Excerpt from OUTCAST
Two sweet little girls stood in the same spot every day in matching yellow dresses with wide white lace.
Every day one of the girls tickled the baby’s toes while the mother held him on her hip. The father with those
long old-fashioned sideburns watched like he was king of his world. Every day our school bus barreled right
through them. No one noticed but me.
I looked back. Like wispy clouds they faded into nothingness.
Pressing my forehead to the seat in front of me, I let the vibrations rattle through my body. I should be driving
my own car like most of the other seniors, not packed into a hot clanking bus that grinds over dead babies.
I should have my own car, not anything new, but mine if I paid for the insurance. That was before it happened,
when my mom and I were still speaking to each other. Before I started seeing ghosts.
The bus shuddered to a stop and Mr. Henry pulled the handle crank to open the door and released us into the
windy Texas morning. Yellow buses lined the curb, spewing teenagers out like bees delivering pollen to the
hive.
I stepped onto the curb. A football whizzed by inches from my face, followed by Jeff Sorenson, my onetime
boyfriend. My lips shaped into a splinter of a smile, but other than his harsh throw nearly scraping my face off,
he didn’t acknowledge my existence. Blowing a breath out, I hunched my shoulders in preparation for the
long walk of shame across the high school’s front lawn.
The dark-haired boy appeared right in my path. My heart took a frantic little spin. Great. The day was already
starting out so well. He looked up at me with dark slanted, somber eyes. Staring, he couldn’t be more than
nine or ten, wearing jean shorts and a stained gray T-shirt large enough to fit two of him. I bit back the reflex
to ask him what he wanted. The last thing I needed was to have a conversation with someone who isn’t there.
The ghosts up on the roof crept closer to the rain gutters, watching us, dead eyes intent. It was becoming the
kind of day where I should have thrown the alarm clock against the wall.
Looking around, trying not to be too obvious, I swallowed, then whispered out the side of my mouth, “What?”
The boy vanished.
I glanced up at the roof. The twenty or so ghosts were already retreating, already shifting and stretching into
lazy poses that resembled sunbathers. They would still be there when school ended. They’d be there
tomorrow and the next day. They were always there. Every school rooftop was littered with spirits the same
way old athletes gather at sports bars.
I hitched my shoulders in farther, lowered my head, better to stay unnoticed and not have to meet the eyes of
the other students, the living other students, and walked toward the glaring row of glass doors. On an impulse
I looked back over my shoulder.
The boy had reappeared, tiptoeing across the grass as though he’d break butterfly wings, his big mournful
eyes tracking me. I shuddered. I knew I shouldn’t have looked back. Little kid ghosts really freak me out.
I headed inside when I saw the shadowmen and froze. The flow of students moved around me like a river
split by a stone, oblivious to the dark forms loitering in the long open space between the inner and outer
doors. I sucked in a long rattling breath.
It’s not that I was afraid exactly. It’s just that the shadowmen were almost as creepy as the little kids, barely
formed husks of darkness. I always had the feeling they were watching me, although there wasn’t even any
shape to their faces to know that. I wasn’t about to simply walk through them like everyone else was doing.
Nope. Nah-uh. Not happening today. There’s too many other ways into this big school. I slipped back out of
the student-stream and ran, cutting across the lawn and around the building toward the back. I was going to
be late, which made me mad. Stupid ghosts. It’s not like I was trying to be the perfect student or anything, I
just liked to be in my seat before everyone else. I wanted to get there unnoticed. The less attention I called to
myself the better.
I frowned, watching my steps, wishing it didn’t have to be this way, wishing I could be normal.
Hustling, I rounded the corner of one of the aluminum portable classrooms and stepped off the curb onto the
loading entryway to the cafeteria. A motorcycle gunned inches away. My lungs clenched shut on a gasp. I
flailed back, arms waving like I was doing the backstroke, and I fell hard on my butt.
The motorcycle fishtailed on a screech when the driver made a tight turn and came back. A boot stepped off
the foot pedal to hold the bike up.
“Are you okay? I didn’t see you.”
“I’m fine.” I lunged up fast, glancing around at how many people might still be out to notice I’d been sprawled
across the curb. A Native American warrior stood across the driveway, as still and as brittle as a stone
except for the subtle lift and fall of the single feather braided into his hair.
Goose pimples raised across my arms. I rubbed them away. Better a dead warrior saw than the living
vultures that were my classmates.
The driver kicked his bike up on the kickstand and rushed over. “Sure you’re not hurt?”
I twisted around to look for grass stains. “Yeah.” I guess I was okay, couldn’t really see my behind.
“You’re fine back there.”
Heat instantly flushed throughout my veins.
“No dirt or grass, I mean.”
So embarrassing! I jerked back around and stared at scuffed boots below faded jeans.
“Here, let me get that.” His long body bent to pick up my backpack. Grabbing it first, I fell back on the curb
again to avoid colliding into him and we both stopped—face to face.
My pulse took off like a runner at the sound of the gun. Holy crap. The guy was simply the most amazing
person I’d ever seen, the dead included. His short dark hair was windblown from his motorcycle ride,
perfectly messy above dark green eyes that watched me with curiosity while at the same time were
uncomfortably active, like he could uncover any secrets I had just by looking closely enough.
I knew I’d never seen him before because even though our student body is huge, a face like that would have
been permanently framed and hanging in the art district of my brain.
Those artistic lips reshaped into a slightly off-kiltered grin. “That one wasn’t my fault. You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Uh…I don’t think so,” I said stupidly. Smooth, the hottest guy I’d ever seen was talking to me and I say uh.
I snatched up my backpack and held it to my chest like a barrier. He was way too close, his eyes way too…I
don’t know…green and alive.
“I’m late for class.” I scooted well back before I got up.
He straightened as well, watching me. “Sure you’re okay? I really am sorry you know.”
With me standing on the curb and him lower on the cement, I looked straight at his chin, at the shadow of
barely-there stubble on his dark skin, at the little freckle below the corner of his curved lip. “Yeah. No worries.
It’s cool. I should have watched where I was going.”
“Yeah, well, next time look before you step out into traffic.”
My gaze snapped back to his. It was my fault now? He was grinning. Jerk. “Traffic? Seriously? This is the
cafeteria loading dock.” That lopsided grin widened into an all out better-than-chocolate smile and my mouth
went dry. Mossy green eyes penetrated straight through my skin.
“Uh, well. I gotta go.” Stains on my butt or not, I turned and left, slowing way down so I wouldn’t seem so
obvious about wanting to get away. Like my snot-wad life really needed some hot popular guy to start talking
about how the biggest outcast in school nearly got herself run over.
When I heard the engine rev up, I looked back. Motorcycle guy was crossing into the parking lot, long legs
balancing the bike as he rolled into a space. For just one brief moment I let myself imagine how it could have
gone if I was normal. Before, when I was normal I wouldn’t worry about ghosts watching. When I was normal I
would have flirted with him big time. It would have been a notch for his reputation to be seen with me, a girl at
the sharp tip of the popularity pyramid, not the school’s resident freak I’d become. Turning away, I shrugged.
That was another life. When I was normal.