Haunted by Lynn Carthage Page B

okay. You don’t have to listen to me.”

    Bethany had been the one to tell me about automatic writing, this thing they did in the 1800s that was kind of like Ouija, only without the laborious spelling out of every word. Basically, you sit with pen and paper and invoke a spirit . . . you invite them to use your body, and while you’re in a trance, they write their messages as fast as they can.
    Maybe it was a dangerous thing to do, to offer the dead the chance to borrow your body. A ghost might refuse to stop writing, and take up permanent residence in the furiously scratching—and alive—body.
    Nonetheless, I headed for the den off the kitchen. Steven had set up his computer there, so I figured I could grab paper from his printer. I walked in, attracted to the sight of the giant desk with its warren of pigeonholes. I’d always wanted a desk like this, with a place for each and every secret. On the top, Steven had shoved a bunch of pens into the Yewscope mug he’d brought from home, to serve as a pencil cup. Yewscope’s logo was a yew tree whose roots were flexible minicams. This was the company he worked for, headquartered in San Francisco.
    Which pen to take?
    It seemed like a big decision. It couldn’t be just any pen. I hovered, looking at the Stabilos and uni-balls and simple BICs. Steven was a pen geek like me, so there were a lot of options. Calligraphy pens, even.
    Pick one, already.
    But I couldn’t. It was so weird. I just stood there looking at them as though I were choosing which of several children would be permitted to live, and which would go to the ovens.
    â€œMadame Arnaud, are you real or not?” I whispered up to the echoing ceiling.
    I listened closely but the house brought no response.
    I took a step closer to the pencil cup. I really needed to just grab one without thinking. It didn’t matter. A pen, Phoebe, any pen .
    â€œYou can use my hand,” I said to the air. “You can write whatever you want.”
    Why was I paralyzed? I looked behind me. I thought, I should close the door behind me . If Mom or Steven interrupted me while I was in the trance of automatic writing, it might startle my own spirit away permanently. I wanted to be able to get back inside when Madame Arnaud was done writing. I walked to the door and closed it.
    Okay, time to start writing.
    I’d aced Mr. Pelkey’s creative writing class, and he was always reading my stuff out loud to the class without saying it was mine. I think everyone assumed he was reading different people’s stories and poems each time, but he read only mine. He always wrote nice, complimentary stuff on the papers and one time wrote something for me to take home to my parents, telling them he thought I had genuine talent. That was nice to hear, and Mom and Steven had been impressed.
    A memory.
    I’d written a sad story, about a girl who can’t relate to anybody and gets sadder and sadder throughout the story. The last scene has her standing for hours in the attic holding a length of rope. I never explicitly came out and said it, but the idea was that she was deciding whether to hang herself.
    Mr. Pelkey had asked me to stay after class, and although I was supposed to be in trig at the other end of campus, I nodded and waited for everyone else to file out.
    He sat me down at his big metal desk covered with piles of student stories, and essays since he was an English teacher, too, and asked me all these uncomfortable questions about my main character.
    â€œShe seems so real,” he’d said. “I was wondering how you’d known how to write the emotions and thoughts of someone so unhappy.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. His face looked way too serious.
    â€œDid you base your character on anyone in real life?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I don’t think so.” Down the hall I could hear all the doors closing, as teachers started up their classes. I