Excerpt
MAIA
A groan escapes my throat as I enter my dorm room. He is here again. The strange one with the haunted eyes. There's just no way to win, is there?
My first year at Douglass University, my social worker, Rosie, pulled some strings and got me into the newest dorm, a building new enough that no one had died in it yet. And I had a single. For all of freshman year, my home was my sanctuary, but this year is different. I have a roommate, Genna. And she's got a dead guy haunting her.
If he were alive, most girls would call him hot. Light brown eyes, café au lait skin, close-cropped hair. He probably could have modeled in life. He looks about our age, but there's no way to tell how old he was when he died. The dead appear the way they remember themselves—it's not always how they looked at the end.
But this one is weird. He's kind of a failed hipster, all wannabe thrift-store chic in weird jeans and goofy T-shirts, but it totally doesn't work for him. And he floats, usually near the ceiling. That's pretty rare. I've seen a couple others who did stuff like that, but they're most often the really angry ones, like Natasha. The murder victims who are about to lose control. This guy seems calm. Harmless, even. He might actually be friendly, but I'm not planning on finding out. And he's completely obsessed with Genna. He hovers there, staring at her for hours. He's been here every day for the past week, since right after we moved in.
Rosie told me she'd checked Genna out. Both of her parents and all four of her grandparents are still alive, and she didn't seem to have any crazy exes in her past, certainly none who had died violently. No stalker types. She's lived a charmed life so far. She's a pretty girl, in a benign, friendly sort of way, and she's actually gone out of her way to be nice to me. Lord knows I haven't made it easy. Why she's being haunted, I have no idea, but it pisses me off.
When I walk in, Ghost Boy is, uncharacteristically, sitting at her desk. Genna is rifling through her dresser, looking for something. She's usually pretty neat—I guess Rosie checked that out about her too. I still organize her stuff when she's not around, but she hasn't said anything about it so far. It used to piss off Cadence, my roommate at the group home, but that never stopped me.
I drop onto my bed and am about to put in my headphones when Genna turns around.
"Caleb, meet Maia. Maia, Caleb." She points back and forth between me and her desk, then goes back to her dresser. Ghost Boy is staring right at me, but I avoid his eyes and look at Genna's back. I don't engage the dead anymore. Ignoring them has been working really well so far. And I know Genna can't see him, she never has before, so I have no idea what she's talking about. She slams her drawer shut, turns around, and smiles.
"She's kind of shy," she says.
I'm looking at her like she's crazy. Who the hell is she talking to? Her phone is on her desk, and she doesn't have a Bluetooth. Something about brain cancer.
Ghost Boy stands up directly in front of me, blocking my view, and holds out his hand like he expects me to shake it. Genna comes up beside him and lays a hand on his outstretched arm. I shoot off the bed, unable to peel my eyes away from her fingers brushing his arm. She's touching him. His skin looks normal. Golden hairs dust his forearm. His hand is still stretched out to me; I reach for it tentatively, brushing my fingers across warm human flesh before pulling my hand back as if stung.
I feel like I have been stung. Shocked by a cattle prod is more like it. I look back and forth from him to her, disbelief cutting off my airways. What. The. Fuck?
Genna's staring at me like I'm covered in green slime, and Ghost Boy's eyebrows are up to his forehead. I shake my head, trying to clear it. I can't take this. It's too fucked up.
I leave my stuff and run out of the room. Run until the dizziness engulfs me and I collapse.
***
