Wraith

by Edie Claire

  You should never have died at all.

  "How?" I murmured.

  "When I turned eighteen," he began, not looking at me, "I was released from the foster care system. Or at least, I released myself. I called my father's lawyer in California, the executor of his estate, and he wired me the money I was expecting—a decent lump sum my dad wanted me to have as a birthday present. I bought a cheap used car and a tank of gas, and I hit the road."

  I swallowed. "Hit the road to where?"

  Zane didn't answer for a moment. Even talking seemed to be getting more difficult for him.

  "I don't want you to think I was running away, Kali," he said defensively. "That's never been me. I had nothing left to run away from. My mother was dead. I'd been in three different foster placements in less than a year; there were no bonds there. I'd been in four different high schools in the last eighteen months and my transcripts were all messed up; there was no way I was going to graduate on time. I didn't even have any friends left."

  "I don't believe that," I interrupted. "You must have had friends—anyone who knew you would care about you!"

  He smiled sadly. "I did have friends, Kali. At my regular school. Good friends. But when my mother started using… well, you can imagine. I didn't want anyone to know how bad things were. I was embarrassed by what she'd become; and I was mad at myself for letting it happen. So I pulled away from them. It wasn't difficult; I was working all the time anyway. Then when we moved and I had to switch schools; they couldn't have kept up with me if they'd tried. I didn't want to be found."

  I fought hard to keep my voice steady. "So, after your mother died… there was no one?"

  He shook his head. "It was my fault, not theirs. But no… at that point, there was no one." He stopped and looked at me. "I was okay with that, though. I really was. I was depressed as hell about my mother and the whole situation, but I never gave up on me. On the life I still wanted to have. I just made plans. The whole time I was waiting for my birthday to roll around, I sketched everything out. I was going to start over… make a brand new life for myself."

  The slightest splash of color flickered in his cheeks. The sight of it warmed me.

  "I wanted to drive across the country," he continued, his voice stronger. "Solo trip, you know. Seeing what there is to see. As many times as I'd flown to California to visit my dad, I'd never once seen the country in between. I wanted so badly to have that freedom… to be on my own… just driving wherever the road took me. I figured I would eventually get to California and settle things with my father's lawyer—finances, plans for college. And I wanted to go back to the place in Malibu where I took my first surfing lesson. After that…"

  He turned and smiled at me. "Before I started college, I was determined to do something I'd wanted desperately to do ever since I was nine years old. Can you guess?"

  His smile was contagious, and my own grew broad. I didn't have to guess; I knew. "You wanted to surf the North Shore."

  His wispy eyes danced with light. "Oh, yeah."

  I chuckled, even as the irony of it all was so tragic I could have cried. "Well," I said as brightly as I could fake, "you got your last wish then, didn't you?"

  His expression turned suddenly sober. "No, actually I didn't. I'm pretty sure I never even got to California. The last thing I remember is driving down an interstate at night and seeing a car with no headlights right in front of me—going the wrong way."

  "No!" The word escaped my lips before I could sensor it; my body turned suddenly cold. "That can’t be right!" I continued to blather. "You're here now; you must have made it!"

  I knew it was a stupid point to obsess on. Zane had died at the age of eighteen, and nothing about that was just. He had lost years. Decades. Did it really matter where he had spent his last few days?

  Yet I couldn't stand the thought of it. Couldn't stand that he had withstood so much, taken it all so well, turned his life around—only to have it snuffed away on some stupid interstate by some idiot drunk!

  "It's so unfair!" I cried helplessly, my own frustration and anger spilling over. "Why do people have to drink and drive?!"

  Zane looked at me fondly. Perhaps it did help, a little, for him to see me express what were, almost certainly, some of his own feelings.

  "She wasn't drunk," he said quietly. "She was just old."

  I blinked at him. "How do you know?"

  He took a breath. "I saw her face. Only for a second, as I swerved to miss her, but she had the dome light on in her car. She looked terrified."

  I studied his face in amazement. There was no malice there. No blame. Only regret.

  "It was a split second, really," he continued thoughtfully. "I don't know if I hit her or not. I don't remember the actual crash. But I can see her face so clearly, Kali. I can't imagine why she had the inside light on and her headlights off. She must have had trouble with the controls; I don't know how she could see well enough to get on the interstate in the first place."

  He paused. I looked down; the arm that had been overlapping with mine was no longer visible. His torso was a floating wisp. His legs were gone. He seemed to be talking loud—but what I heard was faint as a whisper.

  "I hope I didn't hit her."

  His face wavered into nothingness.

  "Zane," I cried, "I can barely see you!"

  I saw an outline of his head as he turned his face back to me. "I can't fight it anymore, Kali. I'm sorry."

  I struggled to get closer to him, struggled to hear the rest of his words. A wave of crippling heat welled up within me—tears that wanted to fall, screams of frustration threatening to erupt—but I fought them down. There would be time enough to fall apart… later.

  "Don't apologize to me, Zane," I said firmly. "I've loved every minute we've been together. And you did get to surf the North Shore; you did! You made it happen through sheer force of will!"

  I think he smiled then; but I wasn't sure. He was no more than stray wisps of color.

  "Remember what you promised me, Kali," I heard faintly.

  "I won't forget."

  He was saying something else, but I couldn't hear it. He was thanking me for something. Telling me…

  I stopped my own breath. It made too much noise; I needed to hear!

  There was nothing. The sound had stopped.

  I let out the breath with a cry. "Zane!"

  I couldn't see him. I couldn't see anything.

  I passed my hand over the place where he had been, but felt only a bedspread and a carpet gritty with sand.

  He was gone.

  Chapter 22

  "Kali," my mother asked with concern, pouring me a cup of orange juice. "Are you all right? You don't look like you slept well."

  I thought about answering her, but my jaw seemed too heavy to move. It had been all I could do to force myself to get dressed; to come out where people could see me.

  I had sat on the floor forever after Zane left, trying to find a way to make peace. Trying to reason out in my head somehow, some way, an explanation that made me feel good about everything that had happened—and the part that I had played in it. Some scenario whereby I had not taken a strong, carefree surfer guy who spent all day every day in the sun, doing what he loved to do, and convinced him to remember himself into weakness and oblivion.

  I couldn't think of a thing.

  It would be different if he'd been happy to go. If he'd felt some warmth in the pull that was calling him. That's what it was supposed to be like, wasn't it? Walking into the light. But he had said he felt nothing. Nothing… and nothingness.

  I had yet to cry. I knew that I needed to. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that if I didn't, and soon, something inside me was going to explode. But somehow, as long as I was sitting on that floor where Zane had last sat, I couldn't give up the idea that he could still see me. That maybe some part of him was still there, watching. And I could not let him see me cry.

  I had tried to make him believe it was for the best. I'd darn w
ell better act like it.

  "Kali?" My mother asked again.

  "I'm okay, mom," I lied. "But I didn't sleep well."

  "Oh?" she pressed. "Why not?"

  I had to get out. I had to get away—away from her, away from everyone. I had to find a private place where I could cry and scream my guts out. And I had to find it fast.

  "Mom," I began, ignoring her question, "do you think I could take the car out this morning? Just for a little bit?"

  She frowned. "I thought you said those kids were leaving today."

  Kids? Oh right, the cover story. White lie #746.

  "I'm not going to see them," I said earnestly, looking her in the eyes. "Actually, I just want to be alone for a while. I thought I'd drive up to La'ie point—where Matt and I saw the humpback."

  My mother's brow continued to crease. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Your father and I need the car at eleven thirty; we've got a lunch date with a couple from the base."

  "I'll have it back by then," I promised. "I just need a little while. To clear my head."

  My mother threw me a long, searching look. For one horrible moment, I was sure she would say no. But she surprised me. "All right, Kali," she agreed, sounding defeated.

  "Thank you!" I said sincerely, jumping up and hugging her around the shoulders. To make her happy, I downed the orange juice, which promptly burned my gut like acid. I grabbed my bag from my room and the keys from the counter and swept outside and down the stairs.

  ***

  I didn't make it to La'ie Point. I couldn't find the place. I drove around the town in a daze, pulling into random parking lots, staring at the Mormon temple at the University, trying to remember where Matt had gotten off the main road and how many turns he had made. I would like to think that if I'd been in the proper frame of mind, I would eventually have managed to find my way to the beach from the edge of an island. But I was not in the proper frame of mind.

  After way too much aimless wandering, I put some very expensive gas in the tank and resolved to head home. My parents were going out soon. I would fall apart then.

  Impatient cars whizzed past me all along the Kamehameha Highway. They didn't understand the burden I was plagued with—how carefully I was obliged to creep on a highway clogged with restless shadows. This morning I moved even slower than usual, looking at every shadow with the vague, unspoken hope that it would suddenly sport blond curls and smile my way.

  None of them did. The shadows just floated about their business, taunting me with their self-absorption, their complete and utter apathy toward me and anything else that was alive.

  They were everywhere. And none of them was Zane.

  I had driven past Turtle Bay and was nearing home when I realized I couldn't make it any farther. My body was cold; my head was hot, and the emotions bottled up inside me could be contained no longer. I turned off the road by a sign for a convalescent home, pulled partway down the drive and off into the grass, and killed the engine.

  Then I exploded. Wracking sobs shook my body; hot tears coursed down my cheeks like lava spilling from a volcano. I wasn't just sad. I was angry. Angry at everything that had happened to make Zane's life so wretched, but more angry that his life had been cut so cruelly short. Could he not have lived another year? Another three weeks? Could he not, just once, have ripped a set at Sunset Beach?

  A part of me tried to see the bright side. Perhaps Zane's unwillingness to accept death was a gift in itself. His body might have been lost to him, but his spirit had traveled to Oahu anyway—out of sheer, blind determination. He had had fun for a while, but it could not last forever.

  I should be grateful for the time he did have, shouldn't I?

  Perhaps I should. But I was not. Because it still wasn't fair. Any of it.

  I knew that many people died too young. But I had always believed that they went to a better place. If only Zane had actually seen a light. If only he had felt the presence of his mother, or his father, calling him on… welcoming him.

  He said he felt nothing.

  The convulsive sobs continued, even as my tears slowed from dehydration. I could not seem to stop. I did not feel any better.

  I wasn't sure I ever would.

  "You there! Missy! What the devil do you think you're doing, driving all over my hibiscus!"

  My head lifted. The voice screaming at me belonged to a haggard old man who was waving his arms frantically outside my car window.

  I brushed a hand ineffectually over my cheeks, sat up, and rolled the window down. I started to apologize, but couldn't get a word out.

  "Does this look like a parking lot to you? Can you not see the flowers growing right there? Do you have any idea how much hand pruning it takes to get hibiscus like that? Huh? Do you? Do you?"

  I blinked, my vision still fuzzy with tears. The man was positively irate, and would have been downright scary, if he hadn't weighed less than me and looked about a hundred and ten years old. His skin was dark, as if he had some Polynesian blood, but he was covered with age spots and freckles as well. The fingers that pointed accusingly into my face were nothing but waxy skin and bone, and a thin hospital gown hung loosely over his gaunt frame. His head was topped off with a handful of wiry, snow-white hairs, and his eyes were dark and burning with irritation. Despite his bluster, he looked frail enough to collapse at any second—and given the state he had worked himself into, I was not at all sure he wouldn't.

  "I'm sorry," I stammered, opening the car door and stepping out. I hadn't seen any flowers driving in, but I didn't doubt his word. I had hardly been paying attention.

  "Just look at this!" he continued, leading me around the front bumper of the car, gesturing wildly toward the tires. "Look at them! Crushed to death!"

  I looked, and he was right. I had taken out an entire bedful.

  "I'm really sorry, sir," I said again. "I'll move the car."

  "Well, it's a little too late for that now, wouldn't you say, Missy?" he fumed.

  I started to apologize one more time. But the words never made it to my lips. As I looked into his face, a palm frond waggled in the wind through his right ear.

  My body went rigid. I stared.

  He was almost entirely solid. With a cursory glance or two, I would never have noticed. But now I was sure of it. A ripple of transparency flitted through one foot, even as his ear had become solid again. He was as indistinguishable from a living person as Zane had been when I first met him.

  And like Zane, he could see me.

  "You aren't alive," I murmured. "You're a ghost."

  The man's tirade ceased abruptly. It was his turn to blink at me. "You can see me, can't you?" he asked suddenly, almost with embarrassment. "I guess I forgot to notice. How come you can see me and no one else can?"

  The question of my life.

  "I don't know," I answered, my voice still scratchy from crying. "I just can."

  "Oh," he stammered, now completely put off guard. "I was so mad about the damn hibiscus, I didn't even think…"

  "I'll move the car," I said agreeably, seeing an opportunity to ask a question of my own. "But I want to know something, if you don't mind. Why are you a ghost? Do you know? I mean, why haven't you… moved on?"

  His eyebrows rose. He stared at me, long and hard. "Little lady," he said impatiently, though not without a hint of sympathy, "I don't know what the hell mumbo-jumbo you're talking about. All I know is, I'm ready and waiting to die, as is my right, and I'd have been gone days ago if it weren't for those interfering brats of mine in there!"

  He gestured toward a window on the ground floor of the convalescent home. I looked back at him in confusion. "Who won't let you die?"

  "The kids!" He railed, gesticulating with his bony, almost perfectly solid arms. "They’re all on and on about the sanctity of life, and how if there's anything anybody can do to keep my heart beating, they've got to do it. Never mind what I told them! Never mind how many times I said, 'I don't want to live like a vegetable. Don't want n
o tubes, no machines. When it's my time, just let me go.' That's what I told them. Told them all!"

  A quivering feeling arose in my legs. My feet froze to the ground.

  It couldn't be.

  Could it?

  "They won't let you die," I repeated, my voice rough as gravel. "You mean, they won't let you cross over?"

  Deep furrows knit his brow. "Don't you get it, girl? I want to die, period. My body's shot. Kaput. Worn out. I'll never walk or garden again, not after this last stroke—and they all know it. I've lived a good life, I'm ready to go. Got my wife waiting for me in heaven—I know that. Everybody else too. Why the bloody hell would I want to rot in that nursing home bed another damn day?"

  I looked from where he stood over to the window.

  My feet began to run.

  "Now what are you doing?" he complained, floating awkwardly beside me.

  I reached the window in seconds. I pressed my face against the glass and peered in.

  Two middle-aged women and a man sat beside a bed, looking glum and miserable. Lights flashed on a IV machine. A single tube led from it to the motionless, closed-eyed man on the bed. The same man whose spitting image stood beside me.

  My eyes fixed on the blankets that lay over the bedridden man's chest. I stared at the spot. I stared as hard as I had ever stared at anything in my entire life.

  The blankets moved.

  He was breathing.

  He was alive.

  My heart pounded. My breath flowed in and out with great, heaving gulps. "You're alive!" I shouted, turning to the ghost—or whatever he was—beside me. "You're ALIVE!"

  The old man looked irked enough to strangle me. "I told you that!" He shouted back. "I'm not dead yet, but I will be soon; I can feel it. Their begging can't keep me around forever."

  "If that's what you want, I'm sure it will happen," I answered, the words forming and coming out of my mouth of their own accord. The majority of my brain was somewhere else.

  Somewhere that the sun was shining again.

  He was ALIVE!

  "I'll move the car right now," I continued to babble. "I'm sorry to bother you. Good luck with everything—"