
The railing feels warm as I pass through it. I pause mid-air and spin around, so I can see Jenny as I float down onto the carpet of pine needles. She leans over, her pigtails hanging over the hand guard. She bites her lip.
“It’s a long drop,” she says.
“Two stories. What are you worried about?”
She frowns. “Hold on a minute.”
She runs back around the porch. A few seconds later, Jenny sprints down the hill, sliding through low bushes and dodging granite rocks. I half expect to see her kick up clouds of dust. I’m not sure why she’s decided to go the long way around. I know she can pass through objects. She went through a truck.
“Are you afraid of heights?” I ask.
“No. I just can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
She leaps off a rock and lands beside me. “Fly--float--whatever you do.”
“It’s easy.” I glide over a fallen log.
Jenny goes around. “Not to me.”
“Well, this may be a problem,” I remark. “We need to get to the top of a tree.”
“I can climb.”
“How? You don’t have hands. It makes no sense.”
Jenny shrugs. “Easier than flying.”
I give up trying to figure out this girl.
I fly ahead. About twenty feet up a butterscotch pine, where fire or disease carved a cavity into the thick orange bark, two baby owls huddle in a nest. They are white puffballs. One is sleeping. The other is awake and looking straight at me. Its round black eyes, sliver of a beak, and abundance of fluff reminds me a kid bundled up for the snow. Mommy owl perches nearby, also asleep. She’s a little larger than a raven, and her feathers are brown with streaks of white.
One good thing about being a ghost--I can go right up to animals without scaring them away. I try to remember that whenever I start feeling too sorry for myself.
“Jenny,” I call.
“Coming.”
The pine is too high for her, so she climbs a nearby oak instead. I see flashes of her checkered purple dress underneath the canopy of spiky leaves and spider webs. Jenny emerges from the debris and stands on the top of the oak, like a wingless Christmas angel. She leaps for the nearest branch of the butterscotch pine. She catches it and pulls herself up. Branch by branch, she climbs to where I’m hovering. By the time she catches up, she is red-faced and out of breath.
“Now, what’s this--oh!”
Jenny spies the owls, and her eyes go bright and crinkly. She smiles so wide I can see her teeth.
“They’re so cute,” Jenny squeals.
She crawls toward them, bringing her face centimeters from theirs. Jenny sits on her knees and leans on her hands.
“How did you find them?”
“Their parents nest here every spring.”
“You watch for them?”
“I know every inch of this forest.”
“I guess you really are a ghost. Charlotte didn’t know about this.”
“There used to be three of them,” I say. “But the third one fell off the nest.”
“It died?”
I nod. I don’t know why I brought it up.
“You have to expect that sort of thing. At least with the owl, I knew what happened.” I gaze at the nest. “So often, you see a bird on this one particular tree or a snake on this one particular rock, and it keeps coming back. And you don’t mean to, but you get attached. Like it’s your pet. Then one day it disappears. You never see it again.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenny says.
So much for lightening the mood.
“It’s okay. Hey.” I jump from the pine tree. “I have something else to show you. Can you come over here?”
“Over where?”
“By this juniper tree.”
If I’m going to be depressing, I might as well go the whole hog. I skim across the forest and arrive at the juniper before Jenny can even climb down from the pine.
Part of the juniper tree is dead. The center trunk is as gray and smooth as driftwood, and its branches are stiff and bare. Part of the juniper tree is alive. Shaggy orange bark twists over the gray skeleton and sends off shoots of scaly leaves. Clusters of powder blue berries ripen underneath. I wait in the shade while Jenny dashes through yellow wildflowers.
“I’m here,” she puffs.
“Glad you made it.”
She glances at the juniper. “Now what’s so special about this tree?”
“This is where I died.”
