Jessica

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I edged closer, minding my steps in the darkness, and as I peered through the glass, there she was. Fear rose inside me, but my gaze could not be averted from hers. The dancing flame from the candle shifted the shadows on her face. Voices from classmates, distant and somehow stifled by the growing darkness rested in my ears. I wanted to reach out to them but she…

“Ridley!”

I felt a hand on my shoulder which nearly stopped my heart as I awoke from the dream. My eyes must have looked somewhat bewildered because Mr Price’s brow furrowed at the sight of me. He was never softly spoken, and I assuredly gathered that I was now in trouble for falling asleep in class.

Indeed, I was.

“I leave the classroom for ten minutes and you fall asleep!” he bellowed.

Heckling laughter rose from other students as I awaited my fate.

Mr Price slapped a small, red card on my desk with enough force to scare any lingering sleepiness from my body.

“Detention, this afternoon.”

He said these words without yelling, but his grin, which temporarily unveiled that famous gold tooth was enough to cause knots in my stomach.

Mr Price went to walk away as I put the detention card in my shirt pocket, then he stopped, turned, and said mockingly,

“Try to stay awake for the whole hour, Ridley.”

-

The detention room was so quiet, I could almost hear my heartbeat. There were only a few of us and the noise of pencils, pens and paper broke the foreboding silence for a short while as we reached into our bags to gather them for the hour long academic tooth pulling session. I suppose I exaggerate ever so slightly, but getting a tooth out would be, well, over much quicker. What made it worse was the duty teacher was none other than Price. I snuck a quick look up at him as I laid my pen and paper on the desk.

The gold tooth again.

While he was distracted with papers on his own desk, I glanced around the room to see who was sharing my fate. Billy Thompson, well, there was no surprise. We often joked in class about him having a permanent booking in detention. Of course, we never did that within earshot. He would have killed us. Then there was…

…her. Jessica Parker had a pale face and wore thick glasses that did nothing to help when it came to being laughed at and picked on almost every day. She hardly ever spoke, which was not hard to understand. The way she dressed reflected the fact that her Dad had been out of work for some time. I watched her there often, underneath the oak in the front grounds of the school, eating a sandwich from a brown paper bag, slowly, as if she almost did not have the energy to do so any faster.

Or perhaps the desire to.

I wanted to say something kind to her, to help, somehow, but at age 12, well, you do not want to commit social suicide that early.

As I looked at her, she met my gaze, just momentarily. Her eyes, even behind those glasses almost cried out to me.

“Please, talk to me,” they said.

But I turned back to my things. It was not the day for talking in detention, least of all to Jessica Parker.

-

On any other day, the bus ride home would have been a very noisy affair. Balls of screwed up paper would have flown all over the place and Billy given dead arms to anyone within reach, which is why I always tried to sit elsewhere, lest I collected bruises over the course of each term.

Today, however, all the other kids had gotten lifts home from parents and siblings, so the bus was quiet. Maybe too quiet. There was one other person who was not picked up after detention. She sat in the same seat she always did, each day, except for those where she did not come to school, which was often. I turned around and she was looking down at her feet like a person defeated.

My parents had bought me a few chickens one time. When we were choosing them, a small, brown one, face to the side of the box, was being pecked by some others. It did not fight back, too small to defend itself. So, they pecked it, unrestrained and without mercy. I wanted to rescue it, lift it out of the box, but Dad said it would probably die soon anyway. As we drove home from the pet store, I cried.

Turning my gaze back to the bus window, I tried to hold back the tears welling in my eyes. As I watched the scenery go by, I felt compelled to look back at Jessica and an idea came to mind. I had an apple left over from lunch, which I was saving for the short walk home from the bus stop. I reached into my bag and held it in my hands. No-one around, just the bus driver who was never interested in anything any of us did anyway.

I got out of my seat and plucking up as much courage as I could, walked to hers. I reached my hand out to her,

“Jessica, here’s an apple. I don’t feel – “

Her eyes met mine, with a gentle glow which I found hard to imagine could exist in such a sad face.

“- hungry. Do you want…want it?”

She reached out and accepted the apple.

“Thank you,” she said in a quiet voice that resembled little more than a whisper.

As I got off the bus, I turned back to where she sat. She lifted her hand, gave the gentlest wave and for the first time I can remember, she smiled at me.

As the bus drove off and I started walking, I took in a few deep breaths. How was this going to change things at school from now on? I walked on, kicking stones, and wondering.

-

I lay awake with dim moonlight moving through the window. I never drew the curtains because the view outside gave me comfort. When cloudless, the night was full of stars which normally settled me off to sleep without much trouble. Not tonight, though. My mind was constantly thinking about Jessica; more than that, I was toying with the decision as to whether I would throw caution to the wind and sit with her tomorrow, at lunch time, under the oak. I would certainly become the object of association induced ridicule, but when I remembered that poor chicken in the box…

The dream I had yesterday, in class, came back to me as a wind moved the open window ever so slightly. Was that her, Jessica, alone in an abandoned cabin, separated from everyone else and searching in the darkness for…for me? The figure in the dream wore no glasses and seemed not only lost, but in pain too.

I was not getting to sleep any time soon, so I decided to get up and look out the window for a while. As I did, I remembered ghost stories from when I was younger that my brother would tell around the campfires we used to build in our family’s “outdoor” phase of life. Tonight, was kind of a reminder of that. The moonlight, the wind, and the forest I could see beyond our yard from my second story room. It was not hard to imagine, especially for me, a spirit walking in the woods beyond, not quite veiled by the trees, calling to me. I shook the thought off because it was making me jumpy.

I suppose ghosts come in many different forms. Ones that make things go “bump” in the night. Apparitions of dead relatives or famous people, roaming halls and moaning. Those you see in the corner of your room because of what you should not have watched on tv before you went to bed. Then there were the ones…

…like her. Jessica was a ghost that most people did not see and in some troubling way, she haunted me. The thought of withholding kindness because of what others would say, that was hauntingly real. I watched the wind blow across the tops of the trees and my decision was now more concrete and resolute. I would sit with her tomorrow. I no longer cared what others would say. Not anymore.

As I turned to get back to bed, my breath stopped short. There, sitting on the fence straight ahead, something caught my eye and startled me. It was a candle, gently flickering in the wind.

-

When Mum woke me in the morning, I struggled to even open my eyes. I expected she would be frantic, as usual, to get me up and ready for school, but today she seemed oddly calm and a little strange.

“Daniel, honey, you need to get up. Something, has…well…happened.”

I sat up on the bed and asked, “Mum, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

She sat down next to me and put her arm around my shoulders.

“Jessica Parker died last night.”

I could barely take that in. I stammered out, “D..died?”

“Yes honey, I’m so sorry. I mean, I know you two were not close or anything but…oh…gosh, her poor father. First his wife and now….”

Mum’s voice trailed off as she leaned her head against mine.

“Did she…did she kill herself?”

Mum’s shocked expression gave way to the seriousness of the moment but still a little puzzled, she replied, “Suicide, no, no honey, she was hit by a car. It’s on the news. It’s….”

She stopped and asked, “Are you ok?”

I took a deep breath and let it out. Yes, yes, I think I was ok. Strangely, I was ok.

“Yeah Mum, I think I’ll be ok. She was…she…we were…”

Mum rested her hand on top of my head.

“It’s ok. Give yourself time, it’s ok.”

She got up from the bed and walked to the door, “I’ll fix you pancakes.”

I managed an awkward smile. “Thanks,” I said.

As Mum left the room, I remembered the candle, the dream and that brief, long overdue interaction yesterday on the bus.

“Jessica,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

-

The next few days seemed to go by like driftwood on the ocean. My thoughts went with the tide, and I was tossed a little from here to there, but never sinking though. I even managed to get myself booked into detention again, this time, however, I was not sorry for what I did.

Billy had made a horrible comment about how no-one would really miss Jessica Parker. I slugged him in the face, making his nose bleed. As he was led off by a teacher to sick bay, he swore revenge on me, which I am sure, one day soon, I would need to prepare for. The upshot was, Mr Price considered even what Billy had said to be no excuse for violence and added yet another red card to my collection.

As I sat in the detention room that afternoon, I turned to the place where Jessica had sat only days before and oddly, even a little amusingly, I wondered what on earth that girl could have done to end up in detention. I smiled and turned back to my work, shaking my head, and trying not to giggle.

-

Again, the bus ride home would be a quiet affair. Ironically, I wondered if getting detention didn’t have its perks. At least I didn’t have to spend any time listening to aimless conversations, watch Billy punch as many kids as possible in the arm and duck paper projectiles. Yes, the quiet hum of the motor and view from the window seemed a much preferable option. Especially now. As I thought on it, I remembered some chocolate I had put in my bag for “later” and reached in to grab it. As I did, I had the overwhelming feeling that someone was watching me. I froze.

Was she here?

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I rested my school bag down on the seat next to me, with the chocolate. I did not want to turn around. I did not want to see what I was now expecting. I did not want to see that sad, pale face with the frightened eyes staring through those glasses. The face lit by that dancing flame.

But I had to look.

Without breathing, I started to turn my head.

“Your stop, son!”

The bus driver’s voice snapped me out of wherever it was I had been heading. I turned quickly in his direction and replied, “Sorry, I was…

(She’s not there…there’s nothing there…the seat is empty…what did you expect?)

…daydreaming.”

“That’s ok Daniel. Have a great afternoon.”

He smiled at me, and I returned in kind as I stepped down from the bus.

“Far out,” I said to myself, “the bus driver knows my na – “

I froze. As the bus drove off and the tyres unsettled the dust, which rose in clouds carried by the breeze, there she was.

Jessica Parker waved at me from her seat on the bus.

-

I never saw her again after that. I suppose I should not have either. All these years later, I wonder, was I seeing things that day. Did I imagine it?

Ghosts come in different forms I guess and maybe some haunt our imagination. Does this make them any less real? I am not so sure.

The dream is different now, and though it seldom visits me these days, when it does there is still a candle in the window. There is still the muffled sound of my old classmates somewhere in the distance. The girl in the cabin, though, she is gone.

And so is my fear.