Chapter 1- Sunday
Every Sunday, I sit outside of the local morgue with two lattes.
I’m not an ambulance chaser.I talk to ghosts.
I found the best way to describe it is like air. We can’t see it, but we know that we are surrounded by it. But if you had a special microscope you could see the air modules. I’m that microscope. .
Phill, the local Coroner, opened the door and rolled his eyes at seeing me once again.
“Hey Phil.” I handed him a coffee cup, “Anything interesting today?”
Phil reluctantly waved me inside in the morgue. It is not as creepy as it seems,
“Nothing exciting. Just a man in his 70s. Died peacefully in his sleep.”
I nodded. Oldies were my usual. But then the doors opened, wheeling in a gurney. I grabbed a surgical mask and handed one to Phil.
“Body was found in a dumpster behind the Whataburger.” Police Chief Robert Garcia, aka my uncle Bobby, said.
Uncle Bobby looked up and narrowed his eyes at me.
“You can’t be in here Maya.”
Uncle Bobby stepped in front of me, holding his hand up to my eyes as Phill approached the body bag.
“Come on, I’m going to be on the force in less than 10 years anyway,”
I moved so I could see him unzip it. I saw the bruised face of Victoria Robertson, with a red band around throat.
Wallet and phone missing. Right now we’re suspecting a mugging gone wrong.”
Mugging? It looked like a close up attack, a bit personal.
Phill lifted the pale arm with bruises and marks on her skin.
“The body was moved.” Phill said, “A lot.”
“We have already requested the security footage.” Uncle Bobby said.
“Alright,” Phil nodded, pulling up his sleeves, “Let’s get her done.”
My Uncle then pulled me away from the body. “Could you please go hang out with someone with a pulse?”
I scoffed.
I met up with my best friend, Sofia at her family’s bakery.
“This year, I am finally ready for purple,” She said putting out a new tray of fresh pan dulce.
“What?” I asked, pulling apart my croissant, “What does that mean?”
“Purpling. Girls are pink. Boys are blue and then..” She intertwined her fingers, “together they
make purple.”
“Ok? You passed 1st grade art.” I joked before taking a bite.
“Very funny Maya. But I’m ready to... move forward with boys.”
“Don’t you like, have to date first? Before you...purple.”
She smiled, “I already know the perfect man...Cole Nguyen.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Cole is handsome and sensitive, ” Sophia leaned over the counter, “And talented. When he talks to you, you just feel special. Of course I could actually ask him out if it wasn’t for Victoria.
I debated on telling but it just didn’t feel right.
“They played Romeo and Juliet last year so now she thinks owns him.”
I looked outside the big windows of the bakery to see the transparent outline of the girl I saw in the morgue. Without the bruises. Victoria Robertson was walking back and forth trying to get people’s attention. But everyone walked right through her.
I had to go to work.
“I’m going to head home.”
“Oh ok. See you tomorrow” Sofia looks outside the window then back at me
I quickly walked past the windows until I was out of Sofia’s view.. I pulled out my cell phone and pressed it to my ear. Find it helpful to look less crazy.
“You can see me?”
I nodded.
“And hear me?”
“Um...yea.”
“Everyone is ignoring me.” Victoria yelled, “My parents, my friends, and even losers like Sophia. What sick joke is this?”
“It’s not a prank.” I told her before taking a big breath, “So...you’re dead.”
She pinched her lips and blinked.
“You are no longer in your body.”
I began walking again, and she of course followed.
“Well ‘If’ I am dead. Then how come I can talk to you?”
“Because I’m a ghost whisper.”
“Well can’t you use your powers to, like, make me not dead.”
“God Victoria, I don’t have “powers”, it doesn’t work like that.”
Then I saw the diamond bracelet on Victoria’s wrist.
“Are those real diamonds?”
“Of course, they are. I wouldn’t be caught dead in fake diamonds. ”
Victoria scoffed at the apartment the second we walked in.
“Your furniture doesn’t match.”
I went to the fridge and got the leftover pizza from last night. Gave it a nuke and sat down with my plate on the couch.
“It’s weird,” I said, “A mugger, who would take the time to kill you, would dump you into a dumpster.”
“Wait, a dumpster?”
“And who would take your wallet,” I went on, “But not your jewelry.”
“Who were you at the Whataburger with?”
Victoria paused.
" I was supposed to meet...I don’t remember.”
“What is the last thing you remember?” I said before taking a bite..
“We had rehearsal.” Victoria was still looking around my apartment, with her jaw all tensed and her nose all up in the air. “Everyone was okay, but I was amazing. And Everyone loved me.”
“And then?” I said.
She wiggled her lips, “I stayed after to get more rehearsal time with Miss Conners...then now everyone is ignoring me.”
I felt this tug in my stomach, The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I would have to do something I hate. Something scarier than dead bodies. In order to solve this case I would have to...get involved. Ugh.
Start writing here…
