The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page B

looking out the kitchen window, but I didn’t think he was taking in the view of the alley that ran behind our building.
    “It must’ve been tough on that kid,” he said finally. “Being ragged that badly”
    “And it hasn’t stopped for lots of us.”
    He glanced at me. “Is Brent still on your case?”
    I shook my head. “Only if I happen to run into him, but I’ve been getting pretty good at avoiding all of his crowd.”
    “That sucks. Having to tiptoe around people like that. Maybe I should go have a talk with them.”
    I shook my head again. We had an agreement: out of the house, we each dealt with our own troubles. We couldn’t interfere unless we were specifically asked. He’d had a “talk” with some bullies back at our old school—this was before I hooked up with Frankie Lee’s crowd and people knew better than to mess with me—and while it had stopped the bullying for that day, a bunch of them got hold of Jared after school and beat him up really badly. They wouldn’t have done that to me—it’s one of the benefits of being a girl. So long as your bullies aren’t other girls, of course, but that’s a whole other story.
    Anyway, to keep it short—or at least shortish—that’s when I made him promise not to get involved in my problems unless I specifically asked him to.
    “I can deal with it,” I told him.
    “Yeah, but you shouldn’t have to.”
    “Well, I could always call in some of my old crowd from Tyson to put them in their place.”
    Jared got a worried look, not realizing I was joking. But if I were really going to do that, he would have had a reason to be worried. Frankie’s crowd was a rough bunch. I’d been younger than all of them—kind of their mascot is the way Frankie put it—but that didn’t mean they’d let anyone mess with me. With those guys you were either in the gang, or you were against them. If you were in, they’d literally defend you to the death.
    “You’re not really thinking of—”Jared began.
    I didn’t let him finish. “I was joking.”
    “Good.”
    “Not that Brent doesn’t deserve being taken down a notch or two.”
    “Yeah, but   ...”
    “I know. Frankie’s idea of a warning is to put you in the hospital.”
    “I don’t understand what you ever saw in those guys,” Jared said.
    “They treated me like a person.”
    He started to say something, then shook his head.
    “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll give them that much. They were bad news, but they never walked all over anybody just because that person was weaker than them.”
    *    *    *
    When I finally spotted Ghost again, he saw my gaze find him, and this time he made no pretense at being normal. He was standing by a door. Turning toward it, he simply stepped right through and disappeared.
    Not this time, I thought.
    I hurried over and saw that it was one of the custodian’s storerooms. I gave a quick look around, but no one was paying any particular attention to me, so I tried the knob. When it turned, I opened the door and stepped inside. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it.
    It was impossible to see anything in the dark.
    “I know you’re in here,” I said, “so you might as well stop hiding.”
    I knew no such thing, of course. I’d only seen him come in. If he could walk through solid objects, he could have walked right out the other end of the storeroom and be anywhere by now.
    “This is just stupid,” I went on. “Why are you spying on me? What do you want from me?”
    Nothing.
    “Well, I’m not impressed. I thought it might be interesting to talk to a dead person, but this is about as interesting as watching paint dry. I guess I’ll just—”
    I didn’t get to finish.
    The door opened behind me and I went sprawling backward, landing hard on the marble floor, my textbooks flying. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
    “See?” I heard Jerry Fielder say. “I told you I saw her go in there.”
    I looked up to see the crowd I was