We Are the Ghosts

by Vicky Skinner

  “Give me a second,” Wes mutters, and I wait in the hallway as he disappears into his bedroom and comes back wearing a T-shirt. EATON HIGH TRACK AND FIELD. My heart stutters when I see it. That was Luke’s shirt, probably transferred to Wes the way so many clothes were, their entire wardrobes moving back and forth between the two with perfect ease.

  I can hear Wes’s mother in the kitchen, but she doesn’t seem to know I’m here, so she continues what she’s doing, the sound of pans clacking together streaming from the open doorway. She was at the funeral, but I don’t remember seeing her in our house after. Or maybe she was there, but my brain was too fuzzy to notice.

  I know her well enough to know that if she knew I’d just walked into her house on the day of Luke’s funeral, she’d smother me with affection and sympathy. Wes seems to know it, too, and he ushers me quickly toward the dining room, where a door leads down to the basement.

  This, at least, hasn’t changed. The recliners, the huge TV, the shelves and shelves of Cowboys fan memorabilia. The basement is usually Wes’s dad’s haven, but when he’s at work, Wes gets to use it. I settle into one of the recliners. The only light in the room is coming from the TV, where something is paused. A video game, I’m presuming. The curtains are pulled over the window. Music plays from a stereo at a mostly reasonable volume, a soft rock ballad, something I don’t recognize.

  “It’s really good to see you,” Wes says after a moment, his eyes on the TV.

  I consider not saying anything. I pull my feet up onto the chair with me and wrap my arms around them. It would be easier to say nothing, to stay silent like I have at home, to clamp my lips shut and not risk crying or screaming or something else unimaginable. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”

  Wes shrugs. “Just because I was Luke’s best friend doesn’t mean you have any obligation to come around.”

  “I’m still sorry.” This much is true. There were days growing up when Wes felt just as much of a brother to me as Luke did. They’d been friends for as long as I can remember, and when Luke left, I was the one who had to tell Wes that he disappeared in the middle of the night without a word to anyone. Wes was just as confused as I was. And then Wes went to Tate, and I went back to high school, and we forgot we knew each other.

  I watch his hands squeeze and unclench around the controller. “How have things been?”

  I know what he’s asking. How’re Mom and Dad holding up? Is our world still the same as it was a year ago? Have our lives gone completely off-kilter since we got the call from the police? I shrug. “I don’t know.” What I mean is, I don’t know how to say what I need to. I don’t know how to juggle everything I’m feeling and not feeling all at the same time. I don’t know how to feel anything without feeling too much.

  This makes his fingers stop fiddling with the controller. I can feel his eyes on me, but I can’t look at him. I haven’t spoken to anyone about Luke leaving, and I definitely haven’t spoken to anyone about him dying, and right here, in Wes’s basement that smells like Febreze and the subtle lingering scent of barbecue, I can’t tell him that something inside me is on fire, an animal that waits patiently for its moment to strike, a moment when it can rip free from my chest and raze the whole universe, and that to cage that animal, I’ve chosen to be numb instead. Being numb, being hollow, it’s easier than anything else.

  He opens his mouth to say something, but at that moment, the music changes, and a familiar song plays low from the speakers. And like a golden retriever, my ears perk up at the well-known guitar notes. I’m rushing to the stereo before I’m aware my brain has sent my limbs any messages. I can’t find the button to change it to the next song or the power button or anything, so I reach down and rip the cord from the outlet, and the room plummets into silence.

  I stare down at the speaker system as my pulse slowly goes back to normal. I’m breathing heavy, like I just sprinted a mile, and embarrassed heat spreads across my skin. I’ve become so good at not reacting when my mother says something cruel, when my father says nothing at all, when I find one of Luke’s shirts in the laundry or a pack of his gum in my glovebox or a pair of his shoes in my closet, when anyone says Luke’s name or tells me they’re sorry or asks me how I am. I should have been able to hear that song without snapping. I’m slipping.

  Wes is standing now, his arms crossed, looking tentative. “I’m sorry, Ellie.” He says it so carefully, like somehow this is all his fault, and if he says just the wrong thing, I might attack. I don’t have the energy to attack.

  I take a step forward and sit down on the recliner gently. This thing between us is so fragile, and I’m not ready for it to shatter just yet.

  Wes settles back onto his seat. He scrubs his fingers through his curly hair, cut short against his scalp.

  “You didn’t come to the funeral.” I didn’t even realize until just now that it’s bothering me, that his not being there somehow made everything more, more empty, more confusing, more unreal, more alone. If he’d been there, he would have sat with me and maybe I wouldn’t have had to face everyone alone.

  His hands fall open by his sides. “I couldn’t handle it. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t sit there and listen to the songs and see all the flowers—”

  “But you’re his best friend! And I needed you there!” I don’t mean to yell, but it doesn’t matter. I’m terrified that I’ve just broken the spell. I curl my lips in between my teeth, like holding them there will hold in everything that’s threatening to crawl to the surface. I have to force it down, keep it in.

  “I was his best friend,” Wes says quietly. “He didn’t want to be my friend anymore, remember?”

  The room is so quiet that I can hear Wes’s mom talking to someone on the phone. She laughs, and I envy her.

  “Was it bad?”

  I shrug. “Everyone kept saying how tragic it was that he died so young. Like it didn’t matter that he died, just that he died when he was twenty. It was bullshit.” I cross my arms hard over my stomach, holding myself together. “Way too many flowers.”

  Wes rolls his eyes. “The worst.”

  All the things we want to ask each other lie on the floor between us. We have a year’s worth of crap to talk about, but I don’t want to talk about any of it.

  “Can I play?”

  He looks over at me slowly, and I see his mouth twitch, like he wants to smile, but then his eyes widen, his mouth going firm again. Maybe he thinks he’s not allowed to smile. Maybe he’s right.

  He doesn’t say a word as he passes me a controller, but before he can start the game, his mom is calling down the stairs to him. “Wes! Baby, dinner is ready! Come help your girlfriend set the table! I taught you better than this!”

  I try not to seem shocked as I look over at Wes, but I can tell he didn’t mean for me to hear about this from the way he can’t meet my eye, from the blush I can see in his cheeks when he goes to turn on the light and turn off the TV.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Duty calls.”

  “Right. Yeah. That’s fine.”

  “Did you want—”

  “I should probably—”

  We both stop talking, but as we move up the stairs to the dining room, Wes asks, “Do you want to stay for dinner? I’m sure there’s enough for everyone.”

  I wave him off, but he doesn’t see me with his back turned toward me as we emerge into the dining room, and I don’t have a chance to answer before the door shuts behind us, and I’m met by Wes’s mother. And his girlfriend.

  Gwen.

  “Ellie!” Wes’s mom squeaks. “I had no clue you were here!”

  She isn’t the only one. With an empty plate in each hand, bent slightly over the table, Gwen stops, her eyes as wide as the dinner plates she’s holding. “Ellie,” she says, her quiet voice in perfect contrast to Wes’s mother’s.

  All the nostalgia I had for this place just minutes ago vanishes, and I immediately feel out of place, like I just stepped into an episode of The Twilight Zone. I try t
o somehow reconcile how life has been for the last year for me with whatever I just stepped into here in Wes’s kitchen. Wes’s mom called Gwen Wes’s girlfriend.

  “I have to get home,” I lie.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Wes says. He doesn’t even seem like the same person he was a minute ago, when we were in the basement. Now, he’s a person who’s dating Luke’s ex-girlfriend and I feel like I don’t know that person. Everyone is staring at me, and I’m starting to sweat.

  “It’s okay,” I say, moving for the door before anyone else can try to persuade me to stay.

  I feel like I don’t recognize anything or anyone anymore, now that the world looks so different than it did a year ago. Just when I thought I knew what my new reality looked like, everything has changed, and I’ve lost track of where I fit in.

  * * *

  It turns out that getting back up the trellis in pantyhose is way harder than getting down it in the first place. It also turns out I was wrong about my parents not knowing I was gone, and when I tumble into my bedroom through my window, my mother is already standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

  “Where were you?” she asks. Her voice isn’t angry, but there’s enough anger written across her face to make up for it.

  I stop in front of her, trying to concoct a lie in my head. I wasn’t prepared for this, assuming she would just be asleep or completely clueless when I got here, and now that she’s standing in front of me, anything I might want to say gets caught in my throat. I can’t tell her the truth. My mother hasn’t seen Wes in a year, either. I still remember the last time he came over, three days before Luke disappeared. Mom made lasagna, she and Luke argued about what he was going to major in at Tate, and then Wes and Luke sat in the living room, playing Call of Duty until my mother stumbled in and told Wes it was time to go home. I remember Luke storming out of the room before Wes was even gone. My mother never kicked Wes out of the house.

  So, I can’t tell her I was with Wes, even if I wanted to. And I don’t. I can’t even describe it, but I feel like I need to keep it a secret, especially since I’m pretty sure that was the end of it. Wes and Gwen have moved on without me, and it was stupid of me to think they wouldn’t. But knowing it, having the evidence right in front of me in that dining room, feels like being untethered from anything that might have been left of my old life.

  “Just went for a drive.” I regret saying it as soon as it comes out of my mouth, but I regret it more when I see the way my mother’s eyes go wide, the way her mouth takes on a horrified shape.

  Just went for a drive. Luke used to say that all the time. He told me once that he would sometimes turn his music up loud and circle the entire town of Eaton twice. He said other times he would drive to Eaton High, park in the lot by the softball field, and listen to an entire Nova album with his eyes closed and his air conditioner running. Other times he would be gone for hours and never tell me where he went. He would come home quiet and pensive.

  I can’t blame my mother for looking at me like I just slapped her. Because it isn’t my thing—Just went for a drive—it’s his. Was his.

  “I’m tired,” I say, hoping that will make her leave. It doesn’t. I can’t take her standing in the doorway anymore. I need a moment to breathe, to just be.

  “There’s dinner,” she says instead, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant. “Rita Matthews left us a casserole. I didn’t really expect to see her today. Don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with the woman—”

  “I’m not hungry.” She holds my eyes for a long moment, and I know she’s surprised. I never talk back to my mother. I never argue with her authority. But I just want to do what I want just once. “Ellie, I haven’t seen you eat in days.”

  “I said I’m not hungry.” I say it loud over her, since she didn’t seem to get the hint the first time. I just want her to leave me alone. I want her to stop trying to play attentive mother, like she needs to take care of me. I don’t need her to take care of me.

  I’m ready for the argument. My mother’s favorite thing to do is argue. She’ll pick a fight with anyone standing too close, and picking fights with Luke used to be her favorite pastime.

  For a second, I remember the argument they had last year, the one they don’t know I heard, the one I still don’t really understand.

  My mother doesn’t argue. Maybe she’s cutting me some slack because of the funeral, maybe she’s just too tired to be her normal, angry self. I don’t care what the reason is. I’m just grateful for it when she finally turns and goes back downstairs, leaving me in peace.

  I shut the door and immediately slip out of my clothes, ready to be rid of them. Instead of putting the dress in my hamper to be washed, I toss it into a bag in the back of my closet, full of clothes I intend to donate. I’m never wearing the thing again.

  I take a shower because I still feel like I smell like gardenias and polyester, and while I sit on my bed, brushing my hair, I see it.

  Among the books and miscellaneous junk on my desk is an envelope. I don’t know if it was there before I went to see Wes, but I know it wasn’t there this morning. At least, I don’t think it was. I try to remember the last time I paid attention to anything in my room other than my bed. I pick it up and look at the return address, and my heart leaps into my throat.

  There’s no name, just an address. A Michigan address. It isn’t in Ann Arbor. It’s in a town called Dexter.

  My hands tremble as I rip open the envelope and pull out the contents. I stare at the folded map in my hand, seeing just fragments of highways and state lines and blue bodies of water before I unfold it.

  I recognize it immediately, and it’s my first instinct to drop it, my heart beating loud in my ears. Because it’s like having Luke’s ghost in the room with me. I press my hands to my stomach and look down at it, lying sprawled open on my carpet. I can’t really be looking at this map. That map can’t really be on my floor. That map has been lost for ages.

  “These are all the places we have to visit before we die,” Luke said when he brought the map home. It was the summer before my freshman year of high school, before his junior year, and he spread the map across the dining room table like we were about to discuss war strategy. “If you want to add anything to it, just put Xs over the places, but I’ve already got most of the big stuff. Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, Times Square…”

  For months, we took turns researching new places to add to the map, and eventually we brought Wes into it. We picked big cities, ghost towns, weird attractions along the side of the highway. It was a whole summer of daydreaming about adventures in the mountains, relaxing on the beach, soaking up history and culture and sunshine.

  I slowly reach down and pick it back up. All the Xs, in different color marker, his and mine and Wes’s, are so plentiful, I almost can’t see the city names beneath them. Notes in the margins about gas mileage and hotels and entrance fees. It’s been folded and refolded and laid out flat so many times that the original creases are gone. It was just a stupid thing he got excited about, the way he got excited about things and then didn’t usually follow through on them. The map was our world for a few months and then it was forgotten about, and that was that.

  That was three years ago. Three years ago, and here it is, in my hands, and I feel dizzy with confusion and disbelief and maybe even a little fear. Where the hell did it come from?

  I turn the envelope over again, looking at the address it came from. My name is written as Ellie Johnston. Not from some stranger, then. A stranger wouldn’t know I go by Ellie instead of Eloise. Someone who knows me personally?

  But that can’t be possible because other than Luke, I have never known anyone who lived in Michigan, and the idea that someone in Michigan knows my name and my address is enough to make me glance over my shoulder, like there might be someone behind me, watching me.

  I look back at the map, at the places that are circled. All this time, we’ve never really been sure where Luke went when he disappea
red. My mother called the cops, but very specific things were missing from his room: his computer, his backpack, his phone charger. And his car. That was gone, too. The police told my mother there was nothing they could do because Luke was eighteen, and it seemed pretty obvious that he just took off, not that anything bad happened.

  I run my finger over the line that connects city to city, from Eaton to New Orleans to St. Louis to Indianapolis to Chicago. He had to have followed these roads, stopped at all of these places. In my hands I have evidence of where Luke spent the last year of his life, and the knowledge sends a shock through my bloodstream. How many hours did I spend wondering where he went, lying in bed, wishing he would just come back? I kept hoping he’d just be gone a few days, that he had gone off to Oklahoma for some kind of wilderness hike or something.

  But one day turned into one weekend, which turned into a month, and I guess a part of me was still waiting for him to come home when my parents told me about the accident. I cough around the solid thing that’s settled in the base of my throat.

  If I’m right and Luke used this map when he left, then who sent it to me? And why? Why would I need to know now, after Luke is gone, where he was this whole time?

  The only answer this map seems to give me is this: Ann Arbor was never in the plan. Nevertheless, if that’s where this map came from, that’s where I have to go. Because suddenly, after almost a year of feeling lifeless, like a ghost walking through the halls at school and sitting at the dinner table and attempting to get on with my life, I buzz with urgency. What if, somewhere in Michigan, there’s a person with answers? What if there’s a person who can tell me why Luke left and where he’s been and who he’s been with?