Wherever You Go

by Heather Davis

  Jason set his fork down on the plate, wiping crumbs from his mouth with his shirt sleeve. "You should have people over again. What's stopping you?"

  Mona shrugged. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I should. It's just awkward with everything going on with your dad right now."

  "But when the divorce is final," Jason said in a soft voice, "maybe you should."

  "I'm not going to celebrate that," she said, throwing Jason a look.

  "C'mon, I don't mean it's something to celebrate, just that you could do what you want to do. You shouldn't care what anyone thinks."

  "Maybe." She leaned her head back, gazing up at the stars overhead. "I have to say, I liked her a lot. Actually, when I watched you and Holly together, I almost felt a little jealous."

  "What?"

  She rolled her head sideways, and Jason could see little tears in the corners of her eyes. "I saw you and Holly so happy, and I remembered what it was like to be completely, madly in love with someone. I said to myself, I want that."

  "But you had that with Dad, didn't you?"

  Mona set her drink on the table again and crossed her arms against her chest. "Yes, I had that with Dad. It just all went away over time. You grow up, and the world starts crushing in on you. All the responsibilities, all the things you're supposed to be for each other. After a while, you forget what brought you together, what it was like to fall in love with each other." She smiled sadly. "Well, maybe you don't forget what it was like, but you don't feel that way anymore. I'm not sure where love goes, but it goes away."

  "I'm sorry, Mom." Jason reached out and took his mom's hand.

  "No being sorry," she said, her smile a little forced. "I think I'm going to choose to be inspired. Yes, you and Holly inspired me. Maybe it's time to look forward to what's coming next, you know?"

  "Okay." Jason squeezed her hand and then let it go. As weird as it was to be talking about love stuff with his mom, he was enjoying himself. Enjoying hanging out with her for a change.

  "I haven't seen you this happy in ... well, ever. Not even with Faith. Oh, the way you look at her."

  "Well, this is different."

  "I'll say. Holly's like a breath of fresh air. She does a lot for her family. She's got some he'th="5%">

  But Jason knew what she meant. He'd always known that about Holly.

  "You only knew her because of Rob?" Mona said, taking the last sip of her drink.

  "Yeah, but she was a lot different back then—kind of bubbly, brighter," Jason said. "She loved him."

  "Of course. You loved Rob, too."

  "No, I mean, she loved him. It's been hard to get close to her," Jason said in a quiet voice.

  "She lost the boy she loved, but that doesn't mean she won't love again, that she doesn't love you," Mona said. "You can remember someone you loved and still love someone new."

  "But then it goes away," Jason said, repeating his mother's words.

  She held up a hand. "So, maybe it doesn't go away, exactly. Maybe it's all around you, waiting to show itself again. Maybe we go away from it."

  Jason shoved a bite of pie crust into his mouth and stared out at the dark waters of the pool. Love is different. Love moves and changes. Love is all around. It sounded like some kind of pop song, but maybe his mom knew a little about it.

  "Last bite?" his mom said, reaching for his fork.

  "Sure," he said.

  She scooped the last bit of coconut into her mouth and smiled. It was too big a bite for her. The filling was all over her face. "You're going to be fine," she said when she'd wiped her mouth. "Just go where love goes."

  Jason nodded and reached for the dishes. "You're turning into a talk-show host."

  Mona laughed. "Maybe in my next life. You know what I mean, though. Right?"

  "Yeah," he said. He moved back toward the house, the taste of coconut cream pie in his mouth and Holly on his mind. The worst thing ever had brought them together, but he wasn't letting the love he was feeling get away. And he wasn't letting her go.

  ***

  Holly has the most beatific smile on her face. A smile that belongs in a painting of an angel, a saint, someone full of the divine. She's nestled in her covers, staring at the corner of the room where you're hanging out. You know she can't see you, but maybe she senses you're watching over her—or that you're restless as hell.

  But mostly what you get from Holly is the way she's radiating happiness. Looking at the curve of her lips, the soft slope of her nose, her peacefully closed eyelids, you don't think you've ever seen her this at peace, this content.

  <" wr nose, hfont face="times new roman">You think back to just a few weeks ago, when Holly was scribbling furiously in her journal—writing down all the things about you that she wanted to remember, the things she wanted to keep alive. It seems like all of that passion for you is gone. All of it washed away in this tidal wave of love you see rushing in toward her shore.

  "It's okay," you tell yourself. "It's not the same as when we were together, but it's gonna be fine." Maybe this comforting thought is left over from the stuff you heard during family therapy earlier—maybe it's a lie you're telling yourself. Wherever the thought comes from, you accept it, welcome it, wrap it around yourself like a warm winter scarf.

  "Roberto," you hear. "You're killing me with this stuff."

  You close your eyes and you're in the bathroom with Aldo. He's standing in front of the mirror, rubbing a washcloth over his face.

  "Shouldn't you be in bed? Holly is..."

  "I got up. I couldn't sleep. I heard some ghost rambling around in the next room," he says with a laugh.

  "I wasn't rambling. I was loitering."

  Aldo smirks. "Funny, kid."

  "Hang up the washcloth," you remind Aldo. "Your hook's the one with the big A above it."

  "Thanks." Aldo completes the task.

  "That's pretty cool that Holly marked things around the place for you."

  "Yes. She's doing everything she can."

  "Even throwing the luau," you murmur.

  "That was Jason. You know that," Aldo chides. He shuffles out of the bathroom.

  "Lights."

  "Yeah, I was getting to that," says Aldo as he reaches back for the switch. "Anything else I should remember?"

  "Nah."

  Aldo moves into the living room and picks up the TV remote. You notice there is a big button with a green arrow marking the power switch. He gives it a click, and an old black-and-white movie comes to life. "This okay?"

  "What? We're gonna watch TV?" you ask.

  "What else is there to do? I ask, you don't tell me. You prattle on, but don't tell me the good stuff. You keep haunting me nonetheless. We're in a rut."

  "We're not in a rut," you say, taking a seat on the couch as Aldo sinks into the recliner.

  "Hell," Aldo says, "what do I know about all this afterlife stuff, anyway? I must not y? " you say,be very good if you're still hanging around."

  "No. You've been great."

  "If my job is to help you move to the other side, or whatever, then maybe we need to get on with it," Aldo says. "I don't know if you've noticed that I'm not doing quite so well talking anymore. You had this idea that I could help you get a message out to Holly, remember?"

  "That was your idea," you say, but Aldo's words sink in. If he's getting worse, his ability to communicate, to tell anyone whatever it is you've been left here to say, is only going to get weaker. The possibility that you'd be stuck here forever—that you'd never move on—is real.

  Aldo fashions a smile. "What's on your mind tonight? Oh wait, don't tell me, let me guess—you're jealous of Holly and Jason."

  "Quit busting my balls," you say.

  Aldo laughs. "See? A sense of humor, that's what I like about you." He eyes you. "Sorry, kid. You were moping your way through that very nice luau in my honor. What gives?"

  "Earlier, I was hanging out with my folks and they were doing some kind of counseling session where they were talking about me—that was
freaking depressing. I hung around with them for a few hours, and then I come to check on you and it's luau night. And Holly, she's—"

  "Happy. The word you're searching for is happy."

  "Yeah." Your eyes flicker to the TV, where a girl is standing in a fountain.

  Aldo shakes his head. "Come on, now, don't act so defeated. Did you really think she was never going to love anyone again after you?"

  "No. It's not that. It's the way she looks at him. I mean, how does that happen?"

  Aldo mutes the TV. "Son, when you love someone, you just know. I loved my wife from the moment I saw her standing with that group of rowdy children on the field trip. I knew she was for me."

  You feel a tightness in your throat. "I never had a moment like that. Not with anyone."

  "That's a shame. Everyone should know love like that." His eyes are kind.

  "Aldo, can you help me? I need to go now. I'm not kidding around. I need to go where things don't hurt, where things make sense."

  "I don't know where that is, kid."

  The words hang in the air for a moment while the two of you watch the movie roll on without a soundtrack. "You know, my parents"—you look down at your transparent hands—"my parents think the accident maybe wasn't an accident."

  Aldo lets out a deep breath. "You finally ready to tell me about that night?" he prompts.

  he="5%"><

  "There was a lot I couldn't remember, you know," you say, your voice taking on the sound of fear, uncertainty.

  "Maybe you didn't want to remember," Aldo says gently. "Pain isn't an emotion anyone wants to sort through."

  "Yeah." You glance at the TV, where someone is running up a cobblestone street. You focus back on Aldo, who is waiting patiently in his recliner, his hands in his lap. "You know how this last September was dreary, like we were in the depth of winter? I hate how it can turn like that here."

  "It was your last year of school, right?" Aldo says. "That should have been something you were excited about."

  "I guess. But I had my dad breathing down my neck about my future, I was trying to keep my mother happy by volunteering down at the church food bank, I was keeping up with my sports, though I was never a star player or anything. They kept repeating that I needed to be well-rounded on college applications. It was like my father's freaking mantra. Anyway, I was trying hard to do what they wanted, to be what everyone wanted."

  "So, wait—you didn't like your father's business? Me neither, though mine was the town butcher, not a banker."

  You give him a weak smile. "Finance seems so boring. I thought about doing architecture, maybe. I liked the idea of drawing something and having someone build it into reality."

  Aldo nods. "I've seen some beautiful buildings—so many in Italy."

  "Yeah, it would have been nice to travel for a year and check out Europe before I went to college. Dad wasn't into that at all."

  "So, it was the start of school," Aldo says, steepling his fingers. "Where were you that night of the crash?"

  "At a party after the football game, over at my friend Mark's house. There were a lot of kids there."

  "And you were with Holly."

  "Yeah. She was pissed at me. We'd been dating for a while. And, I admit, I hadn't been paying her enough attention since the end of the summer. I had so much on my mind."

  "So she was angry with you about that?"

  You pause, thinking of how to put things. "She thought we should be more ... romantic."

  Aldo raises his eyebrows. "She wanted you to get married after high school?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. But that night she just wanted us to, you know—"

  "Oh, oh. I understand." Aldo rubs his hand on his forehead.

  "God, this is weird."

  "Oh, I'm sorry—do you have a ghost talking to you about his intentions with your granddaughter?"

  You almost smile, but the memory of the party comes flooding back. "Mark's parents were gone. There were empty bedrooms. She'd had some beers."

  Aldo sits up straighter. "You didn't want her?"

  "I didn't know what I wanted." Your voice is flat.

  "Roberto, you're telling me that my Holly practically threw herself at you and you didn't want her?" Your face burns as much as a ghost's face can.

  "Are you—"

  "No, I don't like guys. Okay? It wasn't like that."

  Aldo gives you a long, appraising look. "You drank too much."

  "No. I didn't drink too much. I mean, I know it must sound weird, but I didn't feel like it. Not at some stupid party with all this shit going on around us. I was under a lot of pressure. My mind was on a million other things."

  "You couldn't do it," Aldo says. "This happens to all men at some time."

  "Okay, just stop," you say. "It wasn't that. I didn't have problems in that department."

  "Forgive me, Roberto. I'm just trying to understand. It's been a long time since my first time. A little shepherd girl named Lu-ciana in my town. She brought us cheese on Tuesday mornings and had these green eyes." Aldo's smiling, but you can't return the gesture. "I'm sorry," he says. "Go on."

  Closing your eyes, you can picture everything just like it's happening all over again. You can almost hear the soundtrack of deep-bass music, the murmur of kids milling about, the slosh of beer in keg cups.

  "Holly was really hurt. Just pissed off at me in a way she'd never been," you say, remembering. "She started flirting with some of the other guys, trying to make me jealous or some stupid thing. I tried to talk to her, to calm her down. People were wondering what was going on. Everything was just totally screwed up. I thought I'd lost Holly forever. She stayed inside at the party with her friend Marisa while I sat in my car in my driveway, alone. I didn't want to face anyone. I didn't want to face her. God, this is embarrassing. I'm not some kind of wuss or something. I just couldn't deal, you know?"

  Aldo nods. "But you were her date—you were supposed to drive her home..."

  "Yeah. After an hour, I decided the whole thing was stupid, and I needed to talk to her. I got out of the car and walked back into the party, and no one seemed to know where she was. I went downstairs and finally found her in the family room, on the couch with my friend Mark. She was about to pass out, draped over him. His arm was around her waist, and when he saw me he had this guilty look in his eyes. 'I was taking care of her,' he said, but I could tell what he had been planning. It was just like what he'd done to he. She was other girls at parties—he always blamed it on booze the next day."

  "Doesn't sound like a good friend."

  You shake your head. "Nah. He turned out to be a real scumbag. I guess maybe I knew that about him. But I had defended Mark to people who talked shit about him. Seeing him there with his hands on Holly, though—well, that was different."

  Aldo smiles grimly. "So you got Holly into the car."

  "Yeah. I wanted to get her home. I wanted us to talk. I wanted to make everything right. I didn't know if that was even possible, but I had to get her home." You pause, and Aldo reaches out to you, as if he thinks he can put a hand on your shoulder, but of course he can't.

  "Go ahead, son."

  "The road was dark, and there was this thin drizzle of rain hitting the windshield. Not enough to make you use the wipers, but enough that it was getting harder to see."

  "And you lost control."

  Your invisible heart squeezes so hard you can barely breathe. "I started thinking that I'd probably lost everything—me and Holly, my so-called best friend Mark. That I was a huge disappointment to my parents. That I was a lame boyfriend who didn't even want to be with a beautiful girl like Holly. Everything started adding up, started pressing down on me." You swallow around the lump in your throat, barely able to talk. "Aldo, see, I started thinking, one little turn of the wheel and it would all be over. One little turn of the wheel and I wouldn't have to deal with anything anymore."

  Aldo presses his lips together. "That's dangerous thinking, kid."

  "I didn't mea
n to do it," you say, your voice so small, so quiet. Silent tears start to roll down your ghostly cheeks. You know they're there, even if you can hardly feel them. Your vision is clouding, your tongue thick in your mouth.

  "What did you do?" Aldo asks.

  "One little turn of the wheel." Your voice is just above a whisper in your mind. "Just to see if I had it in me. Just to see if I had the guts to do one decisive thing in my whole freaking life, I did it. A fraction. Not even far. But I turned the wheel."

  "What about my Holly?"

  "It was like I didn't even realize she was in the car," you say. "It was like the whole world drilled down into me and the night and the car."

  Aldo closes his eyes, absorbing. He lets out a long exhale. "I can't forgive you for this," he says. "I can't tell you that it doesn't matter. You almost killed Holly."

  "I told you I didn't mean to," you say, your voice shaking. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

  "Meaning and doing are two different things," Alnt fodo says.

  "I don't need your forgiveness," you say. "I don't need you to tell me it's okay."

  "I know. You need Holly to forgive you," Aldo says.

  You close your eyes again. "I can't tell her."

  "Then you're here for good, probably. What, you think this isn't the reason God's making you stick around? You take your life—"

  "I didn't take my life."

  "You take your life," Aldo repeats, pointing at you, "and you nearly kill the sweet girl who loves you, and you don't think you owe anyone an apology?"

  Your throat tightens. Inside, your heart is shattering. You can't say anything because there aren't words for how much you hurt now and for how much you hurt then.

  "I'm glad you told me," Aldo says. "I'm glad to know the truth."

  But you aren't. You start to fade.

  "Wait!" Aldo calls, too late to reach out to you.

  You come out of the nothingness and onto McCallister Road. You stand on the rainy, rocky cliff above the abyss. Maybe it's fitting you're doomed to haunt this place forever. You deserve nothing less than this afterlife drenched in the kind of pain that won't let you go.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "I knew things would work out," said Marissa, cutting the chocolate cupcake from her lunch in half. "I can't believe how right I was about you and Jason. When it comes to love, I'm like a psychic."