“So, tell me, were you born a fraud, Ghost Girl?”— Blogger, Ghostbusters.

“I need a recommendation letter from my chemistry teacher to apply for this?” Her face fell, and she could almost feel the tension starting to build up in her body as she thought about having to go back to the middle school to go find her chemistry teacher, who had long since transferred from the high school to the middle school.

“I’m afraid so, Ms. Gilbert. The STEM Summer Camp must be able to see you demonstrate your abilities in more than just your chosen field of study. You should strive to get a letter from all of your STEM course teachers, including but not limited to your chemistry, biology, physics, and math teachers.” The woman on the phone informed her, her robotic voice doing nothing to ease the nervousness Erin felt.

“OK. Thank you.”

“Have a nice day.” The woman hung up with a click, and Erin was left staring at the phone.

As she turned into the parents drop off lane, she took a deep breath. She knew, logically, there was nothing here for her to be anxious about. All of her nightmares are in the highs school she left to come here. But they weren’t really nightmares anymore; since Abby, they had just been minor inconveniences. Middle school was different. This is where all of her greatest fears had happened.

She’s 17 now. She can deal with a few inanimate hallways and lockers. She set her jaw, and parked her car. She was going to get that recommendation letter.

As she walked inside, the bell rang, and the students oozed out of the school, some of them heading for the yellow school bus, the others waiting around, talking and laughing with one and other while waiting for their parents. Erin walked quickly past all of them, her breath coming in short and her hands starting to sweat. Oh no.

It’s OK, it’s OK, she reasoned with herself. Let’s see. Five things she can see around her: an oak tree, a school bus, a girl, oh God she looks like she might know her. Erin ducked her head and kept walking, her breathing getting shorter and shorter. Two more things, the glass door to the school and the bookshelf next to the front door. Four things she can touch: the cool metal of the door to push it open, the soft fabric of the shirt she was wearing, the strands of her hair, her smooth round nails. OK. Three things she can hear: the students talking outside, did someone mention Ghost? No, no, no, no one did. It’s OK. The sound of the door closing behind her. The sound of her own shoes slapping against the pale floors. “Stop dragging your feet Erin,” her father would say. She stopped dragging her feet and stood up straight.

Two things she can smell. The bathroom, oh yes that’s where she needs to go. The bathroom, where she can hide from everything. She pushes the door to the girl’s bathroom open, and stares at herself in the mirror. Her face is pale as a sheet, not a ghost, not a ghost, not a ghost. A sheet. Her body is trembling like a leaf in the wind, and her hands are too unstable to even pull a piece of paper from the paper dispenser out. It’s OK, it’s OK. Another thing she can smell. The generic soap that the school puts there. The one that tastes like plastic. Oh no, oh no, not plastic, no, no, no, no one is making her eat it, she doesn’t know what it tastes like! She doesn’t.

One thing she can taste. The bile in her mouth. An additional thing she can taste: her lunch as it comes all back up in the sink.

She doesn’t get that recommendation letter, and Abby takes one look at her, and doesn’t ask why she didn’t sign up for the STEM Summer Camp.

The taste of bile and her lunch, and breakfast probably, in her mouth doesn’t wash out, no matter how many drinks of water she takes, and it lingered even after she got home.

Shakily, she sank down on the floor in her room, and leaned her head against the backboard of her bed. She closed her eyes, but she refused to let the tears slip by. No tears, no tears, there was nothing to cry about. The fairy lights hanging above her bed flickered, and she sat there, basking in them, until the color returned to her skin and her hands stopped sweating.

Her mom called her for dinner, and she went downstairs, knowing she couldn’t eat much but still going because it’s better than getting a lecture about “seeking attention all the time” again. She sat down at her seat, hoping and praying that neither one of her parents noticed her still not quite normal complexion. She worried too much, as usual. They don’t bother with her until her mother noticed that she was picking at her string beans, and asked, not unkindly “Are you alright today, Erin? I thought you loved string beans.”

“I’m OK.” Erin’s voice sounded strained, even to her, but her mother didn't question her anymore, having done her motherly duties for the day.

“Then stop playing with your food and eat it. Not everyone can afford good food like this.” Her father barked, impatient as he usually was.

Erin nodded, and silence befell upon the Gilbert family. The silence that came after wasn’t the silence that most people would associate with home. Home’s silence was warm, and comforting, the feeling of a blanket being wrapped around your shoulders. In the Gilbert family, home’s silence was cold, and felt like an icicle that accidentally slipped into your jacket during recess in a cold Michigan winter.

When they did start talking again, Erin slipped back into her own world, and shoved her food into her mouth robotically, not wanting to be noticed anymore. Then she excused herself when she was done, and made her way back upstairs to bury her nose back into her book on theoretical particle physics.

She was walking in Meyrin, heading back to the lab at CERN where she was finishing her doctoral work on a cool October night, when she rounded a corner and saw a group of little kids walking towards her. They were covered in white sheets, and dressed as ghosts, the four of them almost floating on the sidewalk. They looked like her, in her traditional Halloween costume that she had worn since she was five up until she turned eight, and she almost smiled at them when a single leaf fell from the tree above her, and landed on her head. One of the kids pointed at her, and one of the other kids turned and laughed. Her hands started sweating, and she sped up past them, nodding politely at their parents.

She walked faster and faster down the dark streets of Meyrin. Her hands started trembling and her eyes started wandering around the streets, knowing logically there was no danger but also that it was Halloween, and Halloween is when the ghosts come back. She stopped and crouched down on the side of the street, pinning her head in-between her knees. Her new therapist had told her to ask herself “what is” when she felt like this, and so she crouched there, asking herself “what is.”

What is her name? Erin Gilbert.

What is her favourite hobby? Particle physics.

What is her favourite holiday? Christmas—

And with that, her mind started spinning back to the Christmas when she was eight years old, when her neighbour’s ghost started showing up at her bedside every night. The autumn leaves on the ground turned into the leaves that they had left on the neighbour’s porch, and they screamed “GET OVER IT GET OVER IT” at her. Her breathing quickened, and she fell into a spiral of voices shouting around her “GHOST GIRL GHOST GIRL GHOST GIRL.”

BOO!, the white of the ghost toy they had stuck in her locker jumped out at her.

BOO!, the white paint splattered on her as she walked out the school doors.

BOO!, the whites of the therapist room where Dr. Rockwell told her parents that she was just seeking attention and that she just needed to “get over it.”

BOO!, the white of the cell she was shut in when her parents committed her to a mental hospital, the white of her dress there and the white of her nurse’s gown.

“GHOST GIRL GHOST GIRL GHOST GIRL GHOST GIRL”

What is her favourite color? Yellow, yellow, yellow, the color of the fairy lights that made her night brighter so the ghost couldn’t vomit blood on her. Yellow, the color of the warm sun. Yellow, the color of the title letters of the book she had written with Abby—

Abby. Her Abby, that she had left because of a stupid argument. But Abby had crossed a line. But Abby was her best friend. But Abby hadn’t apologized. But Abby looked really sorry. But Abby didn’t apologise. But Erin is the one who left.

An eternity later, the world stopped spinning and the voices stopped screaming. Erin Gilbert picked herself off the curb of the streets, and put one foot in front of the other until she was back at the lab. The lab was dark, so she turned on all of the lights and all of the bright things she had around her, and buried herself into her work.

She would not cry today, or tomorrow, or ever. She had gotten over Ghost Girl, and she had gotten over the paranormal, and she had gotten over Abby. She was fine. She got over it.

She found herself in New York after she finished her work at CERN, and became a professor at Columbia University, teaching theoretical particle physics, and was up for tenure when the things she had gotten over came back to haunt her.

It came in the form of a man named Ed Mulgrave Jr., who came to her in the lecture hall after he read "Ghosts from Our Past Both Literally & Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal.” The book that she had created with Abby. The one that Abby burned all of the copies of, or so she said.

The man was dressed in a suit and tie, and seemed like nothing more than the usual professor who came by once in a while, so she didn’t stop him from talking to her. But then he asked her to investigate the Aldridge Mansion Museum because he thought it was haunted. Abby lied.

Erin took a yellow taxi cab to the Kenneth P. Higgins Institute and was surprised when she found the Paranormal Studies Laboratory. The Institute was obviously not one of great prestige, but to have a Paranormal Studies lab was something she could admire. Perhaps the school was more intelligent and forbearing that she thought.

She paused for a moment at the door, where a sign was written warning students not to write stupid things on the door. She almost smiled at the irony of Abby still having people judge what she does, before remembering that the color of the pen and the way the letter was written reminded her so much of its author. Her palms started sweating again, but when she waited, her breathing didn’t pick up and her hands didn’t start trembling.

There are three reactions a person can take in any situation. Fight, flight, or freeze. She had  done enough of the latter two. She may be ready now to fight for her beliefs.

She knocked on the door, and Abby opened it.