Haunts?

You sound spooked, Mel. Did I freak you out? I’ll take that as a win. Anytime I can get anybody to feel anything, I’ll take that as a win.

Haunts though?

The sprinkler got their feet again. Paula gulped more gin.

I guess the legend is she comes around if you talk about her too much. She comes and strangles you or beats you up. ’Cause she’s angry, see? ’Cause she didn’t deserve that, see? And also maybe because she was killed in her sleep and so her ghost doesn’t know if this is a dream or not.

Melanie went quiet. Like she does. That’s her thing. The other girls call her shy, but really, most of the time, she feels she chooses silence. She doesn’t talk because she doesn’t need to constantly express herself like Natasha does. Hell no. Like when Nat was telling her Daphne story, Melanie didn’t say, I know about Daphne, too, because then everyone would be all Oooh, what do you know? And she didn’t feel like talking about it. Not because Paula said that’s what draws Daphne to you. No. That’s not why.

Right?

Outside, below, a white van passes. A heating and cooling logo on its side. An older woman walks her dog. The streetlamps are on.

Natasha’s Daphne story was different from Paula’s. That’s true. In Natasha’s, the “assholes” were high school ballers, not mean, vague entities. And the way to bring her about was to think of her. Not just talk about her like Paula said.

That’s the part that bothers Melanie.

She doesn’t like talking much anyway, so she was safe from someone she wasn’t supposed to talk about.

But thinking?

Shit. Melanie thinks as much as Stephen Hawking did.

She heads back to the mirror, starts taking out the braids on the other side of her head. She thinks of Tammy Jones’s face caved in, imagines her looking like one of those rubber Halloween masks when you toss them on your bed, when they fold up, how the eyes get closer together, the nose gets longer, how the ends of the mouth curl in a way to suggest inevitable speech.

But what’s bothering her more than the story itself is the feeling that Natasha somehow pried something loose from Melanie’s subconscious. Yes. Without permission.

And against all advice.

She feels a breeze, looks to the window. Goes to it, closes it. Looks through the glass and sees, a dozen blocks up, a silhouette pedaling a bike.

“Mel,” her mom says, behind her in the doorjamb.

Melanie, startled, looks to her.

“You talked to a cop today?”

“I did.”

“You didn’t say we have weed here, did you?”

“What do you think I am? A narc?”

“You didn’t though?”

“It wasn’t about that, Mom.”

“Still. I got worried, is all.”

“That’s insane. A friend died.”

“You said you didn’t know her.”

“I didn’t,” Melanie says. She crosses the room, back to the mirror.

“Well, if police are going to be coming around, be careful, is all.”