Red Ribbons on Her Wrists

Chasing ghosts

Young: I was like you, I had a mom who believed in angels and demons and ghosts but I thought they were all just stuff from scary stories, so when she said she was dead I didn't believe her. She had already walked towards me like I said but I closed the gap and no lie the air around her was colder. I shivered in my boxers and goosebumps covered my flesh. Still the logical part of brain just reasoned it must have been a draft, the weather was steadily changing the further we got into fall. Inches from her I realized with striking clarity, that this girl was anything but ordinary. Right in front of me she was living perfection. She wore a red flannel tank dress with a black cardigan rolled up to her elbows. She had black thigh highs on, that only emphasized the shapely ness of her legs. Her skin tone shimmered in the moonlight that snuck through my open window and I wanted to touch her. Every bit of me wanted to reach out and gently caress her cheek but I didn't. You need to go home to your dad , I said. I can't help you, she looked down and springy curl fell forward into her face. It was then that I could no longer fight the urge to touch, I reached out a hesitant hand to brush that spiral out of her face and my hand went right through it. My hand went right through her.

Smith: What happened then? How did you react? How did she?

Young: Thought you didn't believe in ghost stories?

Smith: I'm humoring you, something any good journalist knows how to do. I smiled wryly at Landon, I liked this boy and had to admit he could tell a good story. I was completely enraptured by his words. Please continue.

Young: I didn't know what to do, I just laid back down in my bed and pulled the comforter over my head. It seems pretty childish is retrospect but I didn't want to freak out so I guess that was my way to process and not scream like a girl in her face. I have no idea how long she stayed there staring at me but I know when the morning light came through my window she was gone. I decided that morning that she had just been a very realistic nightmare, but just in case I called my mom. I told her about talking to the butcher and hearing about his daughter, then researching her and having that crazy dream. She soothed me and agreed that it was probably just a dream brought on by the stress of moving and learning such a sad story. I don't know if I fully believed her or I were convinced that it was just a dream, she offered to come do a cleaning just to be sure and reluctantly I agreed. I don't know maybe I secretly wanted her to do it, chase the ghost away like she used to get monsters out of my childhood room. Anyway she came a couple days later chanted her chants burned her sage all that good stuff and I actually felt better, safer. Even though Thalia hadn't really threatened me, her stare had been scary but she wasn't violent.. She was still a ghost probably a dream but maybe a ghost and that made me pretty uncomfortable.  For several weeks nothing happened, I went to school, ate lots of ramen noodles and take out, things were finally getting back to normal. Can I be frank?

Smith: of course, I wouldn't hope you'd be anything but, I mean it's not like you could say anything much crazier then what you're already telling me.

Young: trust me when I say, it always can get crazier. Anyway if I'm being honest, I started to miss Thalia. I didn't know her, I didn't even know if it had been real but I missed her. She left this incredible impression on me in those few moments and I started to resent myself for having my mom "clean" the place. I began to double up on researching her. I interviewed her friends that still lived in the area. They all had nothing but nice things to say about her, well all but one. Jessica was her best friend, they had been neighbors and their mothers were best friends before them. Jessica told me all I could ask for about the real Thalia. Her mother was of Jamaican and Mexican decent, her father who I obviously knew was German and Irish. Thalia was too beautiful for her own good Jess told me. She constantly attracted unwanted attention from both males and females. To make matters worse Thalia had a very meek personality, she let them catcall or bully her and never batted an eye. Jess confided that she had always worried that Thalia might have killed herself and her body was just somewhere she knew no one would look for her. Kids are cruel but some were exceptionally cruel to Thalia, it's sad Jess huffed. I asked her why she sounded so angry then? She just laughed, shook her head and told me you have no idea do you what it's like when someone you love just disappears and there's nothing you can do about but blame everyone else. Then when that doesn't work you start to blame them and then you hate yourself. For the last five years Landon I've hated myself because I believe my best friend offed herself because she couldn't handle a bunch of bimbos and some stupid piggish men. It eats me alive that I didn't do more but it poisons my soul to think that she thought the world would be a better place without her... Because it's not.

Jessica gave me some photographs and I'm not entirely proud to admit this because I'm sure you're wondering why they all opened up to me so willingly but it's because I lied to them all. I told them that I was a law enforcement student studying cold cases and this was the one I got assigned. I was in fact pre med but that wouldn't have helped my obsessive curiosity so I lied, because I needed to know who she was. I needed to understand what happened to her, if anything had really. But by this time I was almost sure something had, it was just a gut feeling ya know. My girlfriend at the time, Ashley did not like my new hobby one bit and she made it plain. The night of the second incident she was at my place, we had ordered Indian food and were settled in front of the tv eating our dinner off TV trays when she found a picture. It was one of my favorites. Thalia was wearing a white sundress and big oversized sunglasses smiling this breathtaking smile from a high branch in an old tree. Ashley said who is this? I knew I couldn't pull off oh that's just my cousin, as she knew most of my family and we were all clearly white while Thalia was a beautiful shade of light mocha brown. So I told the truth I said it was the butchers daughter the one id been researching because she was missing. Ash must have seen something she didn't like in my eyes because she slapped me and told me I was a creep that's when things got scary. As Ashley went to storm out of my place lamenting the day she meet my weird ass she was violently shoved out the door and landed on her face. She must have assumed it was me because she said oh my god Landon how could you- but she never finished because when she turned around she was face to face with Thalia who was glaring knives at her. "You are a bitch, you don't appreciate how sweet he is and you don't deserve him! Go find a ken doll you stupid Barbie sorority brat!" Thalia calmly said and then without touching the door, it slammed and that was the last time I saw Ashley. Yet I wouldn't change it for the world because it was the beginning of an adventure with Thalia that I will never forget.