Ghost Girl

A short story

Edward Hopper – Rooms by the Sea (1951)

Ghost Girl was great fun, but she was certainly nobody’s favourite. In contests of any kind or orientation, she’d be just outside the podium – an honourable mention, perhaps – never distinctive enough to merit a prize. In relationships, they’d almost fall in love with her; they might just like her enough to date her for a while, but then again they could never find it in themselves to love her, or even to like her company better than any other, so they’d move on swiftly to somebody a little more substantial. Ghost Girl would get handled carelessly as she went from favourite toy to embarrassing, half-remembered joke.

Ghost Girl had no proper limbs. She was definitely not ugly, but her beauty had no discernible character, so she was simply too easy to forget about. They missed her birthdays. Life events went on without an audience. She began to avoid those hefty dates, acquiring a detached, sarcastic tone that said those big celebrations were pointless and not her style. Ghost Girl could be cool if she liked.

People confused Ghost Girl with girls who looked and sounded nothing like her – or each other. Are you so-and-so’s daughter, and did you ever study at Holy Mary’s whatever it’s called? No, she did not. It would turn out to be some girl called Gertrude or Jessica.

Ghost Girl was clever, maybe a little too clever for her own good, since she was not exactly wise. Her heart was too brittle, so she’d try to act out heartlessness to no great effect. She’d drink and laugh too loudly; she’d be a tad too awkward, to the point people only ever found endearing on TV shows. In real life, her friends saw her as a little obnoxious and too prone to melancholia, which meant, of course, there was an extreme self-involvement issue they didn’t want to point towards, so they’d just suggest therapy. They cared – they did – but not to the point of inconvenience.

Ghost Girl was a little too intense. She clung to people, she clung to memories; she had too many keepsakes, and she was shit at letting go. She exhausted acquaintances by confusing them with friends. She felt like a regular, non-translucent girl one time only, but that love was also a lie for her to beat herself up over: why, oh why would he have chosen her when there were rosy-cheeked girls with blood running in their veins, feet set firmly on the ground? You wouldn’t have married her either. She knew, deep in her heart, those had only been ridiculous pipe dreams.

Ghost Girl was smart. She could even be creative. She was not particularly talented or memorable at anything, though. No distinctive features. You’d have to really love her to find the things she did endearing—but that was the one thing they could never do.

Ghost Girl had dreams. Intense ones, drenched in symbolism, she dreamt when she managed to catch sleep. Wild ones she had throughout the day, which she inevitably would turn into ill-advised plans she would never have the strength to turn into reality. And then those would become the nightmares – about drowning cats and roaring tigers – she had in exhausted sleep. Bruise after bruise, she still insisted there was a point in remembering things carefully, in caring for people fondly.

Ghost Girl excelled in one thing only: she left like nobody’s business. She disappeared – no hesitation, without a trace. After she left, they’d grieve her in the way they could not love her: intensely, desperately even. There was specificity in the pain her definite absence elicited. She knew that. She got up and went away many times. At this point, it was quite clear she could only ever be loved in absentia.

Ghost Girl turned into heartache; that was all that she could do. Not baking cookies, not telling jokes: going away. That was her talent. They’d miss her in the everyday things. A silly pop song she liked would come on. Someone would order the iced tea she loved. Details they never even knew they noticed. Some mousy, forgettable girl would get tipsy after a couple of Negronis, and there you have it. They’d miss her, yes – but never enough to chase her back into their lives. It was just a little undignified, you see. Caring that much for a ghost. They’d get embarrassed and soon learn to avoid the subject altogether, though the lack was still there. The longing would remain.

So she’d float around her house, listening to sad songs and struggling against the ball of sadness that tied her to the same places, the same failures, the same heartaches. Just invisible now. Faces changed; even her ghostly one would fold permanently into wrinkles. But older bruises would unspool themselves into new hurt until tying herself back to gravity became impossible.

Ghost Girl was not a great storyteller at all, but she was good as a story others sometimes told each other. It was only at the end of bar nights, when everybody would be too drunk to nurture their filters but too tired to actually go home, that it would come out. They’d talk about her then. I wish she could hear the fondness in their voices.