Rooms(44)

“The others?” Trenton said. His throat was dry.

“They’re always fighting,” she said simply.

For a minute, there was silence. Trenton was waiting for the girl to ask him for help—to avenge her death, or something. Wasn’t that why ghosts hung around? But she said nothing. Would anyone believe him? No. Of course not. He wasn’t even sure he believed him. Maybe he was imagining this whole thing, hallucinating. Maybe he’d finally cracked.

Or maybe the accident had killed him, and the past four months had been one weird dream, and he’d been dead the whole time, and he was only just discovering it. There was a movie like that.

“What’s your name?” Trenton asked.

“Does it matter?” she said. Then: “Why am I here? What is this place?” Her voice broke and she began to cry. The holes became even deeper and darker. He quickly looked away. “I miss my mom,” she said.

Trenton felt the sharp wrench of sadness again, an emotion so strong it seemed to bring his stomach to his throat. He wished he could reach out and put a hand on her shoulder. But she would break apart, he was sure of it. And he wouldn’t be able to handle it—if his hand passed through her. He might throw up.

“You were killed.” He swallowed. Jesus. It was hard to break the news of someone’s death. He sympathized, a little, with the nurse who had called his mom with the news of Richard’s death, even though she’d been a bitch about it. “A long time ago. You were shot here, in the house—”

“That’s her,” she said. “One of the others. Sandra. She got shot. Some guy stole a letter from her . . . ” She flickered briefly and Trenton thought she might vanish. But then she was back: a small dark curve in his peripheral vision. “The others don’t like me very much.”

Trenton closed his eyes and opened them again. The voices he’d been hearing . . . he must be hearing all of them. The ghosts. One of them had been killed in the house, his house. But there were others . . .

It was crazy. He hadn’t even believed in ghosts, at least not until the accident.

The thought returned to him: maybe he was already dead. And even though this was what he had wanted, and been planning for, he felt sick.

“Do you remember anything?” he said.

There was a pause. Trenton shivered. He felt as if a wind had come in through the window and tickled the back of his neck, before realizing that the ghost had shifted, that they had briefly touched.

“I remember Ida,” she said. “She lived next door. But there was something wrong with her bones. They grew all crooked. She always wanted me to play cards, but I didn’t like to. Does that make me a bad person?” Before Trenton could answer, she went on, “And the church—we lived down the street from the church. The bells drove Mom crazy. But I liked them. Especially at Christmas, when they played the hymns.” She fell silent again.

“I meant about what happened,” he said, because he had to say something, to take control, to keep her from crying again. He had to do something to fight the feeling that he was about to cry.

And he suddenly remembered what Minna had said about the cops; they’d come looking for a girl who’d disappeared. He felt a tingling in his spine. It might be her. It must be.

She hesitated. “I remember a car,” she said quietly. “It was raining. I think—I think I screamed.” She broke off. Trenton could feel her tense, gather together; she was suddenly as still as the sky just before a storm. “Someone’s coming.”

“Wait,” Trenton said, but it was too late.

There was a loud bang, then a grating noise outside Trenton’s window. He cried out as a large red blob came into view. Next to him, the ghost disappeared. She simply evaporated, like a mirage when you approach too close; one second she was a brushstroke of shadow, and then even that was gone.

It was Katie, wearing a hat far too hot for the weather. She got an arm over the windowsill. She was red-faced from the climb.

“What the f*ck?” Trenton crossed over to her and grabbed the back of her jacket—his jacket, he realized, which he’d left at her house last night—too angry even to be impressed by the fact she’d managed to drag the ladder all the way from the greenhouse.

“A little help?” she panted.

He hauled and she pulled, and finally she managed to get her legs over the windowsill. Then she snaked herself headfirst into his room, banging her knees on the floor. Trenton almost asked if she was okay, then decided against it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, backing away from her so that there was at least ten feet between them.

She sat back on her heels, whipping off her hat, which was too large. Underneath, her hair was wispy and obviously unwashed. Trenton wished he didn’t think she looked cute.

She unzipped her jacket—his jacket. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” She tossed the jacket on his bed. “Return service. You don’t have to thank me.”

“Thank you,” Trenton said.

“You’re welcome.”

She stood up, wincing as she bent and unbent a knee. Underneath the jacket, she was wearing a T-shirt with a faded rainbow logo, so small and tight he could see the silhouette of her bra straps when she turned around. It was the same thing she’d been wearing last night, and Trenton wondered whether she’d been to sleep yet. He thought of that guy, Marcus, and the stupid tattoo—pictured that hand working its way across Katie’s thighs—and then tried really hard to think about something, anything, else.