Invisible Ghosts

by Robyn Schneider

Abby lived in the mansions down by the pier, and her house was ridiculous. It was all glass, with one of those modern staircases that seemed to float in midair. When she flung open the front door, she was wearing a tight gold dress and her stage makeup.

  “Rose!” she squealed, throwing her arms around me. “Ohmygosh, you came! Everyone’s going to be thrilled. We’ve missed hanging out with you!”

  She leaned in.

  “Can you tell I’m drunk?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” I promised, although I probably wasn’t the best judge. “Your house is amazing.”

  “My dad’s a plastic surgeon,” she said, a little too loudly. “So my nose was free.”

  She stared at me, clearly waiting for me to say something.

  “It looks awesome,” I told her, and she beamed.

  “Totally natural, right? I was paranoid people would be able to tell, and I’d be ‘that girl who got a nose job.’”

  “I promise, no one even noticed,” I said.

  She led me through endless white hallways with marble floors, past a few pieces of art that probably weren’t prints, and into an enormous yard that seemed to stretch on forever.

  This definitely wasn’t a kickback. It was a real party, messy and loud and full of people. There was a grill area covered with booze and a pool chair stacked with pizza boxes. Most of our drama class was already there, along with a surprisingly large crowd of kids I recognized from school. I spotted Adam from my art history class playing flip cup with some guys from the Mock Trial team, and a bunch of beanie-wearing jocks clustered furtively around a vape pen.

  Leo was DJing some kind of retro hip-hop. He was still wearing the lab coat from his costume, which he’d unbuttoned over an Adidas tracksuit. He bent over his equipment, totally blissed out as the Renaissance Faire girls danced nearby, trying to catch his attention.

  “Holy shit,” I said, and Abby laughed.

  “My parents couldn’t make it to the play.” She rolled her eyes. “So this is how they made up for it. Enjoy.”

  Suddenly, Abby was gone. And I was alone. In the middle of a genuine house party. Except I didn’t feel self-conscious, or nervous, or like I didn’t belong. Instead, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

  I turned around and bumped into Claudia. She was still wearing her stage makeup, her hair teased into an old-fashioned updo. But she’d changed into her own clothes. She looked ridiculous, and I knew it didn’t bother her in the slightest.

  “Claudia!” I said.

  “Rose, you came,” she said, sounding surprised. But she wrapped me into a hug anyway, and I found myself hugging back, hard.

  “You were great,” I told her. “The play was amazing.”

  “I flubbed a line,” she said. “In the scene with the blood transfusion.”

  “I couldn’t tell,” I promised.

  “You’re just saying that.” Claudia sighed. “Also, can we all please agree that Abby was terrible and one-note?”

  “I kind of like Abby now?” I said. It came out as a question.

  “Ugh, I do too.” Claudia made a face. “I wish Jamie had gotten to do the play. He would have been way better than Seth, even wearing a sling. This morning, in the third act? I swear to god, it was like watching Kramer kill Dracula.”

  I couldn’t help it, I snorted.

  “Can you and Jamie please make up already?” Claudia pressed. “Or can you just sit with us again anyway?”

  “I will,” I promised. “But I want to fix things with Jamie first. Have you seen him?”

  I twisted around, looking for him.

  “He’s not here,” Claudia said.

  My face fell.

  “He’s not here,” I repeated in disbelief.

  “Well, it is the cast party,” Claudia said. “I don’t really blame him for bailing.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling like an idiot, because if I’d thought about it for two seconds, I would have realized Jamie had stayed home.

  “Look who I found!” Claudia said, beaming. For a moment, I thought she meant Sam, but then I realized she was talking about me.

  “The Queen of the Costumes returns!” Sam said, wrapping me in a hug. He smelled like dried sweat, and his neck was streaked with stage makeup, but I didn’t mind at all. I’d missed him.

  “Everyone’s on the tennis courts,” Claudia said.

  “There are tennis courts?” I asked, impressed.

  “Just one,” Sam said, grabbing a couple of beers. He offered one to me, and I shook my head.

  “No thanks,” I said. “They taste like if the ocean could sweat.”

  Claudia threw her head back and cackled, making a scene.

  “Oh my god! Yes! Armpit Sweat of the Sea,” she announced.

  Sam glared.

  “You better not call me that,” he warned.

  “I’ll get bored of it soon,” Claudia assured him.

  “But I won’t,” I said, smiling sweetly.

  Sam let out a frustrated growl.

  “You two are deadly together, you know that?” he asked.

  “We are well aware.” Claudia slung her arm around my shoulder, and Sam held open a chain-link gate.

  Sure enough, there was a tennis court back here, green and white, with a net flapping in the ocean breeze. Nima, Max, and Darren were seated in one of the squares, passing a bag of barbeque chips back and forth. Judging from the empty cans, they’d already gone through a couple of beers each.

  Max was wearing his Dracula cape, and it flapped behind him, looking polyester and fake now that there was no stage magic to transform it.

  “We’re friends with Abby Shah now,” he announced, a little too loudly. “It’s a thing that happened.”

  “I like Abby,” I said, because it was true. There were layers to her, and the more of them I peeled away, the more I realized she was just as insecure and weird as the rest of us.

  “God help me, I like her, too,” Darren said.

  “Everyone likes Abby,” Nima said happily. “And next year, she’s promised to run for spirit chair, so I don’t have to.”

  Claudia groaned.

  “You mean to tell me,” she said, “that we have to look forward to another year of pretending to be psyched to spin the spirit wheel?”

  Everyone laughed, and I sat down, realizing that Jamie may have guided me back here, but this was where I belonged.

  28

  I RODE MY bike over to Jamie’s house early the next morning. Jamie’s dad opened the front door. He was dressed for the gym, or maybe jogging, in a matching tracksuit that was accidentally cool.

  “Rosie!” he said.

  I hadn’t seen him in years. His hair was thinner and more gray than blond, and a pair of wire-framed glasses was sliding down his nose. Even in track pants, he still looked like a rumpled professor. He also looked nothing like Jamie.

  “Hi, Mr. Aldridge,” I said.

  We stared at each other, and I wondered what, if anything, Jamie had told him about us.

  “I’ll let Jamie know he has a visitor,” he said.

  Before he could, Jamie appeared in the hallway, looking surprised to see me.

  “I’ve got it, Dad,” Jamie said.

  He tilted slightly to the side, as though he was studying me, and he frowned. Even though the bruise on my cheek was covered with makeup, I knew he still noticed it.

  “Um, hi,” I said awkwardly. “You busy right now?”

  “Let me grab my keys,” he said, and then hesitated.

  I knew that pause. That hundred-questions silence. That holdback he did. It made my entire chest ache with the weight of all those unsaid words.

  He returned a minute later, wearing the loafers I’d noticed on the first day of school, so distinct amid a sea of sandals and sneakers.

  I stared down at them, and Jamie made a face, as though he could read my mind.

  “Sam gave me shit for them too, but they don’t have laces,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling awful
. “Right.”

  “Dad, we’re leaving,” he called.

  Without waiting for an answer, he shut the door behind us.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere,” he said, holding up his keys. “I just—I thought—so we could have privacy.”

  “No, it’s perfect,” I said, hating that he was so nervous around me, and that I’d made him so unsure of what I wanted.

  I smiled, and Jamie relaxed a little. I could feel the electricity flowing between us, tentative at first and then stronger.

  His car had been parked outside overnight and was covered in droplets of moisture. Climbing inside was like ducking into a freezing cave. If a freezing cave smelled like stale coffee and was full of library books.

  “Sorry,” Jamie said, reaching for the heater. “Give me a minute.”

  He glanced sideways at me, and it killed me, seeing how much I’d hurt him.

  “Rose—” he began.

  “No, me first,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m so sorry. I never should have reacted like that when you said we should exorcise Logan.”

  “I’m not taking it back,” Jamie said. “I just want that to be clear. I still think . . .”

  “I know,” I said. “So do I.”

  Jamie stared at me, surprised. I could see him wondering what had changed.

  “He hurt you, didn’t he?” Jamie said. It wasn’t a question. Slowly and carefully, he reached for my cheek, inspecting the bruise.

  “It was an alarm clock,” I said, and Jamie winced. “He freaked out when he saw me checking my PSAT score. Which was awesome, by the way.”

  “Now who’s always trying to change the subject to the PSAT?” Jamie teased.

  “Still you,” I accused. “Nerd.”

  Jamie shook his head, smiling.

  “I’m not the one who eats lunch in the library,” he shot back.

  “At least I don’t wear loafers without socks,” I returned.

  “It’s a look,” Jamie insisted.

  “There were at least fifty people at the cast party last night and not a single one of them was wearing it,” I informed him.

  “You went to the cast party?” Jamie frowned. “Why?”

  Wasn’t it obvious?

  “I was looking for you,” I said.

  “I didn’t really feel like partying,” he said.

  “You would have loved it. No one could shut up about how Seth made a lousy Van Helsing.”

  “Really?” he asked, brightening.

  “Definitely,” I promised. “You make a far more believable . . . old man.”

  “And here I thought you were going to say vampire slayer.” Jamie grinned.

  “Whatever, there’s no such thing as vampires.”

  “Bet you twenty bucks there are some high school students on the other side of the country saying the exact same thing about ghosts,” Jamie joked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I miss you so much,” I said, before I could think about it. “I miss hanging out with you, and talking to you and—”

  “Cleo?” Jamie said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Me too,” he said, and then he kissed me.

  It was soft and tentative, a question mark of a kiss, asking, Can I? Can we? And then I kissed him back, and it wasn’t a question anymore, it was a definitive yes, oh please, yes.

  When we broke apart, I rested my forehead against Jamie’s for a moment, so we could stay connected just a little longer.

  “Um,” he said nervously. “Not that this isn’t amazing. Which it is. But your brother isn’t going to show up and . . .”

  “No,” I promised. “At least, he better not.”

  It hit me all of a sudden how wonderful it was, to be alone with Jamie. To be sixteen together and growing older the same amount each day. To have so much history behind us and so much future ahead. There would be parties and movie nights and road trips and plays, and I could have all of those things. I just couldn’t have Logan, too.

  “What are you thinking?” Jamie asked. He was tracing circles over my palm, slow and deliberate, as though drawing an invisible lifeline of us.

  “That it’s going to be okay,” I said.

  Jamie’s face broke into a grin.

  “Who ever heard of a ghost story with a happy ending?” he teased.

  “This isn’t a ghost story,” I told him. “It’s a love story with a ghost in it.”

  And then I thought: But not for much longer.

  29

  I WAS LATER than I realized coming home. When I opened the front door, my mom was in the living room, curled up with a mug of coffee and a book.

  “Morning,” she said. “I thought you were still asleep.”

  “Nope, that’s my stunt double. There have been two of us this whole time,” I joked, and then apologized, “Sorry I didn’t text.”

  “I’ll let it slide,” Mom said. “Since if you’re up this early, at least I know you’re not hungover.”

  My jaw dropped, and Mom laughed.

  “Make smart choices,” she reminded me, and I somehow resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  Mom held up the book. It was the one I’d gotten from the library and left on her bedside table. The hygge book.

  “Good book?” I asked innocently.

  “I’m really enjoying it,” Mom said. “You know, it’s so easy to forget to treat yourself. But deciding that a blanket gives you joy isn’t the same thing as actually feeling joy every time you use it.”

  “Mom, seriously, I’m glad you like the book, but enough with the self-help already,” I insisted, sitting down next to her on the couch. “You don’t need a stranger telling you how to live your life, one size fits all.”

  I reached for her coffee and took a sip.

  “Ew,” I said, making a face. “Is there cinnamon in this?”

  “I figured I’d try something new,” Mom said. She shifted a little on the sofa and sighed. “Although these throw pillows have got to go. I don’t know what I was thinking with all of these sequins. We need something cozier.”

  “Really?” I asked hopefully.

  “Don’t tell your father, he’ll be thrilled,” Mom said with a wry smile. “Which means we’ll have to find another way to torture him so he doesn’t sit here all night watching baseball.”

  “Is that what the pillows were about?” I asked.

  Mom’s guilty expression was all the answer I needed.

  “If you’re changing the pillows, I think this room would look great in different shades of blue,” I went on. “With a fish tank in the corner, there.”

  “A fish tank?”

  “Little fish,” I said. “Practice koi.”

  Mom lit up at the idea.

  “We could have a mother-daughter redecorating project,” she said. “Breathe some life into this space before you go off to college.”

  It felt so natural, her saying that, in a way it never had before. And so inevitable. I was leaving. Not tomorrow, or next month, but soon enough.

  We stared out at the living room, imagining how it could change. A fish tank here, a throw blanket there. And I realized that, in the four and a half years since Logan’s death, my parents hadn’t shut out what had happened. They’d simply found ways to move forward in spite of it.

  And maybe that was why ghosts were invisible, or why they were supposed to be: so they didn’t cast a shadow over the people they’d left behind.

  “You seem happy today,” Mom said, breaking the silence.

  “I am,” I said. And for the first time, I really meant it.

  “Is Jamie coming by later?” she asked, too clever by half.

  “Mom,” I complained.

  “I’ll order pizza,” she threatened.

  “You better not!” I told her. “I know how you operate.”

  “Well, you might,” Mom said, laughing. “But Jamie doesn’t.”

  LOGAN STAYED AWAY for the rest of the weekend, and by the
time Monday morning rolled around, I had the impression that he was purposefully giving me space.

  Mom had already left for work, and Dad was pouring his coffee into a travel mug when there was a knock at the front door.

  “If it’s Girl Scout cookies, buy five boxes of Thin Mints and don’t tell your mother,” Dad advised.

  I laughed.

  “Deal,” I promised.

  It wasn’t Girl Scouts. It was Jamie. He was wearing his glasses, and his hair was still wet from the shower, making little droplets on his sling. I started thinking some very non–7:30 a.m. thoughts.

  “You do realize it’s a school day,” I told him.

  “Well, if you don’t want a ride . . .” he said, grinning.

  “I’m completely out of the way,” I protested. “I can’t believe you drove here just to drive back down again.”

  “One handed,” Jamie boasted. “At least, for another week. You ready to go?”

  I grabbed my schoolbag and told my dad I was heading out.

  “Thin Mints?” he asked.

  “Sorry.” I shook my head. “They have an app now that tells you where to buy cookies.”

  Dad stared at me as though I’d revealed one of the secrets of the universe.

  “Can I get it on my iPad?” he asked, and I tried not to laugh.

  “I DEFINITELY DON’T miss having helmet hair,” I told Jamie as we pulled into the school parking lot.

  “You’re not nervous what will happen if you have a good-hair day?” Jamie teased.

  “Eh, someone told me that was a spurious correlation.”

  I tried to keep a straight face.

  “You don’t say.” Jamie frowned. “Next thing you know prophesneezes will be debunked.”

  “Never.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind chancing it, then I can drive you every day,” Jamie promised. “But advance warning that I’m trying out for the spring play.”

  “Good, ’cause I am too,” I said.

  Jamie stared at me in surprise.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “You guys have to stop hanging out without me,” I said. “I can’t handle all of the inside jokes.”

  “Technically, if you’re not there, that makes them outside jokes,” he said.

  “Oh my god,” I said. “No.”

  “You’re welcome.” Jamie grinned.