We Are the Ghosts

by Vicky Skinner

  And why he never called.

  Whoever it is, I have to find them.

  TWO

  I heard someone say once that if you suck enough water into your lungs, you’ll die happy. If you get to the point of death, drowning somehow becomes euphoric. It’s something that I’ve thought about a lot since I heard about Luke. I tried to imagine drowning turning quickly from terrifying to blissful. It just doesn’t compute.

  This is what I think about as I step into J-Mart the day after Luke’s funeral. I don’t imagine drowning as something exquisite. I imagine it like this, walking into a grocery store in a small town for the first time since you found out your brother died and having all eyes on you.

  I know they’re not all really looking. I know it just feels like they’re all looking. But that feeling is so intense that I feel like I can’t breathe. I live in a college town with a population of twenty thousand, in theory, but Tate students make up so much of that. The rest of us, the permanent ones, we all know each other, see each other around the blurry faces of four-year Tate University residents who will pick up and leave when their time here is done. And I see so many of them now, the ones who live here every day of the year. Almost every single person I pass is someone who was at Luke’s funeral or at my house afterward, and I feel like I can’t hide from them like I used to. My business is on display for everyone, whether they’re looking or not. I’m careful not to make eye contact, in case anyone is planning on sending me any sympathetic looks. I came here for toilet paper and milk, so I just need to get those things and go back home. Quickly.

  I grab the first package of toilet paper my fingers find and am on my way to the cold-food aisle when I walk right into someone. I stumble back and two hands reach out to steady me.

  “Whoa. Might help if you look up from the ground every once in a while.”

  At first, I think it’s an insult, and I’m ready to argue with the person whose hands are still clutching my shoulders. But when I look up and see the smile aimed at me, all the fight dies.

  Cade.

  His hands fall away from me, and he tucks them into the pockets of his jeans. I can see the second he remembers that the last time we saw each other was at a funeral. Whatever easy joy there was on his face a moment ago is quickly replaced with a frown. Death ruins everything.

  “Hey, Ellie.”

  I blush furiously, the way I have around Cade since freshman year, when he started to buzz his hair short and his jaw took on a very irresistibly square quality.

  “Hey,” I say, still looking at the ground, despite his teasing suggestion that I do the opposite.

  I watch his feet shuffle around me, and I think maybe he’s trying to escape the awkwardness of this encounter, but when I look up, I realize he’s just moving out of the way of an older lady trying to get down the aisle. She glances over her shoulder at me as she reaches for a package of toilet paper, and I realize it’s Mrs. Mori, my world history teacher.

  She smiles at me, but I look back at Cade. A huge mistake. I almost forgot how handsome he is, and it’s almost startling to have the full force of his attention on me again.

  “Doing okay?” he asks, so gently that I’m not as frustrated with him asking me the question as I have been with anyone who’s asked me in the last week. Because of course I’m not okay.

  But there’s something in his eyes that makes me think maybe he’s not talking about Luke. Or, not Luke specifically, but just life in general.

  It makes me want to tell him the truth: that I’m numb. That I’m empty. That I’m directionless. That I feel like the map in my bag may be the only way back to my sanity.

  He watches me, and I almost say it. Cade has always been so easy to talk to.

  But that was before. Before we went on that date. Before Luke left. Before I stopped answering Cade’s calls and stopped flirting with him and stopped saying hi in the halls.

  “I’m fine,” I finally say.

  “Look, if you need to talk—”

  “Thanks,” I say quickly. “I have to go. I’ll see you around.”

  “Yeah. I guess I’ll see you around.” My stomach twists when hurt flashes across his face. I’ve seen that hurt expression before, and seeing it again now makes me want to get away faster. I rush to the cold section, grab a gallon of milk, and head back for the front of the store, carefully checking around each corner to ensure I don’t run into Cade again.

  * * *

  It’s my first high school lunch period, and my stomach is in knots. I know Luke isn’t going to want to sit with me. Wes, either. They’re junior boys, on the track team, and I know there’s no way they’re going to let me crash their lunch table when I’m just a freshman. There’s some kind of high school law against that, I’m pretty sure.

  I come out of the line with my head down, but before I’ve taken more than a step, there’s a commotion, and when I look up, I realize that the entire track team is standing up on their chairs. I recognize most of them from meets and parties that Luke snuck me into.

  Someone behind me shouts something I don’t understand and then every member of the track team is saluting. I stand where I am, all of them in front of me, towering over me, while everyone else in the cafeteria laughs or takes pictures or catcalls.

  And then Luke appears at my side. “Everyone, come say hi to my baby sister, Ellie! Welcome her to Eaton High School!”

  The track boys immediately dismount their cafeteria stools, and next thing I know, someone whose name I can’t even remember is carrying my tray of square-cut pizza and chocolate milk to my spot at their table, and they’re all telling me hi and patting me on the back, and I feel like a celebrity or something.

  Once I’ve been herded toward my seat, Luke drops down in the seat beside me and throws his arm around my shoulder. “Welcome to high school.”

  * * *

  The bookstore/antique shop where I work is alive and full of people when I get there. It’s a month until school starts, which means that half the people here are buying their books for school already and the other half are looking for something to do other than sneak into movies at the Cinemark.

  When Laurie comes around the corner, pushing a cart piled high with books, her eyes go wide. “Ellie. What are you doing here?”

  “It’s Monday. I always work on Mondays.” Especially since school starts in a month, and then my hours will be cut in half. I need these hours because my mother says I’ll be responsible for all of my own expenses when I go to Tate, so I’m saving every penny. And more than that, without this job, I would be at home, with her and Dad, and I would lose my mind. This morning, I pressed my hands to my ears while Mom yelled at Dad for calling into work again. She’s been on him all week about vegging on the couch. I’m pretty sure he’s been sleeping there, too.

  Laurie grips the handle on the cart and bites her lip. Laurie, my boss and the owner of the shop, is pushing fifty. She wears skintight jeans and enough jewelry that I’m surprised it doesn’t knock her off balance, but somehow, right now, she looks like a little kid, wanting to speak but not sure if she should. Two girls I go to Eaton High with walk by us, and Laurie watches them go before leaning across the cart to speak to me quietly. “Ellie, if you need more time, it’s okay, I promise. I can handle back-to-school rush on my own.”

  My heart rate picks up. If she asks me to go home, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t be there anymore, with my mother who’s home most of the day and my father who sits glassy-eyed on the couch. It’s like a prison. “It’s either this or be at home with my parents.”

  Laurie makes a weird shape with her mouth and nods. “Yeah, I guess you got me there.”

  I sigh, relieved, and stash my stuff behind the counter. Laurie pushes the cart she has with her in my direction. “Well, here, you can stock the Required Reading display.”

  The Required Reading display sits at the front of the shop, right by the front window, and I push the cart over to it and start stocking copies of The Gr
apes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby while Laurie rings up customers at the register.

  Outside the window, I can see Main Street, running right in front of the strip mall, and at the end of the parking lot, the garage where Cade works. I can see him in there now, through the glass doors. He’s talking to a customer, holding a large chunk of metal in his hand that I can’t identify from this far away. Not that I would know what it was if I were able to see it better. I don’t know anything about cars. My stomach does that uncomfortable fluttering thing it does every time Cade is anywhere near me.

  I’ve caught glimpses of him over at that shop so many times that it’s almost become part of my work routine. Sometimes, I’ll see him on his lunch break, leaned against the side of the building, his shoulders against the brick and his hips pitched forward, talking to one of the other guys that works there while he drinks from a coffee cup or munches on a bag of chips.

  Cade hands the object to the customer, and I can only imagine that the part has left grease on his skin. Cade always has darkly stained fingers. He started working at the garage when he was fourteen, as young as he was allowed by law. He’s always been so fascinated with the mechanics of things.

  “Mostly just oil changes,” he said to me once when I asked him what he did there when he was younger.

  “You want to date a grease monkey?” Luke said, only weeks before that night I spent with Cade at the drive-in. I smacked him on the arm, and he swatted me away. “I don’t know, Ellie. The kid is weird. Spends more time at that garage than he does with people.”

  We were driving home from school after Luke’s track practice, passing by the garage in question, and I saw Cade inside, underneath a pickup truck on lifts.

  “He works with people,” I said when we stopped at the next traffic light, and Luke rolled his eyes.

  “Coworkers don’t count.”

  When I didn’t answer, Luke glanced over at me. He always seemed to know exactly what I was thinking, and he sighed loudly. “If you think he’s your knight in slightly greasy armor, then you have my blessing, Ellie.”

  Looking at Cade now, I regret all of it. I should have just let it be. Maybe then he wouldn’t look so hurt every time I can’t speak to him. He smiles, just a flash across his face, and then nods at something behind the guy he’s talking to. The guy walks away, and Cade stands there for a beat longer, his eyes wandering until I swear he’s looking straight into the bookstore’s window, right at me.

  * * *

  On my break, I sit in the back office with the map spread out on the desk in front of me. My nerves seem to vibrate around inside me, like they’re trying to get out, like they alone can propel me forward, out of Eaton and toward someplace I’ve never been before. I have my fingers pressed to my mouth, wondering if this is what it would have been like to see Luke in an open coffin. I bite down on the tips of my fingers.

  I’ve only figured out half the plan, how I’ll leave on Friday, drive up to Michigan, see who sent me the map, and then drive right back. It’ll take a day to get there and a day to get back, if the only stop I make is in Michigan. I think that’s a short enough trip that my mother will only be mostly pissed off. She’ll panic, but by the time she tries to do anything too rash, I’ll be home and grounded forever, and she won’t have to worry again. It’s not like I’m ever leaving Eaton after this trip.

  I just want to know who sent the map. I just want to see where Luke was when it happened. I calculated the miles between Eaton and Dexter. Over 1,200 miles. I can’t even imagine Luke 1,200 miles away. It makes my throat burn.

  I look down at the map, at all the things we added, all the lines and the stars and the notes, but our handwriting is faded slightly. It’s Luke’s red ink that’s the easiest to see. He traced over the highways in red, like he might lose them if he didn’t make them stand out.

  New Orleans, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Chicago, New York, D.C. Miami. Those cities are connected in a red circle on one side of the map. Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle. A bigger circle, on the other side. It doesn’t make much sense, and I can’t even figure out where Ann Arbor would have fit in, much less the small town of Dexter, which I found out is a miniscule suburb outside of Ann Arbor.

  “What’s that?”

  I jump and spin around in my seat to find Wes in the doorway, looking down at the map in front of me. I scramble to fold it up, but I suck at it, and I end up with a crumpled mess in my shaking hands. “It’s nothing. You shouldn’t even be back here. Employees only.”

  Wes scowls at me. “Laurie said I could. Is that…?”

  I stop struggling with the map when Wes reaches for it, and I feel a weird sense of possessiveness when he takes it. It feels like mine. Whoever had it sent it to me, not Wes. But I know he has as much a right to it as I do. That note scribbled over Las Vegas that reads nude girls is one of Wes’s classy contributions. I watch him examine it, like it’s brand-new, like his handwriting isn’t all over the margins. Like he didn’t put an X over the salt flats in Nevada because his dad used to talk about taking his family there all the time, even though they never got around to it.

  “God, where did you find this thing?” he asks, unfolding it. His green eyes run over the whole thing, and I wonder if he’s thinking of the hours we spent with Luke, conspiring like criminals over a bank heist. Is he thinking about the way Luke always locked the map away so lovingly at the end of each meeting, like it was an antique, worth a fortune? That’s all I’ve been thinking about since I opened that envelope, every memory of Luke touching that thing crossing my mind. None of it seems real anymore.

  “This is our future,” Luke said when he brought it home. “We will not be lifelong Eatonites. I don’t care what it takes.”

  All this time, I assumed he forgot about it, the same way I did, dismissed it as a joke or a childhood pipe dream.

  But it wasn’t just a joke to him.

  “Someone sent it to me.” I just spit it out, and I’m not even sure why. I want this to be a secret, something I can hold inside myself, that I can protect. But if anyone deserves to know, it’s Wes.

  Wes’s dark eyebrows curve in, and one corner of the map droops in his hand. “What do you mean, someone sent it to you?”

  I slouch back in Laurie’s office chair. I’ve only had this secret for two days, but I feel a weight lift off me as soon as I tell Wes. Some of the pressure in my chest loosens, not yet ready to explode. “Someone sent it to me from a Michigan address. Just the map. Nothing else. No name, no letter.” I realize too late that my voice is shaking. I take a deep breath and say the part I’m terrified to utter aloud. “I’m going to go to Michigan to find out who it was.”

  At this, Wes almost drops the map. “You’re going to Michigan?”

  “Yes.” Doubt starts to creep into my chest when Wes doesn’t say anything. His eyebrows are so high, they almost reach the line of his almost-black hair.

  “Do you think this is the route he took when he left?” He folds the map and hands it back to me, but I already know I can’t take it back. It’s ours now, not just mine.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  When I don’t take the map, Wes smacks it against his open palm. “I want to come with you.”

  Doubt is replaced by something else. Dread, maybe. Regret. I never meant for anyone to go with me. This is my trip. I have to go alone. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

  He’s already shaking his head. “You shouldn’t go alone. We’ll go, all three of us. A trip around America.”

  Whoa. Things are getting way out of hand here. “America? No. I’m just going to Michigan. And who is the three of us? You, me, and—”

  “Gwen.”

  I snatch the map from him. “Absolutely not. Luke’s ex? No way.”

  Wes snatches the map back, and I grit my teeth. I never should have said anything. I want to go alone, to just be away from everyone’s eyes and grief and sympathy for a few days. This is not how t
his is supposed to go.

  “Look,” Wes says, holding the map out of my reach as I get up from my chair to get it back. “I came here to apologize that you found out about us that way. I should have told you. It’s just, we haven’t talked in a while, and I didn’t know how to … you know…”

  I stop grabbing for the map. I’m definitely not going to tell him that it bothered me to find out. I don’t want him to know that the first thought I had was a selfish one: that they left me behind, too. How could I demand they be unhappy just for my sake? “Why would I care if you’re dating Gwen?”

  He shrugs. “She’s Luke’s ex.” His arm sags, and I rip the map out of his hand while he’s distracted. “I wasn’t sure if you’d care, but I mean, it’s not like they were together or anything. When he died, I mean.”

  I have to block out what he’s saying. I can’t hear him say words like died. I hold the map to my chest, wishing this conversation could just be over. “Wes, you and Gwen can date whoever you want. I don’t care. But she’s not coming on the trip.”

  Wes crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m not going without her, and you’re not going without me. Come on, Ellie. This was our trip. Let’s take it. It’ll be like honoring him.”

  I get a strange twisting sensation in my stomach. Honor Luke? What does that even mean? I picture the enlarged photo at the front of the church at his funeral. How can anyone really honor Luke? Did anyone even really know him? How many people know he ran away? How many people know how much we fell apart afterward?

  It was a mistake to tell Wes. I know him well enough to know that he’s not going to let this lie, and knowing that makes my skin crawl, like I’m trapped. I know Wes is trying to do what he thinks is right, but I don’t really care what he thinks is right. I don’t think I really care if Gwen feels left out or if Wes is lonely without her.