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Suzie hates being alone.
As a general statement, she feels it’s a little too on the nose. The fact of the matter is of course, Suzie, deprived of human contact in a tube, hates being alone. It’s no surprise she follows behind people like they’re tethered. Barely a shock she always lights up when they arrive and dims when they leave. It’s a simple deduction. You hardly have to be the protege of the World’s Greatest Detective to put those clues together.
As a feeling, however, hate doesn’t feel like a strong enough word. Being alone, staying in the walls of their base as the lone inhabitant, lingering down empty hallways - all of it - makes her semi-existent skin itch. It makes every room feel hollowed out, even though ever since they’ve moved in, the abandoned hotel is probably in the best shape it’s been in years. It makes familiar hallways twist. The space between rooms expands, no sound to rattle them. It makes her feel like the ghost she is, a solitary spectre tracing peeling wallpaper.
In those moments, Suzie can feel herself sink into spirals. She paces circles around the hotel, her feet unable to leave the deep grooves she knows would be there otherwise. She wonders about her own rotted memory, poked through with worms and gaps. She wonders on the question of who she is. She also wonders about the taste of food - what the bite of a crisp apple is like or a soft dollop of whipped cream on pie. She wonders about what a homecoming dance is like.She wonders about giggling with her friends, shoulder to shoulder.
She wonders about the deep, hungry empty inside her.
She wonders if she really might be evil.
She wonders about everything again.
Explaining that takes too many words, though, so she sticks to hate. It’s close enough and simply evident to the others. It’s a simple fact - and the one that drives her actions today.
Suzie is going to make a great escape… sort of.
She’s going to leave the little haunted hotel and explore the Catskills. She’s going to go see people, even if they don’t see her. She’s going to be a little less alone.
She floats through the door into the wooded area around the hotel and follows the winding path back to a main road. From here, at the edge of the property, the hotel looks normal. In fact, despite the wear, it’s almost picturesque with the trees that frame the vista. Iron spires poke through the green like industrial reminders. You wouldn’t ever expect a bunch of teenage heroes to be hunkered inside. It loosens a knot in her chest. “Not a little haunted hotel,” Suzie tells herself, nodding resolutely. “Just a little hotel.”
She continues on, letting herself shrink. Her smoke condenses. A singular wisp of Suzie floats down the road. She’s gotten a lot of practice with this lately. Controlling her body, making it stay solid - that is a struggle. She can only hold it so long before someone taps her shoulder and says, “Suzie, your arm is smoking.” It makes outings hard… unless, of course, she does this. She tucks herself into binoculars and the edges of rooms, small and subtle. Cars drive past and no one even realizes that she’s zipping by too. She rushes along the wind’s currents until she reaches civilization.
The trees part and a small town is revealed among them. It spreads out in two directions around the main road and then springs up. Some buildings tower above others. Others are squat, wide things. The roads spread out in curves, a disconnected system of veins. Suzie drifts off the main road on one such artery and watches the people bustling around. There’s a woman with a large thermos in one hand, the other clutching a laptop. Her natural hair bounces with each hurried step. From the other direction, a man narrowly avoids collision, his own paper cup jostling in his grip. A splash of coffee splatters against the pavement. “Sorry,” he calls. The woman hardly seems to notice. Suzie moves on. Life bustles along.
Inside a gas station, she watches a bored cashier drum his fingers as a gaggle of teen girls dart through the aisles. Backpacks mark them as students at the end of a school day. Suzie, curious, presses through the glass and perches herself in the lens of a barely functional camera trained on the register. One girl - She’ll call her Beanie - yells to another across the store. “Hey, grab me a Diet Soder.” The cashier rolls his eyes and plugs his earbuds back in. His fingers drum faster.
Across the store, the other girl’s - Freckles, Suzie decides - nose wrinkles, her hand stilling on the fridge door. “Can’t you like Zesti like normal people?”
A third girl - Glasses - groans from her spot between them, surrounded by bags of powdered donuts and packaged Shrinkies. “Can’t we not do this one again? You guys do this every day.” The fourth girl - Headband - hums in agreement.
“I mean, seriously. You’re gonna end up buying the Soder and Zesti no matter what, so let’s just skip to that part,” she says, snagging a bag of Tay’s.
Beanie rolls her eyes. Freckles frowns, puffing up her cheek in defiance. “It’s the principle of the matter. I’m allowed to argue about how disgusting Diet Soder is.” The other girl squawks. Freckles carries on. “I mean, seriously. It’s the company’s fault, really.”
Glasses rubs at the bridge of her nose, dislodging her namesake while Headband pats her shoulder sympathetically… before snagging a pre-packaged muffin right past her. She smiles apologetically at Glasses’ flat stare and darts to another aisle full of candy.
Suzie watches as the two arguing girls move like magnets to each other, bickering - no, bantering - with grins on their faces. The other two grab more snacks between them. Headband’s arms are full with a candy mountain by the time they regroup. The cashier glances at the pre-packaged stomachache in their arms and sighs.
“So, what are we watching?” Glasses asks.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Beanie says cheerfully.
“Isn’t that scary?” Headband wonders aloud. She drops another candy on the counter. The cashier stares at her blankly.
“Yes,” Freckles replies and raises an eyebrow at the other girl. “How are you going to rent that - isn’t it rated R?”
“Please, girls,” Beanie boasts, tugging on her backpack sleeve. “That’s why you have an older brother. He rented it and I took it.”
All four girls gasp, giggling and bumping shoulders. Something in the hollow of Suzie’s gut curls, cold and familiar. She shivers. Her shoulders shake, brushing nothing, alone.
A sudden adrenaline overtakes her. She needs to move on. The girls’ laughter rings in her ears as she sinks through the AC to the roof. She takes a gulp of unneeded air and tries to focus on the passing town. A father corralling his kids. A couple strolling with their hands linked. A trio of workers sat at the bus stop. Freckles, Beanie, Glasses and Headband, each swinging a plastic bag emblazoned with ‘Thanks for Coming’, as they walk down the street.
It’s not fair, she thinks. It’s not fair, at all. The thought sits like a shard in her chest, frigid and hollow. I want to do that. I want to buy snacks with the others and argue and watch scary movies we shouldn’t. I want to walk through town and feel the sun on my skin and the weight of my backpack. I want it, I want it, I want it.
She can feel her body twisting, expanding. It contorts with every repetition. (I want it, I want it, I want it I-want-itIwantitIwantit.) The empty space where her heart would be aches. She’s just so…
Jealous.
Shame lances through her. Her whole body dissipates. She’s so jealous.
She’s always so jealous and so lonely and so jealous. When Cassie complains about school, when Anita mentions her dad, when Cissie complains about her mother, when Traya shows her her homework, it curls in her gut alongside that empty pit like a constant appetite. She wants so much… maybe too much. Watching these girls walk by, carefree and happy, that want swallows her.
Susie forces herself away from the town, drifting back towards the abandoned hotel. Guilt nips at her heels, asking familiar questions. (Am I evil? Am I evil? Am I evil?) It isn’t until she’s safely in the confines of the hotel’s woods does it fade.
A hysterical giggle escapes her. She covers her mouth. So, plan: escape the bad thoughts by people watching failed. It failed by a lot. It only made the loneliness worse, actually. Failed on all fronts. She’d be better off pacing in circles until someone arrived. That might as well be all she does for today.
She phases through the wooden door to find voices echoing from somewhere in the halls. The ice melts away as she hurries towards it.
“Suzie,” Cassie calls. In her arms is a backpack filled to the brim with bags of chips and candy.
“Suuuuuuuzie,” Anita calls as well. In her hands, two plastic bags with Soder and Zesti hang by her side.
“Suuuuuuuuzieeeeeeeee.” Traya cups her hands around her mouth. “Where are you?”
She materializes, a puff of smoke that curls around them. Traya grins, letting her hands flop to her side. “Here,” she says, making mini jazz hands. Anita snorts.
“Where on earth were you, girl?” she asks, turning on one heel to head back towards the couch and entertainment center. “We were about to watch the new episode without you.” Suzie’s brow furrows.
“New episode…?”
Cassie winks as she catches her eye. “Cissie ended up booking another guest role, so we thought we could watch the premiere together, just us girls!”
“But where’s Cissie?” Suzie glances around like she might pop out of the walls like she does.
“She told me that ‘there is no way in h-e-double hockey sticks she is watching herself act’,” Traya says with a cheeky grin. “So, she’s missing out.”
Suzie hums. “That sounds fun.” She drifts behind them as they settle on the couch, a tangle of legs and arms. Anita’s elbow looks like it’s pressing into Cassie’s appendix. Traya sits on top of Cassie’s extended legs - directly on her knee caps. It looks unbelievably uncomfortable. Suzie wishes she could fit in that. Instead, she settles herself on the arm, her legs disappearing into smoke as she does.
Snacks go tumbling around, spilling out of the bag. Traya turns the tv on, flipping through channels. Anita rips open a bag of B&B’s, tossing one in the air to catch with her teeth. The candy shell crunches as she does. Cassie gasps. “Wait, wait, hold on. Let me try,” the other girl says with a grin. “I’’ve got this.”
“You are so going to choke,” Anita replies, shaking her head. She tosses the candy. Suzie watches as Cassie nearly tumbles in her attempt to catch it.
“Wait, wait, let me try again!”
Chocolate candies go sailing through the air as the two girls continue to try and catch them. Traya cheers when they succeed.
Suzie feels her jealousy crawl up her throat, even as she smiles at their antics. Her mind drifts back to those girls in town. Are they doing this now? Sitting and tossing candy at each other and none of them are a ghost who can’t even join in the fun-
A chocolate sails through her eye. Suzie blinks.
“Sorry, Suzie. I thought you heard me say to catch,” Anita apologizes.
“No, no, I got… Let me try again!” She focuses on trying her head into something solid. On the screen, some title sequence she doesn’t recognize starts. “I can do it.”
She watches Anita pick up a candy this time, and, with an easy arc, toss the candy at her mouth. Suzie stretches to catch it. It crunches between her molars. She beams. The other girls cheer.
The B&B is honestly tasteless in her mouth, but she swallows the treat anyways.
It’s the thought that counts, she tells herself. For a moment, tossing candies that occasionally split through her limbs and cheering as Cissie fills their screen, Suzie forgets what being lonely feels like.
For a moment, she remembers that she’s still alive.