Absent

by Katie Williams

  “Mr. Fisk.” I can tell by Evan’s face that I’m right. “That’s why you sit in his class? Evan, he’s the adviser for those meetings I told you about where gay kids—”

  “I know. A couple weeks ago, I heard him talking to a student about that group.”

  Me, I think. That student talking to Mr. Fisk was me pretending to be Chris Rackham.

  “He said he’d had a friend, and I heard it. I heard him think my name.”

  “You did?”

  “I lost my hover. I dropped right through the floor.”

  I remember turning to find Evan’s cupboard empty. I’d thought he’d left the room, that he hadn’t heard any of it.

  “I went to one of those meetings. Those kids. It’s not perfect, but . . .” He pauses and looks into the dark of the basement. “I take it back. Things do change.”

  “Do you think Mr. Fisk could be gay?”

  He laughs. “If you only knew the hours I once spent asking myself that question.” He shakes his head ruefully. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is that he considered me a friend. That he . . .” Evan’s voice, steady through the whole story, begins to shake now. “That he remembers me.”

  We listen to the noises of the dance above us, the thrum of the bass, the tangle of voices.

  “Ask me if I regret it,” Evan says.

  “I don’t have to ask that.”

  “Do it anyway. Please. I want to be able to say it.”

  “Okay. Do you regret it?”

  “Every day. Every day of my life.” He smiles at the word life.

  “There’s something I have to tell you. And I don’t know if I can.”

  “After what I just told you?” Evan snorts. “You can. You better.”

  “Okay.” I take a breath. “But please don’t hate me.” I explain everything I’ve been keeping secret from Evan, starting with the afternoon of the grief group meeting, when I thought I’d held Lucas Hayes’s hand, ending with tonight in the hallway when Usha said she’d seen me step off the roof. Evan doesn’t interrupt.

  When I finish, I expect him to yell at me, but instead he squints. It’s the faraway look he gets when he’s solving a complex math problem in his head.

  “You’re angry,” I say when I can’t stand the silence anymore. “I’m sorry. I should have told you about the inhabitations, about everything.”

  He’s still silent.

  “It’s just I knew what you’d say. You’d say that I shouldn’t do it, that I didn’t have the right.” I expel a long breath. “And that’s true. But I didn’t want to stop because . . . Evan, I got to be alive again.”

  He finally breaks his silence, but he doesn’t scold me, doesn’t say anything about my explanation. Instead, he says, “Brooke.”

  “What?”

  “We have to find Brooke.”

  “Why?” I say. “Evan?”

  But he’s already up and climbing the stairs to the school.

  We can’t find Brooke. She’s not at the dance. She’s not on her death spot. We resort to walking through the halls, poking our heads into empty classrooms, calling her name.

  “Evan, what is this?” I ask him after we’ve cleared the entire art and music wing. “Why do we have to find Brooke?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I promise.”

  “Why not now?”

  He bites his lip. “I want to be sure. Where should we look next?”

  “Maybe outside,” I suggest, leading Evan through the doors, out to the student parking lot. “Sometimes she hangs out on the—”

  Evan goes stock-still.

  I turn to see what he’s looking at.

  Harriet.

  She’s where I saw her before, crouched in the middle of the parking lot, on the site of her accident. We run to her, and this time we reach her before she disappears. She’s speaking urgently again, the same word over and over. And again, we can’t hear the sound of what she’s saying.

  “Can you make it out?” I ask Evan. “It’s . . . Is it . . . ?” A chill goes through me.

  Evan says it. “ ‘Brooke.’ She’s saying ‘Brooke.’ ”

  “What does it mean? Is Brooke in trouble?”

  “No,” Evan says. “I think she’s—”

  “Evan.” I gesture to Harriet, whose mouth has fallen open in fear. She points at something behind us. We turn.

  “What?” Evan says. “The school?”

  But I know where to look. I tilt my head up.

  There, on the school roof, stands a figure, face tipped to the sky. A guy, I can tell that much. He doesn’t stand up on the ledge—to my great relief—but on the flat of the roof. He peers over the ledge, though, as if assessing the drop to the ground. There’s something familiar about him. “Is it . . . ?” I ask, then answer myself. “It’s Lucas.”

  “No, it’s not,” Evan says.

  “It is,” I say. “I can tell. It’s definitely Lucas Hayes.”

  “No. Paige. Look at Harriet. Look.”

  I turn back to Harriet, and she holds her arm out straight, a direct line, finger pointed. And it’s obvious what she’s pointing at: Lucas Hayes on the edge of the roof. But the thing is, she’s still saying it, her lips are still forming the same one word: Brooke.

  Then she winks out.

  And Evan and I are left alone in the parking lot.

  24: THE SCHOOL ROOF

  “IT’S HER,” EVAN SAYS, BOTH OF US GAZING UP AT THE FIGURE of Lucas on the school roof. “That’s Brooke. She’s possessed him.”

  Memories lay themselves out in my mind like a hand of playing cards, one flipped over, then the next: Lucas murmuring, Yeah, right, when Mrs. Morello had suggested he was upset about Brooke’s death. Lucas standing in front of the overflowing sinks. Karma, man. Sucks when it finally comes around again. Lucas pointing to the spot on the tile, Brooke’s death spot. You should lie down on it.

  I knew something was different about him, different from the popular Lucas goofing with his friends, different too from the Lucas who’d met me in the trees. I explained it away as the drugs, the guilt, the grief, but really, it was Brooke. Lucas flooding the bathroom? Brooke. Lucas ordering the burner girl onto the floor? Brooke. Lucas climbing to the school roof? Brooke. She figured out how to inhabit people, just like I did.

  “She’s done it before,” I say. Evan isn’t looking up at the roof anymore. Now he’s staring at me. I have the impulse to give him a good shove, because it’s no good standing here gaping at each other, not when any minute Brooke could look down and see us. I duck between two parked cars, gesturing for him to follow me.

  “We have to do something,” I insist.

  “Paige,” he says.

  “Don’t you get it? She blames Lucas for her death. She hates him.”

  “Paige.” He winces. “I’m so sorry.”

  “And now she’s up there on the roof. She’s going to make him jump. She’s going to make him jump like . . . ” I trail off. “Why are you sorry?”

  Evan looks down.

  “Why are you sorry?” I repeat.

  Instead of answering, he asks, “What did you just say?”

  “What did I . . . ” I shake my head. “That Brooke hates Lucas. That if we don’t do anything, she’s going to make him jump off the roof.”

  “You said like.”

  I peek over the car at the roof. Lucas is standing just where he was before, looking over the ledge. “Evan. Come on. We have to do something.”

  “You said, ‘She’s going to make him jump like . . . ’ ”

  “Did I? So what?” But something is rising in me. I picture myself standing on the ledge of the roof, fragile egg held out in front of me, sky above me a muddy sheet. “She’s going to make him jump off the roof like . . . I don’t know.”

  “Like you?” Evan asks.

  “No. That’s not what I was going to say.”

  Evan repeats the sentence. “ ‘She’s going to make him jump like . . . she made me’?”

>   “I slipped,” I tell him. “It was an accident. I slipped.”

  But had I?

  I hadn’t committed suicide. I knew that much.

  But Usha said she’d seen me step off the roof, that Kelsey had seen it, too. And maybe Kelsey had seen it, because that’s what she’d told people, that I’d jumped. Why would she say that? Why would both of them say it?

  I picture it again: the roof. One of my feet stepping up onto the ledge, then the other. Mr. Cochran heading back to Lucas. Someone shouting Catch! The sound of the egg breaking. I’d started to turn because I’d decided that I was going to smile at him, even though I’d been chiding myself for smiling at him a moment before. Like some no-respect burner girl, I’d thought, like poor, dead Brooke Lee.

  I’d thought of her.

  I’d invited her in.

  Horror rises in me, wider and giddier than the bleak gray sky. I’m falling again. I’m falling. Except I’m not; I’m still here, standing on the ground.

  “It was her,” I whisper. “Brooke. She inhabited me. She stepped off the roof.”

  “I’m sorry,” Evan repeats. “I’m so sorry.”

  “But why? Why would she do that?”

  “Because you were with Lucas?”

  “You think she was jealous? You’re wrong. She hated him.”

  “She hated him.” Evan nods. “And so she could make him watch it all over again, his girlfriend dying.”

  “I wasn’t his girlfriend,” I reply automatically, thinking how ridiculous this now sounds. Then I think of something else. “When I was alive, Brooke was following me. Harriet told me.”

  Evan sucks in a breath. “Did she tell you that in front of Brooke?”

  “Harriet!” I clap my hand over my mouth. “Do you think Brooke—”

  “Made Harriet get into the accident?” Evan asks.

  “She hit Heath Mineo,” I say.

  “Who sold Lucas the drugs she OD’d on,” Evan finishes.

  “Evan”—my voice breaks—“she killed me.”

  The weight of it hits me, and I curl up, wishing I could sink lower than the ground, down into the earth, down through the layers of sediment and silt and bedrock until my spirit puffs to ash in the Earth’s core. It feels like maybe I could, if I wanted to enough.

  Except I can’t. Because even though Lucas was a coward, he doesn’t deserve to die. Because Brooke could hurt someone else next, someone I care about, like Usha or Wes, or even someone I don’t care about, some pious biblical or nodding pony or smug well-rounder. I don’t want anyone else to be hurt. I want them to have a chance at life, even if I don’t anymore. I want them to have a chance because I don’t.

  I stand.

  And as I stand, Lucas steps, one foot after the other, onto the ledge of the roof.

  “What are you doing?” Evan asks.

  “I’m going to talk to her.”

  He scrambles up next to me. “We’ll go together.”

  “No. Just me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can get there quicker.”

  Evan looks from the school roof to the property line.

  “Stay down here,” I tell him. “In case . . . ” I don’t finish. In case she jumps.

  He nods once. “Go.”

  But I’m already running.

  At first, I see stars.

  I’ve appeared on the roof, looking up at the night sky. I drop my gaze down. There, at my feet, is the crack in the cement where the little stem of ivy that I plucked weeks ago is trying to grow back. Then I gather all my courage and look along the edge of the roof.

  There.

  A few feet away from me, also up on the ledge, Lucas Hayes inches forward so that the scuffed toes of his dress shoes are over the edge. And I have no way to touch him, no way to pull him back.

  “Brooke,” I say, begging my voice not to wobble, “I know it’s you.”

  Lucas turns in my direction. He might just be surveying the roof and the neighborhoods spread out to his right, but his eyes (Brooke looking out from behind them) catch on me before they scan by.

  “I could do it,” Lucas says, as if to himself. Even though the words come out in Lucas’s deep drawl, it’s Brooke saying them. And I know she’s saying them to me. “I could jump.”

  “Don’t,” I say. “Please don’t.”

  “After all I did, you have to admit, I deserve what I get.” She looks right at me then, and her eyes are empty.

  “You should get down,” I say. I step down myself, onto the roof, and walk in a slow half circle until I’m on the other side of her (him? them?).

  “You hate him,” I tell her. “Fine. Okay. I understand about hate because I hate you. I hate you for what you did to me.”

  She twitches at this.

  “You took my life away. My whole life.” My voice shakes. “But I’m still up here trying to save you anyway.”

  “Him,” she mutters. “You’re trying to save him.”

  “You,” I insist. “Both of you.”

  I reach out to her, palm up.

  She looks at my hand, and I almost think she’s going to step onto the roof with me. But just then, Evan’s voice sails up from the parking lot. “Paige! The dance is ending!” And Brooke’s expression on Lucas’s face hardens into a mask.

  “You can’t touch me,” she says, and shuffles back along the ledge.

  I take another step forward, arm still extended. She takes another step back. The heel of Lucas’s shoe hits up against the crack in the roof’s ledge, stopping her, the little shoot of ivy peeking out from under his sole. She looks at the ground below, then back at me.

  “They’ll be here soon,” she says.

  She’s right. They will. The two of us pause in the moment of silence before the noise. Then the gym doors rattle open, voices bursting out into the night, too loud and too giddy and just the exact right amount of alive. The students don’t spot Lucas right away, but you can hear it when they do, huge pockets of silence dropping into the noise, as if pieces of the floor have fallen away.

  “Get a teacher!” someone shouts.

  “Lucas!” a few of them cry. “No! Don’t!”

  I peer over the edge. There are about a dozen couples there, the girls bright splotches of silk, taffeta, and tulle, the boys shadowlike in their suits. Their faces, all lifted up toward us, are flushed pink from dancing.

  “Step down, Brooke!” I say. “Please!”

  With one last glance at me, Brooke turns to address the crowd below us.

  “I didn’t want it to be this way,” she calls down to them. “There are some things I have to tell you. And when I do, you’ll understand.”

  The crowd is silent, listening.

  “I killed Brooke Lee. I’m the one who bought the drugs for us. I was there, and I lied about it. I pretended to care about her, but I didn’t. She was nothing to me. Nothing at—”

  “You’re wrong,” I interrupt. “Lucas cared about you. You’re wrong.”

  Brooke pauses, then shrugs me off, turning back to the crowd below. “That’s why tonight I have to—”

  “Think about it. How have you been able to inhabit him?” I ask.

  “Tonight I have to—” she repeats.

  “Because he thought of you, right?”

  “To . . . to pay for—”

  “How long did it take for him to think of you? Minutes? Seconds? Not even an hour, I bet.”

  “I have to—”

  “Isn’t that proof? He thinks about you all the time. He cared.”

  She stops. The crowd rustles and murmurs. But she turns away from them, the audience below, and faces me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But I have to.”

  And with that, she steps off the roof.

  I’m not quick enough to stop Brooke from jumping off the roof. But I am quick enough to throw myself half over the ledge, my arms instinctively reaching. After months of touching nothing, I expect my hands to remain empty. After all, I’m dead and gone. I can’t to
uch anything, certainly not the arm of a boy falling through the sky.

  Somehow, though.

  Somehow.

  On my death spot, the only place where I can touch the world, and the world me . . . my hand closes on his.

  When I grab Lucas’s hand, his shoulder makes a popping sound and Brooke howls. But I hold on. The moment holds, too: me stretched over the edge of the roof, Lucas hanging below. The crowd draws a breath that sucks all the noise away, leaving Lucas swaying from side to side in a pocket of silence and space.

  Then, the moment breaks. Brooke looks up at me through Lucas’s eyes. Her face crumples, and she lifts a hand to mine, grabs on tight.

  “Save him,” she says.

  Together we pull him onto the roof.

  25: HOW BROOKE DIED

  EVAN ARRIVES ON THE ROOF JUST BEFORE THE OTHERS. HE finds me kneeling on the ledge, my hand still clasped in Lucas’s hand, Brooke’s hand. Lucas has curled himself up into a ball, his head dropped to his chest, his face pale and waxen as carved soap.

  “Please,” I say when I see Evan. “I don’t want to do this.” I nod to our clasped hands. “I don’t want to . . . but I’m scared to let them go.”

  “It’s okay,” Evan says. He kneels next to me. “Brooke?” he says softly. No response.

  “She’s still in there. She’s got to be, but my hand, Evan. I don’t want to hold her hand. She . . . what she did . . . I can’t hold her hand.”

  “You can let go now,” he says.

  “Can I? Because—”

  “Paige. You’re done now. You can let go.”

  I pull my hand free and climb from the ledge. As I do, I glance down at my classmates’ upturned faces, flushed and animated. Usha stands at the front of the crowd, her hands knotted at her chest, her fierce gaze on Lucas’s hunched back, as if she could hold him up there with the power of her eyes alone. Jenny stands on one side of her, Chris Rackham and Whitney Puryear on the other, their arms all around one another’s backs. At the far edge of the crowd, Kelsey leans against Wes, his arms and coat around her bare shoulders, his chin resting on the top of her head. I feel the memory of those arms around my shoulders, and they warm me, even though they’re just a memory, just ghosts. I scan the crowd, and there are dozens and dozens of other faces. They’re standing vigil, and I don’t think it’s because he is Lucas Hayes; I think it’s because he is one of them. One of us.