Lifting Goof...

She called Me Goof when we were little, so that's what I'll call her now.

I wonder if she'd remember that?

I suppose we were about ten years old when she first came to my school. It was the same year that Cecily was our teacher, anyway- I remember that for sure. Goof's got a Rat's Tail that goes half-way down her back but otherwise her hair is only shoulder length- and she's got shiny excited eyes and a big smile.

It doesn't take long for the word to spread that She's moved here to our Town because she's come to live with her aunty and uncle- her Mother has just died from cancer and her father's no where to be found- and you can tell she really misses her Mum. On the first day of school I tell her that my sister's cat Kimba has recently had kittens in our shed and she begs Me to let her come over to my house that afternoon to see them.

We've been friends ever since...

There were two left; my older Sister had given her friend the black runt last week, which left the grey one, and the white and black one with the Puzzle piece on his back- which eventually earned him his name. She likes the grey one better, anyway, and takes him home and calls him Kahn- after Imran the cricketer- before her Aunty Joan can tell her to take him back to where she got him.

That year, at her eleventh birthday slumber party, we performed a seance to summon her dead mother, because that was her wish for her birthday; to see her mother one more time. My Kindred Spirit starts freaking out at all the talk of spirits and bodies rising from the grave- and because Kahn the kitten is acting really skittishly and apparently cats are super sensitive to the supernatural. She starts to cry a little; and we promise to stop when she threatens to tell Aunty Joan what we are all doing.

As soon as she falls asleep we start the seance again; sitting cross legged around the Scrabble pieces. A girl named Felicity whispers promises to everyone that it's not her who is pushing the glass; but who else could it have been? The glass was always moving in the same direction...

And after that we 'lifted' Goof.

I am supervising the 'lift' because my Grandmother's house on the Hill is haunted by the ghost of an old Sea Captain; so I have the next most experience with spirits after Goof herself. She tells us what we have to do; how we have to place only our index fingers beneath her so that we are barely supporting her at all.

In hushed voices we whisper the words 'Stiff as a Board Stiff as a Board" over and over again; and Goof is steadily rising into the air- until a small scream from my Kindred Spirit shatters the spell. Goof drops a small distance to the floor as Aunty Joan rushes out from her bedroom with the rollers still in her hair; and ends the seance once and for all.

But as we were all drifting off to sleep in our sleeping bags we were all certain that Goof's mum was still there in the room with us. Goof said that she even smelt her favourite perfume in the air at one stage...

And I believed her.