Exorcising Aaron Nguyen

Between a Spock and a Hard Place (Part I)

Boys weren't allowed in the girls' hall and vice versa, so I got my revenge on Hiroki by ignoring the constant buzz of texts on my phone as I went through my entire face-cleansing routine, just in case he'd stepped in dog crap at any point ever. I glanced down at his third text-//You're ignoring me aren't you//-and smirked, deciding to let him sweat it out as I applied concealer to the tread-marks on my forehead. I've never needed much foundation, so after a dusting of loose powder and three coats of mascara, I pulled on black jeans and another v-neck, glad my roommate wasn't around to ask why I was changing again.

I contemplated the glittering bottles on my dresser as I shoved my feet into a pair of nut-crushers. With the heat outside, would a spritz of Jimmy Choo be worth it? Probably not. Extra deodorant it was.

See, I have a thing about body-smells. My hairdryer has a perfume vaporizer, and I'm never without at least one bottle of scented lotion. Between classes, I'm in a bathroom stall with a wet-wipe and deodorant-spray. If someone stinks in a room, people always suspect the fat ones, and I have made it my mission in life to prove them wrong.

I grabbed my camera, mini recorder, and the little notebook I used to jot down notes for articles. When I said I was part of the school newspaper, I wasn't talking about the four-page, corner-stapled, teacher-approved flyer printed out on neon copy with a big cross on top. I'm talking about the good shit. The real news people want to read about, that's overheard in the teachers' lounge, sobbed out in bathroom stalls, or tipped off to the paper's gmail account.

We have to be underground in case the teachers or parents ever found out. There are four of us, and even though we use pen-names, most people know who we are. No one can prove it, though-our newspaper is published via online blog, so the only thing we ever distribute is the link. After the fourth issue offered up disappointingly few hits, I scrawled that link in the second stall of the girls' bathroom and followed it up with: While you poop, get the scoop! Cheap humor, but it worked. We even got a nickname: The Toilet Paper. Sadly, that's still one of my proudest moments.

I power walked to the end of the hall, where Hiroki was standing just beyond the key-card-locked doors. When he saw me, he lifted his watch and pointed at it through the window. I pointed at my head and pushed through the door, shoving the digital camera into Hiroki's hands before he could say anything.

"You're my photographer."

"What bullshit is that?"

"What, you don't want a cover?" I walked past him. "Come on, the chess club is only in session until seven. If we want to catch them, we'd better step on it."

Hiroki bristled and muttered something about the eight-thousand text messages he'd sent me, but I tuned him out as my head continued to throb in time with the heavy clomp of my boots.

The library was on the second floor above the chapel, which is a poor design when you consider how badly organ practice violates the quiet study space, but it makes for some rather hilarious attempts at group-work, with students shouting over the organ and the librarian shouting about using inside voices.

The second floor had no shortage of foot traffic.Though most students were on their way downstairs to the recreation rooms, cafeteria, or Higher Grounds, a few split off toward the library.

I spotted a girl with curly black hair and guy in a varsity jacket walking in the same direction and groaned. Rachel Honeycutt was a mixed-race bombshell that somehow managed to be both fantastically beautiful and annoyingly nice. Though she was most certainly swapping spit with Eddie Keel-my tormenter of desk-scrawling, punched-by-Hiroki fame-she had never once been anything but nice to me. Once, when I was crying into my math book, she bought me a cupcake from Sacred Grounds and set it in front of me with a little note that said, "Bad day? Remember, God loves you and this too shall pass! I will keep you in my prayers. Hope this sweetens up your afternoon. -Rachel"

How was she to know I'd been crying about my inability to stick to a low-carb diet for more than fourteen hours? After that, she always waved to me and said hi, her eyes getting that half-worried, half-excited look like I was some sort of personal piety project. I really wanted to hate her, but I couldn't. She went out of her way to make sure I knew someone was paying attention. Even if it was just to put a check mark in her good deed of the day box, I appreciated that.

"I doubt they're going to visit the chess club," Hiroki said, noting the direction of my gaze. "He didn't mess with you again, did he?"

"No," I sighed. "I just don't want Rachel to be nice to me. She makes me feel like a terrible human being."

Hiroki chuckled, and sure enough, the pair turned down an adjoining hallway with all the private study rooms (monitored by a CCTV, because God is omniscient but the faculty is not). As we passed the hall, I glanced down it.

For just a second, I thought I saw someone staring out at me from the dim stairwell at the end, milky eyes behind thick glasses. I sucked in a breath, and in the next blink, the figure was gone. I thought I saw feet drag up the stairs, out of sight. A spell of dizziness overcame me, and I swayed as my heart and my head both hammered at once. My vision went dark.

Look at me.

Goosebumps prickled up on my arms and I opened my eyes to see Hiroki two steps ahead of me. He was turned back to face me, brows drawn.

"Dizzy spell," I told him. "Did you..." I pointed down the hallway and Hiroki glanced down it, then looked back at me.

"Did you see something?" he asked. I sighed-if Hiroki didn't see anything down there, I probably hadn't.

"I thought I did," I said. "But I don't know how much to trust my brain at the moment. Do ghosts usually stay in one place or do they tend to, you know..."

"Wander? Depends." He gestured for me to keep walking, and I noticed a few of the other students were looking at me. I fell into step, and he continued, "Some ghosts, like Amy Barnes, stay where they died. A lot of times, those are the ones who killed themselves. Part of them wanted to teach someone a lesson with their death, so their spirit stays behind to make sure of it."

"Amy Barnes hung herself?" I hissed. "Why?"

"She's not exactly talkative," Hiroki said. "Rope. Neck. You know."

I shuddered. "So why not exorcise her like you want to do to Aaron?"

His face was impassive as we scanned our key-cards and slipped into the library. "I tried a few times, but none of the stuff I tried worked. I think she's the 'closure' type of ghost."

"Really? You tried."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Come on, G. I can be a nice guy."

"To people other than my fabulous self? Not usually."

Hiroki gave me a strange look, and I felt uneasiness creep over my skin.

"It sort of was for you," he said. By the time I realized he wasn't going to expand on that statement, he was power-walking toward the back of the library.