Free Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden Page A

Jadie, then flopped into his chair and sighed dramatically. “I suppose we got to sit here waiting ’til she gets done now. She fucks around all the first part, when she shoulda been working, and now
we
got to wait. Hey, girlie, how come you’re always so slow? How come you never do stuff when the rest of us do? You just sit around like a retard.”
    Ignoring him totally, Jadie continued with her cutting.
    I realized my initial plan to talk about the collages as a group was going to have to be jettisoned, as, if we waited much longer, the boys’ behavior would deteriorate to a point of no return. Indeed, in the moment it took me to contemplate this, Jeremiah scooped up Reuben’s collage and sent it sailing through the air. “Hey, boog!” he shouted at Reuben, “Say ‘fuck.’”
    “Say fuck,” Reuben echoed.
    “Say ‘fuck,’ Reuben. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck it to you.”
    I jammed a record onto the record player and began a rousing chorus of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” to drown Jeremiah out. Catching Philip, I pulled him comically through the motions. We sang several verses in quick succession, all with lively, exaggerated actions to expend a bit of energy. Then, when the song came to an end, I picked up the book I’d been reading aloud to them and sat down on the carpet in the reading corner to start a new chapter. I read until the recess bell sounded.
    Throughout all this, Jadie remained working at the table. When the bell rang, Jeremiah bolted past her on his way to the cloakroom.
    “Hey, lady, look what she’s doing,” he cried and whipped up her paper before Jadie could stop him. He turned it for me to see.
    The relationship among the disparate pictures became obvious now—they all contained a lot of red. Snipping them into small pieces, she’d stuck the pieces on, mosaic-style, to form a large circle around a black cross made out of yarn. That’s all the picture was: a quartered circle.
    “Hey, this is good, man!” Jeremiah cried. “You ain’t so stupid, if you don’t want to be.”
    “It is interesting, Jadie,” I said.
    “Interesting? Man, it’s grrrrr-eat!” Jeremiah shouted with Tony-the-Tiger ferocity. “You know what this is, lady? A bull’s-eye! Raa-aa-aaaTTT!” He tossed the paper into the air and machine gunned it with his finger.
    Jadie just sat.
    Bending down, I retrieved the collage from the floor and laid it back on the table, while Jeremiah pounced on Reuben and rode piggyback into the cloakroom. “You’ll have to tell us about it,” I said cheerfully. “The mosaic was a very clever idea.”
    Cupping her hands over her mouth, Jadie muttered something.
    “Pardon?”
    She hunched farther over and muttered again.
    “I’m afraid I can’t hear you, lovey.” I bent down very close to her. “What did you say?”
    “Throw it away.”
    “You want me to throw your collage away? After you’ve done so much work on it?”
    She nodded tensely, all her muscles rigid.
    “Is there a reason?”
    No response.
    “Something Jeremiah said? Did his taking it and playing with it upset you?”
    Faintly, she shook her head.
    “I think it’s interesting. I’d like to keep it. We don’t have to put it up, if you don’t want, but let’s not throw it away just yet. Okay?”
    Tears came to her eyes. “Throw it
away.
”
    “Why?”
    “X marks the spot.”

Chapter Seven
    O ver the years, I had acquired a large box of dolls and doll clothes. The dolls were of a type known as “Sasha” dolls, boy and girl dolls, appearing to be of middle-childhood age, with beige, nonethnic-colored skin, thick, combable hair, and wistful, rather enigmatic faces. I had six of them, two boys and four girls, plus two Sasha baby dolls. One year when I’d had a particularly boring summer job, I had filled the extra hours making doll clothes, and there was now an extensive wardrobe of shirts, pants, dresses, overalls, jackets, pajamas, underclothes, and anything else they could