There is nothing more boring than watching Vicky read a magazine.
And it wasn't just one, oh no. She had a whole stack of the dumb things that she read, one after another, all while I sat there screaming at her, trying desperately to get the teeniest little reaction out of her. Nothing worked.
Someone knocked on the door.
Man, I must have really zoned out—I couldn't even remember when she closed it. But Vicky scowled, hurled her magazines on the floor, and flung the door open.
"What?" she snapped. Surprise, surprise—it was Danny. The only person in the entire camp who'd taken the slightest interest in her wellbeing, unless you counted wanting to destroy it. I rolled my eyes.
Danny, breathing fog again, glanced at me but didn't seem to care much that I was there. "Um, I just came because—it's lunch time. Thought you might want to know."
"Great!" she crowed, suddenly switching to that fake-nice voice of hers that make me really wish I could hit her. "Thanks for telling me! I'll see you there! Bye!" The last word had a little of her familiar snarl in it. Danny didn't flinch.
"Well, I'm heading there now," he said in a reasonable tone of voice. "Maybe you should come with me—uh, I mean… do you want to?"
Vicky and me both gaped at him. She looked completely bewildered, but at least I knew what he was up to. "You're trying to protect her from me?" Still hard for me to believe. I shook my head. "She's evil. You should be protecting me from her!" Too late anyway.
Danny glared at me for a second, as Vicky replied, "Uh, sure, okay," sounding as baffled as she looked. She stepped outside after him. What choice did I have? I slipped out just before she closed the door, saving myself the creepiness of going through the door again.
It'd be tough figuring out how to scare Vicky out of her wits with Danny around making trouble, but what else could I do? It wasn't like I'd gotten much of anywhere with my plan, and chasing after her when she was actually doing something was bound to be more entertaining than brainlessly watching her read magazines. And if I was lucky, I could make Danny really mad at me too, for talking to him when no one else could hear me. So I was lonely. What did he care? …and most kids weren't used to having fairies around for them to talk to all the time. Who weren't there anymore. But I didn't care, I couldn't care. I was on my way to lunch with Vicky, a perfect opportunity to find out if I could blow up her camp food, Danny or no Danny.
A ghost's sense of time sucked. While I floated there thinking deep thoughts of vengeance, I'd lost them. With a sigh and a grunt, I sped into flight to catch up with them.
Because it was such a nice day—the weather, I mean—lunch was outside the mess hall, on picnic tables in the open air. I suddenly remembered a few days ago, when I was cheerfully eating my lunch at one of those tables. I'd give anything to be able to do that again…
There, I spotted them. Vicky, slamming her tray down on a table while Danny trailed along behind her, sliding into the seat across from her. No more present than a breeze, I glided over to them, silent as… well, as a ghost.
"Why do you keep following me?" Vicky snapped at him the way she does, jumping down his throat. Smart girl, if pure evil, she could see right through Danny's little game… hard to know who to root for.
His eyes rolled upward, looked like he was thinking fast. "What, I'm not allowed to sit at the same table as you? Everywhere else is pretty full," he pointed out, sounding perfectly reasonable. But if he was sitting across from her, how could I do anything to Vicky without being seen?
I darted under the table quick as a wink, where I could hide while I figured out something to do. Maybe I could reach out from underneath and dump her plate on her lap.
"So… how are you today?" he went on, sounding more awkward and forced than anything else I'd ever heard him say. And he was as distracted as he was going to get. I couldn't wait any longer—carefully, I stretched my hand around the edge of the table and felt around for her plate.
"What do you care?" she shot back shrilly. My hand felt nothing, nothing… no, wait, I felt a weird, cold, goopy sort of sensation as my hand went right through her disgusting camp food.
"Darn it," I muttered, and tugged my hand back. Oops. I shouldn't have said anything. Did he hear me?
Maybe not. There was no sound from up above, except for a sudden clatter, and a fork fell onto the grass beside me.
"Whoops!" Danny said loudly. "Would you excuse me? I have to get my fork."
And all at once I was no longer alone under the table. I let out a surprised squeak, but Danny ignored me.
"You have got to cut it out, Timmy!" he hissed under his breath. "I'm trying to help you! I'm trying to figure out what happened!"
I rolled my eyes. "You know what happened. Vicky killed me!"
"She did not," he retorted as silently as he could.
"How do you know?" Hah. See him get out of that.
"I don't," Danny whispered calmly. "That's what I'm trying to figure out. That's why I'm spending all my spare time trying to get the nastiest, most unpleasant girl I've ever met to talk to me."
At least he admitted she wasn't just not very nice. "Are you nuts? It'll never work. She's not gonna tell you what happened because she doesn't care. She's a cold-blooded killer. She's pure evil. She doesn't have feelings." Well, except rage, but that was beside the point.
But Danny was gaping at me, and he looked horrified. "Timmy! How can you say that? You don't really think that's true, do you?"
"I know it's true," I replied. He'd get to know the real Vicky soon enough.
"I know she's mean, I know you hate her, but geez, Timmy, she's a teenage girl! She's just as human as I am—well, as you are anyway…"
"Were," I corrected him coldly. "Thanks to her."
"Whatever." He collected himself and went on. "She's not some comic book supervillain. She's mean, but she's not evil…"
A whoosh through my chest took the breath out of me, or would have if I'd been actually breathing, and Vicky's foot connected squarely with Danny's chest, knocking him back out from under the table and making him eat his own words.
"How long does it take to get a fork?" Vicky growled. Evil. Evil! Couldn't she even tell she'd just kicked the one guy who was trying to defend her? Didn't she even care? Of course not. She couldn't. But I knew what she could care about…
Snakelike, I seized her leg and sank my teeth into it, savoring her shriek of pain. I did it. I did it! I touched her, and I hurt her! I could really do it, and I could do it again!
She grabbed her leg and pulled it up to look at it, Danny was staring at me in something like shock from his vantage point of several feet away. He couldn't stop me. No one could. Vicky'd be begging for her own death by tomorrow.
I grinned proudly. But the world seemed to be fading again, getting darker and blacker, like I was falling asleep or just fading away…
"Timmy," he called after me as softly as he could, but then I couldn't hear him anymore.
