The Dark World by Cara Lynn Shultz
A few days after my first encounter with Dottie, I was in the third-floor girls’ room, washing my hands. Alone. When people saw me in the bathroom, they usually walked out so quickly I practically saw smoke at their heels.
“I’m sorry.”
The soft voice caused my shoulders to jerk in surprise, and I glanced up to see Dottie appearing over my shoulder in the mirror. She was still wearing the blue cardigan sweater over her buttoned-to-the-neck uniform shirt, her blond hair curled with bangs, like the hairstyle I’d seen on old comedies from the 1950s.
I kept my eyes downcast, trying not to meet her sad brown gaze. Maybe I could cure myself of these hallucinations if I stopped indulging them. I was tired of going to therapy, tired of being forced to try new medications, tired of my parents hovering over me and my classmates running away from me.
“I know you can see me,” she said.
I continued washing my hands, scrubbing at the skin and feeling very Lady Macbeth-y.
“I said sorry,” Dottie repeated, and I glanced up to see her tugging at the sleeves of her sweater again. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you. I was just so happy to be out of there.”
“Out of where?” I blurted, before gripping the soapy edges of the sink and exhaling in frustration. I couldn’t help it; I was curious what she meant. Or what this figment of my imagination was trying to tell me. Might as well embrace the crazy, Paige. At least it’s entertaining.
“You can still see me?” A hopeful smile spread across her face, and I nodded at her reflection. I spun around to look at her, leaning my back against the sink, ignoring how the wet porcelain soaked the back of my shirt.
“Where were you?” I asked, and she sighed again.
“You don’t want to know.” Dottie frowned, looking down at her shoes. Whatever she was thinking of caused her to visibly flinch, and when she spoke again, her voice was despondent. “It’s a distorted version of here. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s dark. It’s lonely.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And there are scary things...” she whispered, shutting her eyes tightly. But then her eyes popped open with excitement. “But out of nowhere, I felt this energy, and I had to follow it. Suddenly, I was back here. No one else could see me—but you could.”
“What kind of scary things did—” I began to ask, but the bathroom door opened, and Pepper walked in. When she saw me, she stopped short and called over her shoulder.
“Let’s go to another bathroom. Bellevue Kelly is in here having a positively enthralling conversation with the sink.” Delighted peals of laughter answered her, echoing in the hall until the door slammed shut. I gritted my teeth and stared at the white tile floor.
“You’re a figment of my imagination. You’re not real,” I stated, more as a reminder to myself.
“I’m not a figment of your imagination. I’m—well, I guess I’m a ghost.” Dottie cocked her head to one side as a look of awe flashed across her pretty face. “Wow, I’ve never said that out loud before,” she said breathily, before adding, “Then again, I haven’t had someone to talk to in a while.”
“That’s crazy,” I scoffed, folding my arms across my chest. “There are no such things as ghosts.”
“Well, would you rather that I was a ghost or a product of your fevered mind?” she countered, and I studied her curiously. There was something...different...about Dottie, now that I scrutinized her more closely.
“You do kind of glow.” Her skin seemed luminous—she exuded a faint light, as if a soft candle illuminated her from within.
“That’s probably just my sparkling personality,” she said, giving me a winning smile.
“Look, if you want proof, just look in my freshman yearbook,” Dottie said, pointing a pink-manicured nail to the door. “All the past school yearbooks should be in the library. They were when I went here, at least. Look up 1954. I was a freshman then.”
I nodded, feeling a little light-headed, before bolting from the bathroom. I felt like running home, but I ran down to the library instead. Now you’re taking orders from the imaginary people, Paige. This is how serial killers get started.
With shaking hands, I pulled the 1954 yearbook off the shelves and rested it on the nearest table. There, between Margaret Falconi and Donald Foster, I found Dorothy June Flanagan.
My eyes met the black-and-white version of her brown eyes, and I felt like I was falling—like the room had shifted. I pulled out the nearest chair and collapsed in it, gripping the edge of the table for support. My heart was pounding, and my stomach, well, my stomach was probably somewhere in the basement. Yearbook Dottie had slightly shorter hair, but it was still flawlessly arranged, with little bangs that curled over her forehead. An untroubled, pretty grin brightened her face, as she smiled at me from the page, as if to say, “See? I told you so.”
Because it was her.
Because she was real.
Coincidence. It has to be a coincidence, right? Underneath her name, her extracurricular activities were listed—Glee Club, Spring Fling Committee. My fingers fumbled as I flipped through the book, leaving small creases in the glossy photos because my hands were trembling so badly. I quickly found the page devoted to the enchanted garden-themed dance and saw a photo of Dottie. Her corsaged wrist rested on the shoulder of a boy who looked like the fifties ideal of the all-American teen idol: tall, broad-shouldered, deeply dimpled and clean-cut. She gazed up at him with a blissed-out grin as they danced under a poorly made papier-mâché flower arch.
My heart was pounding. Twenty minutes ago, I thought I’d imagined the whole thing. Now I knew my figment had a boyfriend. I wanted to know more. I needed to know more, see more—have more proof in front of me that Dottie existed. I flipped to the Glee Club page and searched it for another photo of the ghost girl. There, in the bottom left, my figment appeared again. In the picture, Dottie stood next to an older girl, who looked remarkably similar. They both held sheet music in front of them, their mouths open in song. The caption read: The Flanagan sisters, Dottie and Lorraine, rehearse for their solos in the spring choral presentation.
Whoa. My figment had a family. I set off in search of Lorraine Flanagan, finding her in the juniors section.
I slammed the book shut, the shaking that had overtaken my hands now spreading throughout my entire body.
My figments are real. They’re ghosts.
My mind reeled, thinking of everyone I’d spoken to that no one else had seen. The older woman at the bus stop. The playful young man outside the Met. The woman in Central Park. I exhaled slowly, not sure of how to feel. Was I relieved that I wasn’t crazy, or crazy because I was accepting something otherworldly as an answer? Could I at least be sure I wasn’t about to turn into a serial killer? A brief image of myself in court, passionately telling the judge, “The ghosts told me to do it,” flickered through my head.
I stood up and carefully slid the book back into its space on the shelf, my fingers brushing the worn blue-and-gold spine of the 1955 yearbook. I yanked the book off the shelf and rapidly flipped through the pages, looking for a photo of Dottie. I needed more evidence that she once lived—that the girl in the bathroom was, indeed, a ghost. But when I didn’t find Dottie listed among the sophomores, I found myself looking up her sister, Lorraine. She was beautiful in that polished, fifties way, with blond bangs rolled thickly, eyebrows perfectly plucked and arched. But Lorraine’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes—they looked heartsick. Grief-stricken. And where most seniors penned cryptic comments and inside jokes for their yearbook inscriptions, Lorraine’s merely said, “Polkadottie, I miss you every day.”
I grabbed the yearbook and ran back up to the bathroom, but Dottie wasn’t there.
“Boo,” I heard from behind me, and I dropped the yearbook on the floor. The binding hit the white tile with a loud slap that reverberated
“Sorry, I couldn’t help it!” she said with a lighthearted giggle, her brown eyes glinting with mischievous joy as I picked up the yearbook.
“This is about you, isn’t it?” I asked gingerly, flipping through the book and opening it to her sister’s page.
Dottie studied her sister’s words, her eyes misting over with what looked like tears, and I wondered if ghosts could cry.
“Oh, Rainey,” she murmured, blinking back the mist. “Of course she would do something like that. I should have talked to her before...before I...” Her voice trailed off, her eyes sorrowful. And then Dottie told me her story, about how she rashly decided to kill herself after she found out she was pregnant. I told her my story, which sounded like a fairy tale compared to her heartbreaking, tragic end. I didn’t get home until nine o’clock that night, which led my very worried parents to ground me.
But I didn’t care: it’s not like I was going to go anywhere that was more intriguing than the third-floor bathroom at school. It was where Dottie died—where she felt the strongest. I spent every free period, every lunch hour, in the bathroom talking with Dottie. When I was in class, she roamed the halls, spying on teachers, sometimes whispering answers to me when I was stuck on a test. It was pretty helpful, since I couldn’t exactly concentrate on my studies while my mind reeled with the fact that I could communicate with spirits. And Dottie made it her personal mission to make sure I’d beat Pepper as valedictorian, since she felt responsible for my social leprosy.
There was only one downside to having a ghost as a best friend—other than people thinking I was insane and all—Dottie couldn’t leave the school. When she was in my world, she was tethered to Holy Ass, as they had nicknamed the school when Dottie was a student. When I was away from the building for too long—home sick or on vacation—Dottie was sucked back to that dark world, as she called it. Where it was at once hollow and filled with nightmares. She didn’t like to talk about it, no matter how many times I’d tried to wheedle some details out of her.
My cell phone beeped, breaking me out of my reverie. I didn’t bother to look at it—I got the same text every day from my father, just “checking in.”
“You have to go?”
“Yeah. You’d think I was brought home regularly by the cops or something, the way my parents stalk my every move,” I huffed. “I’m not a delinquent. I’m just apparently crazy. But you know my parents.”
“No, I actually don’t,” Dottie reminded me with a wry smile, and I instantly regretted my off-the-cuff comment. “But I wish I did. I wish we could have slumber parties, listen to records, watch color TV and all that.” She smiled bashfully. “I get so lonely.”
“Me, too,” I admitted. My time away from Holy Assumption wasn’t an undead nightmare like Dottie’s, but Bellevue Kelly’s phone didn’t exactly ring a whole lot. I was a little lonely, too.
“Maybe you’ll meet a boy soon,” Dottie chirped, not-so-subtly segueing to her favorite topic—boys. She was perpetually a boy-crazy fifteen-year-old and, in spite of her crushing experiences with the opposite sex, remained a true romantic.
I, however, was a realist and merely snorted in reply. “Yeah, wish me luck finding a guy that doesn’t mind when I have a scintillating conversation with the walls.” I’d gotten better at telling the difference between ghosts and humans, but every now and then I screwed up, earning wary glances from anyone within earshot. The last guy I dated—okay, Chris was the only guy I’d dated, for a whopping streak of three dates—was two years ago, back during sophomore year at my first school. On our final date, I’d talked to a ghost by the carousel in Central Park. You could say it was a bit of a romance-killer.
“You should talk more to that new boy. He’s quiet, but he seems nice,” Dottie mused, “and he’s always borrowing pens from you and talking to you about assignments.”
“Who, that Logan guy?” I asked, surprised, and Dottie nodded, wagging her arched eyebrows up and down. “He wants my pens. Not my sweet, sweet lovin’.”
“Your pens are pink with feathers and glitter and purple paw prints on them,” Dottie said, folding her arms, before adding with a saucy tone, “I doubt it’s really your pens he wants.”
“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “He’d use crayons if he didn’t have anything to write with. I’m pretty sure I’d use eyeliner if I was pen-less before a pop quiz.”
“Look, he’s not exactly my type,” she said, waving her hands dismissively, “but he’s a potential dreamboat if he got a proper haircut.”
“He’s a transfer who hasn’t heard yet what a psycho I’m supposed to be and suffers from a debilitating inability to bring in school supplies,” I countered. I didn’t tell Dottie that I’d started bringing in extra pens in case Logan needed to borrow one. Why encourage her? “Besides, Dots, you make it sound like he’s fawning all over me when he’s merely polite.” Logan had slid into the seat across from me in the library only last week while I ate Hershey’s Kisses and studied Spanish. He’d quietly asked questions about our assignment as Dottie hovered over me, gushing about him and offering incredibly outdated advice on flirting. She practically had me dropping a handkerchief, leaving me wondering if she was from 1950 or 1850. I’d done my best to tune her out—even casually scratched the side of my cheek with my middle finger to give her the hint—but Dottie wasn’t much for subtlety.
I jumped off the radiator, my feet slapping against the white tile floor with a dull thud. I wanted an end to this conversation—quickly. There was no point in getting my hopes up. I was destined to check “forever alone” under my relationship status for the rest of my life.
“Maybe you’ll meet a guy who can talk to ghosts,” she said, a faraway look on her face. “When you come back to visit me after graduation, you’ll have some wonderful stories to share about the dreamy Big Man on Campus who fell for you at college.”
Dottie was too busy swooning over the fluffy fairy tale she was spinning about my fictional college life to think about what me going to college really meant: that Dottie would stay trapped on the other side.
Dottie couldn’t follow me when I left the confines of our school, and she couldn’t seem to materialize in our world unless I stayed close to where she’d died—the third floor of our school.
“I’ll walk you down—I want to be near the library,” Dottie told me. I nodded, and pulled open the bathroom door for Dottie. She didn’t like walking through walls.
“Why the library?” I asked as we slowly made our way through the empty hallway to the staircase. “Do you read the books people leave out or...?”
I trailed off as dread colored Dottie’s face, and she shook her head rapidly, as if she were trying to shake off whatever mental image had rattled her.
“The library—it isn’t that bad over there,” she stammered, looking at the black steps as we slowly thudded down the stairs, her footsteps a faint echo of mine. She was quiet for a bit, and her voice was barely a whisper when she continued. “It’s not really scary in the library—just quiet. When I end up getting sucked back into the dark world tonight, I’d rather be in the library.”
“I wish you could stay on my side tonight,” I said, my heart breaking a little as Dottie smiled wistfully.
“I wish I could stay here permanently,” Dottie said with a humorless laugh. She wanted nothing more than a second chance at life—and not to have impulsively decided suicide in the school bathroom was a better option than facing her domineering father and telling him his fifteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. But Dottie’s boyfriend—the all-American dreamboat, Bobby—had disappeared. She’d felt all alone. Abandoned. So Dottie had made the worst decision possible. She’d told me she’d regretted it after slicing into her second wrist, but of course by then it was too late. She’d ended her short, promising life before it had even begun.
Dottie star
Chapter 2
“SORRY ABOUT THAT,” I mumbled, wiping the few tears that leaked out on the heel of my hand. Pepper seeing me talk to myself was one thing—I felt a smug satisfaction in her freaking out over it—but getting caught all weepy by the one person who had been halfway decent to me? Embarrassing didn’t even cover it—even if he was just using me for my school supplies. I might have to invent a new word to accurately capture the humiliation. I stared down at Logan’s scuffed black Converse, unwilling to meet his eyes with my probably bloodshot ones. How he got away without wearing the uniform-mandated brown shoes, I had no idea.
“It’s cool— Hey, are you okay?” Logan asked softly. I reluctantly looked up into his warm, light brown eyes, shaded under the brim of his navy Yankees cap—another uniform infraction that went unpunished.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I insisted, doing my best to smile brightly.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Because you’re kind of crying right now.”
“Flirt, Paige! Bat your eyelashes at him. Your eyes don’t look that puffy, and your nose isn’t too red.” Dottie barked more not-so-helpful flirting tips, and the corner of Logan’s mouth curled into an amused smile, his shoulders rising in silent laughter. I felt like strangling my dead friend—until I remembered that Logan couldn’t hear Dottie.
Which meant he was laughing at me. Logan. The one person who had seemed halfway decent.
“Don’t worry about it,” I snapped, angrily dashing the backs of my hands across my cheeks. “I’m sure you’ve heard by now that I’m the resident crazy girl. Crying in the hallway’s just another sideshow performance by Bellevue Kelly.”
Logan’s smile promptly vanished. He took a step back, his eyebrows pulling together as a dark look briefly crossed his face. He folded his arms and stared at me.