Ghoster

by Jason Arnopp

  Oh. This isn’t Scott. This is an altogether more Venezuelan guy named Rudolpho, with a broad brow and even broader shoulders. He looks pretty damn hot, isn’t clutching a dead halibut and he may genuinely Super-Like me.

  Could be worth riding. I mean, investigating.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  2 October

  “Izzy, seriously: where the fucking hell is Scott? Why hasn’t he texted? I’m moving in tomorrow.”

  Tickled by my histrionics, Izzy lays into her rum and Coke. She never used to drink before the accident happened. I wonder if she’ll carry on boozing when she can walk again unassisted by the crutches propped up against our pub table.

  “Kate, I need to tell you something,” she says, deploying frank eye contact. “And I need you to hear me: you’re talking like a crazy person right now.”

  “By the time we finish these drinks,” I tell her, checking my watch, “it’ll have been twenty-four hours since this guy, the one who cannot wait for me to move in with him, last texted. And he hasn’t responded to any of my little follow-up prompts. You know: Helloooo? Are you there? All that needy shit.”

  Izzy’s braids jostle as she shakes her head. “Crazy, crazy, crazy. So what’s going on in that little bauble of yours, mate? What exactly do you reckon’s happened to this bloke who hasn’t replied for a while?”

  “Well, worst case scenario, he could be dead.” Ignoring what Izzy’s eyebrows are doing, I press boldly on. “I don’t know any of his friends or family. So there’s no one to tell me Scott’s been hit by a bus.”

  She shrugs. “Well, you already know how I feel about the whole friends-and-family weirdness there…”

  “Yep, you’ve been expressing that opinion since June. And you’re right, it is pretty weird, but I honestly think—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know: you honestly think that couples often seal themselves in an insular bubble in the early stages of their relationship. In other words, you think Scott’s been too busy banging you to introduce you to a single friend or family member… or even mention any of them. But why have you never asked?”

  I blow out a fat plume of air. “Because… I suppose… if I ask about his family, he’d probably ask about mine. And then, if I tell the truth, he’ll have to hear about me never having known my dad. And even worse, about Mum herself and, you know, the whole… coma thing. Anyway, we’ve gone off topic.”

  “None of that stuff is anything to be ashamed of,” Izzy insists, “and Scott will hear about it someday. But all right, moving on, here’s an idea: have you checked his social media?” When I frown at the very suggestion, she checks herself. “Of course you haven’t. You can’t. But surely if you’re worried, you won’t be breaking your own code by looking at his bloody Twitter for ten seconds.”

  Temptation triggers a warning sign in my head and makes the back of my neck sweat. My addiction is the only thing in the world I feel unable to properly discuss with Izzy. Back in March, when I destroyed my smartphone, I told her I’d just got sick of the internet.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I tell her. “Slippery slope, and all that. I’ve been loads happier since I went off-grid.”

  “Oh yeah, you look dead happy right now, for sure.”

  “God, I’m being stupid, aren’t I? You’re right: Scott’s fine. Busy, that’s all. Probably getting the flat ready. He’s rushing around, buying celebratory balloons.”

  “Hey, do you want me to look at his Twitter for you? Would that work?”

  Seeing me fidget, she adds, “All I want is to see you happy, you know? You’re about to move in with Mr Perfect. You should be glowing, man.”

  The knot in my throat makes it hard to speak or swallow. Despite having laced Mr Perfect with sarcasm, Izzy truly does want me to be happy, even though I’m leaving her and Leeds behind. Even though…

  Even though… actually, let’s not think about how very badly I let her down, not right now. Let’s nod and fight back these infuriating tears.

  “Are you nodding,” Izzy says, “because you agree you should be happy, or because you want me to check his Twitter for signs of death?”

  “Both,” I manage to say.

  Izzy whoops with relief and whips her phone from her bag. Unlike most people, who feel on edge if their phone isn’t on the table right in front of them, Izzy has a healthy, normal relationship with hers. What a total cow.

  I gulp my drink as she taps her phone screen and navigates through to Twitter.

  “Okay,” she says, scrolling down. Then she stops dead and peers at the screen. Oh shit. She doesn’t look concerned so much as horrified.

  I’m waiting for the big fake-out laugh, but it doesn’t come. Instead, she says, “Brace yourself.”

  “What the fuck is it? What the fuck’s happened?”

  “You know Sarah Harding, who used to be in Girls Aloud? Last night, Scott posted a picture of her and him, saying she’s his… new girlfriend.”

  My brain spasms, then snaps back into shape.

  “Fuck right off,” I tell Izzy, who finally breaks cover with one of her bomb-blast cackles.

  “Sorry mate, I couldn’t resist.”

  “Fuck’s sake.” I’m not even smiling, let alone laughing. “Why did you have to pick someone vaguely plausible? Why couldn’t you have chosen Madonna, or Kim Kardashian?”

  Seeing my total lack of amusement, Izzy composes herself. “Because I’m… evil? Also, Kim’s already spoken for by Kanye… sorry, I mean by Ye.”

  “So… has Scott tweeted?”

  “Not since you last heard from him. Shit, I really am sorry.” She peers at the drink I bought her. “Is this a double? That was mean of me. But serves you right for sodding off to Brighton and leaving me here.”

  “You’ve got Jared to keep you busy. You’ve got plenty of other friends, too, you daft mare. And if you think I won’t be in touch, like every hour of every day, then you’re sadly mistaken.”

  Izzy knocks back the rest of her drink. “Have you tried calling Scott? Your olde-worlde piece-of-shit phone does do calls, right?”

  “Twice so far: morning and afternoon. I mean, you play it cool when you’re first seeing someone, but surely when you’ve agreed to move in together, all that crap’s off the table.”

  She seizes upon a new angle. “Which network is he with? Could the network be down?”

  I consider this thin sliver of hope, then brush it aside. “Look, if he’d changed his mind about me moving in, he’d have said so, wouldn’t he?”

  “Course he would.” Even as Izzy says this, I’m painfully aware that she’s never met Scott. She has no idea of what he would or wouldn’t do.

  Neither do you, Kate. Not really. And that’s why your stomach feels like you drank bad milk.

  “I’m going to miss you so much,” I tell her, welling up again. “Sarah Harding or no fuckin’ Sarah Harding, you are awesome.”

  Something diverts Izzy’s attention over my shoulder. She says, “You’ll love me less in about three seconds.”

  Wearing his one decent shirt, Trevor leads a grinning, whooping posse of our ambulance colleagues across the tacky carpet towards us. Each of them clutches the string of a bobbing, Day-Glo helium balloon. I barely tolerate half of these people, but apparently they’ve tolerated me more than I knew. Or, more likely, they’ll grab any old excuse for a piss-up.

  Izzy and I get sucked into the maelstrom. Everyone wants to hug me, push a drink in my hand and wish me luck on the next step of my journey through the bewilderingly twisty corridors of life.

  I’d feel so much better about this little soirée if only my phone would vibrate.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1 June

  The second time I see Scott Palmer, he comes out of nowhere.

  A faint breeze ruffles my hair. I’m cross-legged on one of the blankets the organisers handed out, which in turn sits on the bare earth of this wooded glade.

  “And when the black, black obsidian sea tries to claim
you,” says Tomm, “know that you, and you alone, are your own sparkly little lighthouse.”

  Is this really a glade? What’s the difference between a glade and a clearing, for instance? Being an urban upstart, I have no clue. Also: why am I thinking about this when I should be meditating like the rest of the group?

  “Mother Nature, let me feast upon your apples,” says Tomm. “For you are my mother too. You are all of our mothers. You are everything.”

  Would I get any of my £295 back if I wrestle Tomm to the ground while barking the word Silence? I’ve already eaten one of the included vegan meals and heard the first of this weekend’s talks from the nice anthropologist woman. That might be fifty or sixty quid’s worth, so far.

  “You are the trees. You are the hedgerows. You are the living, prancing fire of the Earth.”

  Tomm probably isn’t the type to press charges. He’s such a bright-eyed muppet, he’d write the whole incident off as me having become so fired up by his poetry that I couldn’t help myself. People express their positive energy via different channels, yeah?

  “You are the tiny mice that make homes in the hillside. You are the rabbits, nestled deep in their warren…”

  These days, meditation feels like a forlorn hope, because life no longer allows you to clear your head. True mindfulness may have been achievable prior to 1980, but that ship has sailed. Our heads are jammed way too full of data.

  I’ve now been without my smartphone for two months, three days, eleven hours and about twenty-two minutes. But hey, who’s counting?

  Even after this chunk of abstinence, I remain haunted. My skull rattles with the ghosts of old Likes, Favourites, message requests, tweets, retweets, deleted tweets, tweets that weren’t deleted but should have been deleted, photographs, videos, memes, bounced emails, emojis and the pings of ten million notifications.

  Being without my smartphone has felt like acclimatising to the loss of a limb… or even the loss of my old self. This has meant trying to figure out who the fuck I am and what I enjoy doing. So far, the answer to the second question has been helping other people, guzzling booze and wolfing down easily prepared comfort food.

  No longer online? Prepare to feel like you’re stuck on the outside, looking in. Prepare to feel intensely alone and isolated, as the world’s biggest party carries merrily on without you, barely even sparing a thought for your absence. All those Twitterers who apologise to their followers for not having tweeted in a while, they’re kidding themselves. Might as well apologise for no longer pissing in the ocean.

  “You are the bees, collecting bounteous pollen and nectar to feed us all…”

  While passing internet cafés, I’ve experienced frighteningly powerful urges to slip inside them. On two occasions, I have weakened and found myself settling in front of a computer terminal, preparing to reactivate Facebook. But then, having remembered what went down in the early hours of 28 March, I’ve left straight away, appalled by myself.

  Time and time again, I’ll dream up a tweet that’s got viral written all over it, or I’ll mentally frame the perfect Instagram shot. Then I’ll pull out my Nokia handset and groan at the tiny screen, the blocky text and the SMS-only bullshit.

  When I see the news on TV, my dopamine receptors twitch and yelp through sheer deprivation. I’m no longer part of the online conversation, weighing in with my own “hilarious” hot take on everything that happens in the world.

  Maybe, just maybe, the world is better off without one more hot take from a nobody. The world can struggle on without one more person who thinks they can bring down the US president by quote-retweeting them and adding a devastating critique for all thirty-eight of their followers to see.

  “You are the ants, the earthworms, the centipedes, even the spiders…”

  Opening my eyes, just a crack, I dare to bring everyone’s silhouettes into view. Perched on the log, our guest poet Tomm reads from his tatty sheets of handwritten paper. Thankfully, our group leader Lizzie has her eyes shut tight. Is she really in a trance, or is she secretly gloating about her success in having lured a fresh consignment of lost, solvent souls to the back of beyond?

  Yes, all sixteen of us not only volunteered but even paid to go on this digital detox retreat for an entire weekend, while the rest of society carried on hurling terabytes of data at each other. Are we delusional misfits or enlightened pioneers?

  “And when the bold blue ocean rises over your head, know that you are safe in Mother Nature’s embrace…”

  Oh shit. Rumbled. This ridiculously handsome guy is looking straight at me.

  His neutral expression makes him worryingly unreadable, while his laser-beam eyes threaten to send me hurtling back against the nearest tree. I freeze and question whether I should close my eyes again, but I feel too entranced. This guy wasn’t with us before, was he? There’s no way. I would definitely have remembered.

  Wait. He looks weirdly familiar. Do I know him?

  Handsome Laser-Beam Guy side-eyes Tomm, then comes back to me. With tiny, gentle movements, he performs the universally recognised hand gesture for wanker, then he tips me a wink. His big wolfish grin showcases teeth so Hollywood-white that I actually blink. While returning the grin, I find myself wishing I’d devoted way more effort to cleaning my own teeth this morning.

  “… and Mother Nature, in turn, will look after you. Thanks, everyone. You’re beautiful.”

  As Tomm’s poem reaches this limp climax, Handsome Laser-Wolf and I exchange the looks of naughty schoolkids about to be caught. Amusingly, as we join everyone else in applauding, we both remember to squint against the sunlight, as if we’ve stayed as bat-blind as everyone else for these full fifteen minutes of torment.

  Smirky Laser-Wolf and I, we’re like partners in crime. And now the penny finally drops. This guy is the one I Super-Liked on Tinder, back on Valentine’s Day.

  The guy who never so much as Liked me back.

  “So. Confess…’

  When Scott whispers these words into my left ear, his breath makes me tingle. “You’re dying to get your phone back, right?”

  Inside this big tent, our group sits in a circle once again. Always with the circles. Ferrying hot spoonfuls of vegan goulash from bowl to mouth, we engage in low-volume chat.

  I never expected to meet someone here, let alone some hot guy I once saw on Tinder. I came to strengthen my resistance to temptation, but now a different kind of temptation has reared its fit, designer-stubbled head.

  Could there actually be something between us? During our group’s walk across the moors to get here, Scott not only tagged along with me but stayed resolutely by my side. When I asked where he’d appeared from, on the second day of this retreat, he explained that he’d been forced to cancel yesterday after a client had made him “an offer I couldn’t refuse”. This segued nicely into a spirited discussion about the Godfather trilogy. Conversation already flows more smoothly between us than it ever did with any guy I’ve met through a dating app.

  Scott and I, we’re dancing this fun little dance. The rest of the group are mere bystanders now, their faces blurred, their voices muffled and distant. Outwardly, he and I are going along with all these mindful activities, but our true focus is on each other.

  Right now, I’m focused on lying to Scott, who won’t get a confession out of me that easily. “I’m really not thinking about my phone. Never engaged with social media at all. To be honest, I got the distinct impression it was going to be bad news.”

  Oh, Kate Collins, you dirty rotten hypocrite. What a stupid, extreme lie. Pretty soon, Scott will find this out and then he’ll run a mile. But what was I supposed to say? My name is Kate Collins and I’m a hopeless addict who must never touch a smartphone ever again? That would never do. Let’s not be putting the hot guy off me within mere hours.

  Against all odds, despite having shown manifold signs of intelligence, Scott takes my claim at face value. “Impressive. So what made you want to do this retreat?”

  “Oh…
I’ve always been aware that I’m too much of a city person, so I thought I’d try something different.” Must bounce the ball right back at him. Get rid of the damn ball. “How about you?”

  “I’m much the same,” he says. An invisible layer of connection forms between us. “Although we do see quite a lot of nature down in Brighton.”

  Oh balls, why does he have to live so far away? Tinder never did show me his distance. “Brighton, eh? Nice. I’m in Leeds.”

  “Wow. I’m visiting Leeds in a couple of weeks.”

  “Oh, cool. Business or pleasure?”

  Hmm. Probably came across like a customs official there. And did I strictly need to give the word pleasure that kind of tongue-in-cheek sultry emphasis? Oh, dear God.

  “Business,” he says. “Have to nip up there for work sometimes. I’m in IT, by the way. Try not to fall asleep.”

  Should I suggest we meet up in Leeds? No. Too soon. Must stay breezy, verging on nonchalant. “Well, I mean, I’m no technophobe. With the whole social media thing, I really didn’t mean to come across like one of those people who makes a big deal of not having a TV…”

  Scott’s bowl whistles as he runs his spoon around the inside. “Not at all,” he says. “That’s the decision you made, based on your instinct. And you were right. The internet can be a real hellhole.”

  “My friends tell me Twitter’s the worst,” I say. “Apparently, it’s become like one big circle-jerk, in which no one ever gets to come.”

  Scott screws up his eyes and slaps the back of his hand against his mouth, presumably to stop goulash from flying out. Can’t help feeling pleased with myself for (a) making him properly laugh and (b) smuggling sex into our conversation. Kind of breaks a barrier. The fewer pesky barriers there are between the two of us – such as clothes, for instance – the happier I’ll be.

  “I’m doing my best to cut down on social media and phone use in general,” Scott says between coughs. Seems a piece of goulash ended up down the wrong pipe. I try not to think about how stray food can aspirate in the lungs and lead to conditions like pneumonia. “It’s surprisingly tough.”