Sullivan’s the real artist, he taught the rest of us. But thanks.”
“He’s the one who sent me that note, right?”
“Right.”
“He sure spits a lot.”
“Sinus problems.”
“I think he’s trying to act tough because he’s so small.”
“That too, I reckon. He’s smarter than the teachers, though.”
“Are y’all in trouble with Kavanagh or something?”
I told her about
Sodom vs. Gomorrah 74,
and she laughed and said she’d heard about it, which firmed my suspicion that her brother Donny was the culprit who turned it in.
“Are y’all really atheists?”
She sounded maybe intrigued, so I said we were.
“Wow. I guess you don’t believe in ghosts, then.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got it all worked out yet.”
“Because I believe in them,” she said. “My house is sort of haunted.” She looked at me to see if I was taking this as a joke. Dozens of houses in Savannah are supposedly haunted. There are books on it. “I think maybe it’s like film or records, stuff like that,” she said, “that takes an imprint. Or even like those poor Japanese people whose shadows got burned into the walls by the atom bomb. If something is strong enough, maybe it can leave an imprint on wood and glass and stuff. Hard to see or hear, but there, you know?”
There wasn’t another girl I knew of that I could imagine hearing this from. She began telling me about a girl who had died in their house before her family bought it. I listened two ways, hearing a ghost story and also following her voice’s music. My arms sprouted chill bumps, and the movements of her mouth seemed to rhyme with something in my head and made me want to kiss her so badly it was painful. She looked at me and pushed her hair back, and on our third circuit I could see our trail in the weeds, yellow buds bowed towards the ground, stems at sharpangles, bleeding milk. Black grass seeds on our pants cuffs. I asked if it was a see-through ghost and felt her eyes on me, and she said she wasn’t kidding, and I said neither was I, just curious, and she told me it was as solid as a person but suddenly just there or gone. And every few seconds our shoulders brushed accidentally, the way two people work a Ouija board without meaning to, and our fingers touched a few times, with the usual acrobatics of the heart, and in a little while we were holding hands somehow and talking very easily.
A car’s headlights spun across us, and the car sped away. I saw with the driver’s eyes this boy and girl holding hands in the park, and was able to believe it briefly. I put my free hand around her arm. She wrapped hers around mine. We locked together, trying to be one person instead of two, my pants feeling tighter and tighter.
“Are you afraid at night?” I asked. I was no longer sure of things. There could be ghosts.
Margie’s hand tightened in mine. I squeezed back. She said, “Do you think I’m crazy?”
I touched, deliberately I guess, the razor scar on her wrist. My heart ached up into my throat. The wind fluttered around us now so that the park was all ripples and waves. Margie’s hair floated. We stopped beside the tree and looked at each other a long time. Our faces were so close, and the sun so low, that I was able to see the faint gray inside her pupils.
“When you look at me that way,” she said quietly, “I can hardly breathe.”
I felt like I was risking my life. My head grew impossibly heavy and dipped a little. She slanted her face and lifted her chin and brushed her lips across mine, then opened her mouth. It happened fast, like accidents do. I remember a flash of panic such as in my dreams of smothering, and then, with a bird in an unseen fury above us, the sensation almost of eating, fillingmyself with warm gravy, and a loosening inside beyond what I knew could happen to me.
Then her face pulled away and I was as dazed as if I’d been punched. My stomach shivered. I held Margie and she laid her head against my chest.
“He’s the one who sent me that note, right?”
“Right.”
“He sure spits a lot.”
“Sinus problems.”
“I think he’s trying to act tough because he’s so small.”
“That too, I reckon. He’s smarter than the teachers, though.”
“Are y’all in trouble with Kavanagh or something?”
I told her about
Sodom vs. Gomorrah 74,
and she laughed and said she’d heard about it, which firmed my suspicion that her brother Donny was the culprit who turned it in.
“Are y’all really atheists?”
She sounded maybe intrigued, so I said we were.
“Wow. I guess you don’t believe in ghosts, then.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got it all worked out yet.”
“Because I believe in them,” she said. “My house is sort of haunted.” She looked at me to see if I was taking this as a joke. Dozens of houses in Savannah are supposedly haunted. There are books on it. “I think maybe it’s like film or records, stuff like that,” she said, “that takes an imprint. Or even like those poor Japanese people whose shadows got burned into the walls by the atom bomb. If something is strong enough, maybe it can leave an imprint on wood and glass and stuff. Hard to see or hear, but there, you know?”
There wasn’t another girl I knew of that I could imagine hearing this from. She began telling me about a girl who had died in their house before her family bought it. I listened two ways, hearing a ghost story and also following her voice’s music. My arms sprouted chill bumps, and the movements of her mouth seemed to rhyme with something in my head and made me want to kiss her so badly it was painful. She looked at me and pushed her hair back, and on our third circuit I could see our trail in the weeds, yellow buds bowed towards the ground, stems at sharpangles, bleeding milk. Black grass seeds on our pants cuffs. I asked if it was a see-through ghost and felt her eyes on me, and she said she wasn’t kidding, and I said neither was I, just curious, and she told me it was as solid as a person but suddenly just there or gone. And every few seconds our shoulders brushed accidentally, the way two people work a Ouija board without meaning to, and our fingers touched a few times, with the usual acrobatics of the heart, and in a little while we were holding hands somehow and talking very easily.
A car’s headlights spun across us, and the car sped away. I saw with the driver’s eyes this boy and girl holding hands in the park, and was able to believe it briefly. I put my free hand around her arm. She wrapped hers around mine. We locked together, trying to be one person instead of two, my pants feeling tighter and tighter.
“Are you afraid at night?” I asked. I was no longer sure of things. There could be ghosts.
Margie’s hand tightened in mine. I squeezed back. She said, “Do you think I’m crazy?”
I touched, deliberately I guess, the razor scar on her wrist. My heart ached up into my throat. The wind fluttered around us now so that the park was all ripples and waves. Margie’s hair floated. We stopped beside the tree and looked at each other a long time. Our faces were so close, and the sun so low, that I was able to see the faint gray inside her pupils.
“When you look at me that way,” she said quietly, “I can hardly breathe.”
I felt like I was risking my life. My head grew impossibly heavy and dipped a little. She slanted her face and lifted her chin and brushed her lips across mine, then opened her mouth. It happened fast, like accidents do. I remember a flash of panic such as in my dreams of smothering, and then, with a bird in an unseen fury above us, the sensation almost of eating, fillingmyself with warm gravy, and a loosening inside beyond what I knew could happen to me.
Then her face pulled away and I was as dazed as if I’d been punched. My stomach shivered. I held Margie and she laid her head against my chest.
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