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was pale and unhealthily blemished, her uniform a size or two too big on her. She was wearing glasses with frames that appeared to have been purchased in the early 2000s, or perhaps were hand-me-downs from the nineties.
    To use the phrasing of a (soon-to-be) professional school counselor, this kid was a hot mess, and that’s not even mentioning the Non-Compliant Deceased Person hanging on to one of the pleats of her too-big navy plaid skirt, dragging it even further askew.
    I was the only person in the room who could see it, but I was sure Becca could feel the extra weight. She probably had chronic back or neck pain for which her doctor could find no medical cause.
    I knew the cause. It was a ghostly parasite, and I was staring right at it, and at the miserable expression it was provoking from its human host.
    Then again, that misery might have been because Becca had just jacked up her wrist so badly, and was being hauled around by one of the state of California’s biggest busybodies.
    “You sit down right here, Becca,” Sister Ernestine said, all but shoving the bleeding girl into the mission-style chair across from my desk. Only it wasn’t a chair designed to look mission style, it was a chair likely dating back to the 1700s when Father Junípero Serra, a Franciscan friar from Spain who had recently been sainted by Pope Francis, had run up and down the coast of California, frantically building missions so he could beat the Lord’s word into the Native Americans he had captured and held there. Judging by their extreme creakiness, I wouldn’t doubt most of the school’s office furniture has been around since old Father Serra’s time. “Let Miss Simon bandage those cuts. I’m going to telephone your parents.”
    “No!” Becca cried, trying to leap back up from the chair. “I told you, Sister, I’m fine! This is stupid. My compass slipped in geometry, is all. You don’t have to call my parents. Mr. Walden was way overreacting—”
    “Mr. Walden?” I raised a skeptical eyebrow as I snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
    It’s completely humiliating that after nearly six years of postsecondary education, the only place in the entire state of California where I could find employment (and not even paying employment) is my former high school. But there are a few upsides. At least here I can tell when kids are lying to my face about the teachers.
    “Mr. Walden doesn’t overreact,” I said. “I had him for my junior and senior years. If he says there’s a problem, there’s a problem. So show me your arm, please.”
    The girl stared at me through her overlarge, brown plastic frames.
    “Wait,” she said, registering what the nun had called me. “Miss Simon ? Are you Suze Simon? The one who knocked the head off the Father Serra statue in the courtyard?”
    My gaze slid quickly toward Sister Ernestine, who’d fortunately bustled into her office and was already on the phone, presumably with Becca’s parents.
    “Nope,” I said, turning back to Becca. “Never heard of her.”
    The girl dropped her voice so the nun couldn’t overhear us. “Yes, you are. Everyone says you knocked Father Serra’s head off with your bare hands during a fight, and that you had to work here in the office to pay to get the statue’s head soldered back on.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God. Are they still making you work here to pay it off? Didn’t you graduate, like, ten years ago?”
    “Six. Six years ago. How old do people think I am, anyway? Arm, please.”
    Reluctantly, the girl stretched her wrist toward me and I plucked the wad of paper towels from it . . . then inhaled almost as sharply as she did, but not for the same reason. Her blood had finally coagulated, and my ripping the paper towels from the wound had torn it open afresh, causing her to cry out in pain.
    I gasped because now that I could finally see the injury, I could tell it hadn’t been the result of any accident, though it had definitely been done with a