Michael's Ghost Girl

Endings

Michael sat in the back of the bus, skateboard at his feet, dreaming of mountains, geysers, and horses. Behind the screen of his eyelids stretched a great blue sky reflected in icy mountain lakes even in the heat of a summer afternoon. There had been such a thing as sanctuary after all.

He wondered idly how Dewey was doing. For the first time in their lives, he and Short Round were starting the school year without their best friend. It felt wrong somehow, but nothing could have changed the fact that Dewey was a year older. He was happily ensconced with Anya in a little apartment not far from the Dartmouth campus. How he'd managed to skirt the dormitory residency requirement was a mystery known only to him. Michael knew only one thing, not even an Ivy League school's regulations could stop Dewey.

The tire of the bus hit a bump, shaking him awake. Her stop was coming up, and she was the last person he wanted to see. Thea was a fly in the ointment of what he'd wanted to be a perfect day. There were too many memories and too much anger. There would be no peaceful ride to school if Thea found him.

But it turned out to be too much to hope for. She made a beeline for him when she got on the bus. She plopped her skateboard down on the seat and turned to stare at him. She'd let her hair grow over the summer and she looked less gamin, less pixy. She'd put streaks of pink and purple in her black tresses, and her makeup was done in shades of silver, purple and black. Thea had always looked soft and pretty, no matter how punk her makeup. Now she looked angry—and hard.

"Where the hell were you this summer?" There were no niceties, no "Hello Michael", no polite "Hi's", just "where the hell were you?" Her look cast daggers at him, demanding, not asking, an explanation.

So he gave it to her. "Wyoming. Dad has a friend who has a friend who owns a guest ranch not far from Yellowstone Park who offered to let Kit and me come work for him the summer."

"Oh, nice. You get to go play cowboys and Indians in Wyoming while I spent a month in treatment, and then the rest of the summer going to freaking AA meetings." Did it do you any good? Michael wanted to ask. He guessed not.

"Okay, who made you get drunk and try to play GI Jane?" He held up his hand as she started to object. "I'm grateful that you saved my sister's life, but there are a lot of choices that you could have made that you didn't. Maybe that was your only alternative, but you've got to deal with what happened. Getting angry at me won't take away the fact that...." He couldn't bring himself to say the words. "You could have gotten yourself killed, along with Kit. Maybe you need to just step back."

"That's easy for you to say. I'm stuck with a group of self-righteous jerks who pretend to care about me. If I hear one more word about God, or Higher Power, or about "working the program" I'm going to throw up on the person who says it. I don't have a problem, I'm fine. If I did have one, it was thinking I was in love with you." She stood up abruptly, snatching her skateboard from the seat, and stomped up the aisle in her Doc Martins.

Michael breathed a sigh of relief. He felt bad for Thea, but she didn't want to hear it. Even if it hadn't been for Mariah, he still could not have given her what she wanted. He'd learned that it was a cold, hard, world, and if all else was taken from you, you still had your friends.

He looked out and watched the city pass by him. Not too much longer now and he'd be walking in the doors of the old brownstone school. Soon the most important year of his life so far was about to begin, and Thea had stolen some of the joy.

Tiny fingers, cold as the grave, began the stroke the back of his neck. A cold breath blew gently into his ear. "Michael," said a voice inside his head as an icy hand grasped his, squeezing it gently.

"Mariah?" Please God, he thought, "Let it be her, please?"

"Michael," said the voice again, mocking him. He looked and saw the shimmering mist next to him and watched as it began to take shape: head, arms, legs, then disappeared.

He sat up, awake, not knowing where he was. The familiar features of his room began to take shape as he fell back on his pillow in despair. There was no bus, no Mariah, and he was alone. He got up, showered, and went downstairs where his mother was cooking breakfast. He could tell she wanted to say something cheerful, but she set down his plate filled with bacon and eggs and left the kitchen.

Kit looked at him, knowing, her young face older than it should be, what happened had changed her too. They'd made an agreement not to tell what had really happened, who would believe them, anyway? "We are such things as dreams are made on," Mariah had said to him once. Only he, and Kit, knew that such things were real, not dreams. Grandfather had been right, the spirit world was real.

Short Round was waiting for him at the flagpole. It didn't seem right, not having Dewey there. Dewey was happy, Dewey was starting a new life. Next year it would be his and Short Round's turns.

Short Round saw the look on Michael's face and put his arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry, bro, it will be okay."

"Yeah, how?" Michael said sarcastically.

"Remember how I told you, when this all started, that she might not be what she seemed to be?" He smiled at the expression on Michael's face. "Well, she wasn't, but she helped save Kit and Thea. Without her, that would not have been possible. And, if it's possible for spirits to love, she loved you. She took a risk to help you. She protected you, and if she were here to tell you, she'd say she wanted good things for you."

"Buddhist wisdom there, short one?"

"No, Buddhists don't believe in Furies, but they believe in demons. Believe me, this was a lesson for me, too. I thought I knew way more than I did."

"So, what lesson am I supposed to take away from this?" Michael tried to smile.

"I don't know, maybe the lesson was for you to just live your life." As usual, Short Round had a point. Mariah would want him to be happy, but he was not sure he could be happy without her.