“You aren’t a whore or a plain Jane,” she says flatly.
“Tell the internet that.”
Through the rows and rows of hangers cluttering my closet, I flip through everything to find an outfit.
Tomorrow, Aidan will be sitting across from me and the last thing I wanted him to see is a plain Jane.
It takes fifteen minutes for me to land on the blue dress at the back of the closet next to my winter coats. A casual yet formfitting dress that hugs all my curves.
A dress Aidan has complimented in the past.
“Why don’t I wear this more?”
Ghosty is behind me, bursting with the energy of someone given a hundred sugar sticks. I’ve never seen a person so alive first thing in the morning, smacking her gum and repeatedly jumping up and down on my mattress.
“Are you always so…”
“Beautiful? Radiant? Just all around amazing?” she yells.
“Nope, wasn’t thinking that.”
I take the blue dress to the bathroom to try it on and see if it still fits. When I come back out, she’s sitting on the bed—no longer jumping and calmer than before.
“This definitely screams ‘don’t break up with me.’” Her words come out cold and sharp. A definite observation that makes me panic.
“You think he’s gonna break up with me?”
“I mean, hopefully.”
“What is wrong with you??”
And somehow, I’ve turned from laughing uncontrollably, to crying, to now being flat-out angry.
She’s just a ghost. She is just a ghost. She is not real. If anything, I’ve just been suffering from a long form of psychosis that has led to my own psyche torturing itself.
A glutton for my own self-loathing.
Sitting at the vanity, I pull my makeup out of the drawer, applying my foundation with a beauty blender as she watches me carefully.
She doesn’t say a word, but the pendant does.
“A luz sabe.”
The chant has always been like an old soul speaking to me in another language.
For the first time, I can feel her chilling hand graze against my shoulder. Her face appears in my mirror.
The same face I’ve seen time and time again over the past few weeks, but now it becomes unmistakably obvious…
“Your name is Skye, isn’t it?” The realization has me trembling. A shaking sensation that ripples throughout my body, going from my hands to my feet.
She nods.
All I can say is, “I wish I figured this out sooner…”
Because what else do I say to her? I’ve been so caught up in my own shit I didn’t realize until now that she—
I can’t even picture that night, because every time I do, I have nightmares. She must have them too…
