Michael's Ghost Girl

Superman

Michael stood up, intending to go take his shower, when his feet seemed to give way under him. He seemed to fall in slow motion to the floor, then began to shake uncontrollably. All the accumulated feelings he had held in suddenly seemed to rush to the surface, and to his deep shame, tears began to form in his eyes. He felt unbearably cold, but couldn't seem to move himself from the floor to the warmth of his bed. A blanket floated over and draped itself over him, and Mariah knelt next to him, wrapping it tightly around him.

"It's okay, Michael, I bet it's a delayed reaction from shock. You seem to think you should be a super human. Super student. Super skateboarder. Super cyclist. Now you're trying to play Superman so you can rescue your sister. Maybe nothing will happen and she won't need rescuing. You can't rescue your parents either. You're just Michael, why can't you let the world take care of itself?"

He'd stopped shaking as she spoke to him, he could even feel the cold flowing out of his body as he lay cocooned in the warmth of the blanket. He wiped the tears away with his hand and let himself lean back into Mariah's arms. He closed his eyes and let Mariah hold him. He wanted a shower to wash away the memory of what had happened, but he wasn't sure he could get up if he tried.

He sighed and stood up, a little shaky, but not bad. He let the blanket drop. "I'll be back. Mom's bringing my dinner up here. I'm going to take a shower."

"I don't think you listened to a word I said," fumed Mariah. "Fine. Go try and save the world, but don't blame me when you find out you can't." She vanished from the room.

Determined to shake off his mood, Michael was watching "The Mummy", laughing, when his mother came upstairs with a plate piled with pizza slices and a glass of orange juice. She set it on his nightstand, then sat on the bed next to him as he slid over to make room for her. She handed him the plate, bursting into laughter as Rachel Weisz fell flat on her back after firing a shotgun, but her eyes were on Michael. Her mother-radar was on full alert, watching for signs that anything was wrong.

On the surface, he seemed okay. "Michael at his most normal" she used to call it. She wasn't buying it, though she knew she would not get anything from him but, "Mom, I'm okay now, really. Don't worry about me." The "Michael Mantra" she called it. She hated it, because they kept few secrets from each other. He was her first born, her darling: she had fallen in love with the moment the nurse placed him in her arms. They were closer than most mothers and sons, seldom fought, and the only fault to the relationship was that sometimes it bordered on being too adult.

She took the remote and paused the movie. "Do you want to talk about it?" That was their code for, "Is there anything you haven't told your father that you'll tell me?"

Michael leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "Mom, there's nothing left to tell. Right now I don't want to think about it. The cops aren't taking me seriously, I can't prove anything, even though I saw that guy run into his house. That van, it was..." He stopped himself, he hadn't intended to say so much, but when he talked to his mother it was hard for him to hold back.

She sat up, took his chin in her hands. "You know something, don't you? Why won't you tell me?"

He gently removed her hands. He was going to lie to her, and he hated it, but this was one of those times when he was going to skirt the truth as much as he dared.

"Remember when Kit got so scared? The guys went and looked at the house for me since I couldn't. They found an old stand-alone garage with a van in it. The van had a bunch of mud on it, like it had been driven on a dirt road or something. After they saw that, they called and told me about it. It was around the time that girl Suzie McCann disappeared."

"Michael, I don't like this. First of all, you and your friends find a skeleton that you don't tell me about, now you're attacked on your way home. 'And by the way Mom, we found a van with mud on it around the time Suzie McCann disappeared'. I don't like all these coincidences." She held up her hand, "I know, you didn't make these things happen, but they scare me, especially since each seems to connect to something else. Right now, just for my peace of mind, I'd like to lock you in your room until you turn twenty-one."

"Eighteen," Michael corrected her, "I'm legally an adult in two years."

"Don't remind me," his mother said grimly, "I'd like to have you promise me no more surprises. I know it doesn't work that way, but you don't know how badly I'm wishing that right now." She kissed him and left the room.

Mike stared at the ceiling, wishing that he could make the past months go away and his life have no more complications than his parents' financial situation. He hadn't bargained on meeting a ghost, getting a concussion, finding a missing girl's body, getting attacked, and falling in and out of love with a ghost who had stolen his heart.

He ached in every muscle of his body: even the hot shower wasn't making the pain go away. He took his plate downstairs, bid everyone goodnight, took some Advil, and went to bed.

He woke up feeling the same as he felt the night before. Another hot shower didn't help. He doubled the dose of Advil this time, eating a big breakfast to keep it from burning a hole in his stomach. He looked so morose that his mother told him he'd be better off in bed if he felt the way he looked. Kit opened her mouth to say something but shut it quickly when he glared at her. Instead, she took her cereal bowl to the sink and left the kitchen as quickly as she could.

"Mike, why don't you stay home today?" His mother put extra strips of bacon on his plate.

"Gotta talk to the guys. Dewey will pick me up. I can't stay here today. I keep thinking about what happened, what's up the street. I don't want to be here." He looked at her apologetically, but she shook her head and turned away from him.

That hurt. He could count on one hand the number of times he and his mother had been mad at each other. He knew this wasn't anger, but disappointment. This time, however, he was going to have to put his needs above hers, and he rarely did that. There was no commandment that said, "Thou shalt not hurt your mother", but there was for Michael. It was just that he had to get out of the house. He couldn't stay here. He wanted to go to the skate park and skate himself into exhaustion. He had to tell Dewey and Short Round what happened. Maybe the man was no match for him or his two friends, or maybe he had just been lucky. If it wasn't for the martial arts he'd studied, and hours spent in the gym, the guy might have kept his hold on him.

A helpless girl like Kit would be no match for him. He'd grab her and have her in his house in no time. He was a predator, and young girls were his preferred prey. To Michael's way of thinking, it was obvious that he wasn't going to stop.

When Dewey came to pick him up, his mother greeted him cordially. She told Michael not to be home too late, but that was it. There was no hug, no kiss on top of the cap, none of the little gestures she used to say "I love you". He looked wistfully at her as he went out the door, wanting to be in her good graces, but knowing he'd have to earn his way back. He hurried down the stairs, looking at the window to see if she was there to watch him leave, but she wasn't.

He got in the car, barely able to refrain from slamming the door.

"What's the problem, Blondie?" Short Round leaned over Michael's shoulder from the back seat. It didn't take much to tell that Michael wasn't himself. "The only reason to have a face like yours is women trouble."

"Shut up, Short Round, just leave me alone."

"Okay Boss, whatever you say." Short Round settled back in his seat. Something was wrong with Mikey, and he wasn't talking. If Mike didn't want to talk fine, he wouldn't either.