My Shame (William’s class) By Peri Gordon, 11

Whistle, whistle. They inhabit me like I am some sort of haunted medieval fortress. Whoosh. One of them darts through one of my walls and into the well-furnished but dust-covered room where the young girl once spent her time making beautiful sketches before her death of sickness in that same room. Another ghost haunts the stairs, where the girl’s father met his own end in a fatal accident. And yet another lurks in the former office of the girl’s mother, where she privately ended her own life. Whiz. Each spirit was once alive. One of them was the girl. One was the father, one the mother. They all died too soon, and that thought keeps them here, passionate grief scorching their minds and hearts. They are each so caught up in their own misery that they do not notice each other’s ghosts, only their own. I was once a place of happiness, the cheerful, stylish, modern home for a family of three. Now I am a place of despair, a ghost habitat. People come outside, snapping photos and gossiping about what went on inside me. Even those who do not believe there are ghosts are prevented by others from coming inside me. Most of them know that the ghosts are, indeed, here. There is a mansion across the street, looking more old-fashioned than I ever have. That would make a good haunted house. But no; I am the haunted one. The home across the street is filled with happy people, happy rooms, happy memories. But I am desperate. Whistle, whistle. I summon all the energy that being haunted provides me. Whoosh. Power and adrenaline build up inside me like fuel for a car. Whiz. I send the spirits soaring out of me and into the home on the other side of the road. I am free from being haunted. Let the suffering be transferred to somewhere else. I have held the burden of being shunned and isolated for long enough. It is another home’s turn. It only takes a few days for the family to move out. Hope rises inside of me. But they do not come here. People don’t know I am no longer haunted. In fact, they believe I have spread the ghost disease, and that now both the other house and I are haunted. Most people leave the neighborhood, never to return again. And the ghosts, missing their old spaces, return to me. Well, that backfired. Perhaps I really am haunted, not just because of the spirits I contain but because I have a wicked soul. Maybe seeing the deaths truly changed me, for I have become immeasurably evil, so evil that I would try to inflict my suffering onto another to free myself. I am despicable. And now that the neighborhood’s inhabitants have left, I am even more lonely than I was before.