If it bothered Chanel that she couldnt smell the perfume that clung in the air she hadnt mentioned it by way of extreme hand gestures or doing the crying thing. Yeah, that freaked me out at first too. Ghosts could cry, who knew.
Thanks to Chanels latest strike against her then boyfriend Gregory, she decided to go brunette when he had made a mean comment about blondes having loose morals and so she had decided that maroon colored highlights would go well with her new 'this is me' style. It was her hair. And at the time she was feeling it.
Personally, I had thought she looked nice with the new hairdo. I had told her so myself, on several occasions if i'd remembered correctly.
I certaintly never had the guts to pull something like that off.
Not that I cared to alter my looks because there was nothing I wanted to change that I thought needed fixing. My body with its milky complexion and countless brown freckles was hereditary and yet I wouldnt have asked to be any other way....
Sure I circumnavigated around the enormous campus mostly in sweatpants or faded jeans but that was out of comfort not because i was embarassed of what I looked like with slim fitting material.
The size of my moderately small waist and rounded hips had never propelled me to a delirius state of gym excursions.
I had embraced my curvy figure long ago and never saw myself in the mirror and compared what I looked like to other girls imagining unrealistic body ideals in order to belong.
I was me and I was weird and that was that.
Normal of age difficulties had never been a problem for me. I wasn't the stereotypical teenager that had body image issues that affected my self-esteem and I wasnt above and beyond persnickity when it came to what I ate.
I mean, OK. I didnt eat vegetables but c'mon they're yucky and tasteless.
The healthy love I had for my own self was the very reason I never understood why someone would go to such extremities just because they disliked a part of themselves so much.
Using the heel of my foot I sink my body under the water, rest my head on the edge of the tub, and let the tips of my hair twist and turn like serpentine snakes in the water and float on my chin.
Thanks to the full body soak I was quiet and composed.
But I couldnt say the same for poor Chanel.
We were in the middle of theories without growing success. There was no lead that could help us explain why there were so many ghosts stuck with no place to go. I couldnt say the words out loud and make sense of them but something about this was familiar.
I was on the verge of remembering some crucial peice of information that I was missing but just when I was about to, the string of thought dissapated into nothingness. A fuzzy memory where I had seen something once or heard about gone.
Infuriated and because I had nowhere else to turn I wanted several times to ask Jett where his god was at. A part of me wanted to march over there and pound on my moms door and demand that Jett tell me why none of his ethereal idols were around to assist Chanel if everything in the bible was real?
If the Archangels werent just cool beings with awesome powers to heal, couldnt they do something about this mess. And if heavens gates hadnt revealed themselves to Chanel and swept her up in a bright light then wasnt some place darker supposed to claim her soul?
Honestly the whole divinic teaching just seemed like one ironclad moral compass that was there to keep its followers from doing a great sin.
It was my responsibility and privalege to help Chanel. How could I not? If it played out differently and role were put in reverse I knew without a doubt that she would do the exact same thing for me.
We were like our own clandestine sorority. The flyer would be like; No need apply. Transient applicants wanted.
And the heading would say; Dead and Lonely? See sorority leader for more details.
Under the admittance prompt would read as follows; having difficulty navigating well look no further. We are proud to announce that Chanel, one of our very own sorority members, has agreed to answer all of your questions from backstroke to teleportation and so much more!
"Do you have any idea what I would do if I had your undamaged hair?" Chanel gushes to me reminiscently.
When Chanel first found out that I could see her new ghost form it freaked her out more.
All in all she looked relatively good for being dead.
I had asked Chanel how she did it. She'd explained that if she went back to any distant memory from her previous life then she could mimick whatever outfit she had worn on that given day.
Unfortunately nothing could be done of her ill-advised maroon highlights.
I speculated it had everything to do with how she died. The night of the accident she didnt have platinum hair so it would make sense that in this form it was brown.
My life was so different now that I was at Starkhouse and there wasnt much I missed about my old one. I kept to myself only talking when I absolutely had to otherwise people would start to ask what was wrong with me, and I didnt want people here to think of me like that.
That girl was dead so far as I was concerned and in place of her was me and I was doing everything in my power to change but change didnt come easy.
I tried to keep emotinally detatched because not caring about people was earsier that way. While easy to talk to I wasnt particularly clingy with my new friends.
Because of my backgroud I grew up untrusting of others. It was Chanel who had decided she wanted to go over to my house and had solidified herself in my world by her choosing.
Since I hadnt been the one to pursue the friendship it had been irritating at first but as I got used to Chanel always being there I had started to rely on her for support.
On paper in the main interestes column our friendship hadnt seemed like we were compatible for many reasons but it lasted despite the odds.
"Do you remember the look on Cecily Tomsans face?" I ask her trying hard not to laugh.
Chanel laughs uncontrolabally. "How could I not? It was singlehandedly the most fun I had all year."
Last school year Mr. Tafft, our history teacher, had set up a two body podium. Chanel had been given the title of democrat during finals and had went up against her republican counterpart, Cecily, who'd ended up losing the argument and fostered a grudge against Chanel because of it.
Cecily was one of those bitchy mean girls that had the looks to boot. I didnt hate her, per say, I merely disliked the way she'd tried to make Chanel miserable for no reason. Being captain of the high school cheerleading squad hadnt been enough for Cecily so she had stooped low and had picked on the next prettiest girl on the team.
"I think we should talk about what happened." Chanel looks at me with her somber face and just like that the gloves came off.
Instead of articulating words like a functional human being I used my legs to slide down the vat of water, covering my face with it, the back of my head resting on the bottom of the white porcelain tub.
neiner neiner neiner.
i cant heeeaar yyyooouuu.
"I mean it. Its not healthy that you never want to talk about it."
Unfortunately Chanels voice rang loud and clear even if my head was submerged under tons of now luke-warm water.
"Fine. Keep dodging me all you want. Sooner or later its going to come out." Chanel sang in a do-re-mi-do viva voce.
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