Ghost
THE BUS RIDE was long, and Suraya spent most of it sleeping,
unused to having to be up before the sun in order to be on a bus by
6:20 a.m. She wasn't the only one, either. In almost every seat, Pink
watched as one by one, freshly scrubbed students nodded off, lulled
by the bus's gentle rumble. When he tired of staring at their lolling
heads or glazed eyes, he looked out of the streaky windowpane
instead, as the landscape changed from rolling green to brick
buildings, and the world changed from the darkness of early morning
to the light of day.
The school was a sprawling old building with graceful arches for
windows and an overwhelming air of gentle decay. Pink knew from
the fancy brochure Suraya had read aloud to him that this was a
premier all-girls school, known for its stellar reputation in academics
and athletics, its list of former students a constellation of familiar
names and well-known stars. But as far as he could tell, the
"premier" label did nothing to hide the peeling paint on the heavy
wooden classroom doors; the flickering light bulb in the corridor; the
bat poop that clung stubbornly to the red tile floors; the bats
themselves, which often took the opportunity to swoop down fromthe dark recesses of the high ceilings to make the girls squeal; the
wooden chairs and tables that wobbled tipsily on uneven legs.
The hall was filled with excited chatter and hordes of girls who
seemed to greet each other exclusively in shrieks of joy. The noise
set Pink's teeth on edge, but Suraya didn't seem to notice; she'd
fished a battered copy of A Wrinkle in Time out of her backpack and
had settled contentedly in a corner to read, her legs crossed, her
back against the wall, the skirt of her turquoise blue pinafore nicely
arranged to make sure she wasn't flashing her "coffee shop," as the
boys back at her old school had called it.
When Suraya was younger, her mother had sometimes brought
home back issues of an ostensibly educational children's magazine
the school subscribed to, and one of Suraya's favorite sections had
been the Spot the Difference page, her brow furrowed as she
concentrated furiously on marking all the ways the two given pictures
didn't match: a missing tree branch here, an extra flower petal there.
Now Pink played the same game with the scene laid out before him:
the deafening squeals of the other girls versus Suraya's silence; the
bright, brand-new, freshly ironed uniforms versus the faded softness
of Suraya's pinafore and the white shirt she wore under it. Both were
hand-me-downs from a neighbor whose daughter had outgrown
them; they were fuzzy from use and draped over her thin frame as
though it were a hanger instead of a body. He wasn't quite sure why,
but the differences made his chest tight and his stomach hollow.
Pink curled into a ball in a particularly cozy nook in the depth of
Suraya's shirt pocket and shut his eyes. The school day was long;
he might as well take the time to nap.
He was just about to drift off to sleep when he felt Suraya's body
tense, like a fist ready to punch.
Suraya?
He poked his head a tiny way out of her shirt pocket to see what
was going on. Suraya was still looking down, seemingly focused on
her book, and he was about to shrug and slide back into his nook
when he realized that her hands trembled slightly, and that they
hadn't turned a single page.
Slowly, he looked around her until he spotted them: a cluster of
girls, shooting sly looks over at the corner where Suraya sat andwhispering to each other.
Whispering about her.
Inside Pink's belly, anger began to spark, warm and bright.
They nudged each other and giggled. "Look at her shoes," one
stage-whispered, loudly enough for Suraya and Pink to hear, and
Suraya shuffled her feet awkwardly, trying to hide as much of them
as she could under her too-long skirt. Her school shoes were so old
that they were fraying at the seams; the Velcro was fuzzy and barely
held together, and there was a hole right above the little toe on her
left foot. She'd tried to hide the graying canvas beneath layers and
layers of the milky chalk her mother had bought, slathering on more
and more with the sponge applicator until the white liquid dripped
down her arm and splashed onto the grass. As a result, her shoes
were so white they were almost blinding, but also stiff as wood, and
as she walked, the chalk cracked, leaving bits of dust in her wake.
On the page of her book, Pink saw one tear fall, then another.
The girls were openly laughing and pointing now, and Pink's
anger had grown from a spark to a flame. He had to hold on to his
antennae to keep himself from casting a spell he might regret. He'd
seen people like this before in his travels: people who needed to
step on others to raise themselves up, people who took delight in
causing others pain. Many had come to the witch's door seeking out
ways to do just that; heck, the witch herself had often indulged in a
good old hex or two and laughed long and hard about it. He just
hadn't realized they could start so young.
"Maybe that's how they do it in the kampung. Hey, Kampung
Girl!"
The shout was aimed at her, but Suraya kept her eyes firmly on
her book, refusing to look their way.
"Hey! You, with the torn shoes and that dishrag of a uniform!"
More giggles, and this time Pink could see Suraya bite her lip, hard.
A single drop of blood pooled beneath her teeth, and she quickly
licked it away.
The book was suddenly snatched from her hand. "What could
you be reading that's so interesting you can't even reply when
someone calls you, Kampung Girl?" This girl was clearly the leader,
her long straight hair tied back in a high ponytail with white ribbon,her uniform still crisp and clearly new. Her shoes were white canvas,
but designed to look like ballet slippers instead of the plain old Velcro
or lace-up sneakers the others had. A shiny gold K dangled from a
chain on her bright pink backpack.
"I didn't know you were calling me," Suraya said finally, her voice
calm and even. "That's not my name, after all."
"Your name is whatever I choose to call you." Pink heard a thunk
as the book was tossed to the floor. "It could be Kampung Girl. It
could be Smelly. It could be whatever I want. Understand?"
Suraya said nothing, and K's eyes narrowed. "I said. Do. You.
Understand."
One of the girl's minions, a pretty girl with dark skin and a mass
of long curls, tugged on Suraya's long braid once, hard, so hard that
it made her yelp and brought tears to her eyes. But Suraya nodded
very slightly—at least enough to satisfy K.
"Very good." The girl leaned in close, and Pink smelled
bubblegum-scented shampoo and baby lotion. "You don't belong
here," she whispered. "And I'm not going to let you forget it."
The bell rang then, signaling the start of assembly, and the girls
scattered to line up with their classes, leaving Suraya breathless,
scrambling to get up and gather her things, her eyes still glassy with
unshed tears.
As she walked quickly to her line, she left a trail of white dust
behind her.
Thankfully, K and her minions weren't in Suraya's class, and Pink
could feel her body relax as she slipped into the familiar routine of a
school day: new books, new teachers, new things to learn. Suraya's
mind was a sponge, and she never seemed to mind what was put in
it so long as there were interesting things to soak up and absorb
along the way.
The bell for recess sounded, and Suraya made her way to the
canteen, gripping a plastic container she'd hastily filled that morning
with a banana, a boiled egg that her mother had received at a
wedding and left on the kitchen table, and three bahulu from the
heavy glass jar on the kitchen counter. The banana was riper than
she'd thought, and she had to peel it carefully so that it wouldn't fall apart; even so, when she took a bite, she somehow managed to spill
a huge chunk of banana mush down the front of her pinafore. It
looked like she'd been sick.
From a table nearby came a chorus of familiar giggles, and Pink
turned to see K and her gaggle of girls looking at Suraya and
laughing. He turned back, his face contorted in his most ferocious
grasshopper scowl. He could tell Suraya was trying not to cry as she
dabbed at the stain furiously with a tissue. Eat the bahulu, he told
her gently. You'll feel better.
She shook her head slightly at him.
Suraya. Eat.
This time she obeyed, though not without a small sigh. The
round, seashell-shaped little sponge cakes had always been her
favorites, but now all she could do was turn it around and around in
her hands, nibbling at the edges. As she did, Pink saw her steal a
glance at K's table, and at K's brilliant turquoise lunch box, adorned
with stickers of the latest K-pop boy band sensation. When she
opened it, they could also see that each of the lunch box's sections
was filled with food: a heap of fried noodles, still steaming slightly; a
slice of yellow butter cake; a handful of cookies studded with
chocolate chunks; picture-perfect orange slices, plump and juicy. "Oh
look!" K's face somehow managed to look both pleasantly surprised
and unbearably smug. "My mother is so thoughtful. Isn't it nice when
someone cares enough about you to pack you a proper lunch?"
That, Pink decided, was quite enough. If he had to sit here one
more minute and watch Suraya's cheeks burn and her eyes water,
he might actually scream.
Instead, he flicked his antennae.
K's table was in the middle of laughing raucously at yet another
one of her not-that-funny jokes when one of them happened to look
down at her own lunch box.
The screams echoed to the rafters and shook the bats awake
from their slumber as girls jumped up and tried to get as far as they
could from the table, their faces pale. Some were retching; K made a
great show of heaving dramatically over the closest dustbin.
Suraya stood up, bewildered, trying to see what was going on.
And then she saw, and blinked, and looked again.
Because if you weren't concentrating, you could have sworn that
the food in those abandoned lunch boxes was moving.
Except then you looked closer and you realized the terrible truth:
that every lunch box on the table was so full of worms and maggots
that if you stayed quiet enough, you could hear the sticky squelch of
them writhing and wriggling through noodles and fried rice and
porridge and cake and whatever else those unsuspecting mothers
had so lovingly put in them this morning.
Suraya pushed her own container with its meager lunch way, way
back onto the table.
Then she walked quickly away from the shrieking girls and the
chaos, past the frangipani trees that bloomed beside the cafeteria,
slipping carefully into the narrow passage between the row of
classrooms and an old building that was mostly used to store broken
furniture and assorted bits that the school administration wanted to
get out of the way. Back here, there was one more frangipani tree all
on its own, light filtering through its spreading boughs and dotting the
ground with puddles of sunshine, and this is where Suraya stopped.
There was nobody else here; it was as if nobody even knew it
existed.
Pink felt her hand slide carefully into her pocket, and he jumped
onto it so she could draw him up into the light. In the place where his
heart would have been there was a hammering and a pounding that
rattled his tiny body and made him jumpy. Would she be grateful?
Would she understand that he did things only for her protection?
Instead, she was frowning, and the pounding inside him turned
into a strange sinking feeling.
"Why did you do that, Pink?"
They were harming you. He tried to maintain a defiant pose,
sticking up his little grasshopper chin, but to do so to his master felt
like insolence. I did only what they deserved.
"But I never asked you to. Didn't I tell you that before? Not to hurt
anyone unless I ask you to?"
Well. Um. Suraya's eyes never left his face, and Pink began to
feel horribly hot and squirmy. Yes, he admitted finally and—it must
be said—reluctantly. Yes, I believe I recall you saying something like
that, now that you mention it.
"And did I ask you to hurt those girls?"
Not in so many words.
"I didn't, Pink."
He sighed. Fine. You did not ask.
"So you disobeyed me. Never again. Do you hear me?"
In the distance, he could hear the steady murmur of chattering
girls as they clustered together, waiting for the bell to ring. I hear you,
he said sullenly. But why? Why not give them the same pain they
give you? Measure for measure. An eye for an eye.
"I don't want anybody's eye."
You know what I mean.
Suraya was silent for a while as she thought about this. Then she
sighed. "Because then, that makes me no better than them. That
makes me a bully too."
The bell rang and she quickly slid him back into her pocket. Just
before she began running toward her class, she glanced down at
him and smiled—a weak and watery smile, but a smile nonetheless.
"Thanks," she whispered.
Pink felt pleasantly warm all over. You're welcome.
"But don't ever do that again."