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October 29-November 4, 2006

October 29, 2006

“You and Emma,” Matt says and clicks his tongue. “I've gotta say, I thought you two were finished.”

“Never say never, I guess,” I say over the phone as I walk out of the dorm to grab something to eat.

“So you don't even know how far you went?”

“Can't say that I do. I mean, I don't think we went all the way, because I still had my boxers on when I woke up.”

“So there's no chance that in her or your drunken stupor it seemed like a good idea to get them back on you?”

“Never say never.” I wave to Teri as I pass her, walking in the opposite direction. She looks like she wants to stop and talk, but I keep on my way. On one hand, it's been strange not really seeing her these last couple days, as we've laid off the stake out leading into the week. On the other hand, I feel kind of strangely guilty when I see her, remembering what Emma said when we first spoke the other night. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

In any case, my mind shifts gears. “I've got other things on my mind now, though,” I say. “You wouldn't believe this story I'm covering for the paper.”

“Sex offenders in student government?”

“Na. This time, it's a ghost.”

October 30, 2006

“Do you really think it's worth hanging out up here tonight?” I ask as Teri and I round a corner, walking through the sixth floor of Bower yet again.

“I don't see how tonight's different from the other nights,” Teri says. “Strange stuff is going on on the floor. If there's a ghost, it's not as though it's just going to stop and save itself for tomorrow.”

“Well, call me crazy, but let's say there's not a ghost, and that everything that's happened has been the doings of ordinarily people who want attention or have too much time on their hands. If it's something like that, then why wouldn't they wait until tomorrow.”

“Even if you do want to be a skeptic, think about it this way. Tomorrow, this place is packed. There's no room to flood a bathroom undetected—there's going to be someone in there, or someone who sees you come out. So if people are trying to get away with something, tonight's their last chance.”

“Hey,” I say as we round a corner and find ourselves face to face with Anthony.

“Hello,” he says, stopping in front of us.

“So, big party tomorrow night, huh?” I ask, putting my hands in my pockets.

“Yeah, probably the biggest program I've had.”

“Well,” I smile, “if you're going to go throwing furniture out the windows—that's some pretty effective advertising.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

I start to laugh, but Teri just looks at him, and a moment later he walks past us. We walk on, quiet for a few moments.

“You think he was joking, right?” I ask.

“He didn't deny what you said.”

“Yeah, but he couldn't be serious. I mean, he works for res life—he's not gonna throw a couch out the window.”

Teri plays with the ends of her hair as we walk. “But if it's not a ghost, who would be better at pulling off something like this? And who would have more stake in it?”

I think about it. “It is going to be a big event for him.”

October 31, 2006

I skipped my Hancock class today, taking a nap in my room. I rationalized that it's pretty likely I'll be up all night tonight, following this story, and it was better to get my rest in the afternoon.

I was also torn between equal parts regret at not being able to talk to Emma, and thanks for not having to face her after the weekend.

Teri and I meet outside Bower an hour before the party's set to start. She raises her camera from its position, strapped over her neck. “Cleared off the memory card for tonight. Got plenty of room for pictures—maybe event video.”

“What's the use of video for the paper?”

Teri shrugs. “Something crazy happens, we can probably figure out a way to load it on the website.”

We make our way upstairs, where Anthony and a handful of other guys are in the lounge, hanging up streamers, moving around couches. There are bowls of chips and pretzels set out, and two liter bottles of soda, and more and more it looks like just any old res life program.

I spot Shelly Orton making her way from her room to the women's bathroom. In an old t-shirt and sweatpants, she doesn't want to be a part of this program. She's actually afraid.

People start to arrive. Some are in costume, some not. Either way, the crowd grows from a handful to 20, to 50 well over 100, to the point where people start leaving because the place is too crowded, and there's no clear order to the event. Teri takes pictures of the crowd as it expands, trying to catch everything.

I part from her for a few moments, walking around the floor. I think about where I was 10 years ago, walking around the neighborhood with my mom or dad, trick or treating with Matt. I think about simpler times, when you could believe in things like ghosts and vampires, and really get caught up in a scary movie. There have been moments when I've let that side of myself creep back in over these last couple weeks—thinking about James Kendrick what it would mean if he was haunting this floor. Every now and again, I've turned around quickly thinking I heard a strange noise, or caught something out of the corner of my eye. There's a certain fun in that, even if there is a certain fear.

I felt the fear coming into tonight, but now, with so many people around, the feeling fades. They say that a scary movie is most frightening when you watch it in a theater full of people, feeding off each other's fears, jumping when each other jump, hearing that scream, not just on the screen, but right behind you. But when people aren't scared, there's nothing to feed off of. People are here out of curiosity about what will happen next—maybe about what kind of stunt Anthony might pull.

When I get back to the lounge, Teri is snapping pictures of a small crowd, huddled on the floor. “What do we have here?” I ask.

“Ouija board,” Teri says. Stepping closer, I'm not surprised to see Anthony directing the thing.

“Bianca? What's that mean?” a girl asks.

“I can't tell you what it means,” Anthony says in his monotone. “I'm just a part of the board—just a conduit for the message.”

I stifle a laugh as we come closer, and the crowd thins a little bit, no more impressed with this message from beyond than I am.

“It's nice of our friends from the newspaper to join us tonight,” Anthony says, before looking up to see us—another cheap trick. “Perhaps one of you has a question.”

“I don't think so, Anthony,” I say, crossing my arms, not about to put myself in a position where he can embarrass me, or use me for a prop.

“I'll do it,” Teri volunteers, stepping past me. She pulls the camera off handing it to me. “Grab a few pictures, okay?”

“You got it,” I say. I remain standing as Teri crouches down. The others spread out, giving her a space directly across the board from Anthony.

“All right, Teri. I'll need a question from you.”

“All right.” She clicks her tongue. “Is there really a ghost on this floor?”

Anthony doesn't react at all, cracking his knuckles then setting his hands down on the pointer of the board. It jerks into motion, sliding all around. I have to admit that Anthony's good with it. It's hard to tell that he's consciously moving it.

Of course, I can tell where it's going as easily as anyone else here—Y-E-long dramatic, motion-S.

Except the pointer stops on G first.

Then it spins to O.

The guy sitting to Barry's right sits with a sheet of computer paper and pen, writing each letter as it stops.

T
O
T
H
E
R
O
O
F

“Go to the roof!” the guy exclaims after deciphering for a moment.

“All right,” I say. “What's on the roof?”

Anthony doesn't look up. “I told you, I'm just a conduit—”

“Right,” Teri says, no more amused than I am. “And you're just the RA on this floor. You didn't set up this whole ghost story to get people to come here tonight.”

I can feel more and more eyes floating toward us. If there's not going to be a ghost, the next best thing is a confrontation. Anthony isn't getting heated, though. “Believe what you want,” he says. “But you asked the question. I gave you the answer.”

“So we'd might as well check it out,” I say. “Let's see what he wants us to see.”

Teri doesn't take her eyes off of Anthony. “How do we get to the roof.”

He looks up at last. “Take the elevator all the way up to the 12 th floor. Get out and take the stairs up to the fire exit. That'll take you as high as you can go.”

Teri gets up.

“You really want to do this?” I ask.

She leads the way to the elevator.

I follow. Half the people there follow.

As get out of the elevator, and start up the stairs, I feel that sense of excitement starting to creep back into me. Going up the stairs, leading the way with Teri, no one's talking amid the clatter of our footsteps, then a ringing sound, louder as we climb higher.

A sign on the door warns us that the door should only open it in the event of an emergency, and that alarm will sound. After a moment Teri pushes it open.

At first I see nothing. A strong, cold breezes rushes by, making me glad I kept my fall jacket at my side throughout the party, as I pull it on.

But then I spot her. T-shirt blowing in the wind, shivering, it's Shelly Orton.

I have no choice but to walk toward her as more and more people flood outside. The closer I get to Shelly, the closer I realize she is to the edge.

“Shelly?” I call out, a little hesitant. “Shelly?” I say louder.

This time she turns. Her hair is blowing all over the place, some of it in her face. She's crying and there's snot hanging from her nose, some plastered over her mouth, some still dripping. She moves a hand across her face, clearing some of the mess.

“Shelly, what are you doing up here?”

“I—I didn't have anywhere else to go.”

I look behind me. No one's near me.

It's just me and Shelly. Four or five feet between us. About two feet between her and the edge.

“Were—were you thinking of hurting yourself?”

She sort of shrugs, shifting a little on her feet, which I observe are bare.

“Were you going to jump?”

Shelly sniffs. “What's it matter to you?”

I step toward her, carefully. “Shelly, whatever you're thinking about doing here—it's not worth it.”

“What does it matter to you?” She rushes her hands through her hair. “I tell you I see a fucking ghost, and you don't even report on it. You probably think it's some joke.”

“No.” I step toward her and she takes a half step back—perilously close to the edge. “I'm here—I've been here all week trying to figure this out. Between you said, and couch out the window and everything. I'm here because of what you said.”

“So that's great. You care about me because I gave you a story.”

“Look—you're right, I don't know you. But I don't want to see you kill yourself here.”

She stops then, looking me in the eye. “Why not?”

“Why would you want to?”

Shelly shakes her head. “Because none of it matters. I'm gonna fail out of school. And no one here cares about me, at this stupid school.”

“Then screw school. Screw this school. Maybe there's a better place for you.”

“But I don't fail. I can't. It's—it's this fucking school.”

I get closer. This time she doesn't back away, and I take her hand. “We can figure this out. We've got your RA inside, and look,” I turn behind me at the crowd, all of them still just watching us, “you've got all of these people who care enough to be out here now.”

Shelly pulls her hand away. “They don't really care, though.”

“No.”

She backs up.

“No!”

Shelly trips, or loses her balance. Or maybe, on some level, she just doesn't want to jump. In any case, she falls forward, not back. I catch her in my arms.

I did my best talking. Now, I physically pull her away from the edge. She doesn't put up much of a fight. Soon, we've got people all around us, and I'm confident she won't get away.

I look up just as Teri takes a picture of the two of us.

November 1, 2006

“I'm telling you, I think this is our front page photo.” Teri says, leaning in toward the screen of her laptop.

I take a sip from my coffee. We've been up all night, between the Halloween party, the situation on the roof, and talking to police after. It's not as though there was much I could tell them, not knowing Shelly outside of her visit to the Window office, and what I saw that very night. Nonetheless, I was there, and I talked to her, and I guess that put me closer to her than just about anyone else at Taylor .

“I don't think so,” I say, looking at the picture of me, knelt on the ground, cradling Shelly Orton in my arms.

“What, it's a great dramatic shot. That, and it could double as your new Facebook picture.”

I shake my head. “There's no way I'm running that on the front page. I'm not going to author it and make myself the star.”

“You were the star,” Teri says. “Face it, you were the hero. You saved that girl's life.”

“I just did what anyone would have done.”

“No, you did what no one else did. Everyone stood back and watched. The best I could do was take all of these pictures.”

I squint at the screen. “You really did get a lot of pictures of the whole thing.”

“It's what I do.”

“But seriously, if I hadn't been there, someone else would have done the same thing. I was just the first one out the door. But anyway, if I'm co-authoring the article, I'm not gonna make myself the focus. And besides, I think it's poor taste to have Shelly's picture there. She's got enough to deal with now.”

Teri shrugs. “So what do you want to go with? Picture of Anthony at the ouija board? Shot of the crowd? Or something earlier, like the busted couch.”

I stroke my chin, feeling the stubble accumulating there. “I don't know. I don't want to give Anthony too much credit. Plus, I still think it's kind of sketchy that he sent us out to the roof to deal with Shelly. I mean, if he knew what was going on, he should have dealt with it—screw the party.”

“So you think Anthony meant to send us up to the roof to find her?”

“I don't know what else it could have been.”

Teri shakes her head. “The thing is, he didn't deny the couch, and when I was prodding him a little after—while you were talking to the police—I got the feeling that he had set up all of the other stuff on that floor. But he wouldn't admit to rigging the ouija board at all. He said he had been controlling it before, but that when he sent us to the roof, it wasn't rigged.”

“Right. I'm real inclined to believe him now.”

“Well the other thing that we don't have explained is that Shelly said she saw the ghost, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well Anthony couldn't have rigged that—or at least I can't imagine how he did.”

“So you're saying she and James Kendrick made contact, then he sent us to save her before she jumped off the roof the way he did.”

“Is it so crazy?”

“Do I even have to answer that?” I ask. Teri turns back to the computer, clicking away. I lean back, against her bed. If I close my eyes for more than a couple seconds, I'm confident I would fall asleep right here, right now. “So yeah, let's just go with a picture of the couch with all of the broken glass and everything.”

“Wait,” Teri says. There's something icy in her voice—a sudden sense of urgency. “Come look at this.”

I straighten myself out and lean back toward the screen. “It's Shelly right before she fell down.” I shake my head. “That was really scary.”

“No,” Teri says. “Look at this.” She scrolls her mouse behind Shelly, moving the arrow up and down.

At first, I don't see anything—just smoke. But then, I wonder why there's smoke, and as I look closer, Teri zooms in on that area of the picture. There's not much mistaking it.

It's not smoke, though it is pale, a little misty, and sort of translucent. Despite all that, there's no mistaking a hand, pushing Shelly forward—pushing her to safety.

November 2, 2006

“I'm leaving the topic for this paper wide open,” Hancock says, walking down one row of desks. “So you have room to explore whatever interests you about the texts. I would encourage you, though, to challenge yourself, writing outside of your normal comfort zone.”

A minute later, she releases the class. Emma didn't sit next to me today. In fact, she sat about as far away from me as possible, sitting all the way in the back of the room. I leap to my feet, to catch her as she leaves, but she's out a step sooner, and in a hurry to leave.

“Emma, wait up!” I call after her in the hallway. She doesn't wait, but I'm able to work my way through the crowd quickly enough to get to her. “Emma, why are you running away?”

“I'm not running away. I'm just leaving class.”

“All right, then why won't you talk to me?”

“We're talking now, aren't we?”

“Okay. So why did you leave before I woke up the other morning?”

“Why didn't you come to class Tuesday?”

I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “I had a long night ahead of me, and took that opportunity to nap.”

“Right. So you didn't cut class for the same reason I left in the morning?”

“What reason is that?”

“Because you know that we made a mistake that night. We never should have kissed, and I certainly shouldn't have come back to your place.”

“Look, I'm sorry about that. I wasn't myself, and honestly, I can't even remember—”

“You can't remember what happened once we got back to your place?”

I look down. “Yeah, that's right.”

“Well I'll tell you what happened. You took off your shirt, then fell asleep the second you hit the bed.”

“Oh.” I'm embarrassed to say how tired I am right now. After pulling an all-nighter on Halloween, I was in the Window office until 2 a.m. last night.

“And I took your pants off of you so you wouldn't stab yourself with your keys or your cell phone, or whatever the hell else you had in there.”

“And—and you stayed the night?”

“I wasn't going to walk home alone at that point. So I rolled you up against the wall, and I slept over the covers.” She looks at me. “And what's that look for?”

“It's just—I know I was really getting into you again at that point. And I'm kind of surprised you weren't feeling the same way.”

Emma rolls her eyes. “I guess you'd also be surprised what a turn off it is to hear you snoring, and watch you start drooling on yourself.”

“Oh.”

“But like I said, it was a mistake anyway. So don't feel bad about it. It doesn't matter.”

November 3, 2006

“So what does that mean?” Chang asks as we step inside McSavage. It's late afternoon and with classes done, I'm more than ready for the weekend to begin.

I rub my eyes. “I don't know. I guess it means that's that—Emma and I are done.”

“But if you were both still interested enough to do what you did Friday night, then it's clear enough things aren't really over between the two of you. I mean, you still like her, and she still likes you.”

It's a lot more complex than that. It's the kind of situation where it's hard to understand if you aren't in it. But after all that Emma and I were through, and everything I put her through, and after what little ground we made up over these last couple months—things just aren't the same now. They're never going to be, and we're never going to get back together the way we were. It can't be that simple again. It's more than I have the energy to explain right now. “It's complicated,” is all that I do say, turning the key to open our suite door.

The door opens on its own. Looking up Dave's on his way out. “Hey man.”

“Hey, what's going on buddy?” Behind him appears a guy, about 6'5”, with long black hair reaching down past his neck, covering part of his face. “Guys, this is Lenny. He's from the Axis.”

“Ah, nice to meet you, man,” Chang says, reaching out his hand.

The guy takes Chang's hand and squeezes it in his own, masked in a fingerless, black leather glove. Lenny doesn't say a word.

Dave chuckles. “All right guys, we're heading out. Keep it real here.”

“Will do,” I say. I step past Lenny, looking up at him. He doesn't look at me at all.

November 4, 2006

It was with some reservations that I accepted Chang's invitation to join him for tonight's “A Cappella Showcase” at the Student Center Main Stage. I'm sure it's too soon for me to talk to Emma again, but in another sense, I really would like to see The Off Beats perform.

I made matters a little better this afternoon, when Teri IMed me, asking me if I had plans for the night. She said she'd be happy to join us for the show. Later, Dave was looking for something to do as well. I figure with a bigger group, it'll be easier for me to stay anonymous in the crowd.

I'm surprised by just how good The Off Beats are. While the other groups show rust or signs of still getting their new members acclimated to the group, the girls don't look as though they've missed much of a step from last year. They do a lot of the same songs. Emma earns a standing ovation for “Falling Too Deep.” When Teri stands, I reluctantly follow her lead. They do a couple new songs as well. The last one's a slow tune about heartbreak and making mistakes. Veronica has the solo, and for a few seconds, I can remember how I fell for her in the first place. I remember how she can draw a guy in, and just how sexy she is when she's standing alone at the mic.

But when Veronica is done, the spell is broken. I clap for her and the group, like everyone else, but can't help feeling a little sick watching her smile, drinking in the applause.

Teri nudges me. “They were good, huh?”

I nod.

After the show, Chang has to talk to Claire I hang back a little ways, and find myself watching the girls, talking amongst themselves. Emma hangs back with a couple of the new girls. On a certain level, I notice how my security screen of people has vanished—with Chang talking to Claire, and Dave off to the bathroom, Teri's the only one who still stands with me. What I really notice, though, is Veronica on her own, walking toward me.

“Hey Preston ,” she says. After nearly half a year, I struggle to believe she's really talking to me.

“Hey.”

“How are you doing?”

I swallow and nod slowly. “I'm doing all right. How about you?”

“Good,” she says, with a smile, then turns to Teri. “I'm Veronica,” she says with a smile.

“Nice to meet you. I'm Teri.” They shake hands. “You sounded great up there.”

“Thanks.” As they talk, I catch a glance at Emma, just as she looks away from me, or Veronica, or Teri. Who knows now. “Have we met before?”

“Indirectly. I think it was you I talked to on the phone—I wrote an article about your group going to competition last year for The Window.”

“Oh, that's great. Thank you for that.” Veronica moves some hair from her face. “You know, we're actually going to be competing closer to home this year, at Duggan College . We'd love to have some coverage again.”

“Sounds like a good story, doesn't it, Preston ?” Teri asks.

I nod, still looking away. “We'll have to check it out.”