Born and raised on the island of Kaua’i, Danielle Batalion Ola now writes from the mainland. Her work has been supported by Kundiman and the Tin House Workshop. You can find her stories in The Common and Lunch Ticket, among others.
By her senior year, the ghosts on campus were so boring that Allie wished she were a skeptic. She found two active spirits in her dorm. The first would hiss at Allie if she ran down the hall after ten p.m.: Quiet, please. I need quiet. The other haunted the bathroom, always waiting to flush a toilet in an empty stall after Allie was done with her late-night piss. It had all spooked Allie when she first arrived as a freshman, eager and cut grass green, but now, these little haunts were expected. Predictable. Just once, Allie wanted to meet a spirit—just one—that was out for revenge or redemption; a ghost with a story that would make M. Night Shyamalan salivate enough to end the California drought. Instead, she got a stickler for quiet hours and a poor giggling soul with IBS.
Allie wasn’t the only one who’d noticed their supernatural company. Most of her classmates had a spooky story up their sleeves, and a good number of them hadn’t capital-B Believed until it happened to them. A disembodied voice in their room. A mysterious knock on the door. An empty hallway where they swear someone pinched the pert cheek of their ass. This shit isn’t normal, they’d say, again and again, until a month passed, a semester, then a year, and suddenly it was.
After midterms, Allie told Preeti that she might have found a third dorm ghost, one that was visible to the naked eye. She explained how her friend Tara had seen a disembodied hand floating behind Allie’s on their last FaceTime call, and Preeti barely blinked. “Yeah, this place is hella haunted,” she said, passing a joint to Allie between two pinched fingers. “I feel like people got murdered here. I mean, they put a bunch of girls in the forest and called it a school. You don’t think some shit’s gonna go down?”
“A forest?” Sweet smoke flooded Allie’s chest, warming her against a chilled breeze. “Dude, we’re in Oakland.”
“Oh, this doesn’t look like the woods to you?” Preeti gestured overhead. Her fringed bob—a tragically impulsive choice Preeti made in the wake of a bad breakup—bounced with the motion. They were standing at their usual smoking spot, a clearing in the woods behind the dining hall that all the RAs politely ignored. It was a full moon that night, bright enough that they could see the leaves trembling above them.
Allie shrugged. “So what, you’re saying our college is haunted because...we’re an all- girl’s school?”
“I’m saying,” Preeti began, plucking the joint back from Allie’s fingers, “that this place is weird. The other day someone was saying they saw lights going on and off in their common room. Charlie and Ji-Eun felt something grab their arms in the library. Once—” She paused, looking towards the path she and Allie had taken into the trees.
The pause stretched on too long. Allie got impatient. “No one’s gonna come looking for us here.”
Preeti waved a hand as if to say, No, not that, and took a deep breath. “Once, we were driving across campus to pick up Ji-Eun. It was raining, right? Like, literally storming. Then out of nowhere we saw this girl in a white nightgown walking down the road. Charlie stopped the car to let her cross the street, but then she just walked past the car, right past my window, and she kept going until she disappeared into the trees.” She paused for effect and then added in a low deliberate voice, “When we talked about it later, we realized none of us actually saw her feet.”
Oh yeah, Allie knew that one. She’d seen her plenty over the past year, during the late night walks Allie went on to exhaust herself when she had spent an hour or three staring at the ceiling instead of finding sleep.
Preeti was waiting for a reaction, a sign that Allie was impressed. She was the sort of person who fancied herself a ghost hunter, someone who heard a mysterious whisper and immediately assumed that they were being called to usher a spirit to the Great Beyond. Allie was sure if Preeti ever managed, she’d put it on her resume within the hour. Ghost Hunter & Purgatory Consultant; good at listening; a self-driven problem-solver. She liked being admired. Allie knew this, and as much as Allie liked her, she didn’t want to give Preeti the satisfaction. “Sounds like you guys saw a cracked-out grad student and none of you looked below the waist.”
Preeti went quiet. Seemed disappointed. Allie didn’t want to say it out loud, but she was, too. She’d been hoping for something new. Something good.
The walking-in-the-rain ghost girl was pretty chill; didn’t moan and groan like the ones in the halls. She never bothered Allie. Together, they’d just walk and walk. But if she had to guess, Allie would say the girl was a roadside casualty. Probably a hit and run. A tragedy, but a mundane one, and Allie had had enough of mundane.
. . .
Allie left behind a brother to attend this school: Joseph Ernesto, his second-first-name lifted from a great-grandfather on his father’s side. Allie called him Joe. Joe’s dad was a piece of shit who left before Joe started talking, unlike Allie’s piece-of- shit dad who waited until kindergarten, at least. But the absence of their fathers and their mother’s long hours made it easy for them to feel like “real” siblings; not half, but whole.
The summer before Allie left, Joe was real clingy. He forced her to eat with him at the dining table, away from their used but new-to-them flat screen, even when their mom wasn’t home to enforce the household rule against eating with the television on. He had a bad habit of asking Allie questions that were too complicated to answer. Always had. But after she got her acceptance letter, it became so much worse. He had a knack for springing them on Allie when she least expected it, moments when Allie just wanted to kick back and relax.
Over a bowl of Kraft mac and cheese: “Do you think everyone actually has a purpose in life, or do we just tell ourselves that to stay motivated?” (Yes.)
In the middle of a Love & Hip Hop rerun: “How can people keep loving someone when they don’t even like them?” (Feelings are a curse.)
In the theater, barely a whisper, as two girls a few rows up kissed: “What do people mean when they say sexuality is a spectrum?” (Shh, the movie’s starting.)
He started bulldozing his way into Allie’s room and planting himself on the right side of her bed. He was twelve then, and Allie would scream at him for being too old for sharing a bed. But Joe always had a response ready. “Gotta practice for when I get this room after you move out,” he’d say. Or, “I’m sleeping closer to the door so I can protect you, noodle-arms.” Allie would pretend to be angry even though she left her bedroom door unlocked every evening, even though she always embraced Joe after he fell asleep.
In July, Tara got access to USC-bound Manny Bosch’s Finsta. Tara reported that the aspiring wide receiver had posted a family photo on a white-sand beach, announcing that he’d be spending the next two weeks “playing daddy for some puerto rican mamis [babyface] [eggplant] [flex].” Allie knew this meant that while the Bosches were away, the pool in their backyard was wonderfully available. She waited for the perfect summer day, a day with blue skies and a light breeze, and when it came, she told Joe that it was time to go for a swim.
“Careful,” Allie said, hands lifted in caution as Joe hoisted his leg over the Bosches’ fence.
Joe looked at her and smirked, “Oh, so you think you could catch me?”
“Shut up, I could if I wanted to.” Allie wondered if she should remind Joe that she used to carry his fat diapered ass for hours or tell him that smirk looked stupid between his chubby cheeks.
Joe jerked suddenly as if losing his grip and cackled when Allie shrieked and reached for him in response. Allie snapped her arms back against her sides as she glared, “Be quiet, idiot. The neighbors.”
Joe mockingly lifted a finger to his lips but hushed. He looked carefully towards the ground, measuring the distance, and leapt onto the grass. As he struggled to find his footing, Allie moved to help him. But then she noticed Joe’s lanky limbs, the dusting of hair climbing up his arms and on his upper lip, and she suddenly remembered that her little brother was growing, had always been, and she rushed towards the waiting water both to prove that she wasn’t always going to baby him and to leave that discomfiting realization behind.
Allie was wading into light-webbed turquoise, content when Joe cannonballed in. After she’d wiped the water from her face, she swam to Joe and smacked him on the arm. “Stop, Joe.”
“Live a little, Allie.” He laughed, kicking back from her. He lifted joined hands into the air and brought them crashing back down into the water, sending a splash directly into her face. Allie gaped, blinking away chlorine behind a curtain of dripping hair. She leapt up and pushed down on Joe’s shoulders until he was thrashing below the surface. It only took a moment for him to wrap his hands around her ankles, to yank hard, submerging Allie with him. Neighbors be damned, they were at war.
After they tired themselves, Joe floated in the center of the pool, the sun warming his skin. Allie rested against the edges, eyes closed and ears clogged. It didn’t take long for Joe to break the peace.
“Hey,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Do we look related?”
Allie’s eyes opened, vision flooding with a cloud-splashed sky. “What do you mean? We’re brother and sister.”
“Yeah. Do we look it, though?”
She looked at him. Joe had righted himself, was treading water now, and she couldn’t help but notice the height of him. He was tall for his age, like Mom had placed him on the rack when he was still young and pliable and stretched herself a stately son. His face was the shape of a steamed bun, just like Allie’s, but that was the only similarity between them that anyone could find. Allie was round all over. Mom still called her their Little Teapot in rare moments of affection; short and stout. She liked to say that Allie knew before anyone else that her dad wouldn’t be around, so Allie took everything she could from his side of the family and ran. But Joe—Joe was all Mom.
“Yeah,” Allie said. “I mean, I think we do.”
He laughed. “You’re full of it.”
Allie swam to him and held her arm out beneath the water. “Look,” she said, flexing her hand, relishing the feel of the water pushing against the motion. She curled her fingers against her palm, showing Joe a thumbs up. “Our thumbs bend the same way, like they’re about to break. And we have the same skin.”
“I’m darker than you.”
“Are not.”
“Also—the fuck, Allie?” Joe’s laugh had an edge to it; something that wouldn’t give beneath his breath. “Of all the things you could point out, you go for our thumbs?”
Allie stared at him. It was the first time she’d ever heard him swear, and she didn’t want her surprise to show. Joe was actually upset by this, the idea that they looked more like strangers than siblings, and his hurt stung. “We’re family, Joe,” she said. “Whether we look it or not.”
He frowned and held his arm out beside hers, palm up, and stared. Their arms looked pallid beneath the surface. Later, Allie would remember thinking: Only corpses have skin like this, this sickly green-gray.
. . .
Dani lived down the hall from Allie. They always smelled faintly of garlic because of the little sachet of cloves they kept beneath their pillow. There was a campus ghost tour last week, and Allie heard that Dani showed up with a rosary clutched in one hand and a Ziploc bag of red Hawaiian salt and sage in the other. Allie took this to mean that Dani was at least a little crazy, but she liked them anyway. After a few drinks, Dani turned into the funniest person Allie knew. Plus, to counteract that garlicky smell, they had a great collection of essential oils.
“Frankincense or sweet orange?” Dani asked, holding up two little bottles of brown glass. Without waiting for Allie’s reply, they nodded surely. “Both? Both.” “Why both?”
Allie asked, pulling her notes from her bag. She watched from the bed as Dani filled a mug with water in their dorm room sink, their ponytail resting in a straight line against their back.
“Frankincense for immunity and orange for focus,” Dani said with somber authority as they walked back to their desk. They lifted the lid off the oil diffuser and filled it with water. “Need focus; can’t get sick. Failing stats.” They weren’t, really. Dani had a solid B in the class, but according to Ji-Eun and Preeti and Carla and all the other amateur astrologers on campus, Virgos only wanted grades that matched their personality type: A, A, A.
“Sure. Do you,” Allie shrugged. She didn’t care that much about the benefits of frankincense or sweet orange, though she had to admit that it was a lot easier to read about neurotransmitters and myelin sheaths when a room didn’t smell like must.
As silky white vapor spilled from the mouth of the diffuser, Allie cracked open her notebook. But before she could begin to decipher the messy scrawl, Dani spoke. “I saw Maria in the garden yesterday.”
Dani claimed that they’d had “The Sight” since they were little. A cousin passed away from cancer when they were two. Five years later, Dani told their mother that they had an imaginary friend: a woman with copper-striped hair and a birthmark the size of a plum on her collarbone. Dani’s mother drenched them in holy oils and gave them their first rosary in response. Dani had a lot of imaginary friends after that. A young boy in a newsboy cap, a woman with violent red burns that stretched from her right shoulder to her forearm, and an old man with a nose that looked awfully like their own. So while their classmates were just now dipping their toes into the afterlife, Dani found the entire thing pretty old hat.
Maria was the prissy heiress that haunted the dried-up fountain just outside the dorm. When she first moved in, Allie would retreat to the garden to do her readings on the fountain’s cobbled steps, but Maria would always drift into her peripheral vision, a wisp of the female form. Are you here for the show? she’d asked Allie that first time. When Allie didn’t answer, she disappeared with the rustling of leaves.
When Allie was one of the garden’s most frequent visitors, Maria would appear at the edges of Allie’s vision and spit demand after demand at her. Why are you so late? Where is my seat? When will it start? It became so bad that Allie could barely step out the door without Maria hissing at her ears. By late September, Allie surrendered and decided to ask Dani if she could study in their room instead. Dani laughed and asked, “She’s harassing you, too?”
Dani learned on the ghost tour that Maria was born with a name like Tabitha or Bertha and thought it was so unflattering that she renamed herself in a hissy fit in her freshman year. Tour Guide Azure (her real name) said Maria would only move on if she was serenaded by a Greek choir, which made Allie wonder if Maria had passed away in a theater somewhere, moments before the curtain lifted. The thought disturbed Allie. She didn’t like the idea that any Maria or Tabitha or Bertha could live their life and still be thrown backwards to their college days in death. It made Allie feel doomed, like her graduation day would be the end of everything significant and there was no point to the rest.
“Did she want you to sing for her?” Allie asked, peering at Dani over the edges of her book.
“I think she just wanted to talk.” They had that look on their face, a tender thoughtful look Allie couldn’t stand. “Do you talk to them?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?” Dani asked with honest concern.
Allie let out a sigh and closed her notebook, her attention fully settled on Dani now. Joe had asked her the same thing, back in sophomore year. She told Dani the same thing she’d told him then. “They’re boring. They don’t ask the right questions. It’s always who are you or where am I or why are you here? Even if I talked to them I don’t think it’d be a fun conversation, so what’s the point?”
Dani nodded. “I guess you’re right. We don’t even know if it matters. Maybe they can’t even hear us. Maybe the ones that get left behind are supposed to feel alone.”
Allie shifted in her seat. “Where is all this coming from anyway?”
They shrugged. “Nowhere really. Just thinking.” Dani put their palm against their cheek, staring at Allie as if trying to peer through her.
After a moment, Allie spoke again. “I saw Preeti last night.” She paused, hearing just how quickly the words had rushed out of her, before pressing on. “She thinks we’re haunted because we’re at a girl’s school.”
“Women’s college,” Dani corrected, frowning. “And what is that supposed to mean? That female spaces are inherently cursed?”
“I think,” Allie said, “that she was just saying that there’s a specific energy here.”
“Tell her to text me back instead of coming up with bullshit theories,” Dani said. Allie smirked before she could help it, remembering Dani and Preeti at a party, bodies pressed against each other in the corner. Dani averted their gaze. “It’s weird to think about though.”
“What is?”
Allie could see the vapor unfurling behind Dani, uncoiling just beyond their shoulders. “The idea that a place has a certain energy. I mean, if it’s the place that holds on, that means we could all be lonely college ghosts when we die, right?”
The smell of sweet orange seemed too strong now. Allie forced a chuckle. “Well, we have some time before that happens.”
Dani shook their head, looking at Allie but through her all over again. “You never know.” As soon as they said it, Allie saw the regret on their face, heat welling in their cheeks.
“It’s fine,” Allie said quickly, against the pang in her chest and anger in her gut. “You’re not wrong.”
. . .
Allie had just wrapped up her junior year when that speeding Toyota Camry dragged Joe sixty feet down the 101. He was only fourteen then, and what haunted Allie was that she’d never know exactly when he died. She wanted to say that she hoped he didn’t feel a thing, not even a tickle as the asphalt tore at him. But she realized that would mean wishing he died on impact, and it felt dishonest to say that when really, she only wished that he hadn’t died at all.
He was with two friends at the time. Allie didn’t recognize their faces, only their names. Joe mentioned them off-hand on their calls. He liked to talk shit about J.C.-not-Jesse and brag about how he helped Steph and Roy bring up their grades. Whenever Allie asked, Joe said they spent their afternoons playing video games. Then, a couple of weeks before the accident, he admitted that they’d started playing games of chicken on the freeway. It was a simple game. Stand in the middle of the road and be the last one to run.
“Oh my god, Joe,” Allie said, her voice flying into a higher key, straining to reach him through the phone. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”
“Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing,” Joe said. Sheepishly, he added, “It’s just for fun. And it’s not like I’m playing to win.”
Allie thought of their evenings screaming at each other over Mario Kart and rifling their way through playing cards in games of Speed. Once, after she beat Joe five times in a row, he grabbed as many cards as he could and tore them in half, declaring the deck unusable. Allie scoffed. “Bullshit. I know you.”
“But you don’t,” Joe grumbled. Before Allie could respond, he added, “What do you want me to do, huh? I don’t have anything to do at home.”
Joe had been angry ever since Allie decided to spend her school breaks with friends instead of returning home. In the beginning, he shared his gripes with her. Mom was always working. She never cooked. If he wasn’t at school, he ate freezer food and nothing else. Towards the end of Allie’s sophomore year, he started texting her jokes about failing physics so bad he tried to kill himself by sticking a plastic fork into an outlet. When Allie asked what he wanted for his birthday, she got a text back that read, just yeet me off a cliff.
Allie asked their mother if he seemed any sadder than usual. She asked if Joe actually had friends. “Think so, but I haven’t met them,” her mom said. When Allie kept pressing, her mother sighed and said, “He’s old enough, Allie. He’s going to have to learn how to be on his own eventually.”
“But I think he’s lonely. Lonely is different than being on your own,” Allie replied. “Maybe you could take time off and spend time with him? Go on a trip? Something.” There was enough of a pause that Allie heard a car turning once, twice, around the parking lot outside. Finally, her mom said, “We can’t afford a vacation and your school.”
Later that week, Allie explained to Joe that she couldn’t come home because she’d landed a summer job at an on-campus research lab, and even though he congratulated her, Allie always felt like he held it against her. Maybe her mom was right. He’d have to learn.
“Joe, you could get really hurt. There are so many other things you guys could do that wouldn’t kill you. Don’t be stupid, okay? Stop, for me?” After a beat, Allie added, “Promise me you’ll stop and I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just ask.”
Joe didn’t promise, but he asked, “When are you coming home?”
Mom said his death made the papers. Joe would’ve liked that. He liked being in the limelight; the boy drawing crowds at the center of a room. But when Allie read the article, it felt as if something had been torn from her, and in moments she was on the phone with the newspaper, screaming as if that would stave off the ache of it. “You had one job,” Allie cried, voice fractured. It was a tragedy, the article said, that the life of a young Joseph Earnest had been cut so short.
. . .
Before Joe died, he believed in ghosts. He believed Allie could hear them. But Allie knew he only thought this because once, when Allie was in the eighth grade and Joe was in the second, Allie came home from school and ran an experiment on her poor unsuspecting brother. She pushed Joe into their bathroom and told him he wasn’t allowed to turn the lights on. As she held the door shut from the outside, pressing her ear against the cool wood, she gave him his instructions. “Spin and chant it three times,” Allie commanded. “Say Bloody Mary.”
Joe took a deep breath and let it loose. “BloodyMaryBloodyMaryBlood—”
“Stop!” Allie said, knocking to interrupt him. “You have to say it slow.”
There was a pause on the other side. If Allie listened closely, she could hear Joe’s bare feet falling onto the bathroom tile. “Bloody Mary,” he chanted. Then again. And again. “What now?”
“Look into the mirror,” Allie directed. “Do you see her?”
“I don’t see anything,” Joe replied. “Can I turn the lights on?”
“No.” Allie was disappointed that the ritual failed. Tara had sworn by it. But Allie was a resourceful girl, and she knew an opportunity for entertainment when she saw one. “Are you sure you don’t see her?”
“It’s too dark in here to see anything.”
“But I heard something.”
There was a long stretch of silence before Joe asked, “What do you mean?”
“I heard a woman’s voice. I heard someone talking.”
“What did she say?”
“I couldn’t tell. Shhhhhh, I’m listening.” Allie lifted a hand to her mouth to stifle her own laughter. She could hear Joe’s feet slapping on the tile now, turning in fast circles this time, round and round. When enough time had passed, she gasped dramatically. “Joe! Joe!”
“What, Allie, what!” Joe shrieked back.
“She said she sees you, Joe! She sees you!” It only took a second for the doorknob to start rattling in Allie’s hand. She held fast. When Joe realized Allie wouldn’t release him, he began pounding at the door. Allie cackled, “She’s coming for you, Joe! She’s coming!”
That day fell to the back of Allie’s mind, gathering dust, until Mom and Joe dropped Allie off at her campus years later. Mom and Allie were unpacking boxes in her new dorm, her roommate still yet to arrive. Joe left to use the bathroom, but after a few minutes he rushed back in, eyes bright. “Allie, this place is haunted.”
Their mom scoffed. Allie shot a glare at her. “What do you mean?”
Joe grabbed Allie by the wrist and pulled her into the hallway. “Come and see.” He walked Allie all the way to the glass breezeway that connected her hall to the common room, where they’d passed through with their boxes not long before. There was a pack of Allie’s new dorm mates walking through with their parents, their own brothers and sisters. Joe made a motion to wait until they’d passed through before meeting Allie’s gaze. “I saw her here.”
“Joe.”
“I promise,” he said. “I saw someone. A girl. In those—those old-timey clothes. Just listen for her, Allie. Please?”
Allie shot Joe a look, but when she saw his steamed bun face and doleful eyes, she realized that this was the least she could do for him on the day they had to say goodbye. She made a show of taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, centering herself, and tried to think about what sort of lie she’d feed her brother when she saw him next. Then she heard it. A light breeze of a voice, blowing against her ear. Who are you? Her skin prickled as the hair on her arms lifted, as if drawn towards the source of the sound. Why are you here?
“Allie? Allie, did you hear something?”
When her eyes opened, she saw Joe and his cheeks and shoulders that looked too wide for his lanky body, even wider than yesterday. She grabbed at them with an excitement that surprised her. “I did, Joe. I heard.”
. . .
“I think I’m going to drop out,” Allie declared. Tara stared back at her, eyes blinking across three thousand miles and a cracked touchscreen.
Allie had left Dani’s room a few hours ago, claiming she had some meeting with a student org. Dani was polite enough not to say a word, even though they knew Allie slowly bowed out of all her clubs after Joe died. She started to spend her nights on FaceTime with Tara instead, talking, remembering, staring at the ceiling in silence. Tara was a good friend. Tara knew Joe. Tara listened. Tara’s curly wet hair sat atop her head in a toweled twist, big glasses with lenses thick as jerky set down on the desk beside her. Without them on, Allie knew Tara couldn’t see a thing. But still, her eyes narrowed. “You always say that.”
“I mean it this time.”
“Do it, then.” Tara reached for a tub of moisturizer that sat behind the camera. The quality of the call was good enough today that Allie could see the hairs poking through the ashy ridges of Tara’s armpit. She could tell that it was getting cold on Tara’s campus. She hadn’t shaved. As Tara rubbed blue-tinted cream into her cheeks, she taunted Allie. “Three years of college, wasted.”
“Three years of debt,” Allie conceded.
Tara nodded. “Might as well make it four. Besides, if I have to be four years in debt, so do you. You broke one promise. I need reparations.”
Allie and Tara went to the same middle school. At first, Tara thought Allie was stuck-up; that she refused to hang out with anyone after school because she thought she was too good for Tara and the rest of their classmates. Then their Spanish teacher paired them up to do a presentation on a city in Spain. When Tara arrived at Allie’s house with her laptop and a stack of library books with fun facts about Seville, it was Joe who opened the door. Tara kept coming after the project was over, watching Joe whenever Allie disappeared into another room and entertaining him whenever Allie needed rest. When Joe wasn’t in the room, she and Allie talked about going to Seville for real. Tara said they could make it happen, that she’d heard flights were cheaper from New York. Allie said they’d go to New York then, as college students, and Tara was so excited that she asked Allie to pinky swear. It wasn’t until Allie broke that promise that she’d realized she’d found something of a best friend in Tara, when Tara forgave her for turning down a seat at Fordham to be closer to Joe, closer to home.
Allie had gone quiet. “Hey,” Tara said, hoping to jostle her. “Hey. Are you thinking of him?”
Allie shook her head, knowing Tara wouldn’t be fooled.
Tara frowned and reached for her glasses. She breathed on the lenses, the puff of air moistening the glass before polishing it against her shirt. Tara did this whenever Allie was upset, as if she needed to see clearly to spot the weight on Allie’s shoulders, to comfort her and shoo Allie’s sadness away. “He wouldn’t want you to leave.”
“He wanted me home.”
“But he didn’t want you to leave,” Tara said, gaze piercing. Allie knew she was right. That somehow, even with Joe missing her the way he did, both these notions were true.
Changing the subject, Allie said, “Preeti thinks this place is haunted because it’s a women’s college.”
Tara’s eyes softened. They flickered left, right, searching Allie’s face, before she settled back in her seat and turned to her laptop sitting to the left of the camera. “What do you think?”
“I think—” Allie began. She thought about Joe spinning in their bathroom, Joe plummeting into the pool, Joe at the dinner table, laughing at something he’d said. “I’ve been thinking about how even off campus, most ghosts you hear about are women anyway. It’s always a girl crawling out of a well or a mom crying for her kids. It’s always a woman who’s angry or lost her mind. It’s always the girls who suffer.”
Tara glanced at the camera. Allie barely noticed. Allie’s eyes were looking beyond the screen now, seeing Joe as a baby, wailing between two pillows. Joe, in her arms, yanking at her hair. Joe, poring over his homework, asking how do you do this, Allie? Allie, will you show me what it means?
“And maybe that’s just because girls are always expected to carry so much. To cook, to clean, to give and give and give whatever they can to make people happy. We have to carry so much when we’re alive. We have to do so much to make everyone else’s lives work, so it’s like—fuck, of course we get stuck here after we die. We’ve been taught to feel like the world can’t go on without us, that so many people need us, so of course we’re going to stay. But when you hear about men, when you hear about boys, they get to make mistakes.”
Joe stepping onto the freeway, playing to win. Joe, reduced to the wrong name on a page.
“They get to make such stupid mistakes, Tara. And you know what? They get to move on.”
Tara was staring again. Allie could see her mouth moving but the words didn’t reach her. She was distracted by the coil in her throat, the feeling of something running down her cheeks. “I have to go,” Allie said hastily. Before Tara could speak, she ended the call.
Allie laid back on her bed after the line went dead. She stared at the ceiling and thought about the day she went back home. Her mom embraced her at the door and they’d wept. It would be a closed casket funeral, she said. Allie remembered how she’d thought about her last call with Joe then, wished that they’d FaceTimed instead.
They sat there for hours before her mom sniffled and wiped her eyes. She still had to work. She needed to go in for her shift. Allie watched as she pulled on her scrubs and powdered her face with a heavier hand than usual. When her mom left, Allie went to her room and stared at the ceiling just like this.
She waited.
She listened. Her ears strained, waiting for the sound of footsteps in the hall. A rustle of clothes. Something, anything. Allie closed her eyes and whispered, “Come on.” She wanted to feel the sheets pulling back, the mattress sinking beside her. She wanted one last question, unsettling, searching deep. “Talk to me.”
But there was nothing. The room was still, and the silence settled over Allie like a wound, gnawing at her until she fell asleep.
•
