told her through the shower door when the murmuring continued. I was pretty sure she’d just called me a cow.
“Heard what?” she asked innocently.
I snorted and scrubbed harder at my hair. There was a jelly-like substance stuck in my strands on the back of my head, and it seemed to be impervious to water.
Something was dropped on my head just then.
“Ouch,” I yelped as it clattered to the ground. Peering down to see what the ghost had dropped on my head, I was shocked to see it was shampoo. Fancy shampoo in fact.
“Use that. I won’t be able to look at you with your hair like that. It’s too distracting,” she said through the door.
I stared at the door suspiciously as I leaned to grab the shampoo. “Can you see through that door?”
Another huff.
I was tempted to just get out of the shower then, but the shampoo was really nice and my hair was still stuck together in the back. I quickly squirted a glob of shampoo in my hand and went to work, wondering about the mechanics of a ghost being able to pick up a plastic bottle while I scrubbed.
“You’re wasting water. In my day, my students were allowed five minutes to bathe! Five minutes! You’re at least fifteen minutes in. You are not the Queen of England.”
Annoyed, I shut off the water, just as I realized that I didn’t have a towel.
As if she was reading my mind, a towel flew over the door.
When I didn’t say anything, she huffed again. “Thank you is also something a lady must always say.”
“Thank you,” I muttered absentmindedly as I stared at my filthy, soaked jumpsuit in disgust. I was going to need to shower again after putting that on.
Cringing, I slipped it on and opened the door to leave the stall. The ghost appeared right in front of me, and I stumbled backward once again.
Her lips were pursed even more than before as she scrutinized me closely. It looked like she’d just stuffed a lemon in her mouth and the sour taste was almost too much for her to bear.
“I let you use my shower. I give you shampoo. And this is how you repay me,” she said, casting a hand over her forehead like my appearance was about to make her faint. “And you smell. You’re the only creature I’ve encountered that somehow smells worse after a shower than you did before.”
“I’m just going to be going now,” I told her, slipping around her to head towards the exit, since something told me she wouldn’t take kindly to me walking through her.
“It’s decided, we’ll begin lessons immediately,” she told me after I’d only made it a few steps.
I froze. “That won’t be necessary,” I replied with an uneasy laugh. “I’m perfectly polite most of the time. You caught me at a sort of inopportune time. I’m not usually rude when I’m naked.”
I was cracking myself up today.
I resumed walking towards the exit when the ghost appeared in front of me. I grasped at my chest. “Can you stop doing that? You’re going to give me a heart attack.”
“Well it would be a better way to go than an electric chair,” she sniffed indignantly, shaking her pointer finger at me.
Well, that was unexpected. I didn’t think I wanted to know what this woman had done to garner the electric chair at a place like Nightmare Penitentiary. I mean, there were hosts of murderers walking these halls and sleeping in these cells. And none of them were headed for the chair.
“I’m just going to be heading out now,” I told her, side-stepping around her once again and practically running to the exit.
“Your form’s all wrong,” she called after me.
I made it back in the hallway and headed over to where I’d made the wrong turn what felt like hours ago.
I’d just taken a breath in relief when, with a pop, the ghost appeared right in front of me again.
Her face was somehow more of a pink than a silver, and a strand of her previously perfect hair had fallen into her face. She was exhaling loudly. Which was a little odd because I was pretty sure that ghosts didn’t breathe. She was acting like she’d had to run after me.
“Well, I never!” she howled.
“Why are you following me?” I snapped. I’d woken up under a cafeteria table wet and covered in food, taken an ice-cold shower, and now I was still wet and my clothes were still covered in food.