Ghost Girl: The true story of a child in desperate peril – and a teacher who saved her

“Is it easy for you?” I asked.

“Yeah, kind of.”

“How do you come back into your body afterwards?”

Jadie didn’t answer.

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “I just wake up in the morning and I’m back.”

“A dream?”

Jadie frowned. “No. I didn’t say that. It’s not just a dream. It’s something I can really do. It’s just that I try to stay out, but I always fall asleep.”

“It sounds as if you don’t really want to come back.”

“Well, see, if you’re a ghost when the sun comes up, then you stay a ghost forever. That’s what Tashee says. You won’t ever get back into your body after that, because if the sun comes up on it with no person in it, it dies.”

“Oh.”

“So I always try to stay awake. I drink Coke. There’s always Coke to drink, but then I get sleepy. I fall asleep then and that makes me go back into my body. So when I wake up in the morning, I’m always still here.”

“And you would rather have stayed a ghost?”

Jadie nodded.

The conversation seemed to peter out then. We both stared at the picture, as silence enveloped us.

“I like this drawing,” I said at last. “Do you suppose I could have it?”

Jadie looked over. “What would you do with it?”

“Just keep it. Maybe put it up on the wall. It’s a good picture. Maybe the others would like to see it.”

“No,” Jadie replied, alarm in her voice. “I don’t want anybody else to see it.”

“No? Why not?”

“’Cause I told you. ’Cause it’s private what goes on inside you. Besides, if you put it on the wall, spiders might walk on it. Spiders might see. Then the policemen would come.”

She completely lost me on that one. “Policemen?” I said in bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

“They’d take me away for lying. They’d put me in jail. I might die. Sometimes policemen kill you with their guns, if they think you’re trying to get away. And if they got you in the jail, sometimes they kill you in a chair.”

Seeing that she was becoming agitated, I quickly changed tack. “So Tashee knows about being a ghost, too?”

Jadie nodded. “Yeah. Tashee’s the one who taught me and Amber how to do it.”

“That was clever of her.”

Jadie nodded again. “Tashee knows lots and lots of stuff.”

“Sounds like Tashee’s very special to you.”

For the first time, a slight hint of a smile touched Jadie’s lips. “Yeah, she’s my best friend. I like her better than anybody.”

“Is she in school here? She’s not in Mrs. McLaren’s class, is she? Is she a third-grader?”

Jadie looked at me, her expression bemused. “Well, of course not,” she said, her tone implying that I’d asked a very silly question indeed. “That’s why me and Amber turn into ghosts.”

“What do you mean?”

“So’s we can go visit Tashee. Tashee can’t come here. She’s been dead more than a year now.”

Chapter Six (#ulink_b4724fa7-7105-54c1-afb1-c0bb3689ea2e)

I was disappointed when Jadie did not show up after school the next afternoon. Her appearance had been an intrusion initially, but after two visits, I was curious about her and looked forward to seeing her again in the undisturbed quiet of the late afternoon. Once the children were gone and I’d done what I needed to outside the classroom, I brought my work out to the table in the classroom, thinking this would make me more accessible than the cloakroom had done. However, Jadie went home at the end of the school day, as usual, and did not come back again. On two or three occasions, I thought I’d heard her outside in the hall, but whenever I went to the door, no one was there.

It wasn’t until well into the next week that Jadie again appeared after hours. It was quite late in the day—after 4:30—and I’d finished all my work, had made a tour through the teachers’ lounge, and was now back at my desk in the cloakroom, paging through a teaching magazine. Click went the latch on the classroom door, then no sound.

“Yes?” I called.

Jadie appeared in the doorway. She’d been home and changed and was now wearing a horrible home-made jog-suit with rickrack stitched unevenly around the neck and sleeves.

“Hello,” I said, and smiled.

Jadie stepped just inside the cloakroom. Twisting her head, she surveyed the small room very thoroughly. Above the coat hooks were the shelves, and above the shelf on the right ran two heating pipes. They were about three inches each in diameter and entered the room through the far end wall to run parallel about two feet above the shelf for the entire length of the room before disappearing out through the wall behind the desk. In fact, the room was well supplied with pipes, because there was also a large plumbing pipe about eight inches in diameter that rose vertically through the floor in the corner near the far door and disappeared through the ceiling. All these things Jadie surveyed carefully. Then she turned her head and looked at the door, which was open between the cloakroom and the classroom. This was a heavy, old-fashioned door made of solid wood. Even without touching it, one could tell it was strong. There was a window in our classroom door, but there wasn’t in this, nor in the one between the cloakroom and the hall. Jadie turned and put a hand out to feel the door.

Jadie examined the door minutely. She ran her hands over the wood, lingering to feel the grain. She pursued the ornamental molding with her fingers, then came to the knob and lock. These, like the door itself, were old-fashioned, and there was a proper keyhole. All of this, too, Jadie examined carefully, poking her little finger into the keyhole, turning the knob, watching the latch go in and out.

This whole procedure took a full ten minutes, and, throughout, I didn’t say a word. Still at my desk, I simply watched. Jadie didn’t seem particularly interested in my presence. All her attention was focused on the door. Gently, she eased it away from its stop and pushed it closed, shutting the two of us into the cloakroom. Then she turned the knob and opened it slightly. She fingered the latching mechanism.

“Here’s the deadbolt,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. She touched the bolt in its housing inside the latch. Then she shut the door again, tried the knob, opened it, felt the lock, closed it. This she did at least six or seven times before turning abruptly to me. “You got a key for this? Can you lock it?”

I nodded.

Her face brightened. “Give it to me, okay? Lemme lock it shut.”

Fascinated by her behavior, I agreed and dug the key out of my desk drawer. Jadie deftly slipped it into the keyhole and turned it. The deadbolt slid into place with a satisfying thunk. “That’s good,” she murmured in a pleased tone. Removing the key, she tried to open the door but, of course, it didn’t move. Then she unlocked the door, opened it, stuck her head into the classroom, pulled back, and slammed the door shut, relocking it. From there, she scuttled down to the other door, which opened into the hallway.

“Does the key work in this one, too?” she asked me. “Can we lock this one?” But before I could reply, she was already trying the key in the lock. It did fit both doors, and a satisfied smile crossed Jadie’s face as she tugged at the newly locked door. Abruptly, she let go and scuttled back to the other door to try it again. This, still locked, too, refused to budge. “Got to cover this up,” she muttered and came to the desk. Seizing a foil of masking tape, she tore a strip off and placed it carefully over the keyhole. “Key’s in the other one. Can’t see in, but got to cover this one up.” Then, unexpectedly, she veered away from the door. Bent double, she began hurriedly moving around the circumference of the small room, her eyes on the floor.

“Are you looking for something?” I asked.

“Spiders. No spiders,” she muttered. “There’s no spiders in here.”

“No. Mr. Tinbergen has a man who comes around and sprays. He was just here in February. So there’re no spiders.”