My life’s pretty good. I’m attending school at SLU, I live in a great apartment with some really nice roommates, and I’ve got a pretty good thing going with a guy named Gavin. He’s a literature major.
My life is pretty normal, too. Nothing weird really ever happens, nothing out of the ordinary. Oh, except for one tiny thing. One of my roommates happens to be a ghost that’s been haunting the place since two centuries ago.
But that’s really nothing new to me. I’ve gotten used to it, as have my other roommates. Other than that no one really knows. We try not to have people over too much, and other than that there’s really no worries about people finding out since you know, Liz can’t leave the apartment or speak. Just move things, mostly. She communicates with us by writing. We have a dry-erase board she can write on and then show to us. At first she used blood on the walls, but that was a pain to clean, and we were starting to worry where she was getting the blood from.
So really there’s usually nothing to worry about there. Usually. Except for one situation. It started with a call from Gavin. At the time I was grocery shopping. Now between Sarah, Kaylie, Ginny, and me (Liz doesn’t eat.) there isn’t much cash flow. So we have to really stretch our money when shopping. We need to get enough food for at least two weeks every time we get paid, plus any necessities we’re out of, plus a few things that have lots of sugar and caffeine in them for late night study sessions and such. So yeah, shopping is extremely stressful. We take shifts. And that day it was my turn. So I’d waited until the other three were home so I could take their dues, I went to the bank to cash my own paycheck, and I headed to the store.
I’d gotten through half my list, I was trying to calculate which laundry detergent would be the best deal, and my phone started ringing. I picked it up, though I was still distracted with my calculating, and answered. “Hello?”
“Hey Sal.” I rolled my eyes. Gavin had been calling me that since we’d met, just because he knew it annoyed me.
“Hi.”
“What’re you doing?”
“Shopping.”
“Fun. So remember how you were coming over tonight so I could prove that I can actually cook?”
“Yes. I still don’t believe it. I’m going to call Imo’s on the way over just in case.”
“What if I surprise you?”
“Dinner for tomorrow night.” Having figured out which laundry detergent was best, I moved on to the actual groceries. First was milk.
“Here’s the situation: Idiot Kaleb broke the oven somehow. All he was making was a frozen pizza. I decided not to ask anymore questions about what happened, because it would just make me question his sanity further. So since I can’t use the oven, which is necessary for what I was planning on making, we have a problem.”
“Yes we do.”
“I was thinking that I could bring over the supplies, and cook it at your place.”
“Sure, sounds good,” I said absent-mindedly.
“Great. See you later then.”
“Bye.” Right after I’d hung up I realized that I’d just said he could come over. To my haunted apartment. I finished shopping quickly as possible and went home. “Guys! Problem!” Immediately my roomies entered the room. Liz lifted the coffee table and dropped it to show she was there, too. “Um, okay, don’t freak out. I may have accidentally told Gavin he could come over tonight.”
“Here?!” Kaylie yelled. “What happened to not having anyone over?”
“Okay, in my defense, he called while I was shopping. I was side-tracked.”
“Guys, it’s no big deal,” Ginny was always the rational one. “So you tell him.”
“Tell him?”
“Yeah. Just say it really calmly and like it’s no big deal. He probably won’t think it’s that weird, once he gets used to it.”
“Really?”
“Probably not but it’s worth a shot.”