Lullaby for the Rain Girl (8 page)

When Barb Seymour blew into the room, papers falling this way and that from her grasp, I waved her over.

“Hey, Ben!” she said in her breathless way, depositing her pile of work on the table and sitting.

“See the agenda?” I asked.

She chuckled. “I saw it.”

“How much will you pay me for not revealing the secret of the stolen chalk?”

“I’ll pay you in sexual services,” she said, brushing hair from her eyes. “How’s that?”

I laughed. It was easy with Barb exactly because, except as friends, we were utterly unattracted to each other.

The meeting commenced. My attention wandered, as it always does. I heard talk of sports schedules, of paperwork, of plans for Thursday, the last day of school before Winter Break. Someone suggested that the teachers have some sort of small party that afternoon. Our dyspeptic principal, Mr. Geiger, assured us it wasn’t in the budget. Our vice-principal, the young go-getter Mr. Russell, said that there was some discretionary petty cash that might cover it. Food was suggested. Pizza was discussed and agreed on, but then someone else said that not everyone liked pizza. There should be salad. Others suggested cheeseburgers, Buffalo wings, desserts. Mr. Geiger told them the school wasn’t a catering service. Pizza was returned to as the main item, but there were holdouts for salad. It went on for nearly half an hour, and in the end, nothing was decided, which meant there would be no party at all. This kind of thing happened all the time.

By the time we got to the chalk it was nearly four o’clock. Geiger berated the entire staff while Barb and I maintained caught-in-the-cookie-jar poker faces. An argument ensued concerning how the principal could be so sure it had been a teacher. How could he know that it wasn’t a student, or a member of the administration, or not simply a clerical error? It went on for another twenty minutes with no resolution before, everyone exhausted and demoralized, the meeting broke up.

“You
caused that last bit,” I said to Barb reprovingly, smiling as we stood.

“Oh, come on,” she said, gathering her things. “If it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. It’s a miracle we’re getting out of here at four-thirty. That’s pretty good for old Geiger-counter.”

“True.”

“Need a ride?”

“Um…” I hesitated because I wondered if my young friend was outside, but I knew I was being silly. “Um—sure, Barb. That would be great.”

As we left the building I looked around, but no one was in sight. Barb and I packed into her predictably stuffed-with-garbage VW Bug and pulled away from the school.

On the way to my apartment it crossed my mind that I’d never called Vincent. Well, I knew there would be a message or two waiting on my message machine. But it was a quarter to five; perhaps I could successfully duck him for another day. I’d not even glanced at the settlement papers he’d handed me on Friday—they were still sitting on my dining room table. Even thinking about them depressed me. The rain spattering the windshield of the VW didn’t help.

“Want to come in?” I said as she pulled up in front of my building.

She brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Nah. Gotta get home. Thanks, though.”

“Well, thank you for the ride.”

“No problem, Ben. You’d better get home and make your Y2K preparations.”

I smiled. “Would you lay off about that?”

“I’ll lay off when the world becomes a primitive wasteland filled with wandering bands of savages out of
The Road Warrior
sometime in the overnight hours of January the first, 2000. By the way, did you know that the end of 1999 isn’t even really the end of the millennium?”

“Yeah, I heard that.”

“There was no year zero. A millennium starts with year one, not year zero. So technically—”

“I’ve
heard
that, Barb.”

“Well, you think about it, buster!” She grinned as I stepped out of the car. “Ta-ta!”

She pulled away, the VW burping and gasping. I loved her teasing; it made me feel lighter somehow, connected to the world. But I knew what was waiting for me in the apartment. Vincent, which meant Kate. Maybe Alice, which meant Dad. Piles of grading. I stepped under the awning of the building to get out of the rain but then just stood there, trying to think of a reason not to go in.

“Was that Ms. Seymour?” said a voice behind me.

I knew whose it was without looking.

“Yes, it was.”

She stepped in front of me. She had on the same light coat as before. Her hair hung straight down onto her shoulders. Her eyes were wide, guileless.

“Do you like her?”

“Like her? Of course I like her. She’s my friend.”

“I mean
like
her like her.”

I thought for a moment. “No. Not like that.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know why not. Some people just don’t connect that way, that’s all.”

“Oh.” She looked out at the rainy street. “I sent you an e-mail.”

“Did you? I haven’t looked since yesterday.”

“Well, I sent you one.”

“Thanks.”

“Will you answer it?”

“I don’t see why I wouldn’t.”

“Good.”

“I didn’t see you in school today.”

“No? I saw you, though.”

“How are you always seeing me when I don’t see you?”

She smiled, very slightly, glanced at me and then away. “Some people are
observant,”
she said.

“When did you see me?”

“At lunch. You came downstairs and got a Coke from the machine.”

“Why didn’t you say hello then?”

She shrugged. “I like just watching you.”

I looked at her for a moment. “I—I have to go in now,” I said hesitantly. Once again I wondered if this girl was homeless or a runaway or what. The last class discussion came back to my mind: words like
creepy
and
crazy.
Yet in truth there was absolutely nothing creepy about this girl and she did not seem in any way crazy. She was just there, utterly plain, bland, quotidian.  I would never even have noticed her if she hadn’t shown up in my classroom after school the previous Thursday.

“Okay,” she said, stepping out into the rain. “See you.”

I turned to the building and was through the doors before I thought to check my optical illusion from last week: how she stood in the rain without apparently getting wet. But by the time I looked she was gone.

Upstairs I saw the blinking light on my message machine and the flashing number
3.
Ignoring it, I went to the bedroom and switched on my computer; I changed clothes and grabbed a soda from the refrigerator while I waited for it to boot up.

Finally I was online. Ignoring the spams I went straight to
[email protected].
The heading simply read, “No Subject.”

I clicked on the message.

I LOVE YOU, BENJA-ME-ME!

xxooxoxoxxxoxoox

Your Rain Girl.

Something bloomed dark and sour in my heart. My breath came fast. The floor tilted; I nearly fell from the chair. It wasn’t the declaration of love or the x’s and o’s that did it. It was the name.

Benja-me-me.

A heavy black wing swooped over my mind, blotting out the world.

I just made it to the wastebasket as my stomach seized up, and I vomited.

5

I almost called in sick the next morning, but realized that the worst course of action for me would be to sit around the apartment with nothing to do. The day floated by in a kind of phantasm—not threatening, but remote and something less than completely real. I felt as if I were on some odd kind of drug, one that didn’t make you high, exactly, but which removed you just a step from reality. Yet it wasn’t like a hallucinogen, either. I was able to teach my classes and interact with my colleagues but part of me wasn’t quite
there.

I knew I would see her again, of course. What I didn’t know is what I would say to her. My mind had run through a thousand possibilities, rational explanations, and yet: there were none. It wasn’t possible.
She
wasn’t possible.

At the end of the day I sat at my desk in my empty classroom, staring out at the light rain streaking the windows. There were papers in front of me but I didn’t look at them. I had no thoughts in my head, just an overwhelming sense of disturbance, of the past as a quiet, still pool suddenly alive, tempest-tossed and thrashing. I had no specific memories, just distant disconnected sounds, pictures clear for an instant then splintered and blown in the air and kaleidoscoped apart again.

“Hi, Ben.”

She wasn’t at a desk in the back now. She was in a chair next to me, only inches away. She looked the same as she had every time I saw her. The eyes, the hair, the bland appearance—but it was something other than blandness, I realized. Something more.
Unfinished,
that was it. She looked somehow unfinished, like a statue the artist had left off from too early. There was something vague, unspecific about her. That’s why it was so difficult to remember what she looked like whenever she wasn’t with me. Her skin didn’t have the kind of lines or pores or smudges or pimples or anything one might expect a sixteen-year-old girl’s skin to have. Her eyes seemed to lack individuality, spark: they were animated enough, but they could have been anyone’s eyes—they didn’t seem to be
hers,
somehow. That was why she was disturbing, even though there was nothing even vaguely threatening about her.

“Hi.”

“Did you get my e-mail?”

“Yes. I got it. I…”

“What?” She cocked her head, studying me.

“How…how did you know?”

“About…?”

“The name. How did you know about the name?”

“Oh, that.” She stood up suddenly, wandered over to the bookshelves and tilted her head to look at the titles on the spines. “I just made it up, that’s all. I hope you don’t mind. You don’t, do you? Hey, are any of these books any good? I need a good book to read.”

“Who are you?”

She looked at me again. “What do you mean?”

“Your name. I want to know your name.”

She shrugged, continued studying the books.

“You’re…” I hesitated. “Your name is Rachel, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.” Her eyes met mine. “Do you want to know the truth? The truth is I don’t have a name. So there.” She stuck out her tongue at me.

“How can you not have a name?”

“I just don’t.” She was near the back of the room now.

“I think I know what you are.”

“Do you?” she asked casually, pulling a paperback from the shelf and opening it.

“Yes.”

“And what am I?”

“You’re a ghost.”

The room was half-dark in the rainy afternoon. She seemed far away.

“I’m a what?”

“A ghost,” I said, standing and moving slowly forward. “It explains everything. Everything that’s so mysterious about you.”

“What’s so mysterious about me?”

I thought about it. “The fact that no one has ever seen you except me.”

She looked at me with her dark eyes. She put the book back on the shelf.

Then, to my amazement, she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard and so long that she had to lean against the bookshelf for support. I began to chuckle too, though I didn’t know why.

“What—what’s so funny?” I asked.

Her laughter subsided to giggles. “You think I’m a
ghost?”

“Yes.”

“Because no one else can see me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’ve never seen you with anyone else. No one else has ever spoken to you in my presence.”

Still giggling, she pushed away from the bookshelf, glanced mischievously at me, and skipped quickly to the classroom door. She opened it and stuck her head out.

“Excuse me!” she called to someone. In a moment Mr. Avery, one of the custodians, came into view in his gray coveralls. He held a mop in his hand. “Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes?” he answered.

“Do you have the time, sir?”

Mr. Avery checked his wrist watch. “Four thirty-five,” he said.

“Thank you very much.” She closed the door again and looked at me.

“A
ghost,
he says,” she stage-muttered. “Holy cow, Ben, this isn’t
The Sixth Sense,
you know. ‘I see dead people!’
Ooooh!”
She bugged out her eyes and wiggled her fingers at me.

Her laughter had completely changed the atmosphere in the room. I suddenly felt relaxed, free, as if some enormous burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I dropped down into my teacher’s chair again. She picked up a piece of the chalk Barb had given me and started to doodle on the board.