Page 16 of Heartless Heathens

“There aren’t many of us. You either gotta grow teeth in your cooter or carry a knife to survive the rabid dudes on this campus.” She shrugged.

“The girl…” I reminded her, feeling frustrated at how much of my time she was eating up.

“Well, if it’s your ghost…she’s like an urban legend around here. Supposedly some girl died in the bell tower like twenty years ago or some shit like that and now she haunts the chapel. Some people say they’ve seen her around the library or in the woods. Yours is the first sighting of the year.” She picked up an apple and bit into it before dropping her feet from the desk.

“A ghost? That’s not what I’m talking about, I’m looking for a girl that’s probably really upset and scared. I need to make sure she’s okay,” I clarified.

“And where did you see this sad girl?” She did this weird thing with her lips like she was just baffled by my inability to believe her ghost story.

“In the chapel,” I sighed, running my fingers through my hair, realizing how it appeared but knowing damn well what I saw with my very own eyes. “But it wasn’t a ghost.”

“If it sounds like a duck dude, I don’t know what to tell you.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Anyway,” she flipped open a laptop and started scrolling through some software system, “no one’s checked into the building for about thirty-five minutes now, and the elevator doesn’t open if you don’t check in down here. I would have noticed. I don’t think your mystery girl is in this building.”

“Thanks,” I said, turning around. “If you see a silver haired girl, come find me.” I told her and she nodded. I grabbed her arm and looked straight into her eyes so she knew I meant it, “Not Frollo. Not anyone else. You find me first. Got it?”

“I got it dude,” She shook me off with an eye roll and slammed her laptop closed. “I’m Reesa by the way. Rude.” she shouted in my direction but I didn’t bother to turn around and introduce myself.

I spent the next two hours looking like a total lunatic, stopping any student I passed by to ask if they’d seen the silver haired ghost girl, but the only thing I got was a huge waste of my time and different versions of this myth.

One student said she was Frollo’s dead daughter, haunting the school grounds after he’d killed her in sacrifice to his God. Another claimed that she was a drunk girl who was pushed from the bell tower a couple of summers ago. Some other person laughed and said it wasn’t a ghost at all, but that Claüde Frollo kept a girl hidden in the tower who he used as a sex slave.

Either way, we were apparently the only people in this school who hadn’t heard of the mystery with this bell tower.

And now we were living in it.

I gave up after sun-down but double-checked with the girl in the dormitories that she hadn’t snuck past me while I was circling this campus like a mad dog. Either I was gonna have to settle for the fact that she mightreallyhave been a ghost, or maybe she’d already left the grounds.

If she’d gone to Frollo we would know. The guy was begging for any chance to kick us out that he could find. He would have come flying in on the back of a crucifix with a hoard of nuns to help us pack our things if he’d already heard of what went down in Corvin’s room.

It was practically dark after the mile trek back to the chapel, my stomach was rumbling something awful and I knew there would be nothing but frozen pizza waiting for me when I got back. The cafeteria food was absolutely inedible here, and it wasn’t the fact that I grew up so rich I could snob shitty food, it was the fact that even with all the funding they received, these fuckers were dishing out expired food from the old prisons.

I pushed my way into Corvin’s room, knowing this was where they’d both still be.

“How’s he doing?” I practically whispered and Sonny looked up at me from a book.

“He’s been sleeping. Did you find her? Is it settled?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then why are you back here?” He asked in a flat tone, looking back down to his reading.

“Ass. I looked everywhere. Most of this campus laughed in my face too when I asked about her,” I told him, crossing my arms.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He finally put his book down, like the conversation was finally going somewhere worth his attention.

“I don’t know, just some urban legend people here spread around. She didn’t make it to Frollo, and by the looks of it she didn’t make it to the dorms either.”

“Well then, she’s still outtheresomewhere, isn’t she?” He cocked an eyebrow again at me and he tilted his head towards Corvin’s window where the girl leaped out of a few hours back.

Fuck.

I knew what he was insinuating with just the three-degree tilt of his head.

“It’s too dark man, I won’t be able to see shit,” I protested.

“Your phone has a flashlight,” he deadpanned.

“Ok, how about this, I just spent the last three hours being slightly convinced that we bought a haunted chapel and Corvinmighthave assaulted a ghost. If you want me to go out there, you’re coming with me.” I raised both eyebrows and crossed my arms while I waited for his decision.