This is a piece of a plot bunny that has been bouncing around my head for about thirty years and I am finally willing to commit a bit of to written form. You’d think it would be less clunky after all those years, but I guess if I could make it flow quite right, I would’ve written it down a lot sooner. It’s mostly inspired by High Concept Sit-Coms, so I tried to keep it shallow and, despite tremendous mental pressure, avoid profanity.

“Will you please trust me on this? Don’t go. It’s a bad idea.”

“Why would I trust you?” Dorothy asked. “I’ve known you for all of ten minutes. She’s family. Technically.”

“Yeah, but which of us seems more inherently trustworthy?” Gabe flashed an exaggerated smile.

“Well what do you have against it? We’re just going out to have some fun. You’re acting like they’re plotting some kind of heist. Do you-” she shook her head. “Do you know something?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Gabe said. “But I would really like it if you trusted me. Trust is important, don’t you think?”

“But this is weird. You know that, right? That what you’re asking is weird? I’m being asked to hang out with, ahem, The Cool Kids, and you, who I don’t know from Adam, is telling me assassinate my social life for mysterious undisclosed reasons and–” Dorothy felt the sudden weight of unwanted attention and looked around. “Why are people looking at me?”

Gabe glanced around, nonplussed. “Oh,” he said. “You didn’t realize. Sorry. I thought you did. They think you’re talking to yourself.”

“What?”

“Yeah, they can’t see me.”

She set her water bottle down. “What are you talking about?”

A guilty expression spread across Gabe’s face. “Okay. This isn’t going well. I can’t actually explain, but I can show you.” He paused and held up his hands in a warding gesture. “You should brace yourself so you don’t overreact.”

He held out his hand in front of him, then slowly moved it toward where she’d set her bottle on the table. He extended one finger toward it as if to push it over. Then, in a slow, smooth motion, passed his finger straight through the bottle.

Whatever bracing Dorothy had done wasn’t sufficient. She let out a little yelp, drawing even more unwanted attention before she could stifle herself. Through clenched teeth, she whispered, “You’re a ghost?”

“I’m not a ghost.”

“Then I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. I can prove that. Maybe. But, um…” he nodded over her shoulder.

Anna. Dorothy hadn’t thought there was still a “worse” things could get. “Oh. Um. Hi?” she tried.

“I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Anna said. “But ‘my step-sister is a schizo,’ isn’t a good look for me.”

With a sour expression, Gabe said, “Ooh. Ableist much?” He stood up and walked over to Anna. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re really hot. But that’s not a good look.”

“I.. Uh…” Dorothy struggled.

“Drama club,” Gabe said.

“Drama club,” Dorothy repeated, surprised.

“Drama club?” Anna parroted.

Gabe walked through Anna and another table of students and pointed at a poster on the wall, too far away for Dorothy to read. “Audition,” he called out. “Thursday.”

Having no other choice, Dorothy decided to run with it. “Drama club,” she said again. “There’s an audition Thursday. I… I thought I’d try out. I was practicing.”

Anna’s eyes narrowed, suspiciously. “You? Drama club? Isn’t that a little ESFP for you?”

“I’m… Broadening my horizons.”

“What’s it for? The audition?”

“Our Town,” Gabe shouted. “Be right back.”

Dorothy glanced over just in time to see him futz with something in his hand, then he simply vanished. Anna looked her up and down, lingering on her pinafore. “Okay, fine, I find that broadly plausible. Show me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Show me what you were practicing.”

“Why?”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Just do it. Let me see how big of a fool you’re going to make out of yourself, so I can decide whether or not to disown you.”

“Um…” Dorothy stammered.

Just then, Gabe reappeared behind Anna, walked through her, and held up a script. “Eyes here,” he said. “Forget everyone else, just look at the script, don’t think about the extent to which your entire social existence is in existential peril.”

It was more than she could process, so she did as she was told. “​I can’t,” she read. “I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize.”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them. “So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look…”

A hush fell around her as she recited Emily’s goodbyes to Grover’s Corners, but Dorothy stayed focused on the paper in front of her and didn’t notice. Even Anna seemed hypnotized by her delivery, though Dorothy couldn’t see it with Gabe between them. “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it-every, every minute?” she finished.

“No,” Gabe said, filling in the corresponding part, “The saints and poets maybe. They do, some.”

“I’m ready to go back.”

When Gabe lowered the script page, Dorothy finally noticed that every eye in the cafeteria seemed to be on her. She blushed and reflexively brought her hand up to her face. “What?”

“Wow,” Anna mumbled. She struggled for a second and had to physically shake herself to recompose. With exaggerated nonchalance, she said, “Yeah, that’s passable I guess. I, uh. Tell you what, I’ll go with you. It’ll look good for college, right? Wait. Thursday? Crap. Never mind. I’ll take care of it. I got to go find Jimmy.” She turned and stalked away.

The rest of the room slowly returned to normal business and Dorothy turned back to the lunch table and sat back down, befuddled by what had just happened. “What was that?” she whispered through clenched teeth.

“They liked it. You impressed them. You really don’t appreciate how gifted you are,” Gabe said. “You’ve got a power in your words. Someday, they’ll be your own words, but Thornton Wilder will do for a start.”

Dorothy pieced it together. “Thursday,” she whispered. “You committed me to something Thursday. Anna too. So we can’t-”

“There,” Gabe said, smugly. “See? No social assassination required. I got your back.”

“What are you?”

He cringed. “Really can’t explain. If it helps, just think of me as your guardian angel.”