No Girls Allowed

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a ghost? To merely be a shadow in the presence of someone you once where? To look back and wonder “why did that happen” or “how did that happen?” Trust me when I say that I ask myself these questions every day. I think about the day I died. I think about why the driver had to have run the light. Why the person drove on and didn’t worry. Why I didn’t even live through enough time to hear the sirens of the ambulance. 

I sat down on the top of the doorway of my room. I kicked my feet from under me and rested my elbows on my knees. It would have been an uncomfortable position except for the fact that I didn’t really feel like myself anymore. I glanced around my light blue room and saw everything that I had left behind. My collections of silly trinkets that I never used, the bookshelf next to my bed, with the messy covers covering the mattress. 

It has been a year since I died and it was my one year mark. It has been one year of looking at the empty spot at the table that my family leaves for me even though I am not there. One year of crying and mourning and more crying. One year of food being given to my Mom and other Moms and people telling her “I am so sorry. She was only 14.”

I missed being alive. I missed running without floating off the ground. I missed going to see my friends. I missed going into the clubhouse. 

I haven’t been back to where my friends and I used to meet since the first day I died. I decided that it was probably a good idea to go check on them tonight when they were gone so that I wouldn’t accidentally knock something over and scare them. Of course 15 year old boys probably won’t go trick- or- treating but they were probably going to watch scary movies or scare off some 6 year old with a lame haunted house.  

I sighed and floated down from the top of the door and into the hallway. It looked the same as when I had died. There were pictures of the family, some without me with my brother and parents going on a free trip to help cheer them up from our old neighbours, and pottery on small side tables. 

I slid down the railway to the stairs and caught air at the end, forcing myself to the ceiling. I swam through the air and saw my family at the table. I pulled myself down from the white half- wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. I couldn’t explain how much I missed sitting at the table and can barely tell you how terrible it was to see the empty spot at the table. I am not usually a sentimental person but this made me cry. 

After I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore, I carefully held on to the wall so that I wouldn’t drift upward and walked out the door. Outside is hard because there is no ceiling to catch you if you stop holding on so I fastened my grip to the row of apartments.

Once the apartment buildings stopped, I spotted a tree only about ten feet away. I let out a sigh and thought you’ve got this! It's only a couple feet away. Just jump and then grab onto the top. I leaped forward and grabbed onto the very top of the tree. I thrust my head back and sighed again. This was going to take a while considering that the sun was setting behind the rolling hills. 

The thing about being a ghost is that after every month or so, you forget something. I’m assuming that the important things go last because I still remember that my name is Lauren Williams but I have almost completely forgotten what my Mom and Dad’s names are and totally forgotten where I live and what state it was in. 

Somehow I still remember where my friend's house was. I don’t know why my mind decided that this specific fact was going to be important but apparently it was.

I jumped from tree to tree, house to house and everything in between until I found the address I remember. I walked around the side of the house, opening the gate was specifically hard, and saw the tree house in the back. I smiled, remembering the memories that I made. (Again, not sure why I decided that these were going to be more important than to remember where the heck I lived but it was.) I did a wide step, slightly floating as I did so, and grabbed onto the next tree to see the front of the tree house.

After the expedition of finding his house, climbing up and down trees and getting poked by branches in places I would usually find not entirely comfortable, I saw a sign that shattered me: 

No Girls Allowed

The sign read in badly done spray paint. What are we? In the second grade? Seriously? Right as I finished gawking at the stupid sign, I saw the friend ( I couldn’t remember his name) walk out and go into the tree house. So it is his. I thought, shaking my head. 

I started ping- ponging back and forth from the trees trying to trace back to my house. I glanced into the window of the house to make sure nobody was in the entrance hall. I slowly opened the door (See that’s the thing… ghosts can’t go through walls) and stepped onto the tile. 

I let myself float up to the white ceilings and stayed there until I didn’t see any more little kids in costumes. I didn’t even want to think about Halloween or the day I died or that friend. I just wished that I wouldn’t remember anything. This wouldn't happen, though, for at least another year. I could still remember small things but not much. Hopefully next year’s halloween wouldn’t be as heartbreaking as it was for me this year.