Ghost Hand (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 2, A Bag of Blades

All around me students slid from their desks and rushed the door. A short line formed in front of Mr. G's desk, kids waiting to hand in their tests on the way out. Thankfully, they made a nice wall, blocking his view of Passion slanting oddly over her desk in the fourth row. But, any minute, someone would notice her, or see the faint PSS energy protruding from her back. Any minute, I was going to be in serious trouble.

Suddenly, New Guy was crouching next to me. With his right hand he plucked my pencil from the floor while his left hand reached under my desk and grabbed my wrist stump. I tried to pull away, but his grip was firm. People didn't touch me there. I didn't even know this guy. What the hell was he doing? He squeezed my wrist between his fingers and it went abruptly and unexpectedly cold. And then he let go, standing up just as Passion did a face-plant into her Bible.

"Mr. Giannopoulos, sir, I think this girl fainted," New Guy said, putting his hand on her back, the picture of concern.

I stared at his hand—his normal hand—but there was nothing else there, no elongated tendrils of PSS or gaping hole to indicate where they had been.

I looked down in my lap. My ghost hand was back, normal as could be, glowing gently and nicely formed into a palm with four regular-sized fingers and one thumb. And there was something else in my lap— a clear plastic baggie full of a something grey and shiny. I had never seen it before, didn't know what it was or where it had come from. Maybe New Guy had put it there—slipped it under my desk when he'd grabbed my wrist.

"What the—?" Mr. G said in alarm, jumping up from his chair and rushing over. "Passion, can you hear me?" he asked loudly, gently taking her by the shoulders and restoring her to an upright position.

Passion's head lolled to one side.

Mr. G looked at New Guy and said, "Call 911."

 "She's breathing," Mr. G said as New Guy dialed, and I realized I hadn't been. I'd been holding my breath, waiting for someone to discover I'd killed Passion Wainwright in Calc class. But she wasn't dead. Mr. G said so. I took a deep, shaky breath.

When Mr. G pulled Passion's long white sleeve back, perhaps to check her pulse, he sucked in air between his teeth, like a reverse whistle. He quickly yanked her sleeve back in place, but not before I'd seen the long white scars and the fresh pink cuts crisscrossing the surface of her inner arm.

Mr. G and I looked at each other. He knew I had seen it, and I could read the conclusion written all over his face; Mr. G thought he'd just discovered the reason Passion had fainted.

I looked up to gauge New Guy's reaction, but he was on the other side of Passion, oblivious, phone to his ear, apparently still waiting for emergency services to pick up.

Passion gave a weak moan.

Mr. G seemed to come to a decision. "Hand me the phone," he said to New Guy. "Someone get Passion some water," he ordered toward the crowd of students gathering in the hall outside the door. There was no class in Mr. G's room last period, so at least students weren't streaming in.

New Guy handed his phone over to Mr. G just as the school nurse came pushing through the crowd. News of Passion's faint had obviously made it to the main office at the other end of the building. Some random freshman brought in a Dixie cup of water. Passion was sitting up a little and seemed to have revived enough for the nurse to dribble some of it into her mouth. Coach Edmunds was doing crowd control in the hall, shooing kids to their next class. "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along," his voice boomed down the long hallways. And Mr. G was on the phone with the 911 operator, talking them out of sending an ambulance.

I felt like I was watching all this from a distance, like there was some kind of screen between me and everything that was happening.

New Guy looked down at me, his eyes full of concern, as if I were the one who'd just been shish-kabobbed.