"...and so the user said, 'I broke the coffee cup holder.' I'm all, 'What coffee cup holder?' 'You know, you press a button on the tower and the coffee cup holder slides out. I broke it, I need a new one.' The idiot had been putting her mug in the CD-ROM caddy!"
Willow joined in with the laughter. "Oh, I've got a good one." She drained her can of Coke and grinned. "There's this real snob at my school." Willow stopped and thought for a second. "Well, she's not really that bad of a snob anymore. Anyway, she was languishing in computer class and wanted to know how to save her program. I told her to hit 'deliver.'"
There were puzzled looks for all of three seconds until one of the guys hooted, "Delete!" and everyone lost it. Willow settled deeper into the comfortably beat-up couch in the rec room and relaxed, really relaxed, for the first time in months. Outside, the rain rattled the windows and pattered on the roof. Inside, the fire in the fireplace made everything warm and cozy. In the week she'd been here, she'd felt more accepted, more a part of the action then in her whole life in Sunnydale. She never would have imagined speaking up in front of a crowd of people at home. But the people here didn't make fun of her clothes or her hair or her interests.
She had found the nerds, and they were her.
She pushed away the twinge of guilt that hit when she thought of Buffy and Xander. Yeah, they accepted her. But Xander had known her her whole life, and Buffy... Buffy wouldn't have told her the truth about vampires if Willow hadn't already seen the evidence for herself. Probably she and Buffy would have never really become friends otherwise. Willow would have helped Buffy with her homework and sometimes wondered at the weird things that Buffy would say. But she would have never really known her.
Cutting into Willow's musing, the big grandfather clock in the room started booming. "Oops. Shift change. Okay, who's got the lab for the next two hours?" Rick asked. The lab was open twenty-four hours a day, and the kids who were attending the computer camp signed up for two hour blocks of time on the mega computers that the company sponsoring the camp provided.
Willow got up and stretched. "I've got the 6 AM to 8 AM block," she said, yawning, "so I'm going to sleep now."
The vastly night-owl-skewed population of computer geeks shuddered. "6 AM?" Lily asked. "Nobody's awake then! The sun isn't even up yet!"
"But it rises pretty soon," Willow pointed out. "I like the sun. Watching it rise, I mean. 'Night."
Willow set her clock for 5:30 AM so she'd have time for a shower, and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillows. But at 4:30 she found herself wide-awake and bright-eyed.
"Okay, I'll just get an early start. The labs pro-AW-" she yawned, "-bably deserted now, so I can get some extra time on the computer."
She stumbled in and out of the shower on automatic pilot, but perked up the closer she got to the lab room. It was still dark, and so intent was she on the thought of putting in some time on the lovely, lovely computers in there that she almost ran into a girl standing in front of a cabinet. "Whoa. Sorry."
The girl didn't seem to notice that she had nearly been collided with. "Where is it?" she muttered. "Confound it, I know it's around here somewhere. Where is it?"
Willow tilted her head a little to the side and looked at the other girl. She was a few years older than Willow, maybe a college student come to intern at the house. She was dressed in a long, floral, old-fashioned-looking dress, and her dark hair was in a long braid down her back. Willow hadn't seen her around before, but everyone had been putting in a lot of time in the labs, so it was possible that she'd been here for the past week and Willow just hadn't seen her.
"What are you looking for?" she asked finally. The other girl turned and jumped as though she had been stuck with a pin.
"Oh!" Wide dark eyes met Willow's. "It's... my journal," she said finally. "I can't find the dratted thing. I know I put it in here somewhere...." The words trailed off as the girl seemed to forget Willow's existence, turning back to the open cabinet.
Except that Willow was quite sure that cabinet was always kept locked. Well, maybe if the other girl worked here, she had a key. "Can I help?" Willow offered.
"Um... could you check the pie safe? Why a pie safe is in the parlor I don't know...."
"Pie safe? What's a pie safe?"
"Over there, under the window." The girl, still distracted, pointed impatiently. "The cook locks his pies in it to keep them from being devoured before dinner. He will be put out to find someone has moved it in here."
Willow located the small, squat chest and opened it. Entertainment Weekly, People, Time and, of course, every shade and variation of computer magazine, but nothing that looked like a journal.
Willow got to her feet and turned back to look at the other girl. "I don't see...." Her voice died.
The sun was coming up, shining through the window behind the other girl. And through the other girl.
A moment later, the ghost vanished.
* * *
She could handle this. She could. Willow repeated her not-terribly-convincing mantra to herself as she made her way to the computer lab. It wasn't a vampire or a witch or a demon in a full metal jacket, or a three-headed thing. It was just a ghost.
Just. Just a ghost. What had her life become that she actually framed a thought with the words "just a ghost" in them?
She could handle it, though. No sweat. She reached the lab and booted up the computer, logging in.
First things first. Go for the easy answers. She jumped on Yahoo and did a search on ghosts, poltergeists, wandering spirits, and the like. She'd done enough 'Net research for Giles to know at a glance which of the sites were just lurid imaginings and which contained useful information.
And which needed to be dug into a little more deeply...
By the time people started entering the computer room, the sun was fully up and shining with all its might and Willow had been online for three hours. She collected her printouts and unobtrusively slid them into her backpack, then started the project that was supposed to be her focus for the six week session, pretending that she had been working on it since daybreak. "Hey, Will," Rick leaned over the back of her chair. "What was that?"
"Nothing," Willow said casually. "Just some script that I think I need to go over later. I don't want to waste my time on the computer doing it now." Hate lying, hate lying, hate it, hate it...
"Okay. Um, some of us were going into town to grab some dinner tonight. Maybe go to a movie. Did you want to come with me?"
"Hmm?" Willow said absently. "Oh, I thought I'd get something out of the kitchen here. I, um, am falling behind on my project."
"Oh," Rick said. "Another time?"
"Sure. Another time what?" Willow's fingers were flying over the keyboard, and she didn't notice Rick's ignomous retreat.
By the time she was kicked off the computer, she had managed to get a good amount of work done on her project. She retreated to her room with her printouts and started highlighting things that seemed appropriate. Within a few hours, she had assembled enough information to begin to figure out what was going on.
Ghosts fell into a few categories. There was your loud and annoying chain-rattling type. There was the quiet and unobtrusive specter type. And then there was the destructive, whirlwind poltergeist type.
This ghost didn't seem to be destructive. And no one else mentioned hearing chains rattling or doors opening or phantom shrieks in the night. But the ghost did seem to be more than your average wandering spirit. She had a definite purpose and desire.
Ghosts became ghosts, so the theory went, because they had left some earthly thing undone. This particular ghost had been looking for a journal. Willow put down her papers and got up to head down to lunch, thinking hard. If the journal was found, would the ghost be free?
It wasn't until Willow almost turned away from a crowded table to sit by herself to think that she realized what she was doing. Why did she automatically think that *she* had to fix things? Just because there was a ghost and the ghost *may* want her freedom, didn't mean that Willow was obligated to drop everything to help her, right? That was her life in Sunnydale. And that life had nearly gotten her killed.
Flipping her long hair over one shoulder, Willow stopped by a empty seat. "Um, is this one taken?" The chorus of welcomes almost drowned out the mournful wail in her head.
|
|
|
|
Rave
Barbie Girl (Becca)
biscuit07
Filmtheory (Jim)
Malice (Jess)
MebbtheScribe (MichaelB)
Reset (Allie)
Shay (Marrisa)
somnambulist29 (Shea)
Stephanie Loss
Wendyness (Wendy)
Questions?Contact Us
|
|
All stories on this site have been archived with the authors' consent. Do not copy these stories for your own uses without the express consent of the author themselves. Buffy the Vampire Slayer TM and Angel TM are © UPN, WB, Fox and its related entities. All photos on the site are © UPN, Fox, Warner Bros, and/or their respective owners. No profits are being made by use of these images.
Powered with the assitance of eFiction.
|
|
|
