Page 11 of Ghosts Don't Cry
Maybe if I say it enough times, I’ll believe it.
The warning bell rings, pulling me back to the present. I push away from the sink, drag the trash can back to its corner, and head to my next class.
English is next. The teacher announces we’re starting‘The Grapes of Wrath,’and something inside me comes to life. Steinbeck understood what it means to have nothing. To move from place to place with everything you own on your back, and watch the world grind people down until there’s nothing left but the will to keep moving.
I’ve read it before, in a library in Portland, sitting in a corner where the heating vent kept me warm for a few hours. The story stuck with me in ways most things don’t. Maybe because it was about people like me. People the world would rather forget exist.
When lunch time arrives, I don’t go to the cafeteria. There’s little point. I don’t have any money or a packed lunch to eat. Instead, I find my way to the library.
The head librarian sits at a desk, stamping returned books. The sound is almost soothing. Most libraries have gone digital, but this one still uses the old method of checking in and out. She glances up when I walk in, offers me a little smile, then goes back to her work.
I find a corner near the reference section, far from the windows and close to the radiator. The table is scarred with years of carved initials and bored doodles. I spread my notebook open, pull out the emergency contact forms, and start signing them.
Around me, the library breathes with quiet sounds. Footsteps on the wooden floor. The soft click of a computer mouse. Everyday sounds that relax the tension in my spine and let me breathe a little easier.
I finish the forms and tuck them back into my bag, then pull out the history book, and read through the next chapter. If I’m going to survive here, I need to stay ahead. I need to proveI belong in these classrooms, even if everything else about me screams outsider.
The afternoon passes with more classes. Math, where equations make more sense than anything else in my life. Biology, where I take a seat at the back and keep my head down. By the time the final bell rings, my head is pounding. I haven’t slept more than a few hours at a time in weeks, and last night on a bench at the bus station didn’t help.
I need to find somewhere warmer than a bench to sleep tonight. A place where I won’t be noticed by other students, or moved along by cops doing their rounds. In a town like this, all it will take is one person seeing me sleeping rough, and the entire place will know about it.
Three blocks past the high school, I spot a chain-link fence that’s half-collapsed. Beyond it is an old, abandoned factory. I climb through the gap, keeping to the shadows and circle the building. There’s nothing but broken glass and weeds growing through the cracks in the ground. All signs that no one has been here in a long time.
The door around the back opens with a hard shove and a screech of rusty hinges, and I make my way inside. The interior smells like rust and rot, but it’s a shelter from the weather outside.
I find a room on the second floor that might have been an office. It’s far enough from the entrance to keep me protected, and close enough that I’ll hear footsteps long before anyone finds me, if anyone decides to explore. There’s a window I can escape out of if I need to, and the drainpipe looks strong enough to hold my weight. I open my backpack and take out the blanket I stole from the back of a store before I left Seattle. Spreading it out, I prop my bag against the wall like a pillow, and pull out the paperback I found on the bus.
The light is already fading, and cold seeps up through the concrete despite the blanket. I open the book, hoping to lose myself in a fictional world for a while, but the words blur. My mind keeps circling back to Edwards, and the way he looked at me when I answered his question. I can’t draw his attention again. Being seen is too dangerous.
My stomach rumbles, my mouth is dry, and my head aches. I need to figure out where I can find food, but right now, all I want to do is sleep.
I set the book aside and close my eyes, tipping my head back against the wall. Tomorrow, I’ll do all the things I need to survive in this town. I’ll go back to school. I’ll keep my head down. I’ll remember that this is temporary.
But tonight, just for tonight, I let myself hope that maybe this time things will be different.
Chapter Five
LILY
The Jittery Squirrelis packed with the Saturday morning crowd. I join the line, still riding the small victory of surviving the grocery store without losing my mind. After navigating the produce section’s particular brand of chaos and not committing cart rage, I deserve a latte and a croissant.
Ahead of me, Amy Wilson and Kate Peterson are talking. They don’t bother lowering their voices, and it’s hard not to overhear their conversation when they’re standing less than three feet away. They’ve always been the same. Even back at school, they were the loudest girls in the class
“I’m just saying.” Amy lifts her cup, lipstick staining the rim. “Prison did him good. He filled out in all the right places, if you know what I mean.” She waggles her eyebrows and smacks her lips.
My spine snaps rigid. I don’t even need to hear a name to know who she’s talking about.
“You’re terrible.” Kate smacks her arm, laughing.
“Rachel said when he walked into Mitchell’s office yesterday, she almost didn’t recognize him. All muscle, covered in tattoos, with messy black hair.”
The air in the coffee shop turns thin. I focus on the menu board above the counter, even though I already know what I’m going to order.
“I never did understand what Lily Gladwin saw in him back then. She could have had any of the boys in our class.”
My nails dig crescents into my palms, and I welcome the sharp bite of pain because it gives me something to focus on besides the heat crawling up my neck.
“Right? Valedictorian sneaking around with a guy who lived god-knows-where. I’m not even sure he washed that often. My mom said she thinks he was sleeping in an old building over on Maple.”
