Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #19 October 2015 | Page 48

school, I walk out behind her, feeling triumphant. The
students who jostle me by accident shudder and look
at her with wary eyes. They think Polly has somehow
chilled them, as if she is a witch with an evil aura.
Poor little thing. I’m not sorry they’re afraid, but I
wish they wouldn’t blame her.

It was a sweet moment, a good
moment. I think about it until the sun
comes up and the bell rings to signal
the start of school.
I wait for Polly until she comes through the
front doors. She trudges in with her head down. No
one speaks to her, I notice. She is not with a knot of
girls or even an individual boy left over from elementary school. How odd.
I watch her at her locker, and some kid jostles her before snarling, “Watch it, freak.” Polly says
nothing.

Before I was born, when people talked about
ghosts, they said ghosts haunted places. They said
a ghost was stuck where it died, or maybe where its
body was buried. I have never found that to be true.
The room where I was born bothers me. It is clean
now, and sometimes my mother still goes inside to
hold my teddy bears or nap on my bed. At first I
watched her there. Sometimes I even tried to talk to
her or touch her arm to comfort her. But it only ever
made her shiver and start to cry. The cemetery is so
boring, with its yards of lawn and shining stones. My
gravestone, with its short, carved lifespan, is depressing. But the school. Even though Jenna and Daniel
are no longer there, I still wander through the halls
they used to walk. It makes it easier for my dreams to
swallow me. Most of the dreams are lovely. I am not
happy, but I can remember being happy.

“What a jerk,” I mutter.
She glances up at me, then away. She’s still
determined not to speak to me. I can’t blame her. If
kids already tease her, what will they say if they see
her looking at nothing and talking to no one? For all I
know, maybe that’s why they’re cruel. Maybe someone once saw her talking to some other ghost. I have
never seen one myself, but I heard stories about them
back before I was born. That indicates there might be
more than one of us walking around. Maybe we can’t
see each other. Maybe you have to be born special,
like Polly, before you can see ghosts.
At lunch, Polly lets one of the long sleeves of
her shirt travel up, and I see the white mounds of scars
that crisscross her wrists like roads on a map. The
girls sitting at the other end of the table see them too.
Their hands fly up and they whisper, sibilances clearly audible over the background cafeteria din. Polly
glances up at them, and they fall briefly silent. She
shoves her shirt into place and goes back to pushing
her food around her plate with a plastic fork. As soon
as she looks away, the girls start whispering again.
I can see now that Polly will never talk to me
at school. I’m going to have to follow her home.
It is hard to spend the whole day focused
enough to be aware of when Polly leaves. My dreams
threaten to swallow me, and I fight them. Polly. Polly
is all I care about. As she moves down the steps of the

Polly’s house is pretty but small. She has a
green lawn rimmed with white pickets and a porch
with a swing. Roses climb a trellis in a mad riot of
blooms and thorns. The house itself is pale yellow
with white shutters. In her black clothes, she is a blight
against this place. She climbs the steps. She opens the
door without knocking and I follow her inside. She
looks tired. A woman, plump and comfortable-looking, with Polly’s blue eyes, is in the kitchen.
“Hi, sweetie,” she says, throwing an arm
around Polly’s shoulders. “Want a snack?”
Polly mumbles something and ducks under the
arm. The woman frowns.
“Honey, what’s wrong? Did you have another
bad day at school?”
“Nothing’s wrong, mom. I’m
fine.” Polly pulls the refrigerator door
open, then shuts it again with an air of

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