Ghost Girl; Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Can You See Me?
A month and two weeks and a day have passed since they met in the forest. School has begun. She thinks that maybe it is time to make friends who can speak English, instead of the language of the forest, the wind through the trees, the oncoming storm. Maybe, she thinks, it is time to have a friend among my own species. So she dresses like a human female. A thin, tight shirts, tighter jeans that have been acid washed and cut in strategic places so they can cost more than normal blue jeans. No sweatshirt. Makeup on her face and polish on her nails. A light spray of perfume. Shoes that are part of a trend instead of her battered old sneakers that Gyp has been gnawing on while she got ready. She grabs her backpack, which is black and littered with buttons that have statements that make her laugh on them, and makes it to the bus stop a minute and a half early. No one talks to her on the way to school and the few times she attempts a conversation no one responds. She gives up.
By the time she gets back on the bus she has gotten lost on the way to class three times. She has tried to engage in conversation more than three times. She has said "Hi! I'm new here." to people who didn't care and didn't hear more times than she cares to remember. She has made no new friends, no new acquaintances. She almost misses her bus stop, but the driver seems to remember her in time. She gets off the bus, goes home and throws the girl clothes on the floor, where they will remain until she remembers them several years from now and throws them away. She pulls on blue jeans that are almost two sizes to big and have been faded by sun, not acid, and have holes that were not there when she bought them. She finishes her homework quickly, only two assignments because it is the first day of school, and pulls on the ratty sneaker that she should have worn this morning. The left one is still partially damp from when Gyp was chewing on it this morning, but they are still more comfortable than the other pair of shoes. It takes her less than a minute to tie the laces and be out the door and into the woods, all the dogs sprinting after her.
She wonders, as she has for one month, two weeks, and a day, who the trespasser was. She wonders, like she has every time she gets near the place where they had seen each other, why she still thinks about him. By the time she gets home she has decided it is time for a change. She buys hair bleach and hair dye that looks dark blue on the board at the shop, but in reality makes it iridescent indigo, like the shell of a beetle's wing. Three years from now, when they meet again in the same spot, he will look startled to see she has been crying and say, "Ghost Girl? What's wrong?" She will think he is a hallucination and tell him what she has told no one and he will be unsure how to fix things. Her dogs will mill around her, uneasy at their pack-mate's pain, and the bull terrier will lick at her tears. He will hug her and tell her everything will be alright, even though he has no way of knowing the future. They will sit there until she stops crying and, when he asks, she will tell him her name.