Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(55)
Believe that your granddaughter is some kind of witch, believe that your decades-gone little sister has never been allowed to rest. That wasn't the sort of choice I'd have wanted to make. "Poor Art," I sigh.
"I deal," says Bethany, and then she's opening the door to the Buckley High School gymnasium—when did we finish crossing the parking lot? When did we pass the point of no return?—and stepping onward, into the dark. I hesitate, clinging to the illusion of choice for as long as I can. Bethany looks back at me, eyebrows raised in silent question, and with another sigh, I step forward, following her into the darkness.
***
Prom themes are the universe's way of getting us ready for the endless indignities it plans to heap on our heads, like fashion trends and bridesmaid dresses. No one ever seems to admit to being the one who thought that "Rain Forest Romance" or "A Dance on Mars" was a good idea. They just follow the mysterious sketches that tell them to put the streamers here, the crepe-paper flowers there, and the endless buckets of glitter everywhere that glitter shouldn't go.
Whoever chose this year's theme wasn't feeling particularly creative. The Buckley Buccaneers will be celebrating the magic of prom night in a gymnasium transformed into a bizarre combination of pirate ship and South Seas Island, complete with sand-covered paper mache "dunes." The banners hanging to either side of the stage proclaim that tonight is a night for Adventure. Where? On the High Seas, naturally.
"This is the third pirate-themed prom I've been to at this school," I inform Bethany.
"Look at it this way: it's the third one you've attended, but you've managed to miss fifteen of them, so the numbers are still slanted in your favor." Seeing the horrified look on my face, she smirks. "The drama department really enjoys recycling props. Why don't you go for a walk-around, and see if anything strikes you as off?"
Everything about this strikes me as off, from the lighting in the gym to the poster that greeted me when I stepped off of the ghostroads. The trouble is figuring out exactly where the problem lies. Maybe it's just Bethany's doom-saying, but I'm starting to feel like she's right, and something dangerous is coming. I just have no idea what "something" may turn out to be.
"No problem," I say, and turn, skirts swishing around my ankles as I start my circuit of the gym. Counter-clockwise, of course—the natural direction of the dead—and moving slow, trying not to miss anything.
No one could step into this gym and guess anything other than "senior prom." The decorations are perfect, that magical combination of cheese and class that somehow tears down social barriers, turning a fractured student body into one entity, at least until the last song ends. Crepe paper roses hang from the ceiling, the Buckley Buccaneer leering out of a hundred unexpected corners like some sort of comic pagan god. There's something wrong with some of the banners. At first, I assume it's just the differing levels of skill in the high school art classes coming through. Then I turn a corner, and find myself looking straight into the eyes of a life-sized, painted pirate. There isn't time to smother the shout of surprise that pushes past my lips.
The clothes are right, the silly hat and sillier parrot of the Buckley High mascot painted in loving detail. But the hat is in his hand, rather than being forced down over his perfect duck's-ass hair, and the look in his painted eyes is flat, judgmental, like the eyes of a snake somehow granted human form. Bobby Cross. I'm looking at a painting of Bobby Cross...and that's when I realize something I should have realized from the start:
I never made it to prom. There were no pictures of me in my prom dress, because I never made it to the prom.
"Shit," I mutter, and take a step backward.
"That took you way longer than I thought it was going to," says Bethany from behind me. I turn toward the sound of her voice, mouth already starting to shape my first demands for information. Whatever question I was going to ask is forgotten at the sight of the tin cash box swinging toward my temple. Then it hits, sending jolts of pain all the way down into my toes, and the world goes black.
I don't even feel it when I hit the floor.
***
Hitchers are a weird little off-shoot of the ghost world: we mess up the rules, just by being what we are. We're dead and buried. We don't age, we don't sleep, we don't need to eat or drink when we're on the ghostroads, and we have the option—even if very few of us ever choose to take it—of moving on to whatever destination waits beyond the last freeway off-ramp. At the same time, give one of us a coat, and we're alive again, all the way through. A lot of ghosts turn solid on the anniversaries of their deaths, but only hitchers transition all the way back to the lands of the living. Combine that with a coat, and well...