Cold Touch
The girl was splayed on the grass between two Honey Locusts, their yellow leaves like sunspots on bluing skin. She sat up at the clunk of the dorm door falling shut. Her head bobbled side to side, a sort of full body waving. He waved back. He didn’t want to seem rude.
The girl had been there on and off all semester. She had been a nuisance earlier on, when she was still wailing past quiet hours, and grabbing at anyone who got too close. The RA had to call campus security twice. They came with night sticks and pouches full of salt; none of the students were supposed to leave their rooms until it was over.
She was quieter, after the second time, but she didn’t really go away.
“I forgot my key, can you let me in?” she asked.
He pushed the toe of his sneaker into the dirt. “Pro’lly not, no.”
“Why?”
“Don’t think the RA would be super cool with it.”
Most of the Ivies had ghosts, any campus that had been around long enough. Faded old codgers from so long ago you couldn’t make out their faces. Just a shape, defined by high collars or the watery impression of a starched ruff.
This one wore corduroy shorts and a crop top. There were clovers poking out along her hairline, and one on her cheek where a pimple used to be.
“I forgot my key, I think I left it in my room. I’m trying to get back to my room.”
“I know. I'm really sorry.” And he was. Just not sorry enough to risk her hurting someone.
“Room two thirty—”
“I wish I could help. Honestly, I really do.”
He didn’t want to know her old room number. Didn’t want to know any more than could be avoided. They all got an email from Res Life, after the second visit from campus security. For the safety of all students, please avoid engaging the apparition whenever possible. It made her stronger, they said. She’d start to fade the more people forgot her, and become less active in time.
He knew a few of the bleeding heart freshmen had taken offense on her behalf. They’d looked into deaths in the dorm and found her—her name, and how she died. They talked to her every time they passed, wrote her name in chalk across the front stoop. Maybe they were right, maybe she deserved that. But deserved didn’t have a lot to do with it, in his opinion. He thought about the summer he turned thirteen, when he stood in front of the full-length mirror in his aunt's shore house guest room. He remembered the way that white tank top clung. Cupping the skin beneath it. Almost like something it was not.
Some things were best let go.
“It’s a nice day out.” Her head tipped to the side, loling at first, then meeting her shoulder with a crack. “Will you sit with me? For a little while?”
It was this or Expository Writing. He sat beside her on the ground, wet dirt clotting under his fingers. This close he could see the weeds poking through the tops of her thighs. She didn’t smell like rot, not in the way he thought she might. More like ozone and cigarettes.
“You’re pretty,” she said.
He laughed. It wasn’t something he heard often. He liked the sound, though. He felt the tickle of hair, the shaggy nape of his neck. Pretty. A word that smelled like sea breeze. He wiped his mouth, fingers catching on the rough snarl of stubble, and willed a half-formed longing away.
“Thanks. You were too.”
She leaned in to put one cold hand over his. She kissed him, and it tasted like dirt, like bitter pine bark and leaf litter. Their teeth clicked, and hers gave—moving slightly in their loose sockets.
He pulled away.“I gotta go, I’m late for class.”
She didn’t answer. She was looking at the dorm again.
“I forgot my key, could you let me in?”
© 2023 Devon Borkowski
About the Author
Devon Borkowski is a writer, artist, and actor from the Rappahannock tribe of Virginia. She was raised in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and graduated from Rutgers New Brunswick with a BFA in Visual Arts class of 2022. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in The Dillydoun Reveiw, The Closed Eye Open, and Room Magazine.