The Ghost Who Hated Romance

“If you tell me you’re allergic to dust, I’m going to lose my mind.”

That was the first thing Maddison ever said to me. Not hello. Not hi, I’m your roommate. Just that, delivered flat, while she held a feather duster like it was a weapon.

I was standing in the doorway of Room 217 with two duffel bags, a pillow under my arm, and a look on my face that probably said please don’t be a serial killer. Because that’s the thing about boarding school. You don’t know who you’re going to get stuck with. Could be your future best friend. Could be someone who cries at 3am every night and never explains why. Could be someone who smells like wet dog and has no concept of personal space.

“Not allergic to dust,” I said.

“Good. Because this place hasn’t been cleaned since the Civil War.”

“It’s from 1902.”

“Same thing.”

She stepped back from the window and I finally got a real look at her. Maddison was tall. Like, really tall. Five-ten maybe. Curly hair pulled back with a clip that was losing the fight. Freckles across her nose like someone flicked a paintbrush at her. And she was wearing a hoodie that said I’M NOT ARGUING, I’M JUST EXPLAINING WHY I’M RIGHT. I decided right then that I liked her.

“I’m Daisy,” I said.

“I know. Your name’s on the door.” She pointed. “So is mine. Maddison. With two D’s. Everyone spells it wrong. Madison with one D is for girls who peak in high school. I’m destined for greater things.”

“What greater things?”

“World domination. Maybe politics. Same thing.”

I laughed. Actually laughed. Which surprised me because I’d been in a bad mood since we left the house at 6:45 that morning. Mom kept saying we needed to beat traffic. Beat traffic. Like traffic was a person we could physically fight if we left early enough.

“Your mom still outside?” Maddison asked.

“How’d you know?”

“Saw her through the window. She’s been crying into her phone for like ten minutes.”

I dropped my bags on the bed closest to the door. “She’s not crying. She’s just... emotional.”

“She’s crying. It’s fine. Everyone’s mom cries on move-in day. Mine cried so hard she got mascara on my dad’s shirt. He had to change before they drove home. They stopped at a gas station and bought him a new one. A whole new shirt. For a four-hour drive.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s parents.”

The room was small. Smaller than the pictures online. But I expected that. Schools always lie about square footage. The beds were pushed against opposite walls, and there was just enough space between them for one person to walk if they turned sideways. Two desks. Two dressers. One window that looked out over the quad.

Maddison’s side was already done. She had fairy lights strung along the wall above her bed. Actual fairy lights. In a dorm room. They twinkled like tiny judgemental stars.

“You brought fairy lights,” I said.

“I brought ambiance."

“It’s 9am.”

“Ambiance doesn’t have a schedule.”

I started unpacking. Mom had packed my stuff in these vacuum-sealed bags that made everything smell like plastic and regret. I pulled out sheets, a comforter, a pillow that was already losing its shape. Maddison watched me for a second, then went back to dusting. She hummed while she worked. Something I didn’t recognize.

“So,” she said after a while. “Where are you from?”

“Connecticut.”

“Town or city?”

“Town. Small one. You’ve never heard of it.”

“Try me.”

“Ridgefield.”

She stopped dusting. “Ridgefield? Like the one with the haunted library?”

“That’s not—” I paused. “Wait, you’ve heard of it?”

“Everyone’s heard of it. The library where the books fly off the shelves. The librarian who died in 1954 and still checks out books to people.”

“That’s not real.”

“That’s what people say about this place too. And yet.”

She gestured around the room. I didn’t know what she meant yet. I would. But not right then.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Vermont. Middle of nowhere. My parents run a farm. Well, they call it a farm. It’s really just four chickens and a goat that hates me.”

“A goat that hates you?”

“He knows what he did.”

I laughed again. Twice in one conversation. That had to be some kind of record.

Unpacking took longer than it should have. Mom had packed things I didn’t need. A sewing kit. A book on etiquette. A small ceramic bowl that she said was for “holding small things” but looked like something a grandmother would use to collect dust.

Maddison helped me make my bed. Actually helped. She held the fitted sheet on one corner while I struggled with the other. Then she stepped back and looked at the result.

“You need a comforter,” she said.

“I have one.”

“That’s not a comforter. That’s a thin blanket pretending to be a comforter.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. You’ll freeze.”

“I’ll survive.”

“Famous last words.”

She went back to her side of the room and started organizing her bookshelf. She had a lot of books. Like, concerning amounts of books. I counted at least twenty, and we weren’t even done with the first day.

“Do you actually read all those?” I asked.

“I read everything.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“Everything means everything, Daisy. I don’t discriminate. Fiction, nonfiction, biographies of dead people who probably weren’t that interesting. All of it.”

“You’re weird.”

“Thank you.”

It wasn’t an insult. She knew that. I knew that. Something passed between us. A recognition. The kind you feel when you meet someone who might actually get you. Or might not. But you’re willing to find out.

Around 11, Mom showed up. She knocked on the door like she was visiting someone important. When I opened it, her eyes were red. Maddison was right. She’d been crying.

“I just wanted to say goodbye,” Mom said. “Before we head back.”

“You said that already. At breakfast.”

“I know. But now it’s... official.”

She looked past me at the room. At Maddison. At the fairy lights.

“Hello,” she said. “You must be the roommate.”

“Maddison. With two D’s.”

“Beautiful name.”

“Thank you. I chose it myself.”

Mom blinked. “You... chose it?”

“Changed it. Legally. When I was fourteen.”

“Right. Well.” Mom looked at me. “Call me tonight. Let me know how you’re doing.”

“I will.”

“And eat something. You skipped breakfast.”

“I ate a granola bar.”

“That’s not breakfast.”

“Famous last words,” Maddison said from behind me.

Mom left. I watched her walk down the hall and turn the corner. Then I closed the door and leaned against it.

“Your mom’s nice,” Maddison said.

“She’s something.”

“She loves you.”

“Yeah.”

“Not everyone’s does.”

I didn’t have a response to that. So I went back to unpacking.

The dining hall was chaos. Absolute chaos. Someone had told every new student to arrive at noon, and everyone had listened. There were lines out the door. There were lines wrapping around the building. There were probably lines I couldn’t even see.

Maddison pushed through like she’d been doing it her whole life. I followed because I didn’t know what else to do.

“You have to be aggressive,” she said. “These people will eat everything if you’re polite.”

“I don’t want to be rude.”

“Rude is survival. Rude is getting the last piece of pizza. Rude is what separates winners from people who eat salad for dinner.”

She grabbed a tray and handed one to me. We got into what seemed like the shortest line, which was still terrifyingly long. The girl in front of us was complaining about the food before she’d even tried it. The boy behind us was talking loudly on his phone. Something about a yacht. Something about his father.

“Private school kids,” Maddison muttered.

“You’re a private school kid.”

“Self-hating private school kid. It’s different.”

We finally got our food. Some kind of pasta. Some kind of sauce. Some kind of bread that looked like it had been sitting under a heat lamp since Tuesday. We found a table in the corner and sat down.

“This is terrible,” I said, taking a bite.

“I know.”

“But I’m eating it anyway.”

“That’s the spirit.”

We ate in silence for a few minutes. The dining hall was loud. Too loud. The kind of loud that makes you want to leave. But leaving meant going back to the room, and the room was small, and I wasn’t ready to be in a small room again.

“Hey,” Maddison said. “Has anyone told you about the ghost yet?”

I put down my fork. “What ghost?”

“The ghost of Whitfield. Eleanor. The girl who shows up whenever someone falls in love.”

I laughed. Actually laughed. “That’s a joke, right?”

“I’m not joking.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“That’s what the last girl in room 217 said.”

I stopped laughing. “What last girl?”

“The one who transferred. After the ghost thing got weird.”

“What ghost thing?”

Maddison leaned forward. Her eyes were serious now. Not playful. Not joking. Serious.

“So the legend goes like this. There was a girl named Eleanor. She went here. In the 1920s. Fell in love with a boy whose family basically owned this town. They were going to run away together. But his family found out and stopped it. She got expelled. She died. Alone. Heartbroken.”

“Okay...”

“And now she haunts the school. She shows up whenever students fall in love. Like, actually fall in love. Not just hook up. Not just date. The real thing.”

“And then what?”

“And then things get complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“Couples break up. People transfer. One girl in the 80s had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I’m not. Ask anyone. It’s the school’s most famous legend. There’s even a rhyme.”

“A rhyme?”

“‘When hearts entwine and love takes hold, the ghost of Whitfield will leave you cold.’”

“That’s a terrible rhyme.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What’s the point?”

Maddison sat back. “The point is, don’t fall in love at Whitfield.”

I picked up my fork again. “I’m not planning to.”

“No one plans to.”

I thought about that for a second. About how maybe that was the whole problem. That love didn’t care about plans. Love just happened. And then you were stuck with it. And sometimes it destroyed you.

“I still don’t believe in ghosts,” I said.

“Neither did she.”

“Who?”

“The last girl.”

The rest of the day was a blur. Orientation. A meeting about rules. Another meeting about expectations. A third meeting that no one seemed to know the purpose of. We sat in an auditorium that smelled like old wood and older secrets. A woman with a tight bun and tighter smile told us about the school’s history. About its values. About the importance of community.

I zoned out around minute three. Thought about home. About my mom driving back alone. About my dad who wasn’t there. About how I ended up here in the first place.

Maddison nudged me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired.”

“We can leave. No one’s watching.”

“They’re definitely watching.”

“Only the ones who matter. And none of them matter.”

I stayed. Because that’s what you do. You stay. You follow the rules. You pretend everything’s fine. Even when it’s not.

By 6pm, I was exhausted. The kind of exhausted that makes everything feel fuzzy. We walked back to the dorm in silence. The sun was starting to set. The quad was full of students. Groups forming. Friendships being made. It was all happening so fast.

“Did you make any friends?” I asked.

“I don’t need friends,” Maddison said. “I have you.”

“We just met.”

“Details.”

Room 217 was quiet when we got back. Maddison turned on her fairy lights. I sat on my bed and stared at the wall.

“You know,” she said. “The ghost thing. It’s just a story.”

“You said it was real.”

“I said it was a legend. Legends are stories. Stories are just things people tell to make sense of the world.”

“Or to scare freshmen.”

“That too.”

She climbed into bed and pulled out a book. Something with a dragon on the cover. I watched her read for a while. Watched how absorbed she got. Watched how she mouthed the words sometimes.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” I said.

“Have fun.”

The bathroom was down the hall. I walked slowly. The floor creaked under my feet. One of the lights flickered. I told myself it was just old wiring. Just a building being old. Nothing to worry about.

I brushed my teeth. Washed my face. Looked at myself in the mirror.

I looked tired. I looked young. I looked like someone who had no idea what was coming.

When I got back, Maddison was asleep. Her book was on her chest. The fairy lights were still on. I turned them off. Then I lay down. The bed was uncomfortable. The pillow was flat. The room was too dark and too quiet and too much.

I stared at the ceiling.

Everyone kept mentioning the ghost thing. In the hallway. In the dining hall. In the bathroom. Girl after girl talking about Eleanor. About the legend. About what happened to the last girl who lived in room 217.

I thought they were joking.

I told myself they were joking.

But they weren’t laughing.