Lucy's Ghost

As a veteran middle school teacher, I have seen my fair share of strange kids come through my classroom, but few students will stand out stronger in my memory than Lucy Kandle. Lucy was a quiet yet inquisitive girl who recently tormented my homeroom class. Here I was, a grizzled veteran, facing off with a small copper-haired girl who questioned everything and used the question "why?" like an instrument of torture. Taming her insatiable, infuriating curiosity into a force for learning has been one of the greatest hurdles in my teaching career.

It was in an English writing exercise that Lucy first introduced me to her ghost, an imaginary friend named Cassandra. This drew my curiosity, as most girls of Lucy's age had long ago forgotten their imaginary friends. Cassandra, she claimed, was the ghost of a young girl who had drowned, came back as a spectral mermaid, and became best friends with Lucy in the second grade. Lucy relayed the somber backstory of her imagined friend in a matter-of-fact tone, as normal as saying her friend had simply moved here from Nebraska. Lucy liked to tell stories about Cassandra and often included her in various writing exercises.

During a particularly stormy lunch break last week, I opened my classroom for students to shelter indoors from the rain. My indoor sanctuary summoned just one student: Lucy. She sat across from my desk to pick at her lunch, chatting absently with me about her week. As the conversation slowed and died, she eyed the storm outside sadly with her large grey eyes and began to tell me a story of the time Cassandra saved her life.

On a bright and sunny summer morning in the fourth grade, Lucy rolled out of bed at a late hour and padded downstairs for a quick breakfast of sugary cereal. When she returned to her room to change out of her pajamas, her heart sunk. Her favorite teddy bear, simply known as Bear, was no longer sitting on her bed.

Lucy could not remember getting Bear – the stuffed toy had always been part of her life and had watched over her as far back as she could remember. The discolored white bear had been repaired numerous times with colorful stitches and wore a colorful beaded friendship necklace and a hand-made angel costume made by Lucy and her grandma, respectively. The irreplaceable bear was a constant guardian in Lucy's life, and its absence caused a flutter of panic in the pit of her stomach.

Half-dressed, Lucy searched her bedroom in a flurry of blankets and toys, but Bear was nowhere to be found. Heart pounding, legs racing, she ran around her house to find her parents. Neither had seen Bear, and they claimed that no one had been upstairs all day. Not even Ethan? She asked, suspecting her troublesome brother, but her mother simply stated he was away at a friend’s house on a playdate. She returned to the scene of the crime in a huff.

"Cassandra, where are you!?" Lucy growled into the dusty hallway, careful not to draw attention from her parents. "Cassandra, I know it was you!"

Lucy squinted in the sunny hall, looking for her phantom friend. Silence echoed around the dusty space. "Look, I know it was you. You're jealous, ain't ya? Bring Bear back right now!"

Getting no answer from the empty house, Lucy returned to searching her room. She dropped to her knees in her paisley pajama bottoms to scan the darkness under the bed, then crawled to the large dollhouse. The dollhouse had been in the house when they moved in and appeared to be beautifully and skillfully handmade. Over the years the large dollhouse had accumulated smears of glitter glue and scratched trims, and most of the furniture had been lost, but Lucy appreciated it all the same. Today, she squinted her eyes and examined a new blotch on the painted plywood floor. "It wasn't enough to take Bear, huh? You had to make a mess in here, too?!"

Lucy stomped down the stairs with bare feet, milling over the situation. She was convinced, it MUST have been Cassandra. The two friends argued the previous week and had not spoken since. Cassandra was jealous of Lucy because Lucy had all kinds of toys that she never had. Cassandra’s early drowning had prevented her from experiencing Barbies and Gameboy, popsicles and Teletoon. In turn, Lucy was jealous of Cassandra because Cassandra could go anywhere and do anything she wanted, and never had to do anything she did not want to do, like homework. She could even turn into a mermaid and swim forever, never again having to avoid or fear the substance that cut her life short. Unresolved tension from the argument still hung heavy over the two girls’ friendship.

Lucy intended to invoke the power of her mother to find the missing toy, storming into the yard with the demand prepared on the tip of her tongue. As she entered the yard, a shimmering star hanging loosely on a low branch caught her eye and froze her feet. She approached the branch, crouching low over the cobblestone path to inspect this new clue. A scrap of glittery fabric fluttered in the breeze—that of Bear's dress—a small scrap used to tie the simple handmade angel dress to the stuffed bear's body.

Lucy’s mother rose from the deck chair, grabbing the seat cushions under her arm. “Don’t stay outside too long, Luce. I don’t like these clouds.” She pushed the pillows into an overstuffed deck box before heading inside. “Might rain.” Lucy looked up to the sky, noticing the clouds for the first time.

Lucy followed the cobblestone path out of the yard in the direction the scrap of fabric indicated. Beyond the creaky wooden gate, she padded down the back alley and moved towards the park. It was Cassandra’s favorite place; a beautiful public park with a lake, two playgrounds, tennis courts, and community garden plots, just across from Lucy’s house. She had walked there by herself a hundred times; it was practically an extension of her own back yard.

Lucy walked down by the lakeside kicking sand into the shallows, squinting out at the waves to search for her friend. “Cassandra?” she whispered, knowing her mermaid friend could hear her no matter how quiet she was.

Perched atop a large rock, running the glittery fabric sash through her fingers, Lucy sat. As the rain began to sprinkle onto her coppery hair, she sat. As the rain began to pour, she saw the telltale ripple of Cassandra’s fins approaching her from the center of the lake.

“Cassandra! There you are. I was worried, I thought you were mad at me.”

“I am mad, Lucy.”

“I’m sorry, Cassandra.” Lucy shifted awkwardly. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you today. I thought you stole Bear, but I don’t think you did.”

“No Lucy, I didn’t.”

“You see, Bear wasn’t there… and mom and dad both said they hadn’t been upstairs, and Ethan wasn’t home. So, who could have grabbed Bear? And then there was the mud in my dollhouse and muddy smudges allllll over the floor. I even found some black hair in the mud!

“When I found Bear’s sash in the yard, near the gate to the lake, I was pretty sure it was you. So I came here to find you. But then I thought about it. The mud in my room, the black hair, the sash… It wasn’t you. I know who it was. I just need to figure out where they put Bear!”

Lucy sprung off the boulder, now slick with rain. She skipped over the wet grass towards home, stopping at the edge of the small stream that fed into the lake below.

Where the small spring had tumbled by just moments before, a roaring, untamed dragon now laid. Water swirled and bubbled in a white rage, spilling well past the stone wall and onto the grass beyond. Lucy sought out the familiar flat stones she had used to cross a hundred times before, only to find them absent in the angry torrent. The only way around the stream was to walk to the park's main entrance and go around the fence, a lengthy walk. Stubborn, cold and wet, she scoped out a section of the stream that seemed shallow and slow, and carefully edged her naked toes into the drenched grass, steadying herself.

Counting down from three, Lucy took a brave step into the flowing water, her toes searching for something to sink themselves into. With a crash, the water rushed over her, soaking her hair and ripping the fabric scrap from her hands. Lucy thrashed about, unable to free her foot from the deadly grip of the dragon’s teeth below. Her ankle wedged itself in between two rocks, she could feel the stone ripping at her skin. A blanket of water pushed her down and made her body heavy as she fruitlessly clawed at the torrent.

“Mom!” She tried to scream. “Dad!” The cry bubbled out, lost in the foam. “Ethan!”

She was not sure if she managed to scream, or if she only imagined it. She continued to struggle, but the dragon pinned her down effortlessly. She thought of her mother’s words, warning her to come home before the rain.

Two hands emerged from the dark weeds below, pushing Lucy upright into the light. Bracing herself against her guardian angel’s support, Lucy finally wriggled her ankle free from the stones and heaved her awkward mass onto the soaked grass beyond. She glanced back at the turbulent water to see her friend’s pale face dissolve into the darkness below.

After some time—she wasn’t sure how long—Lucy dragged herself up the grassy embankment towards her home. Her cheeks flushed with red, her ankle scraped and sore, she trudged into her yard looking like a swamp monster from an old movie.

“Oh, Lucy!” Her mother clucked as she cranked the patio umbrella shut. “What did I tell you?”

With a giggle, the older woman grabbed the garden hose and aimed. Lucy squealed as the water hit her, and she lurched forward to grab at the hose. After a minute of chasing and squealing, Lucy was giggling too.

“Did you ever find Bear?” her mother asked, pausing her ambush.

“I think so.” Lucy limped to the side of the deck, dropped to her knees in the mud, and peered into a hole under the deck. She emerged holding the stuffed bear, its angelic wings caked with mud.

“Oh!” Her mother exclaimed, lowering the hose again. “How did you know she was down there?”

“Well, at first I thought it was Ethan… but he wasn’t here, and you and dad stayed downstairs, so it couldn’t have been you neither. So, I looked around. My room had a bunch of mud everywhere, even in the dollhouse, and there was a bunch of black hair in the mud. Then there was the sash…” she paused her story to rifle through her pajama pockets, but the sash was not there. “The sash was on the branch by the gate, right by the path.

“I had to think about it for a bit, but in the end, I knew it had to be Moose who took her.” The family German shepherd perked up at the mention of his name. “Moose has been digging holes in the yard all week, and you keep spraying him with the hose when he does, so of course he was covered in mud when he came into my room. He probably took Bear when I came down for breakfast, then tried to bury her. When Bear was too big to hide, he added her to his hidden stash.”

Lucy brushed dried mud off the dilapidated doll as she spoke, only succeeding in adding fresh mud from her soiled hands. Her mom retrieved the bear from Lucy gently. “How about we get both you and Bear a bath, how does that sound?”

The next day, Lucy returned to the lake to thank Cassandra for the rescue. She paced the sandy shore for nearly an hour, but her strange friend was nowhere to be found. Laying across the boulder near the water was a familiar glittery scrap of fabric, glistening in the sunlight.