Phantom Recall

4 || miss sonia and mr. dupont

Stepping into the hallway with a teacher and hearing that classroom door shut brings me right back to my middle school years. Except this time, I'm not in trouble. They can't get me in trouble. And yet, for some strange reason, gazing upon Miss Sonia's innocent and mortified expression, some degree of shame for having been the cause of it creeps onto me.

"Uhm..."

She presses a hand to her mouth for a moment, covering that nervous smile of hers as her eyebrows come together.

"This...this is prank, right, boys?" Pleading eyes continue to flick back and forth between Noir and me. "I..." Another forced chuckle. "I know my students, I-...I know I have never seen you two before. So...are you from other school, or-? What's...o bozhe moy...what's going on?"

"We're dead," says Noir, without missing a beat. "Like 'hands crossed over the chest, eyes-closed in a coffin' dead."

I smack his elbow. "Be delicate. She's not a teenage boy, ya know."

"Excuse me?"

"I-I'm sorry about them, Miss Sonia," Eret interjects, putting on a nervous smile of his own but his eyes still appear ready to spring out of their sockets. "Listen, it's not a prank, I promise, I don't really know how else to explain this, but..." He makes a low, back-of-the-throat humming noise before throwing a cautious glance my way. "These guys...are...dead, in a sense. Well, not just in a sense. They're ghosts. And up until just a minute ago I thought I was the only one who could see them."

Miss Sonia only stands there and blinks. Nonplussed. And rightfully so, I would say. In our defense, however, there really is no easy way to tell someone they can see dead people. Poor Miss Sonia probably got out of bed this morning expecting to come to school and teach her classes as normal, and now she has us to deal with.

"We can prove it for you," I say, albeit a bit tentative to do so. The memory of Eret passing out in front of me circles back in my head. And with that, I falter a bit at reaching out to put my hand through the classroom wall. Would Miss Sonia pass out, too? Or worse? The hallways are virtually empty at this hour but who knows when someone could pop out of one of these rooms? What would happen then if they were to see?

Fortunately I don't have to make the decision. Noir takes it upon himself to step through and completely disappear into the wall beside us. And I guess he thought it would be funny to extend his arm out from inside the wall and wave to us, wriggling his slender fingers like a gross Halloween decoration. I yank him back out into the hallway.

"The heck is wrong with you?" I snap at him through gritted teeth. "You're gonna give her a heart attack!"

It certainly looked like he had. Miss Sonia's complexion grows several shades paler right before our eyes, and I hear the faintest, trembling breath leave her parted lips. Yet she still smiles.

"Oh, this..." She places her hand over her heart. "This is...quite something..."

"They're harmless, I promise," Eret says, subtly reaching his own hands out as if fearing Miss Sonia would topple over at any second. "If I had known you could see them, too, I swear I wouldn't have let them come with me."

"Maybe it's a sign thing," Noir chimes in, unhelpfully. "I'm a Pisces. Will, what are you?"

"Virgo. Wait, hold on, shut up."

"Okay, boys, listen..."

The three of us seal our lips at once and face Miss Sonia, no doubt all a bit shameful for causing her such stress so early in the morning. It's evident that even through her sweet smile she still struggles to keep her composure. She pinches the bridge of her nose and pauses to take each of our faces in once more — lingering especially on Noir and me, of course.