A Ghost Story

Chapter 6

"How was your date?" Eileen said as soon as I sat down at our lunch table.

"It wasn't a date, and it was very nice." I replied indignantly. "It was a good use of an afternoon."

"She texted me that you were weird but didn't do anything rude."

I shrugged. "Yeah. Basically. I could say the same about her. She's cool though. And yes, clearly out of my league, as you said."

"Do you like her?" Eileen said with intensity.

"Gosh, I just met her yesterday. How am I supposed to know?" In truth, I would normally spend a whole day sitting around and reliving a brief, strange conversation I had with a pretty girl. But it was May, and I had instead spent the rest of the night alternating between reading An Abundance of Katherines by John Green and scrolling through my Instagram or Snapchat. Homework had thankfully faded at this point in the year. In any case, I hadn't thought of her obsessively or imagined having more conversations with her. In fact, hadn't really thought about our unusual interaction very much at all.

"Haven't you ever heard of love at first sight?" Eileen said.

"Yes, but that's less love and more thinking with your eyes. Or your dick, if you're a guy."

"True."

"Like I said, she's cool though. I'm generally distracted by random thoughts this time of year though and I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about her last night. Also it would be pretty quick to get a crush on someone overnight, don't you think?"

"Yeah, but you could still be at least interested in her or something."

"You know, what if I just want to have a kind friend that happens to live in a haunted house because you know I don't have a lot of friends outside of Water Polo and Swimming, and half those guys are jerks anyways and the other half of them probably dislike me or at least think I'm weird."

"Caroline thinks you're weird too." Eileen pointed out.

"Yes, but I get a vibe from her that seems to be more accepting of my weirdness."

"Probably because she's also weird."

"She's not so much weird as much as she is new and she happens to live in a haunted house," I said in defense of Caroline.

"Yeah, you don't really know how weird a girl is until you have spent a season on the lacrosse team with her."

"Enlighten me." I said curiously.

"Okay well for starters, once I accidentally pulled out her earbuds and Beethoven's 9th symphony started blaring. So everyone looks over and they're like 'why the hell are you listening to classical music.' And she's just like 'I play viola in orchestra.' And like what the hell is a viola anyways?"

"That's the one they make all the jokes about. It's like a violin but bigger. I listen to quartets when I do homework and to be fair Beethoven is a actually pretty interesting. Though it is odd that someone listens to music like that just straight up. And I've never really met a violist before."

Eileen wasn't really sure whether I was complimenting or degrading Caroline, and neither was I. She hesitated a moment and gave me her look that said 'weirdo.' Then she continued. "So another time we were at a Portillos and she had two chocolate cake shakes."

"Damn. That's impressive. And she's not even fat."

"Yeah it made the other girls on the team so jealous it was kind of funny. But still it was weird."

I simply nodded at this.

"She has a huge hickie on the side of her neck and everyone knows it but she says she doesn't have a boyfriend and she's a virgin."

"Uh, yeah, that's pretty weird I guess."

"So another time, she got into a fight with another girl during a match and she got scratched across her cheek but then she smacked the girl who did it across the head. And she was out cold, like K.O.'ed. It was scary. She got suspended for the next two games."

"I got the sense from her that she would do something like that when I met her yesterday. So is she like really good?"

"Uh yeah she's like the best lacrosse player on the team. And maybe in the conference. And you know she also did basketball and volleyball and apparently she was really good at those too even though she's just a sophomore."

"Damn, here I thought I was cool having done 2 varsity swim races this season."

"Yeah, you thought."