ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[steppingup]

"Nope. Enigmatic. Really unhelpful that way. But I met - it."

[castmyown]

"'It'?" asks Darren, confused.

[steppingup]

"Couldn't for the life of me tell what gender it was. Could've been a man, could've been a woman. Might be neither, I don't know."

[shesepankh]

"And you didn't ask? I guess this might seem comparatively unimportant next to their species."

[steppingup]

"He or she was a little busy at the time. Seemed kind of rude to go up to it and say, 'Are you a boy or a girl?' Professor Oak style."

[shesepankh]

"Yeah, fair. What was going on?"

[steppingup]

"Exorcism, followed by closing a hell mouth. That was fun."

[shesepankh]

"Sounds like a heck of a way to kill a weekend, yeah. I need to know a lot of stuff, it'd seem. I'm glad Darren found me instead of - most anybody else."

[steppingup]

"Yup," agrees Vernon. He pats Darren's back, in a fatherly sort of way.

[castmyown]

"Happy to help."

[shesepankh]

Bella produces, swishes, and dismisses her tail. "I don't suppose there's informational pamphlets. 'So You're A Mythical Quadruped: What You Will Need To Know'."

[steppingup]

"I wish. It would have made my life a ton easier. Along with a, 'So Your Kid Is A Mythical Quadruped: What To Do' pamphlet."

[sundayfish]

Charlie snorts. "What-all kinds are there? Of quadrupeds."

[shesepankh]

"I don't actually know if we're all quadrupedal, but there's the one and only known sphinx, yours truly, and apparently Darren and Savannah are perytons - bird-deer things."

[steppingup]

"They're not actually all quadrupeds. Nixies, for example, are kinda like mermaids. Except not quite."

[castmyown]

"Thank you for the glowing description, Bella," deadpans Darren. "I'm a magic deer with wings, essentially."

[shesepankh]

"Exactly. Bird-deer thing. Being a 'deer with wings' doesn't specify kind of wings, you could have bat wings if I just said that."

[castmyown]

"Your father has seen my wings. I demonstrated while I was freaking out."

[shesepankh]

"...At what point in the process of freaking out did you attempt to explain the wings part?"

[castmyown]

"Um. I told him on the phone because I didn't want him to freak out and proclaim witchery or something when he got here and I explained on the way here a bit."

[sundayfish]

"Cost me about a minute, I called your phone before coming to get you 'cause I figured it was a prank, but he answered your phone too."

[castmyown]

"... Sorry," says Darren.

[shesepankh]

"...At least you didn't wind up with him convinced that you had harmed me? I guess? Because that would have been hazardous to your health?"

[castmyown]

"Yeah, that's something. I probably could have handled it better, though."

[steppingup]

Vernon claps him on the back. "Hey, kiddo. It happens. You did what you thought was right in a freaky situation where you didn't know what to do and it worked out okay. Calling that a good day."