Ghost of a Girl

Chapter One

The funeral for Haven Delilah Mayberry was on a Monday. New Hope Baptist Church on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street was packed for the early afternoon service. It seemed that almost every person in Westside crammed inside the sacred walls to honor Haven. There were even a few standing just outside the open double doors trying to peer in.

The high school had closed for the day, and the next day as well. No one could even think to attend the place where Haven ruled. Her absence would haunt the hallways and the classrooms. Those had been the words plastered across the school's website.

I didn't go to the service. Well, I didn't go into the church, but I was there. Just across the street sitting on a park bench hidden in the trees filming the whole thing.

I watched as the black cars pulled up front and Mr. and Mrs. Mayberry got out of one and shuffled up the steps to the church. Each step looked painful. At one point, Mr. Mayberry had to support his wife. She looked like she was going to collapse at any moment. The other cars had more relatives inside. Aunts and uncles and cousins. Haven had been an only child, so there were no siblings to console.

We had that in common, me and Haven.

Once the relatives had showed up, the friends and acquaintances streamed down the sidewalk toward the church. A sea of black washing over the white streets. I spotted Haven's closest friends, Jenna and Paige, easily. They teetered up the stone steps on four inch heels, the hems of their short dresses barely skimming their knees. They both had on wide brimmed hats and big round black sunglasses. I was surprised they didn't stop for pictures and interviews before entering the church. Other students from the school showed up. Teachers as well. There was a lot of air kissing and hugging on the stone steps.

I took it all in through the lens of my camera. It helped. It was a buffer between me and the real world. I could cope better with a graduated neutral density filter to sieve out the too brights and the too darks of life. This definitely was a too dark instant.

Once the service was over and the church bells tolled, the mourners streamed out of the church and back into waiting black cars. The back of the hearse was open and six pall bearers all in black suits carried Haven's cobalt blue coffin out and slid it inside the car. One of the men who wore a purple tie slammed the door shut and the sound reverberated across the street and filled my ears.

I had to fight the urge to slam my hands over them.

When the funeral procession started, I got on my bicycle and followed behind. It was slow enough, weaving through the streets that I was able to keep up. Only once I lost them on Evergreen Street, but it wasn't like I didn't know where they were headed. Once the cars reached the cemetery, I got off my bike, leaned it against a big oak tree that provided a yard of shade and watched as the mourners plodded toward the hole in the ground where Haven would be laid to rest.

I lifted my camera and filmed the whole event.

The pall bearers set the casket on the contraption hanging over the grave. Mrs. Mayberry wailed loudly and turned into her husband's arms. Other mourners watched on in rabid interest. Some of the ladies even looked at her with embarrassment as they dabbed at their faces discreetly with tissue. It all seemed so civilized, as it tended to be in the South. I would've loved to have seen some real emotion. Some rage. Some agony. I'd hoped someone would jump on the coffin itself as it lowered into the ground, clutching at the flower wreaths set on top.

That didn't happen.

Pastor John Gainsborough read some passages from the bible. He crossed himself, then shook the Mayberrys' and the other mourners' including his daughter Jenna's hands. Then someone, probably the funeral director, pressed a button and the casket lowered into the grave. When it was all the way down, Mr. Mayberry picked up some dirt and tossed it in. Others did that as well, then rounded up their loved ones and left the service.

Jenna and Paige and others from the school had behaved themselves, acting like enlightened and refined people, although I knew them to be otherwise. The girls wiped at their eyes with tissues and hugged each other tight. It looked good from afar. It looked authentic if no one was looking too hard or knew them too well. But not once did either of them look truly devastated by the loss of their friend.

I hated them for their designer mourning wear and their artificial fat teardrops rolling down their perfect cheekbones. I hated them for the expectation of their attendance at the funeral. I hated them because everyone knew they were Haven's friends. And no one knew about me. No, I was a big secret.

They got the sympathetic looks and gentle hugs and touches on their arms. And at school I knew they would get treated differently. Everyone would tread lightly so they didn't upset or disturb.

It was so unfair when none of them deserved the honor of knowing Haven.

I turned off my camera, then returned to my bike. I jumped on and peddled as hard and as fast as I could all the way home, stopping only once to vomit up the pancakes my mother had made for breakfast in the gutter.