Walking With a Ghost

Pain struck me like lightning when the back of my skull and spine smashed into the tiled concrete wall of the girl's locker room. Joni Kennedy had my face pinched in one hand. She pulled my face toward her, my body limply following, and pushed me into the wall again. There was chanting and hollering all around me. Tears poured from my eyes and my arms flailed around in front of me, desperate to get one good swing at Joni.

"That is enough!" Our broad-voiced, female gym coach hollered and everyone went silent.

Joni let go of my face and backed away. "Finch, with me, hurry. Kennedy, principal's office. I don't even want to look at you."

Joni gave me a smug smile before leaving. I rubbed at the back of my head and checked for blood as I followed Coach Schmidt. When I pulled my hand away, I was relieved to not see any blood. But I was still sputtering and blubbering like a neglected toddler.

"Do you need to go to the nurse's office?" Coach asked, rubbing my back softly.

I hadn't noticed until then that I was wheezing harshly. I nodded frantically at her. She swooped me up into her arms and rushed me to the clinic. There, I took the instructed amount of puffs from my asthma inhaler and my violent panting calmed and I managed to stop crying. Coach sat next to me on the plastic cot with a paper sheet over it that kids with belly aches would lay on.

"What happened?" Coach asked me.

"J-Joni always attacks me. Been that way s-since elementary school." I answered shrugging.

"How come you never told me?"

"I didn't think you'd care. Joni's popular and everyone loves her."

"Lita, I don't love Joni. She's just my student, so I have to tolerate her. Her popularity means nothing to me. My student's safety means more to me than anything. I'm going to have to report this and call your parent's. This cannot continue."

"My parent's aren't home." I quickly said, staring at my feet and replaying last night's debacle in my mind.

Dad had his hands around Mom's throat, his knuckles bone white, his face a bright, vivid shade of red, veins popping to the surface. Mom...her arms flailing and grasping helplessly, her eyes wide, blue-violet, meeting my eyes with her horrified stare. Her peach complexion being completely drained before my eyes.

"I was going to fix everything," Dad had said in a sort of strangled laugh. "But you wanted to take her away from me. If I can't have her, neither can you!"

...Mom's stiff, dead body dropped to the wooden floorboards with a loud, sickening, ugly thud.

"Lita, are you listening to me?" Coach had raised her voice and she was snapping her fingers in front of me.

"W-what?" I asked, lost and found in a matter of seconds. Where had I gone?

"Where are your parent's?" Coach Schmidt asked slowly.

Where am I, I thought to myself.

"Lita?"

"I don't know," I finally answered. My hands were clammy and I was aching for a hot shower. I wanted to scrub off this thick, dirty, bruised, sliced, molested, old skin and start anew. Shed it all off.

Reborn as a new Lolita Finch. Untouched and untouchable.