“Hello?” I whisper, because even though my brain is screaming at me to shut up and run, my mouth has decided to function independently of it.
A low growl rumbles from Bob, vibrating through my backpack and straight into my spine. The panel of light above me flickers, then stabilizes with a buzz that sets my teeth on edge.
Then I see her.
A woman pushes out of the wall. She looks like she’s in her thirties and dressed in bell-bottoms and a turtleneck that’s stained dark across the chest. She’s gray. Her movements aren’t fluid. She stutters and skips like she’s a clip on a damaged VHS tape. She stops moving. Her eyes widen as her hands claw at her throat. Then she moves again. Her feet pad an inch above the linoleum as she takes three steps forward, stops, and claws at her throat again.
Bob’s growl deepens. I’m not hallucinating.
The woman freezes with her hands around her throat. Her head turns.
Our eyes meet.
I duck my head and stare at my keyboard, my heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. Do ghosts find eye contact threatening? Animals do. I wish I’d asked more questions before walking away from theonly people who know what they’redoing.
I try to look absorbed in reading, but I can still see her in the corner of my vision. The woman cocks her head. She takes a single step toward me. Then another.
She definitely saw me looking. I looked right at her, and now she knows I can see her, and oh God, what does she want from me? Does she want to kill me, too?
“… hhhhhelllll… sssssuh…”
I force myself to keep staring at the computer screen even though the words are swimming together, and I can’t focus on anything except the glimpse of her getting closer.
“… hhhheee… mmmmeee…”
She’s right next to me. I can feel her there, like a cold pressure against my skull.
“… sssssooo… llllll… ssssssince… ssssomeone… ssssssaw…”
A hand drifts into my field of vision. Gray fingers reach for my face. I can see through them to the computer behind, but she’s solid enough that the air around her hand shimmers with cold. Her fingertip brushes my cheek.
The sensation tingles to the point of pain, like when your foot falls asleep and you have to walk on it. My cheek goes slack, the muscles quivering around her touch.
Fuck this.
I grab my backpack and bolt toward the exit. Bob’s eyes bug out of his head at the sudden movement, and I clutch the bag tightly against my chest so as not to jostle him too much. Mrs. Chang shrieks as I barrel past the circulation desk, and I yell, “Sorry!” over my shoulder but don’t slow down.
I dive into my car, gulping down air like I’ve been drowning. Pins and needles spread from my cheek to my jaw where she touched me. I scrub at the spot with my sleeve, but the feeling won’t go away.
What did she want? Help, she said. Help with what?
Bob sleeps in the back seat as I drive, eventually finding myself turning onto the road the construction site is on. I park across the road. The last thing I need is for Ray or, God forbid,Dylanto see my car, but if I’m going to have any more unwelcome visitors today, it would be good to have some other people around.
Swallowing hurts so bad, but I manage to get down two Ibuprofen and curl up with Bob, watching an illegal recording ofRentuntil my brain turns off.
At three, Ray emerges from the trailer. Part of me wants to run over and beg him to tell me what I should do, but I slam that thought down hard. He’s not my dad. He gave me a job. That’s all.
But times like these make me wish I didn’t have to be alone all the time. I try to get rid of that thought too because it’s not going to change a single thing about my life, but I find myself chomping down hard on my lip and trying not to cry.
I dig a can of soup out of my reserve for dinner. Bob wants nothing to do with the pee pad.
“Please?” I beg, dragging it closer to him with my foot. “I don’t want to go out there alone.”
Bob sniffs at the pad.
“Fine.” I crawl into my sleeping bag. “I’m going to leave it there, so if you want to go at any time during the night, please use it. I’ll be very upset if you pee in my sleeping bag.”
After locking the doors, I turn off my dome light and plunge the car into darkness. Sleeping with a bag of salt feels weird, but you know what, it’s not the weirdest thing to happen to me in thepast twenty-four hours, so I prop the bag open in the cupholder of the door in case I need easy access.
