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Molly McGee stood by the doorway to her father’s office, and though he was facing the open door, the two computer screens, his propped up tablet, and his smart phone, all completely held his attention. Molly had seen her dad like this enough times to know he was never going to notice her unless she spoke up first.
She didn’t, at least not right away. She watched on as he muttered to himself about numbers, moving funds, deadlines, and monthly rent. It was serious work, the kind work that took his attention more often than not nowadays. She didn’t understand half of it, she had no clue what the McGee’s financial situation was, but she figured it had to be tight after finally acquiring the forever home. Well, that and other things.
She had something to tell him, but the words caught in her throat. She hated leaving the house, it felt like pulling teeth. She had left many houses in the short time she had been alive, and now that they were settled, she found herself never wanting to go out at all. Seeing her dad so serious made her want to stay with him and help… but what could she do? Nothing, least she screwed something up.
Molly considered just walking away, except off to the corner of the small study room, completely out of place with the bookshelves and filing cabinets, was a black-hooded specter, watching Peter McGee again, for the seventh day in a row.
The ghostly figure never spoke to her, and though Molly could see it, she knew better than to speak to it. She could just tell that talking to that ghost would only get her in trouble, and talking to one ghost had already gotten her more than she could have bargained for. It was only when her dad would go to his study to work that the hooded ghost would appear, floating in the corner, silently watching him, until Scratch could shoo the ghost away.
“Okay, time to wrap it up for tonight!”
Scratch could be heard before he had even appeared, clearly annoyed at even having to make an appearance as he floated up from the floor in front of the hooded ghost, as if to put himself between it and Molly’s dad.
“This is MY workspace, and you’ve been here long enough. If the guy does anything that you need to know I’ll pass it along, but in the meantime you’re keeping me from doing MY job, so how about calling it a night?”
Molly didn’t move, but she felt relief at seeing Scratch tell the hooded ghost to finally leave. She would be sure to ask later what he meant by saying he would report to it anything it needed to know—what did that ghost want with her dad?
All the while, Peter McGee was typing numbers, and counting dates, oblivious to what was happening just a few short feet away.
The hooded ghost made no move to leave though.
“Hey? Are you asleep? Are you sleeping on the job?” Scratch asked, waving a hand in front of the ghost.
A low rumble came from under the hood of the ghost. Even from where Molly stood, she could feel the growl in her bones. The little hairs on her arms stood on end, and an overwhelming desire to run away filled her to the brim. She would have moved had Scratch not spoken up.
“Don’t growl at me! We use words in this house to get the message across. Ever heard of communication is key? I don’t speak growl, I’m just going to assume you said, “Oh you’re so right Mr. Scratch I will leave now I’m so sorry to have interrupted your important work with my hack fraud attempt to be scary by standing in the corner like a pervert stalker that never speaks. I wish I was more like the magnificent Scratch, the best scarier in all of Brighton and the reason it’s the saddest town in the state!”
At that, Molly cracked a smile. A small, simple chuckle, no louder than a mouse, was enough to pull Peter’s attention from his screens to his daughter, surprised to have heard something even close to laughter from her.
“Oh, hey kiddo. Are you hungry?”
Molly frowned, “No? We ate dinner just an hour ago.”
Pete blinked, “Oh, right I forgot. I guess that meatloaf was pretty forgettable though. Did you need something?”
Molly looked to the corner again, just in time to see the hooded ghost phase through the wall, leaving her dad’s study room finally. Scratch was already floating through the ceiling, leaving some privacy for Molly. She would be sure to thank him later with a king sized KitKat from her stash.
“Is it alright if I go out? My friend Andrea invited me-“
“Yes!”
Molly and her dad both looked at each other for a second in surprise, before Pete could break eye contact and look away.
Molly had actually been hoping he would have said no.
“I mean, of course it’s fine. You should get to spend as much time with your friends as you can. I’ll have to remember to thank Andrea for always being so considerate. Just make sure you have your phone with you and that it’s charged. Be back before midnight too.”
It was only a little past five in the afternoon. On a school night.
Molly wanted to argue that she maybe shouldn’t have to go out at all, but she knew that was only going to raise more questions and more questions meant more talking and she was already going to have to do so much talking once she met up with Libby and did Libby even want to talk to her in the first place and—
“Oh, did you need some cash too?” Pete asked.
“NO!” Libby almost recoiled at the offer. “No dad, it's fine. I’ll keep my phone on me. I’ll be at the used bookstore with Andrea. I’ll be home way before midnight, don’t worry.”
Pete smiled at that.
“I hope you have fun, kiddo.”
Molly gave a half hearted wave and turned away. She sincerely doubted there would be any fun for her tonight.
***********
“Well, this was certainly costly.”
Leah Stein had been scared to take her tablet and open her banking app. Still, it didn’t compare to the terror she felt from discovering her thirteen year old daughter had run away from home. Four days of lost revenue, the gas and tire replacement on her beat up old car, along with the visit to urgent care to have Libby checked out after suffering her panic attack, all added to a sizable hole in the already small net under the tightrope balancing act that was her financials.
Yeah, this was all very costly, but money was something she could manage and control. She had savings, she could talk to the bank, she had resources as a small business to help when situations like this inevitably came up. All that was relatively easy compared to the bigger problem down the hall behind a closed door.
No, not a problem. Libby is not the problem, but clearly I am…
Standing alone in her kitchen, dinner not even started, already well past mid day, Leah felt she should be busy fixing the things that were wrong, but she had no idea how to even start. Libby had been moody, sullen, closed off, all the things Leah expected in a rebellious teenage phase. Even the goth stuff was just a phase, nothing too out of the ordinary for an angry teenager desperate to rebel against… against what exactly? Her mother? Where had Leah gone wrong that would make Libby think she’d be better off with a man who put himself above family?
Her right hand began to ache. Pulling up a chair, Leah sat down at the empty kitchen table. She didn’t feel like cooking, but they didn’t have the money to order out. Libby would need to eat something soon, she had school tomorrow, and Leah had a meeting with the principal to discuss Libby’s unexcused absence. Again.
Lifting her right hand, she held it out in front of herself, watching as it trembled.
At that moment she recalled one of the last arguments she had gotten into with her own mother, about how she was denied the woman’s blessing to marry Matias. She had seen him for what he was, but Leah only saw what she believed was there. Her mother just couldn’t understand, and now Leah sat alone in a kitchen, unable to understand her own daughter. Life certainly comes full circle.
I sure hope I don’t have a hairline fracture … that was just another medical bill Leah didn’t need, and she wasn’t about to explain to anyone how she had hurt her hand on her ex-husband’s jaw.
She had wished the memory of that moment had dulled, but no, it stayed sharp and jagged as glass. Every detail, from the moment she pulled up to the second hand bookstore, seeing Matias just… standing there, over the limp body of her daughter, and the look of absolute guilt on his face when she screamed.
Just the memory of it made Leah’s eyes hot. She had never been so scared, and so angry. She never got angry. Life got hard and anger was just a distraction. It didn’t help matters, it didn’t solve problems, and Leah had tried her best to teach that to Libby. Anger was never a solution, and yet there she had been, reaching back and putting all her weight into a single punch that Matias must have seen coming a mile away but couldn’t believe.
She hadn’t even registered the pain in her hand until after she drove Libby back home.
It hadn’t even felt satisfying, because despite all Matias had done wrong to her and Libby, he really hadn’t done anything wrong in that moment. He swore he did not try to lure Libby away from Leah. He had no idea Libby ran away from home. Leah believed it, because while he blubbered on excuse after excuse from a bleeding mouth, at no point had he even asked if Libby was even okay. His concern stayed just on himself, like always. He could not change. He didn’t want Libby when Leah was pregnant with her, he didn’t want Libby after she was born, and he didn’t want her now that he was somewhat successful.
And now, Libby, most likely, finally understood that too.
… still, Leah’s first reaction had been to attack Matias, instead of going to Libby. Chalk it up to an accumulation of fear, anger, and jealousy. How dare Libby pick him over her, when she’s done so much for her and he had done literally nothing but exist to give Libby false hope.
This felt to Leah like her lowest point, and the tears couldn’t be held back. She knew better than to cry, she didn’t want Libby to see or hear her cry. She quickly wiped away the tears, standing up so fast as to knock her chair over as she went to the kitchen sink, turning on the faucet to splash water on her face.
Don’t cry you idiot! You have to cook dinner, and then you need to make a plan on how you’ll make up for the lost money, and you have to get a story ready to tell Libby’s principal, and you have to schedule a visit to get your hand checked out because you broke it on the jaw of that DUMB SON OF A BITCH!
A sob pushed through Leah’s throat. She had no time for any of this, she was too busy. She had work to do. She had to answer the door and make an easy dinner for her and Libby and—
The doorbell rang twice, and Leah realized it was coming from the residual side of her store.
“Who could that possibly be at this time?!” Leah spoke with frustration, but was at least glad for the immediate distraction from her own problems. She splashed her face with water again, rubbing her palms into her eyes before wiping her face with a nearby hand towel.
**********
Molly had been right, for once. This was not going to be fun, and she wasn’t the only one who knew that.
“So, you can totally see this is a bad idea, right? I don’t have to point out the long list of reasons why, do I? You can see with those freaky eyes of yours why we should not be here, right?”
She didn’t need to vocally agree with the frantic specter floating circles above her head. Her sullen look spoke for her, not that Andrea Davenport would notice as she crossed the street first, approaching Book Marks the Spot, which was clearly infested with sobgoblins.
Well, not exactly clearly. Andrea couldn’t see them of course. Even if she had, the round cherub faces and big eyes would have tricked her into thinking the tiny entities were harmless. To anyone not familiar with the pest-like-spirits, they didn’t come off as scary or any kind of a threat. Molly, sadly, knew better.
Yet here she was, agreeing to Andrea’s plan of visiting Libby under the excuse of wanting to give Libby the days worth of homework she had missed, along with hand written notes on the material covered in the classes she shared with Libby. It was Andrea’s duty after all, being the Good Will Ambassador of Brighton Middle School.
“This is so stupid, Molly! Andrea doesn’t give a hoot about Libby’s missing school work, she just wants to get to Libby’s mom, and she’s walking right into a nest of sobgoblins to do it!”
Scratch was right to be panicked. Molly had seen what sobgoblins could do to humans, how very dangerous they could be. A person can only handle so much sadness, until they simply can’t handle anymore in their life. Sobgoblins, at least according to Scratch, were a special kind of curse that took on a life of its own. It was a nasty curse, and very hard to lift.
Molly could only imagine how it was in the residential side of the business. She could guess there was a whole ring of sobgoblins dancing around Libby, making her sadder and sadder by the minute, filling her head with pitch black thoughts about her life.
She wanted to let it go. It really wasn’t her problem. The two of them were barely friends anyway.
And yet, here she was, following Andrea. She had been doing that a lot lately.
Could she really ignore Libby being in danger like this?
“Ugh, I didn’t know those things would be here, okay?” Molly complained, keeping her voice low. The streets were clear, Brighton wasn’t the most active town in the state, so Molly didn’t worry that someone would see her talking to herself. Andrea was already several feet ahead of her. “We can’t just leave those things to hurt Libby and her mom, Scratch.”
“We literally can,” Scratch countered, folding his arms across his chest. “We can tell the pervert nerd you got cramps and need to head back home on the double, forget we ever saw this place, and eat some of that pecan ice cream your dad brought. Libby had a good life, she’ll be missed and all that, but at least her suffering on this mortal coil will be over. Heck, she’d probably like being a ghost anyway.”
“What? No!” Molly raised her voice, catching Andrea’s attention.
“Hmm, what do you say?” Andrea turned to Molly, who quickly turned her head away to hide her annoyance.
“Nothing. Talking to myself.”
It wasn’t anything new. Molly McGee had a reputation for being the creepy girl at her school who talked to herself a lot. She was a basket case, a grade A weirdo who would have been utterly friendless had Andrea not taken pity on her. It helped that Andrea also liked being around Molly’s dad.
“Well save some of your conversation for poor Libby. She’s had quite the awful experience and I just know she needs a good friend right now.”
“Yeah? And what’s her mother need?” Molly asked.
Andrea blinked at Molly’s matter-of-fact question, then grinned.
“Hmmm, perhaps some high quality Davenport Dedication?” Andrea grinned and flashed a metallic smile, sticking her tongue out and flicking the tip of it upwards a couple of times. “At least to start with. You know, really get the engine puring before I take her out for a ride.”
To the side, Molly saw Scratch face pucker up, like he had bitten into a moldy lemon.
“She’s like a succubus!” he groaned.
Andrea’s behavior should have unnerved Molly. She would sometimes lay awake at night wondering why it didn’t.
“First off, gross. Second, this is no different than taking advantage of someone when they’re vulnerable. Libby’s going to kick the metal out of your teeth when she finds out we’re here.”
Andrea tilted her head to the side as the two teenagers walked around the building to the back entrance, where a doorbell could be spotted.
“Oh sweet virginal Molly. You make me sound like I’m a dangerous predator. I only want to help Libby. She flew too close to the sun and got burned. She needs a friend. Or two. And her mom… her poor, poor mom. Did you ever stop to think how hard it is to be a single parent raising a little girl all alone??”
Molly stopped in her tracks, feeling Andrea’s gaze like a knife to her throat. Andrea certainly had a way with using her words to cut people like an assassin cuts throats.
“Obviously, her mom needs help too. And I happen to be very…” Andrea pressed her lips together and blew an exaggerated kiss in the air before running her tongue over her upper lip, “…very helpful.”
“Molly, she’s too gross. I might throw up.”
Scratch physically turned green, the look of disgust actually melting off his face until his eyes slipped out of his ethereal head and rolled around the ground, before poofing back into his eye sockets.
“I can’t believe this kid! Molly, why do you have such shit taste in friends?”
Molly had no time to respond to that as Andrea was already ringing the doorbell.
The moment she had, a pair of sobgoblins phased through the walls of the bookstore, eyes on Andrea. Molly was quick to look away, knowing better than to look them in the eyes, but couldn’t stop noticing how they snarled at Andrea the moment they saw her, actually disappearing from view.
“Scratch?” Molly whispered, still standing a few feet away from Andrea as she waited for the door to open.
The ghost seemed just as surprised as she was.
“Wow. I’m both impressed and terrified. Andrea’s mood is so happy that the sobgoblins are repelled by it. Like she’s a flashlight being shone on a cockroach. She… really believes she’s going to bang Leah Stein?”
Molly had no response, but she could see Andrea actually accomplishing that tonight. Being impressed and terrified at the same time was easy when you kept the company of Andrea Davenport.
Moments later, the back door to the used bookstore opened, and a mess of a woman poked her head out.
“Hiiii Leah!” Andrea grinned, giving a little wave of her hand. Molly caught herself also giving a halfhearted wave to the older woman, who really did look like a mess. Her eyes were puffy, and while her face looked wet, Molly knew what mothers looked like when they were pretending not to have been crying minutes ago.
Above Leah’s head was an unusually fat sobgoblin. It hissed at Andrea like a feral cat, actually getting Molly to take a step back as Andrea pushed forward.
“Oh I’m SO sorry I didn’t call earlier. Since Libby was absent for a few days, I took it upon myself to make sure and get all the homework and notes on lectures she missed so she wouldn’t be behind in her classes when she comes back to school. Would it be okay if we could come in and say hi, please? I know the hour is late, and if you haven’t already had dinner or started dinner, I’d be more than happy to order a meal for us!”
Leah Stein’s amazement at Andrea was second only to Scratch. The sobgoblin on her head shrunk in size from a grapefruit to a plum as Leah considered Andrea’s offer. Molly was amazed, not used to seeing sobgoblins so effortlessly repealed but also that Leah was taking Andrea seriously. How low could the woman have felt to be so easily having her mood shifted by this sudden intrusion?
“Oh, wow, uh, well, I mean—“
“It would be NO problem at all. In fact, I insist. After the long travel you two had, you deserve to have an easy night. It makes me happy that I’m even in a position to offer whatever help I can to one of my best friends, and her mom. You don’t have to worry about anything… heh, let me take care of you.”
Holy hell, Andrea.
Molly never got to see Andrea work her charm on an adult before, and it was proving to be quite the show.
The sobgoblin shrunk smaller, until it popped away with a final angry hiss. Molly could see in slow motion the deep funk Leah had been in melt away as some of the color came back into the woman’s eyes. It was a relief to see, if anything.
“I… I think it would do Libby some good to have her friends with her right now.” Leah spoke with a little uncertainty, and if Molly could believe the details Andrea had told her about Libby’s running away, she would have been sure at the very least Libby would be grounded. Leah likely was weighing the options of punishing Libby versus helping Libby. What were friends for if not to be there when you’re down?
At that moment, Leah seemed like a good mom to Molly. Must be nice.
**********
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Libby Steins looked disgusted to see Molly McGee.
To Molly, Libby looked rough without her usual goth makeup. Molly only needed to take a glance at her to spot all the signs of Libby having cried earlier: puffy eyes, red nose, the occasional sniffle, messy hair you get from laying down. If she had been Libby, she wouldn’t have been exactly happy to have people over sticking their nose into her business. Asking dumb questions like if you’re okay, when, you clearly aren’t.
Molly felt bad at that moment. She had not wanted to come out of an inconvenience to herself, but seeing Libby as she was right now, the selfishness of her earlier thoughts began to sting.
Maybe it was because Molly McGee didn’t really have friends before Brighton, or maybe because she was only friends with Andrea and Libby due to… circumstances, but now that she was here, she felt compelled to do something to help.
Yeah, and how many times has your help only made things worse?
The counterpoint to that: when did Molly McGee ever do anything that was in her own best interest?
“Andrea told me some of what happened.”
“It’s none of her fucking business. Or yours.”
“Y-yeah. I mean, she didn’t tell me much, but she was still worried about you.”
“That’s why she’s with my mom right now?”
“They’re ordering take out. Andrea insisted on treating.”
“Fuck me. The only thing Andrea wants to eat is my mom’s ass. And you, Spooky? Did you come just because Andrea said to come? You certainly seem like a sub.”
It was almost getting hard to hear Libby over the alarm bells ringing in Molly’s head. She knew she was screwing up, Libby didn’t want her or Andrea here, they weren’t friends and she was stupid for assuming they were just because of the things Andrea had brought in Molly to do with them. Things she would never repeat or had even considered being capable of doing.
“Moll, I’m getting the feeling this was a bad idea… almost like, what’s the phrase for it? It’s on the tip of my tongue…”
Scratch floated behind Libby, invisible and silent to the goth teen.
“Please don’t.” Molly said softly.
“I TOLD YOU SO.” Scratch yelled, not considering hiding his frustration as the ghost grew suddenly in size. His normally pale blue body corroded into a green hue as his form expanded. Teeth pushed out through his open mouth, jagged and sharp, while his eyes darkened into pinhole sized red dots.
“NEXT TIME. LISTEN. TO. ME!” Scratch’s voices sounded like nails on a chalkboard and the wailing of babies, with a touch of glass breaking.
“Okay you know what? Just knock that off! You’re not scaring me anytime soon.” Molly yelled back at Scratch, not that Libby knew that.
For his part, Scratch poofed back into his normal form, surprised but also offended, knowing his performance had just been insulted.
“Pssh, I’m still right,” the ghost muttered.
“What the fuck? I’m not trying to scare you,” Libby looked angry and confused, but to both her and Molly’s surprise, Molly kept going.
“Yeah, okay, maybe I didn’t want to come to see you. Maybe I thought that after the shit your bad parent put you through, you’d want time to be alone and just, I don’t know, process what it means to have a shitty parent?! I know what that’s like, I know the last thing I’d want is for the weird girl and the slut to come barging into my home, seduce my dad, and then dump the weird girl in front of me for… I don’t even know what! But I came anyway, and not because I’m Andrea’s sub or any of that gross crap you and she do. I came because I know being alone didn’t help me when my mom picked herself over me, and being alone isn’t going to help you right now either. If Andrea didn’t really care about you then she wouldn’t have told me anything about what happened and she wouldn’t have asked me to come, even though she knows I hate leaving my house. She cares, in her own warped way. I care because… well…”
Molly was blushing, her eyes darting everywhere except on Libby. Her heart was racing in her chest.
“Because aren’t friends supposed to give a shit?”
Libby and Scratch looked dumbfounded at Molly, neither able to say anything right away.
Molly, feeling like she was about to throw up, took a step back and opened her mouth to apologize before Libby spoke first.
“Jesus Christ. Okay. Yeah. Sure. I guess. Whatever…”
The awkwardness of the situation was so thick it could have been cut with a knife.
Holy hell, why did I even…?
“So did your mom leave you to go write a book too?” Libby asked.
The question caught Molly off guard. “Huh?”
“So Andrea really didn’t tell you all the details? Uh, surprising. What did she say?”
“Just that… things didn’t work out.”
Libby signed and leaned against the door frame to her room. Molly could see the anger melt away from Libby, like a breath she had been holding in all this time. Her body posture changed, shoulders slumped forward, and all pretense of putting up a front were gone.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s one way to put it. Look, basically Leah—mom was right all along about him. Tried to warn me, but, I mean, why would I want to believe my dad didn’t want…?”
Libby didn’t finish her sentence. It looked to Molly like she couldn’t finish that sentence.
It was fine, Molly understood that kind of disappointment, and it brought tears to her eyes to see someone else suffer the crushing pain of having a selfish parent.
“Fuck’em,” Molly said softly, looking down at her feet, hands squeezed into tight fists.
At that, Libby cracked a smile. A small, simple chuckle, no louder than a mouse, was enough to pull Molly’s attention, and stop the dark thoughts filling her heart. It wasn’t often she made someone else smile.
Molly had never seen Libby smile before.
“Fuck’em,” Libby said in agreement.