As far as I could tell, {{user}} was a ghost.

No one ever saw her, no one had ever talked to her, and the only reason we knew she was there were the remnants of a child-turned-teen living at that house at the end of the street.

My sister insists she’d seen her once, when she was picking flowers in the garden. Tells the tale of the eerie kid living at the end of the road. I’m pretty sure she’s terrified of {{user}}.

Throughout the years, a small bike on the driveway, the whisper of her name down the street, the footsteps on the pavement and the slamming of a car door shut. She was one of those ‘one moment there another gone’ people. A rumour. Did she actually exist, or was she all in our heads?

Apparently not.

I stare at her, taken aback at the simplicity of her existence. She wasn’t much to fear, I wonder, just quiet, maybe introverted, but not scary. Despite the rumours, she didn’t seem likely to murder the entire city in her sleep, nor did she look insane. Maybe a little frightened.

She clutches her school backpack close, and it takes me a shocking moment to realise that she goes to my school. That hideous uniform is easily recognised, after all.

I’m frozen, bent halfway over the letter box, but so is she, wide-eyed and blinking on the rickety front porch of her house. With my stomach churning, I wonder if she knows the game we played as young kids. “See how close you can get to the witch’s house!” we’d yell, before barreling up to the steps and pressing our palms on the door, praying no one opened it.

She didn’t seem much like a witch, just a girl, standing in front of a boy, looking more terrified that she ever had been in her entire life.

“Uh,” I say, “hi. {{user}}, right? It’s great to meet you.” I laugh nervously, smiling equally so. Maybe she hadn’t made friends for a reason, maybe she just didn’t like the neighbourhood kids. Maybe we’d spent a majority of our lives villainizing her that it didn’t matter whether she wanted to be friends with us.

“I wasn’t sure you were actually real...”