Did You See a Ghost?

The answer was a simple compromise.

"Mom," I said the next day when I entered her and Dad's room with my fluffy pillow in hand, pressing the mound to my torso. "I think I'm going to sleep in the guest room tonight."

I wasn't sure if it was worth it to be a sitting duck in case it wasn't Melina who haunted me. After all, I still hadn't entirely confirmed it was her. It was easy for someone to be an imposter, especially when it seemed she was always a topic of conversation for me.

A simple intruder would have been smart enough to pick up on such a pattern if they were insistent on manipulating me. A false sense of closeness was probably in some mysterious guide to being a criminal that circulated in the darkest rungs of society, and I wasn't going to walk right into the mousetrap as it snapped on me while I fatefully seized the enticing chunk of cheese.

Thus, I remained cautious, fairly certain I made the right decision as my parents ogled me in confusion under the faint morning light that seeped through the windows.

"What's wrong, dear?" my mother asked as she wiped her eyes.

They then widened as she examined me more, and that was a time I wished she still wore her daily contacts instead of having received laser surgery. "Why are you so pale? What's wrong?"

As much as I could conceal my thoughts, there wasn't anything I could do about my body reacting on its own, so I groaned at her (as any adolescent would) while I contemplated an excuse.

"It's so cold in my room!" I faked a cough and sniffle. "I don't have enough blankets to not wake up feeling sick, so I want to see if the guest room is any better."

Mrs. Porter—the drama teacher—needed to move aside! There was a new actress in town!

"You can just fix the AC, dear," my dad grumbled as he rolled over, irked by the influx of the sun's rays through the pitiful white curtains.

I whined, "But it's also so drafty!"

"Turn off your fan," my mom suggested.

I genuinely thought my lies were impregnable, but it seemed I was no match for my nitpicky parents. Why did my mother have to be such a practical and observant person?

"B-But…"

"Ari, go get ready for school. You can sleep in there if you want tonight. Just get some rest." My mother walked up to me, squeezing my cheeks as I grunted in annoyance. "You don't want those eyebags to get any bigger, do you?"

Rolling my eyes, I complained, "No, *mom*."

I got it: I looked like a creature of the night who begrudgingly persisted through the day! No need to rub it in!

***

"Why do you look like you've seen a ghost?" Cherry asked during study hall a few hours later, and I wanted to smack her for actually having gotten the issue correct.

A seeping sense of grief pulsed through me that day, but more than that, terror and exhilaration crept through my veins.

"She probably did!" Zixin chimed in as he read his fifth ghost novel of the week, fixing his blue graphic tee dedicated to some sketchy UTube detectives.

(The biggest mystery was: Who thought random college students doing forensics was credible in any sense of the word?)

He added, "Isn't that why we're doing the whole novel project? For a ghost?"

Somehow squeezing himself between metal rods, he flipped through the pages rapidly as he laid like a pretzel in the desk. While kicking at a wooden board with her fuzzy pink boots, Cherry joined him in sitting strangely as she perched herself atop a table with her legs dangling off its side. The mantra of safety in numbers was a surefire one if the teacher bothered to look up from her desk to see the two of them goofing off.

"Zixin, she genuinely looks terrible!" Cherry exclaimed while pointing a finger at me, guaranteed to draw attention from the bored students in the relatively quiet classroom.

Pressing my lips into a thin line, I then said, "Cherry, I'm fine. I just didn't rest much."

"Mhm."

Taking them from behind her, she skeptically crossed her sweater-covered arms, and I was surprised she didn't topple over like a Jenga tower with its foundation missing.

I wasn't going to put up with this shit for the second time today! Why didn't anyone trust me?

"I'm serious! Plus, you look worse than me when you're tired!"

As if I threw bait into the water for the fish, Cherry snatched it in her mouth and distanced herself from the topic at hand.

She retorted, "At least I don't pass out in the middle of Mr. Zhong's class!"

"You both can't manage your time!" Zixin slammed his book shut as if we bothered him during the story's climax. "Congratulations!"

Despite him insulting me, I found myself laughing along with him in the aftermath of his statement, while Cherry rolled her eyes with a smile. (To be fair, Mr. Zhong was the instructor for my last period of the day and perhaps a duller history teacher than a piece of rock that had been weathered since prehistoric times.)

Zixin was always the tiebreaker and referee of the group. And that was fine. Cherry and I were more than willing to return the favor if it meant we'd stop fighting over the dumbest possible crap. In our perfect trifecta, we only had each other, so there was no reason to waste our precious study hall minutes together on petty disputes.

Latching onto the thin novel but unable to pull it away from him, Cherry told Zixin, "Why are you reading these again when you have a test next period?"

"Because…"

Clicking his tongue, he tried coming up with some bullshit excuse to spout so that he could placate the redhead.

Tilting her head in a cocky manner and narrowing her eyes, Cherry firmly said, "Zixin."

He raised a finger as if he had a genius thought, but he stretched Cherry's patience so thin that tension was created in the room. "B-But ghosts!"

Like the rubber band was released to smack me in the face, I slapped a palm to my forehead in disappointment. This was precisely why he was about to flunk out of pre-calculus.

***

Aware I dodged a bullet during our break time—there was no use in calling it study hall when we did anything but—I stealthily slid through my final two classes of the day and made a beeline home on my bicycle before my parents arrived.

With my mom's explicit approval, I was going to make the most of my staycation in the guest room. It was imperative that I move any valuables and necessities to it if I didn't want to have a run-in with a ghost, but some part of me wanted to use this as a test.

After all, if Melina was the spirit who spoke to me, wouldn't she have known I wasn't going to fall for such an easy ploy? Wouldn't she be able to deduce where I was and with her incorporeal form, breeze through the walls so that she could locate me?

If she was so insistent on meeting me and proving her existence, then it only made sense to provide a little resistance on my part.

...That was to say, I wished I was that crafty, but I was honestly just fucking scared yet foolishly tempted like I was a window shopper who desperately examined the merchandise that was just out of my reach.

How could I not yap about such a supernatural occurrence if Melina appeared in my room at sunset?

How happy I would have been to see her before me!

Why, if she was like the first day I saw her, I might have fallen in love all over again. And there would be nothing I could do from then as I sunk deeper into her soul.

Yet that blood on the wall… Was it only going to be there a single time, or would I spend each visit cleaning the stains from the paint's surface?

Would it imprint itself on me and tear me apart until I drowned in the fluid—drowned in this liquid infatuation of mine while she watched?

This was merely the first step towards falling into that viscous pool, but I couldn't contain my precarious excitement.

Yes, I would gladly welcome her presence if she eagerly sought me when the night came…

With that in mind, I dusted off the white sheets atop the mattress, thinking how they were probably mere stick figures of ghosts compared to the sight that I hoped would soon greet me. The mattress remained here—untouched—for perhaps a year or two. Its last occupant was my aunt after a Halloween party when she got blackout drunk, and nobody had used it since then.

I took a whiff of the fabric, wondering if it still smelled like it did before—if the impermanence of alcohol and perfume was abolished in a vacuum like this.

That was preposterous of me. Of course it had no scent! Lingering things were all but mere memories after some time, and I was curious to know if the wisps of ghosts were the same.

Laying in the snowy mass of a bed in the center of the room and making a snow angel, I hugged a pillow to my chest as I pulled my phone from my pocket to be my lighthouse under the dim lamps.

It was time to stake out the crime scene while I pretended to be a sniper from my secondary post. I pulled the white blankets over my head to sheath myself.

All I had to do from then on was wait.

(And read whatever shitty novel came up on my feed in the meantime instead of finishing futile pages of homework amid my anxious excitement. Priorities.)

***

Around three hours later when it was eight in the evening, I uncovered myself, suffering from both heat and worry. (It was hard to argue that they were entirely separate feelings because they both evoked profuse sweating.)

Was Melina not coming to see me tonight? Was there instead some intruder I needed to escape from immediately as they used her name and likeness for shameful purposes?

Though I recognized the fickleness of this situation, I found myself… disappointed.

Truly, I never thought I would say that in reference to her. Ever.

But I anticipated seeing her so much that I neglected my other responsibilities for the day.

For her to leave that promise unfulfilled… Everything would have been a waste of my time!

I impatiently slammed my fists on the mattress, muttering curse words to myself as I flung my phone near the bedframe. By then, I was almost too antsy to function properly, so I strongly desired some kind of clarification about what was to come.

It had to have been *something*, right?

Even as I listened further and dragged my eyes around to view the panorama of the room, I found myself becoming bitter about the fact there was nothing—not even a flicker of light as a shadow was cast over it or the sound of gentle footsteps trekking along the soft carpet.

The room was as lifeless as—

Just then, a scrape akin to nails on a chalkboard caught my attention and alerted me to some motion near the entrance. Desperately hoping it wasn't my parents quite yet—I couldn't have my plan foiled—I slid out of my cocoon, carefully tapping my soles against the floor to peek around the corner.

The door was down a miniature hallway from which I heard the egregious noise, so I aimed for this spot. Biting my lower lip harshly, I tiptoed as I approached the scratching, and it continually grew louder until I was red hot on the other side of the wall.

My hopes shot up so much by then; my heart pounded erratically as I leaned my back against the sheetrock, unprepared to round the corner just yet. I didn't think I would survive if my heart rate came crashing down upon the sound turning out to be nothing.

But with another few scrapes that caught my ear, I knew this wasn't pure coincidence.

It was worth risking my livelihood on… If it was who I prayed it was...

With one deep inhale, I stepped outward with my left foot and swivelled on my heel, immediately sickening at the morbid sight before me as my tongue emerged from my mouth in disgust.

In my dazed state, it took me a minute to process the lettering of the message inscribed on the wall of my new sanctuary, but when I finally did, I realized it read:

"Darling, did you think you'd be able to run by just going to another room?"

There was something almost musical about the squiggly writing, and I grinned subtly despite the aching in my stomach at the sight of blood.

"Darling". It had a nice ring to it when it came from her.

As I was in that euphoric trance, my eyes bugged out in pure shock when I thought my retinas deceived me.

In front of the note, a flurry of colors painted my vision, consolidating into the form of a person. One by one, the pixels settled into their makeshift grid. They created the shape of two tan arms, a torso covered in a draping black dress, a pair of dainty legs, and then—at last—a grinning head with black hair flowing from it in gentle waves, settling in place by the force of gravity.

There was a small cut on the girl's arm that leaked copious amounts of her red fluid, and she continued dragging her finger through it as if the pad was a quill and the blood her ink, decorating my wall with the ominous messages.

Soon, she stuck the bloodied index finger into her mouth, magically staunching the wound on her arm as she then dripped the saliva into the hole. She then turned to me with a bright smile on her face and reddened teeth, giggling in a way that evoked nostalgia in me as I nearly teared up at the sight of her.

Melina. It was really her...

I was disgusted to find myself wondering what it'd be like to kiss her after that—to take every liquid of hers into my mouth as we became close enough to share each other's breaths and taste copper on each other's tongues.

With that devilish smile still on my countenance, I greeted her by saying, "I was waiting for you to find me, Melina."

At last, I had actually seen a ghost, and I immediately concluded that Halloween had gotten it all wrong.