Whispers

2. So then we grew a little and knew a lot

        “So, we gonna talk about what happened or…” Hunter started, as we both stepped over sticks and twigs and leaves and dirt. We made our way to a tiny stream, only about two feet wide, softly rushing and murmuring in a lost language only the birds and animals and plants around could understand.

        It wasn’t the cleanest, well-kept place in the woods near both of our houses. We usually had to watch out for crushed beer cans and empty chip bags that fluttered by and stuck on the branches that stick out. It wasn’t the easiest to get to, either. But it was our place. My one true place of peace in this crazy, whirlwind world.

        It was still pretty in a forgotten oasis kind of way. I liked how the sun peeked through the leaves like golden freckles across the ground and the gentle rustling way the brush moved in the breeze. Being reminded that other, much more beautiful things lived and breathed and harmed nothing else in this terrible, cruel world kept me from wanting to harm anything else. Too bad I always seemed to accomplish completely messing up everything just by breathing and living. But the reminder was nice. The reminder of something good.

        “Nope,” I said.

        We weren’t gonna talk about how Miss Char Tilden, my swore enemy since grade school, had called me out in the middle of the cafeteria for the sole reason that I had been alone and I had been vulnerable. She saw that Hunter was nowhere to be found. And that meant I didn’t have my safety on. Hunter was my own strange brand of sanity, usually, only one of his steady-stoic-sad looks able to keep me from going overboard. He kept me normal. Or, as normal as I could be when ghosts clung to me and my moods could change quicker than the speed of the current in our secret creek. And without him, who knew what the hell I would do. I didn’t even know.

        Which is why it was even worse that Char chose then, of all the times, to start up her revenge-filled rift with me. Grudges and weeds are what Roselane grows best. And maybe crazy.

        “Hey, Liv? Oh, sorry. Are you too busy talking to ghosts right now to talk?” She’d slid up to me in the lunch line, as I was getting my tomato soup and crackers. Tomato soup because it was almost as cold as my own heart outside and crackers because the soup needed a companion. Everybody needs a companion.

        Char wanted to start something, right then, right there. I could see it in her cutting green eyes. Devil’s eyes. That’s what I called them. She was in a mood. A kill-or-get-killed mood. I’d seen it before, when she’d literally smashed my face in with a field hockey stick in P.E. I still have the tiny, fingernail-long, scar from the stitches, just above my right eyebrow. I got her back with a very-carefully placed bra-strap snip. At Homecoming. In her halter dress. Oh, her face was priceless. Her boobs weren’t, though. I still wonder how much she paid for the over-inflated, stress-balls-about-to-pop pair of them. Yeah, I got suspended but it was worth it.

        But still. I was not in the mood this time. I was over-medicated, over-tired, and had already had one freak-out earlier that morning and it had ended with my hand bandaged and bloody.

        So I didn’t say anything.

        That was always the safest bet. Keep your head down, don’t make eye contact, don’t speak, don’t even try anything but to get away. Don’t. Do. It.

        It didn’t work.

        She still went for it.

        “No, really, though. I thought ghosts didn’t eat? That’s why you’re so skinny. Like, anorexic. I mean, at least my boobs look good naked. Yours probably look like a 12 year old boys.” She then let out that cackle that I swear came from hell itself.