LJ Idol, Season 10 Second Chance, Week 3: Getting to Carnegie Hall
Miranda Nguyen was a disappointment to her parents. Part of it was because of what she wanted to be when she grew up. From a very young age, she could sing, and she decided that would be the vocation for her. That wasn't what disappointed them-it was what she wanted to sing. As children of the hip-hop era, her parents thought she should want to be a superstar like Cynara. What Miranda wanted was opera. Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen felt like all the money they spent on lessons was wasted, and they told her so.
But still she practiced, every day, because it was what she wanted, and at fifteen she should have some control over her destiny.
The other way she let down her parents was by hearing voices that weren't there. They weren't mean voices, for the most part. They were mostly neutral observers of the world or just sheer gibberish. And they always went away when she sang. But she made the mistake of telling her parents about them, and that's how she ended up here, in the mental hospital.
She couldn't have her phone, which sucked. The food was lousy, and there were some real drama queens in group therapy. On the other hand, she wasn't going to stay here forever, the staff was really nice, and the anti-psychotics they put her on made the voices go away.
That's why it was so upsetting when they came back, worse than before.
It happened in the morning, after breakfast, when she snuck away to practice her arias. She couldn't do it in any of the common areas because it upset the other residents, so she found distant hideaways in which to do her thing. This spot was a new one, outside in a secret garden around the corner from a fire exit.
She didn't know any real arias, so she made them up, testing her vocal range both with songs she knew and with utter nonsense. She began, making it about ten seconds before she heard a whispering in her ear. She stopped and listened for it, but it wasn't there. She started again, and there it was, but when she went silent, so did the rest of the world.
This would not do at all. The voices always let her sing in peace. Why were they changing now? Were they mad that she was receiving medical treatment?
She gave it one more shot, and for some reason she did it with her eyes open. And so, this time, in addition to the incoherent whispers, she could see a faint shadow of a human face right in front of her. She stopped, and it faded away. She was used to the auditory hallucinations, but now there were visual ones.
Should she tell somebody? If she did, would she ever get out of this hospital?
“Don't stop singing!” urged a voice nearby. “It's attracting the ghosts. Or ghost singular. I only saw one, but it's quite common for them to come in packs. I don't know what the collective noun for a bunch of ghosts is. Spook? A spook of ghosts? That could work.”
“Hello?” Miranda called out.
A girl of twelve or thirteen emerged from around the corner, between Miranda and the fire exit. She moved like she was getting used to a new body, and she wasn't sure what she thought of it. Her eyes were dark brown and wide, and her hair bounced in unruly black curls that were streaked with gray, as if she were thirty years older. Miranda recognized her from a few therapy groups. She was optimistic and loved to talk about other residents' problems, all the while avoiding talking about her own. She was named after an angel, but she couldn't remember which one. Gabriella?
The girl said, “You should probably also keep singing because you have a beautiful voice. Has anybody told you that? Somebody has to have told you that.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Miranda.
Michelle?
The girl blushed. “I follow you whenever you run off to sing. I always appreciate the art that we crazy people put out. Tina does those really amazing chalk paintings in the rec room, Andrea writes funny poetry, and you sing.”
Rafaela?
“Why do you hide from me?”
“Asking you would be weird,” the girl replied.
It was definitely Rafaela.
“It's weird that you're sneaking around like this,” Miranda told her.
Rafaela frowned. “Is it? I can never tell with these things.”
Miranda's mind returned to the important matter at hand. “You could hear the whispers too?”
“Not well enough to make out what they were saying, but I could definitely hear something.”
The tension fled from Miranda's shoulders. “Oh, thank God! I thought the meds had stopped working.”
“Nope!” Rafaela grinned. “Full on haunting. I've been living here for a year and I had no idea this was here. And it's attracted by music! I've never known a ghost that was activated by music. Although when you think about it, I wonder why that kind of thing isn't more common; singing is such a psychic activity.”
Rafaela made Miranda dizzy. She was determined not to let this girl run away with the conversation-not when she had so many questions. Such as: “What makes you think you know so much about ghosts?”
Puffing out her chest, Rafaela informed her, “I'm a witch from a long line of witches that goes all the way back to the settling of the New World.” She deflated. “Well, I'm not actually a witch. I was training to be one, but I failed. That's how I ended up in here.”
So she was delusional. That's how she ended up in here. On the other hand, there really did seem to be a ghost.
Rafaela continued, “I'll bet you could get it to manifest itself completely if you kept singing.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because it's so cool!” Rafaela squealed.
Miranda had to admit that there was indeed something cool about bringing a ghost to life. “It's not going to hurt me?”
“Of course not,” Rafaela assured her.
“Okay.” Miranda took a few deep breaths and then plunged into her aria. The longer she sang, the more solid the face became. It belonged to an old woman with her white hair pulled up into a tight bun. A dress with poofy shoulders materialized, along with a lacy apron. She was so close that Miranda closed her eyes to keep from being distracted-which was hard enough with all the whispering. She finally came the climax, which was a long and high note, and halfway through it she was shoved hard enough that she was lifted off her feet, slamming into the wall behind her.
“Oh my,” Rafaela said.
Miranda watched as the semi-transparent figure hovered over her, its hands raised to strike. The ghost slashed with fingers curled into claws, but just before it could hit her, Rafaela jumped between them.
“Ouch! Motherfucker!” Rafaela cried out. She recovered instantly and took hold of Miranda's hand, pulling her to her feet. “We need to get out of here.” She then ran toward the fire exit, dragging Miranda along with her.
The ghost wasn't moving very fast as it followed them inside, but it left deep gouges in the walls with its fingers that would be hard to explain later.
After running the length of a hallway, turning a corner, and running another length, they put enough space between them to catch their breath. That's when Miranda noticed the four slices in the shirt and skin of Rafaela's bicep. For her part, Rafaela didn't seem to notice.
“Oh, my God!” Miranda panted.
Rafaela looked down at her arm. “Yeah, it hurts like you would not believe. And now I have to think of an excuse to give the doctor when she patches me up. I can't tell her I was assaulted by a ghost. She'll think I'm crazy.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Ghosts are creatures of ectoplasm,” Rafaela explained, “which means they're sensitive to two things: salt and iron. There's no iron anywhere, and the only place to get salt is the kitchen, and trust me, I've spent nine months trying to sneak into the kitchen, so that's not going to work.”
Miranda tugged on her uninjured arm, and when she got her attention, she pointed at the rapidly approaching ghost.
Rafaela snapped her fingers. “And chalk. They're sensitive to three things. I think we're going to get out of this.” She grabbed Miranda and took off toward the recreation room.
“Hey!” shouted Tina as Rafaela snatched a piece of chalk from her hand without slowing down.
“I'll bring it back when I'm done!” Rafaela shouted back to her. After they left the room, she turned to Miranda. “And now let's find someplace private.”
“I don't think we have to worry about it anymore,” Miranda told her.
“It's a malevolent spirit just awakened. If we don't stop it, it's going to do something bad.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Miranda asked. “We're just two girls.”
“That's not true,” Rafaela replied. You're a really talented singer with the power to activate ghosts, and I'm a witch. I'm mostly a witch. Partially a witch. I'm witch adjacent.”
“So?”
“So as an almost witch, I happen to know a spell that will banish that ghost away,” Rafaela said. “All I'll need is for you to sing to lure it in.”
“No way!” Miranda threw up her hands.
“Why not?”
“Because I don't trust you!”
Rafaela pouted. “Well that seems harsh.”
“You told me the ghost wasn't going to hurt me,” Miranda reminded her, “and you were wrong.”
“What do you expect? I'm twelve. Are you telling me you've never been wrong?”
Miranda shook her head. “I'm not helping you, and that's final.”
“Please?” Rafaela begged.
“No,” Miranda replied.
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Fine!” Rafaela spun on her heel and stomped away, muttering, “Looks like I have to do it by myself then.” She ducked into a hallway and disappeared.
Shaken, Miranda made her way to the rec room to cool down and find something to do before her appointment with her psychiatrist that afternoon. Tina had left, so she had the place to herself...
… for about one minute before the ghost was suddenly standing there in the corner. As casually as she could, Miranda left the way she came. She rushed when the ghost lunged out of the wall, its claws out. She ran down the hallway she saw Rafaela go into-the girl might be full of shit, or she might actually know what she was talking about. Miranda had no choice but to gamble on the latter.
She found Rafaela in a dark corner, drawing in chalk on the wall a box with symbols that looked like weird, alien letters on the inside and outside of the corners. Her eyes lit up when she saw Miranda approach. “You changed your mind? That's so awesome!”
“It's coming,” Miranda said through shallow breaths.”
“All right,” Rafaela ordered, “get behind me and repeat what I say, even though it's not in English.”
“What?”
“Just trust me.”
The ghost came into view and started making its way over to them. As soon as it reached the graffiti, Rafaela shouted, “Pare!”
Miranda repeated, “Pah-ray.”
The ghost stopped.
“Descanse em paz,” Rafaela continued, “Descanse em paz. Encontre seus ossos. Descansar. Descanse em paz.”
Miranda tried to imitate, but she couldn't keep up.
Rafaela reached back and squeezed her hand. “Don't sweat it. I think she got the point. Look.”
Sure enough, the ghost was fading away, wearing an expression that seemed strangely peaceful.
When she was completely gone, Rafaela clapped her hands together and grinned. “That was fun!”
“Are you insane?” Miranda asked.
“Yes,” Rafaela replied. “That's why I live here. You too, in fact.”
“I am so done with this,” declared Miranda as she stormed away.
“Don't let this discourage you from singing!” Rafaela called after her.
It did at first, but in a few days the fear wore off, and soon Miranda was sneaking off like before. And she never saw her, but she knew that Rafaela was somewhere nearby, listening.
But still she practiced, every day, because it was what she wanted, and at fifteen she should have some control over her destiny.
The other way she let down her parents was by hearing voices that weren't there. They weren't mean voices, for the most part. They were mostly neutral observers of the world or just sheer gibberish. And they always went away when she sang. But she made the mistake of telling her parents about them, and that's how she ended up here, in the mental hospital.
She couldn't have her phone, which sucked. The food was lousy, and there were some real drama queens in group therapy. On the other hand, she wasn't going to stay here forever, the staff was really nice, and the anti-psychotics they put her on made the voices go away.
That's why it was so upsetting when they came back, worse than before.
It happened in the morning, after breakfast, when she snuck away to practice her arias. She couldn't do it in any of the common areas because it upset the other residents, so she found distant hideaways in which to do her thing. This spot was a new one, outside in a secret garden around the corner from a fire exit.
She didn't know any real arias, so she made them up, testing her vocal range both with songs she knew and with utter nonsense. She began, making it about ten seconds before she heard a whispering in her ear. She stopped and listened for it, but it wasn't there. She started again, and there it was, but when she went silent, so did the rest of the world.
This would not do at all. The voices always let her sing in peace. Why were they changing now? Were they mad that she was receiving medical treatment?
She gave it one more shot, and for some reason she did it with her eyes open. And so, this time, in addition to the incoherent whispers, she could see a faint shadow of a human face right in front of her. She stopped, and it faded away. She was used to the auditory hallucinations, but now there were visual ones.
Should she tell somebody? If she did, would she ever get out of this hospital?
“Don't stop singing!” urged a voice nearby. “It's attracting the ghosts. Or ghost singular. I only saw one, but it's quite common for them to come in packs. I don't know what the collective noun for a bunch of ghosts is. Spook? A spook of ghosts? That could work.”
“Hello?” Miranda called out.
A girl of twelve or thirteen emerged from around the corner, between Miranda and the fire exit. She moved like she was getting used to a new body, and she wasn't sure what she thought of it. Her eyes were dark brown and wide, and her hair bounced in unruly black curls that were streaked with gray, as if she were thirty years older. Miranda recognized her from a few therapy groups. She was optimistic and loved to talk about other residents' problems, all the while avoiding talking about her own. She was named after an angel, but she couldn't remember which one. Gabriella?
The girl said, “You should probably also keep singing because you have a beautiful voice. Has anybody told you that? Somebody has to have told you that.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Miranda.
Michelle?
The girl blushed. “I follow you whenever you run off to sing. I always appreciate the art that we crazy people put out. Tina does those really amazing chalk paintings in the rec room, Andrea writes funny poetry, and you sing.”
Rafaela?
“Why do you hide from me?”
“Asking you would be weird,” the girl replied.
It was definitely Rafaela.
“It's weird that you're sneaking around like this,” Miranda told her.
Rafaela frowned. “Is it? I can never tell with these things.”
Miranda's mind returned to the important matter at hand. “You could hear the whispers too?”
“Not well enough to make out what they were saying, but I could definitely hear something.”
The tension fled from Miranda's shoulders. “Oh, thank God! I thought the meds had stopped working.”
“Nope!” Rafaela grinned. “Full on haunting. I've been living here for a year and I had no idea this was here. And it's attracted by music! I've never known a ghost that was activated by music. Although when you think about it, I wonder why that kind of thing isn't more common; singing is such a psychic activity.”
Rafaela made Miranda dizzy. She was determined not to let this girl run away with the conversation-not when she had so many questions. Such as: “What makes you think you know so much about ghosts?”
Puffing out her chest, Rafaela informed her, “I'm a witch from a long line of witches that goes all the way back to the settling of the New World.” She deflated. “Well, I'm not actually a witch. I was training to be one, but I failed. That's how I ended up in here.”
So she was delusional. That's how she ended up in here. On the other hand, there really did seem to be a ghost.
Rafaela continued, “I'll bet you could get it to manifest itself completely if you kept singing.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because it's so cool!” Rafaela squealed.
Miranda had to admit that there was indeed something cool about bringing a ghost to life. “It's not going to hurt me?”
“Of course not,” Rafaela assured her.
“Okay.” Miranda took a few deep breaths and then plunged into her aria. The longer she sang, the more solid the face became. It belonged to an old woman with her white hair pulled up into a tight bun. A dress with poofy shoulders materialized, along with a lacy apron. She was so close that Miranda closed her eyes to keep from being distracted-which was hard enough with all the whispering. She finally came the climax, which was a long and high note, and halfway through it she was shoved hard enough that she was lifted off her feet, slamming into the wall behind her.
“Oh my,” Rafaela said.
Miranda watched as the semi-transparent figure hovered over her, its hands raised to strike. The ghost slashed with fingers curled into claws, but just before it could hit her, Rafaela jumped between them.
“Ouch! Motherfucker!” Rafaela cried out. She recovered instantly and took hold of Miranda's hand, pulling her to her feet. “We need to get out of here.” She then ran toward the fire exit, dragging Miranda along with her.
The ghost wasn't moving very fast as it followed them inside, but it left deep gouges in the walls with its fingers that would be hard to explain later.
After running the length of a hallway, turning a corner, and running another length, they put enough space between them to catch their breath. That's when Miranda noticed the four slices in the shirt and skin of Rafaela's bicep. For her part, Rafaela didn't seem to notice.
“Oh, my God!” Miranda panted.
Rafaela looked down at her arm. “Yeah, it hurts like you would not believe. And now I have to think of an excuse to give the doctor when she patches me up. I can't tell her I was assaulted by a ghost. She'll think I'm crazy.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Ghosts are creatures of ectoplasm,” Rafaela explained, “which means they're sensitive to two things: salt and iron. There's no iron anywhere, and the only place to get salt is the kitchen, and trust me, I've spent nine months trying to sneak into the kitchen, so that's not going to work.”
Miranda tugged on her uninjured arm, and when she got her attention, she pointed at the rapidly approaching ghost.
Rafaela snapped her fingers. “And chalk. They're sensitive to three things. I think we're going to get out of this.” She grabbed Miranda and took off toward the recreation room.
“Hey!” shouted Tina as Rafaela snatched a piece of chalk from her hand without slowing down.
“I'll bring it back when I'm done!” Rafaela shouted back to her. After they left the room, she turned to Miranda. “And now let's find someplace private.”
“I don't think we have to worry about it anymore,” Miranda told her.
“It's a malevolent spirit just awakened. If we don't stop it, it's going to do something bad.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Miranda asked. “We're just two girls.”
“That's not true,” Rafaela replied. You're a really talented singer with the power to activate ghosts, and I'm a witch. I'm mostly a witch. Partially a witch. I'm witch adjacent.”
“So?”
“So as an almost witch, I happen to know a spell that will banish that ghost away,” Rafaela said. “All I'll need is for you to sing to lure it in.”
“No way!” Miranda threw up her hands.
“Why not?”
“Because I don't trust you!”
Rafaela pouted. “Well that seems harsh.”
“You told me the ghost wasn't going to hurt me,” Miranda reminded her, “and you were wrong.”
“What do you expect? I'm twelve. Are you telling me you've never been wrong?”
Miranda shook her head. “I'm not helping you, and that's final.”
“Please?” Rafaela begged.
“No,” Miranda replied.
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Fine!” Rafaela spun on her heel and stomped away, muttering, “Looks like I have to do it by myself then.” She ducked into a hallway and disappeared.
Shaken, Miranda made her way to the rec room to cool down and find something to do before her appointment with her psychiatrist that afternoon. Tina had left, so she had the place to herself...
… for about one minute before the ghost was suddenly standing there in the corner. As casually as she could, Miranda left the way she came. She rushed when the ghost lunged out of the wall, its claws out. She ran down the hallway she saw Rafaela go into-the girl might be full of shit, or she might actually know what she was talking about. Miranda had no choice but to gamble on the latter.
She found Rafaela in a dark corner, drawing in chalk on the wall a box with symbols that looked like weird, alien letters on the inside and outside of the corners. Her eyes lit up when she saw Miranda approach. “You changed your mind? That's so awesome!”
“It's coming,” Miranda said through shallow breaths.”
“All right,” Rafaela ordered, “get behind me and repeat what I say, even though it's not in English.”
“What?”
“Just trust me.”
The ghost came into view and started making its way over to them. As soon as it reached the graffiti, Rafaela shouted, “Pare!”
Miranda repeated, “Pah-ray.”
The ghost stopped.
“Descanse em paz,” Rafaela continued, “Descanse em paz. Encontre seus ossos. Descansar. Descanse em paz.”
Miranda tried to imitate, but she couldn't keep up.
Rafaela reached back and squeezed her hand. “Don't sweat it. I think she got the point. Look.”
Sure enough, the ghost was fading away, wearing an expression that seemed strangely peaceful.
When she was completely gone, Rafaela clapped her hands together and grinned. “That was fun!”
“Are you insane?” Miranda asked.
“Yes,” Rafaela replied. “That's why I live here. You too, in fact.”
“I am so done with this,” declared Miranda as she stormed away.
“Don't let this discourage you from singing!” Rafaela called after her.
It did at first, but in a few days the fear wore off, and soon Miranda was sneaking off like before. And she never saw her, but she knew that Rafaela was somewhere nearby, listening.