We Are the Ghosts

by Vicky Skinner

  I shove clothes into a duffel bag as fast I can. My mother is at a meeting at Tate, my father at work, and I don’t know how long I have before one of them comes home.

  And I intend to be gone by that point.

  * * *

  A knock at my window wakes me up with a pounding heart and an uncertainty that it wasn’t just a dream. I reach out, stretching as far as I can manage and push my curtains aside to see Luke hanging from the trellis.

  I groan and get up to push open the window. Luke stumbles in and crashes onto my bed, laughing.

  “Why didn’t you go to your own room?” I ask when I glace at my clock and it tells me it’s almost four in the morning. Tomorrow is the first day of junior year for Luke, and he’s out partying.

  “Tried,” Luke sighs. “Mom locked it. Must have checked on me and found me gone.”

  I climb onto the bed with him. He smells like sweat and heat, like he’s been out in the sun, which is impossible. Then I lean forward and turn on my lamp. In its light, I spot the difference. “Did you get a tan?” I ask incredulously.

  Luke smiles, but his eyes are closed, his fingers laced across his chest. “Did you know Marcie Clements has a tanning bed?”

  “How would I know that?”

  He chuckles. “Well, I just told you.”

  I roll my eyes and turn off the lamp. He’s obviously not going anywhere. I crawl under the covers, shoving him aside. He’s still on top of the blanket, and that’s probably for the best. He still smells like tanning lotion.

  “I thought you didn’t like Marcie Clements,” I say into the dark.

  Luke shrugs. “I like what she does for me.” In the dark, I can hear the suggestion in his voice.

  “Oh, gross. Shut up.”

  Luke laughs. “Calm down. I don’t mean that. We just make out a lot.”

  That’s still a little too much for me, but I don’t say so. Luke turns. I can see in the dark that he has his back to me now. I shift, too, pressing against him, my face buried between his shoulder blades.

  * * *

  I hear a car pull into the driveway, and then someone honks.

  Go time.

  I pick up the duffel bag I packed and shut my bedroom door behind me, feeling something akin to joy and satisfaction that at some point, maybe tonight, maybe not until tomorrow, my mother will open this door and she’ll find my room empty. She’s built up this sense of security, thinking I won’t take any risks like Luke did, but if Luke can disappear, so can I. The idea makes me stop, my shoes halting on the carpet, my confidence dimming. Can I really do this? Can I really leave like Luke did?

  I’ve got one foot on the stairs when I glance back and see Luke’s bedroom door. It’s cracked, like someone has been in there recently, and I pause, one hand on the banister. I know Wes and Gwen are downstairs, waiting for me, but without hesitating, I turn around and slip into Luke’s room. My breath catches in my throat once I’m in there.

  It’s ridiculous really that after a year of Luke’s absence, his room still smells like him, like the cologne he wore and the way his skin smelled when he woke up in the morning. My eyes travel around the room, taking in trophies, posters, shelves piled high with CDs and vinyl.

  For some unexplainable, unquenchable reason, everything in here feels like it’s not real, like I’ve walked onto a stage, where all the props of Luke’s life are littered around like evidence. It feels like the real stuff, the stuff that Luke touched and left his fingerprints on, should have vanished overnight. How can it still exist in this world when he doesn’t?

  I step across the room and place a hand on the bed. It’s cold. The AC vent blows directly on the bed, a fact that Luke was always fine with. He loved it when the house was cold at night. He loved sleeping under layers of blankets. I pull back the blankets and settle onto the sheets. I burrow my face into them. They smell like dust and dryer sheets. My chest constricts, and I clamp my lips together to hold in a sob, press my face against the cotton harder until I have to gasp for breath.

  For just a second, I close my eyes and pretend like he’s still here. I pretend that any second now, he’ll come into the room and tell me to get my smelly feet off his sheets. Or he’ll let me lie here while he turns on a Nova CD and surfs around on the internet. Or he’ll tell me to scoot over and climb in beside me to read a book or take a nap.

  Why did he do this to me? Why did he throw away everything we went through? Was living out his adventure more important than the life he built here? I fist my hands in the blanket and beg, silently, for it all to not be real. I beg for our life back.

  I open my eyes and sit up quickly. There’s no going back. Luke did what he did, and now he’s gone, and I have somewhere to be.

  I step over to his desk. There’s an empty space on top where his computer used to sit. When he left, he deleted all of his social media accounts, and even though, in those first few weeks, I tried to get in touch with him via his email account, I never got anything in return.

  Beside the empty spot is a stack of CDs. None of them are Nova because there’s no way Luke would leave those behind, but I recognize some others, bands that we’ve listened to together over the years and some mixes that Luke put together for road trips and study sessions. I pick one off the top and pop open the case. And something falls out.

  It’s a sticky note, no longer sticky. I recognize my own handwriting immediately.

  #1, 3, 7, and 15 are the best. Please mix accordingly.

  I stare down at the note. Luke used to beg me to tell him which songs were my favorites when he lent me CDs. It was imperative for him to know. “For future musical experiences,” he would say. I bend down and pick up the sticky note and stuff it back in the case, a little shaken that he kept it. It’s an old CD, and I remember him lending it to me years ago when he first bought it.

  My hands start to tremble, and I put the CD down before I drop it. It’s like this room is sitting here, untouched, just waiting for him to come back to it. I turn to leave, slamming the door behind me, like it can hold in all the monsters if I close it tight enough.

  In my front driveway, Gwen and Wes are moving things around in the trunk, and it feels surreal, just looking at them, my dead brother’s ex-girlfriend and his ex–best friend. I feel like I stepped into a dream, the world clear and bright and strange. My legs are numb as I walk around the back of the car and join them. I can’t believe we’re really doing this.

  They both look at me and straighten away from their task, and even though I just saw Gwen a few days ago, I feel like I’m seeing her for the first time in years.

  When we met two years ago, Gwen was already so thin and slight. But now, all that’s left of her is the points of her bones, her clavicles and her elbows, sticking out awkwardly beneath her brown skin, her clothes swallowing her. She looks so sallow, I almost can’t even see the Gwen I used to know anymore.

  Gwen and Luke dated for a year, the year before he left. Two years ago, she walked into my life with her head held high, always the life of the party, always prepared for an adventure. She was fearless. That’s why Luke loved her. What I could never figure out was why he didn’t love her enough to stay.

  “Hi, Ellie,” she says, and I can almost see her hesitation as she decides whether it’s more polite to smile or not smile.

  “Hey, Gwen.” I might not have seen Wes over the last year, but I haven’t gone out of my way not to see him. Gwen, on the other hand … well, it’s different with your sibling’s ex. I took her off all of my social media, ducked for cover if I saw her at J-Mart, pretty much did my best to avoid her at all costs, and now I feel guilty for it. I don’t even know how to begin to talk to her after a year of radio silence.

  “Thanks for letting me come with you guys,” she says, putting her bag in the trunk and reaching out to take mine from my hands. “A road trip out of Eaton sounds…” She trails off and then turns from me to stuff my bag in the trunk. “Perfect,” she finishes, coming back to face me. This time,
she does smile at me, and I know immediately that something is off, like hearing a siren in the distance.

  I catch Wes’s eye, and I know without him telling me, just from the way his eyes widen and his mouth stretches into a stressed line, that he hasn’t told her about the map. He hasn’t told her that this trip is about Luke or the person in Michigan who might have known him. And now he’s asking me not to tell her, too.

  I shoot him a glare and wait for Gwen to go around to the front seat before I say, “What the hell? You didn’t tell her?”

  He glances around the open trunk at her, sends her a little wave in the side mirror before turning back to me. “No, okay? I didn’t tell her. I want her to come with us, and I wasn’t sure she would if she knew. She’s … upset, okay? She needs this as much as we do.”

  No, I want to say, she needs something completely different. Because this isn’t a vacation to me, and if that’s what she needs, then our needs are not the same. “This isn’t some fun road trip,” I say, trying to keep my voice down. “This is important.” I can’t even say for sure that this is true. Sure, it’s important to me. But I don’t know what we’re going to find in Michigan. Was Luke important to whoever sent this map? Is it really important for me to know who sent the map in the first place?

  Wes grasps my shoulders, surprising me. “I know. And that’s why I want her to come. I’ll figure out a way to tell her.”

  I sigh, unease twisting inside me. Secrets are never a good idea, and this seems likes a particularly bad one, but he’s the one who wanted to bring Gwen, so he’ll have to be the one to figure out how to tell her. “Okay.”

  The side of his mouth quirks up, and he tips my chin with his finger. “She wants to spend time with you. I think it’ll be good for all of us.”

  “Right.” Anxiety creeps along my back. In the trunk, I can see the map sticking out of the pocket of my bag, and I reach out and shove it back in, zipping the compartment so that it won’t slip out again. I take the bag back out of the trunk. It should sit in the back seat with me, where I can keep an eye on it.

  “I got snacks for the road,” Wes says, “and all of our stops plugged into my GPS. I can pay for hotels and shit, and we can figure out financials as soon as we get back.”

  I nod, trying to hold up my end of the conversation, but I’m stuck on the words as soon as we get back. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I haven’t thought about what will happen when we pull right back into Eaton and the world goes back to exactly how it is right now. I shove the thought away.

  He reaches out to close the trunk just as someone calls out, “Wait!”

  We spin around, and I realize that I know the figure that’s jogging toward us from the end of the street. I know his slanted shoulders, his long legs, his short hair, and watching him now, it’s like I’m dreaming.

  “Wait up!” Cade says, and it’s now that I realize he has a bag slung over his shoulder. Oh my God. What the hell is he doing? He stops in front of me, a little out of breath, and then he smiles wide. “Hey,” he says and then sends Wes a meager wave. Behind me, I hear the car door open, and then Gwen comes to stand beside me.

  “What are you doing here?” Wes asks, and I’m relieved because I want to ask, but I can’t make my mouth move. But the way he asks it, of course, is different than the way I would have. Because he asks it as if he’s more interested in why Cade, himself, is here. If I was the one to ask, I would be more interested in why Cade is here, of all places, at this time.

  Cade takes a deep breath, and then he settles his eyes on me, as if I was the one to ask the question after all. And in one long huff, he says, “I want to come with you.”

  Of all the millions of things Cade could have said in this moment, this particular combination of words is not something I ever could have prepared myself for.

  “What?” Wes and I say at the same time.

  Cade holds up his hands, already prepared for us to reject him. “I know this has nothing to do with me.” At this, Wes glances over at Gwen, probably afraid that the whole thing is about to come crashing down before we’ve even gotten in the car. “But I need to get out of here. Out of Eaton. Just for a little while. And I can offer you a place to sleep in Indianapolis.”

  I scowl at him. I feel a little like someone is asking me a very complex math question. “Indianapolis?”

  Cade nods. “My family lives there.” He runs his fingers along his scalp. “I just, I really need to be away from here.” Something in his voice breaks, and I have to hide my surprise.

  “Did something happen?” I’ve never seen Cade like this, desperate and something else, something urgent. Despite my dedication to trying not to care about Cade, worry blooms in my chest.

  Cade shakes his head, forcing a smile, but I can tell it’s a lie. “No. I’ve just, uh, you know, other than Indianapolis, I’ve never been outside of Texas.”

  “Never?” I’m surprised when Gwen jumps into the conversation, but her eyes are wide, and Cade nods in her direction.

  “Never.” His eyes come back to me, and I’m surprised to see desperation there. I feel like any second now, he’s going to drop to his knees and beg me.

  “Me neither,” Gwen says, and I see their eyes connect, and I’m appalled at the jealousy that stings at me at the knowledge that they have something in common. It’s not jealousy because Gwen is so much prettier than me or because I think Cade might like her. But jealousy that it’s so easy for them to find a connection, that I haven’t had anything to share with Cade in so long.

  “It’s a long trip,” I tell him, not sure who I’m trying to convince, him or myself.

  He’s already nodding. “I know.” His eyes meet mine, and he looks embarrassed, his cheeks going a little pink. “You wrote all the dates down on that map. That’s how I knew you guys were leaving today. I came here hoping I had the right place.”

  “What map?” Gwen asks.

  “The map we used to plan out the trip,” Wes says easily, and I guess he’s not actually lying. I don’t have a second to dwell on this before Wes steps up close to Cade, his hand already out, like he’s going to shove Cade back. I immediately become defensive, reaching out to latch onto Wes’s arm.

  “Wes, what are you doing?”

  Wes glances at me and then narrows his eyes at Cade. “Look, man. We don’t even know you.”

  I open my mouth to tell Wes that I, in fact, do know Cade and that since it’s my trip, I should be the one to decide, but before I even have a chance, Cade has spoken up for himself.

  “Sure you do. We had Spanish together, two years ago.” It’s amusing to me that this is the detail Cade chooses to point out, not the times he came to my house to work on homework with me while Wes was there, not the times we all ate lunch together. Just that one class, like it matters.

  Wes makes a noncommittal noise beneath his breath. “That doesn’t mean I know you. I’m not just going to let some stranger get in my car and ride with us across the country, okay? This isn’t your business.”

  “It’s not your decision,” I hiss at him, but Gwen has already stepped forward, and I see some of the tension melt from Wes’s shoulders immediately.

  “I know you,” Gwen says, and Cade looks at her. “We had world history together. You always screwed up the grading curve.” Cade’s eyes are a little wide, but Gwen smiles at him, and we all fall silent. Again, that tiny sting of jealousy that they’re discovering each other this way. I shove it down. Ridiculous.

  I know there’s no way Wes will argue with Gwen if she wants Cade to come. With me, sure, but with Gwen? He’s looking at her like she just brought the sun out after a rainstorm.

  Gwen considers Cade, her brown eyes sweeping over every inch of him like she can judge his sincerity by the way he stands, the way one of his hands grips the strap of his backpack, the way his eyes are sweeping over her in return.

  “I’d like to come,” he says to her instead of us. “I want to be part of this.” His eyes go to his sho
es, and I see the way he nervously picks at the strap of his backpack. “I guess it’s been a while since I felt like I was part of anything.”

  I get a shock at hearing him say this, something I’ve felt but didn’t know how to describe. I remember him in the darkness of his grandmother’s car, turning to me and smiling, the light from the movie screen casting shadows along his face. I take a step toward him, not even really meaning to. My body just propels me forward, like he has his own gravity that I’m being pulled toward.

  “You can come with us.”

  Wes’s head whips around, and his eyes are so wide, I’m afraid they might just fall out of his head. “It’s my car.”

  “And the whole trip was my idea.”

  Wes’s mouth snaps shut.

  “I vote yes, too,” Gwen says, and Wes’s angry eyes shoot to her next.

  “This isn’t a vote. It’s not a fucking democracy. He has nothing to do with this.” Wes jabs his finger in Cade’s direction.

  “What’s your problem?” I ask, ready to argue with whatever he’s going to throw at me, ready to fight for this boy who I’m not even sure I want to come, either. But he just shakes his head, like it’s not worth fighting over. And then he throws his hands in the air and climbs into the driver’s seat, and I can’t tell for certain, but I think that means Cade is coming with us.

  FIVE

  The first hour is the most awkward. I didn’t really take into account that it would be difficult to find something to talk about with a group of people as splintered as we all are, and even though I know Wes and I have similar taste in music, I’m not sure how to ask him to turn on the radio or put in a CD or something, so we’re driving down 281 with nothing but the blowing of the air conditioner to break the silence.