Supervision. Alison Stine

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      I rose and stood beside her. The strange man I had seen in the driveway was pacing in front of the barn, hands in his pockets, and kicking stones. He seemed to be talking to himself.

      “He’ll be wanting to go down to the pond again,” Martha said. “But don’t you let him.”

      “Why?” I asked.

      “It’s not good to re-visit the place of your death.”

      I felt sickness rising up in my throat. It was too much. It was all too much. I turned away from the window too sharply. The room spun. But a hand was there, a hand at my elbow, lowering me to the side of the tub. Not Martha’s hand.

      He had appeared so fast. “Do you feel all right?” Tom asked.

      “Yes,” I said. “Thanks to Martha.”

      She curtsied and left.

      Tom sat on the edge of the tub beside me. “I’m sorry about Clara. She means well. It’s just, we don’t know how to do this. We’ve never met anyone like you before.”

      “Like what?”

      “Someone who can interact with us; someone who is just like us, except, I suppose—”

      “Not dead?”

      “Right,” he said.

      “So you believe me.”

      “I think so.” He sounded like he was talking himself into it. “The eating. The breathing. The bleeding. You’re still cut, right? You still have a wound?”

      I looked down at my bandage. “Pretty sure.”

      “I believe you. And you believe me?”

      I looked at Tom. He wasn’t what I had imagined a ghost would be like. But I had never really thought about ghosts too much before. I didn’t want there to be a middle, a limbo, a world of ghosts. I didn’t want there to be a halfway between the living and the dead. I didn’t want it to be true, what he said he was.

      I had a horrible thought. “Tom, my grandmother isn’t dead, is she?”

      He shook his head. “No. But she doesn’t seem to be able to see or hear you, and neither does anyone else in this town except us. Did something happen to you before you came here? Something bad? Were you hurt?”

      “I got in trouble,” I said. “I hit my head.”

      “You hit your head?”

      “I didn’t die, Tom. I didn’t hit it that hard. I was in a train tunnel. But I was pulled out—alive—and I got in big trouble. I wouldn’t get threatened with jail time if I were dead, would I?”

      “Probably not.”

      “Do you think hitting my head did … something to me?”

      He touched my arm, above the bandage. “Something happened to you.”

      When he touched me, I was surprised to feel what I had felt before when he had held my hand: a feeling of urgency. His touch was light and elusive, like something that might blow away, be taken from me. His hand felt not quite real. “Tom,” I said. “In China, they treat strangers like ghosts.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “My great-grandparents both emigrated. My grandma was the first to be born in this country. And in China, before you know a stranger, it’s like she’s not even there. Like she’s a ghost to you. I thought my grandmother was doing that to me. I thought she was mad at me, that I had offended her somehow. We didn’t have …” My voice trailed off. “It was hard with her before. She was really sad about my mom, and I don’t think she wanted two little kids around, suddenly. And then we left. We never visited. My sister took me away. We barely even called. I thought I was a ghost to my grandmother. And it’s like I am now, Tom. My sister hears me, but my grandmother can’t.”

      Tom looked down at his hands. They were raggedy, the nails short and torn and dirty. Black with earth. He spoke into them, avoiding my eyes. “We think your grandmother might … notice things sometimes.”

      “Notice things? What things?”

      “The work Martha does around the house. Martha thinks your grandmother knows about it, appreciates it. Maybe Martha just needs her to.”

      I thought of the girl, not much older than me, who had taken care of me, the girl who had apparently made my bed and cleaned my room without me even knowing she was there because her work kept disappearing. “What happened to Martha?” I asked.

      Tom stood. “That’s a story for her to tell you.”

      I looked up at him. I knew I might be ending the conversation. But I had to ask it. I had to know. “What happened to you, Tom? How did you die? What killed you, Tom?”

      But he wouldn’t tell me.

       CHAPTER 5:

       Death Beginning

      I’m not sure what was harder to believe: that no one could see me except my new friends—or that all of my new friends were dead.

      I didn’t want to scare my grandmother, not like Clara had done with the eggs, but I hung around her, following her into rooms and lingering near doorways. I barely dared to speak to her, beyond calling her name. I had no idea what to say, how to even start to explain what was happening (what was happening?). Still, the evening that I hurt my arm, I tried.

      I wrote her a letter.

      I ripped a sheet of paper from a school notebook and found a pen. I sat cross-legged on my bed. Dear Grandma, I began. I’m here but something’s the matter. I’m sick or I’m … I couldn’t finish the next thought. I didn’t know what I was going to say, what excuse I was going to try to give.

      But it didn’t matter. Because the words faded. They disappeared.

      I shook the pen. I dug through my bag and found another. That one didn’t work either. Another pen, another. I tried a pencil. It wasn’t the ink, I realized. It wasn’t the lead.

      It was me. I wasn’t going to be able to get the words out. Even if my grandmother had owned a computer and I could have typed her letter, I knew somehow it wouldn’t have worked. I couldn’t make myself be seen.

      And I couldn’t make myself be heard. Or read.

      I was trapped. Something had snared me. I willed my grandmother to notice me, just notice me, sense me. I waited for her to turn around, to turn off the TV, to see me.

      She never did.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ