by Liz Kessler
I wrap the glass in the newspaper and put it carefully in the wastebasket. Then I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, and try to shut the world out.
This is crazy. She’s arguing with her sister now, and it’s all my fault. What was I doing, getting so angry like that? That isn’t what I’m like.
As far as I can remember.
I’m a good guy. As far as I can remember.
I tiptoe across the room. She’s fallen asleep on her bed. I want to cover her up; I want to stroke her hair. I want to lie down behind her and put my arm around her.
I don’t know if that sounds creepy, but it’s true, and I can’t deny it. I am longing for human contact.
I approach her softly, cautiously. I don’t want to scare her. Don’t want to make her leap out of her skin. And I don’t especially want to be compared to a big hairy spider again, either.
I kneel by the bed and watch her. A strand of her hair has fallen across her face. Her eyelids are dark. Her face is smooth, peaceful. Where is she? Where are her thoughts? I wish I was in them.
My whole body feels as if it’s on fire, burning with how much I want to make contact. So near and yet so far. Could that ever have been a truer phrase? Literally centimeters apart, and yet separated by a chasm of life and death.
I am falling into that chasm. I can almost feel myself crashing on the rocks.
What harm can it do to lie here?
I carefully position myself behind her and close my eyes. My body burns with longing for her touch. I can always pretend.
So I do. I reach out to put my arm around her, expecting to feel nothing but air.
I’m wrong, though. I don’t know if it’s the intensity of my longing, the stillness of the night, my imagination, or what, but my arm doesn’t go through her. I can feel her.
I tighten my arm around her waist and pull her close. I don’t care if I’m imagining it. It’s the most real thing I’ve felt since I died.
If I had any breath in my body, I’d be holding it.
Please don’t be scared, Erin. Don’t leap in the air. Please.
I don’t know if, on some crazy level of psychic communication, she hears my pleading words or what, but the most amazing thing happens next.
Two things, actually.
Thing one: she doesn’t scream, leap in the air, or shout, “Spider!”
Thing two: she reaches out and closes her hand over mine.
When I feel his arm slip around my waist, the thing that surprises me the most is the fact that I’m not surprised.
The other thing that surprises me: I’m not scared.
Probably because I know that I’m dreaming. It’s the only explanation. I don’t care if it’s not real. It’s a nice dream.
Trouble is, the moment I start relaxing into it, it begins to fade.
I grip his hand, but it’s disappearing, melting away from me, a spirit disappearing into the darkness. I try to grip harder, but there’s nothing to hold on to, and I find myself grabbing at my comforter instead.
“No!” I call out. “Stay! Don’t go!”
But it’s too late. He’s gone. It’s not just the feel of his arm; it’s more than that. His presence has gone. Vanished so completely, I wonder if I imagined the whole thing. I sit up in my bed and look around, but there’s no sign of him, or anything. The room feels empty.
Did I imagine it? Am I cracking up? Should I be worried?
Before I get the chance to question myself and my mental health too much, Mum is in the doorway. “Erin, are you OK?” Her eyes are sleepy; she’s in her pajamas, has bed hair.
“What time is it?” I ask, looking down at myself. I’m still dressed.
“Nearly one o’clock.” Mum comes over and sits on the bed. “We looked in on you earlier. You’d fallen asleep, so we thought it best to leave you.”
I nod.
Mum puts a hand on my arm. “Are you all right, darling?” she asks. “I heard you call out.”
“I . . .”
I what? I woke up and felt a boy’s arm around me, and then he disappeared, and I didn’t want him to. I can’t exactly say that.
“Were you having a nightmare?” Mum asks.
I pause. “Yes. I guess so,” I say. “Did I wake you?”
Mum leans forward to kiss my forehead. “It’s fine, honey — don’t worry. As long as you’re OK.”
I nod again. I haven’t got the words for any of this. I’m happy to let Mum think I was having a nightmare, even though I know that it was nothing of the sort. It was about as far from a nightmare as it could be.
And I don’t know what the feeling is, or what just happened, but I know this. Real or not, those few moments were the most alive I’ve felt in months.
Damn. I panicked. I thought if she touched me, she’d freak out for sure, and I didn’t want that. Could she feel my hand? Did it creep her out? I don’t even know what I would feel like to her. Would I be freezing cold? Would it feel like she was touching a corpse?
I mean, she did tell her mum she was having a nightmare, so I guess it was just as well I leaped away, or faded, or whatever it is I’ve done. All I know is I can’t reach her now. The spell’s been broken. As far as she’s concerned, I’ve gone.
And no, I didn’t want her to freak out. But to be honest, I don’t want her thinking she was having a nightmare, either. Really? A nightmare? Was it that awful? Or did she just say that to keep her mum off her back?
I can’t help wondering what it means. I could touch her. She felt me.
Does this mean the purgatory is ending? I’m coming back to life?
I don’t dare to let myself hope. The disappointment hurts too much.
Her mum’s gone and Erin’s lying down again. Her eyes are still open — but I’m not going to try again. Not tonight. Just let her rest. Let her think whatever she wants to think about it.
It’s not as if it matters either way. Not like anything could come of it.
Not like there’s any point in holding out hope about anything.
I sit down on the floor, lean against the wall, and settle down for a long, lonely night.
It turns out school really isn’t all that bad. Not my favorite thing ever in the world, but not the worst thing ever in the world either — and that is progress.
In five days, I could probably count the number of conversations that go beyond “Please can I have some chips?” or “Is this chair free?” on the fingers of one hand. And yes, OK, I eat my lunch on my own every day with my head down and spend breaks reading a book with my headphones on, so I can’t exactly say I’m surprised that I haven’t made a bunch of new friends by the end of the week — but at least I’ve survived. And survival is good enough for me.
Friday afternoon, I’m heading home from school with Phoebe. I try to keep up as she chats away, filling me in on all the things she’s done today, who told her what gossip, who she hung out with and what they did, her plans for the weekend with her new friends. I listen to her in a kind of stunned amazement. How does she do it? We’ve been at that school less than a week and she seems to have maneuvered herself into the center of year seven’s social circle.
And what have I done? Given myself ten out of ten for survival.
Is that really all I want to do? Survive? Shouldn’t I be setting my sights higher than that?
Listening to Phoebe’s easy chatter, I can’t help being envious, can’t help wishing I had plans this weekend, can’t help wishing someone — just one person — had asked me to hang out.
But what do I expect when I hide away and look down and do everything I can to avoid human contact of any kind?
I might as well have been carrying around a billboard that says DO NOT COME NEAR OR TALK TO ME AT ALL!
Sometimes it feels as if I actually am carrying that sign around. The only problem is, it’s invisible to me and I don’t know how to get rid of it.
Phoebe skips up the path and disappears into the house, leaving the front door swinging open for m
e to follow behind her. I steel myself for Mum’s questions about my day. I’m running out of optimistic things to say about my new school.
There wasn’t all that much to say in the first place, and there are only so many times I can get away with telling her that lunch was fine and my classes aren’t too difficult before she’s going to start asking for a bit more detail and wondering why I’m not talking about my new friends yet.
Thankfully, she’s busy cooking dinner. And she has other things to badger me about. “Darling, are you going to finish unpacking this weekend?” she asks. “Dad’s doing a recycling trip on Sunday. It’d be good to get rid of all the boxes.”
I’ve still got about five boxes of stuff that I haven’t emptied yet. I just shoved them in the walk-in closet in my bedroom and haven’t bothered to do anything with them since.
“Yeah, I’ll do it now,” I say, glad of the excuse to spend time alone in my bedroom. I keep hoping he’ll be there. Keep wondering if I’ll sense his presence again, maybe even see him.
Mum looks up. “Thank you, darling,” she says, and the gratitude in her eyes makes me feel guilty. She thinks I’m keen to help out around the house, when really I’m chasing after a — a what? An illusion? A hallucination? An indication that I’m finally going crazy?
“No worries,” I say quickly as I hurry up to my room.
I jump up as the door opens. She’s home. I flatten down my hair and pull my clothes straight. Then I actually laugh out loud at myself.
Dude, you are trying to make yourself look decent when (a) the girl cannot see you anyway, and (b) you are dead, a fact that generally doesn’t do wonders for people’s appearance at the best of times.
I can’t help it, though. It’s a reflex. On the off chance she does see me, I want to look my best for it. The best that a pale, withered, tired, skinny dead guy can look, anyway.
She normally drops her bag on the bed and sits in the window with her notebook when she comes home from school. I’m used to her routine now. I know she writes poems, but I think mostly it’s a diary. Not that I’ve read it again. Or, well, only a bit, anyway. I’ll see her hand whizzing across the page in a rush and it makes me desperate to know what she’s saying. But then I read a couple of words and feel bad, so I make myself look away.
I like to watch her write, though. It’s as if she has to get the day down in her book before she can move on to the evening. As if the events of the day haven’t happened, aren’t real, until she’s written them down.
I’m just the same. I was the same, back when I could do remarkable things like actually hold a pen in my hand.
I’ve been remembering more and more things. When I’m on my own in the day, I force my brain to think. I see images: Mum, Dad, Olly. Then there are feelings, too. Some of them are hard to put into words — they’re like big clouds of emotion, all bunched up and indistinct. Some of it’s easier. I can remember how writing made me feel. How it kept me sane. Writing songs and poetry helped me make sense of my life. I remember that.
I can’t help thinking that if I could figure out how to grip a pen and drag it across a piece of paper, forming words, maybe I’d stand a chance of making some sort of sense of what’s happening to me now.
Then I imagine that if I could write, perhaps I could communicate, and if I could communicate, maybe there’s some way I could come back. Back from this blankness. Back to the living.
That’s when I know my imagination is working too hard, and I have to stop myself. It only makes the crushing reality of my situation even harder to take.
Yeah, that’s another thing. I had thought I was trapped in here because I couldn’t grab hold of the door handle. Turns out it’s more than that. I’ve tried to squeeze through the doorway behind her. Even tried to get out on the odd occasion she’s left it open. Which she doesn’t do very often. But I can’t.
It’s as if . . . I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not a feeling I ever had when I was alive, so I don’t think alive people have words for it. The nearest I can get is to say it’s a bit like the doorway opens into a thick, cold black fog — but a fog that simultaneously scalds and freezes your skin if you make contact with it.
Like I say. It’s hard to describe. Hard to make sense of, like all of this.
I don’t know why I’m trapped in this room. Don’t know why I can’t get through the doorway but can sit in the window. Don’t know why I can lie on the floor but can’t pick up a book. I don’t know any of it. Maybe it has something to do with how hard the surface is that I’m making contact with. How porous. Or how old it is. How permanent. I don’t know. Maybe if I’d studied more in school, I’d have a few more ideas.
Except I’m not sure which subject would have had Things That a Ghost Can and Cannot Do on its syllabus.
Anyway. I don’t care about any of that. Most of my caring is focused on her. I want to know how she feels about what happened between us the other night. Did it freak her out? Did she like it? Does she want it to happen again?
Will it happen again?
I settle down to watch her write. But she’s not going over to the window today. Instead, she dumps her schoolbag and makes a beeline for the walk-in closet. She left a bunch of boxes in there the day she moved in and hasn’t bothered with them since.
She starts dragging the boxes out of the closet. I feel like such a jerk. I want to help. What kind of a guy watches a girl drag heavy boxes around and doesn’t even offer to help?
Answer: a dead one.
My feelings of uselessness and despair plummet another notch downward. I want to help her. I want to talk to her. I want something. The desire to make contact with her is like a dull thud in my stomach.
I can’t watch. Instead, I go to the window seat, lean on my knees, my chin in my hand, and look out the window.
As she lugs boxes across the floor, empties her old life onto the bed, I hug myself as tightly as possible and try not to think about how much I wish it was her hugging me instead.
It’s at the point where I’ve dragged all five heavy boxes out of the closet and emptied the contents onto my bed that I suddenly wish I hadn’t started the job.
I’m looking at a medium-size mountain of, basically, junk and wondering what on earth made me think I needed all this stuff. Approximately a hundred books, most of which I haven’t looked at for years; three pencil cases full of enough pens, pencils, and erasers to write twenty full-length novels; twelve teddy bears with missing ears/eyes/hair that I am slightly embarrassed to still own but for some bizarre reason cannot part with let alone imagine some stranger cuddling; and a pile of clothes that I’ve mostly grown out of but can’t bring myself to throw out, despite the fact that I’ve worn little other than jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, and beanie hats for the last two years.
Dad bought us all a load of new furniture online and has spent most of the last week putting it together. The stuff that isn’t going to the shop to be painted and sprayed in bright colors, that is. I’ve got a bookshelf, a chest of drawers, and two nightstands waiting to be filled.
It crosses my mind just to shove everything back in the closet and forget about it for now, but that will only put the problem off, not solve it. And I might want to do something with the closet. Maybe I’ll put some cushions in there and turn it into a den, where I can hide away from the world whenever I want. I could curl up with a flashlight and read.
Either way, I’ve got five boxloads of junk to put somewhere. I’d better get on with it.
Before I start on the putting away, I decide to hold off another couple of minutes to do one last check of the walk-in closet and make sure I haven’t left anything behind.
I flick my phone’s flashlight on and have a quick look around. Nope. It’s all clear. Just torn carpet, mucky walls, and . . .
Wait. What’s that on the wall? I take a few more steps inside it. There’s something there.
It looks like writing. I crawl farther into the closet and shine my light on it. Someone m
ust have wallpapered in here a long time ago, because there are bits of paper dotted about, ripped and hanging off the wall. Some of it looks as if it’s been pulled off; other bits have rumpled against the wall with age or damp, maybe.
But there’s a bit of wall where the paper has definitely been pulled off. In the gap, someone has written something. I lean in, shine the light on the words, and read what it says.
SOMETIMES I WONDER WHO I AM
OR IF I’LL EVER BELONG.
THE LOSER, THE LONER, THE GUY ON HIS OWN,
WASTING HIS TIME ON A SONG.
EVERYONE KNOWS ME YET NOBODY SEES,
THEIR LIVES A CONSTRUCTED PRETENSE.
AND SO I’LL SIT HERE AND BUILD WALLS WITH MY WORDS;
MY PEN IS MY ONLY DEFENSE.
I stare at the words. The poem. The whatever it is. Who wrote it? When did they write it?
I feel like an archaeologist discovering evidence of an ancient tribe. Except it’s obviously not that ancient if it was written on a wall in a house with a pen. And it’s clearly just one person, not a tribe.
But still. It was here before we were, and that makes me want to know more.
I’m leaning forward, looking around on the rest of the wall to see if there’s any more, when something glints against the light from my phone. Something at the back, where the closet narrows right down under the stairs.
I crawl farther in, all the way to the shallow far end of the closet, and shine my light into the corners. It’s dark, dusty, musty, and full of stringy cobwebs. I try not to think about how many spiders there might be knocking around in this long-forgotten corner.
Plus I can’t see what it was that glinted now. I probably imagined it, anyway. Typical of me. Do everything I can to duck out of real life but get covered in dust and sweat on a wild goose chase that my imagination has conjured up.
I’m about to give up when I see it glint again. What is it? It looks like a silver pendant.
I shove spiders and creepy crawlies to the back of my mind and reach out for it.
