by Liz Kessler
I feel as if he’s taken away my oxygen. How can it feel like this? I’ve known him less than a month. How can he have wormed his way into my — my what? My heart? How can he? And then send me away when I need him the most?
Fury courses through me as I pace the landing. Not just at him — at everything, at them for making me live my life under the cloud of what they did to me. Fury at myself for thinking I could move on without looking back. You can’t do that. It’s not possible. It’s like constructing a skyscraper and taking away each floor as you build the one above it. Not possible. The whole thing would collapse. Implode. Like I’m doing now.
I can’t go back in there, not for him to look at me with steel in his eyes and tell me to leave. I don’t want to see that again.
So instead, I do the thing my old therapist told me and try to settle my breathing. Deep breaths into my stomach. Count to ten. Feel my heart rate settle.
Then I go and join my parents downstairs.
“Hey there, sweet pea,” Dad says. He’s sitting on one of the sofas, with Phoebe at the other end. She’s got her legs curled up under her and is staring at her phone. Texting one of her new friends, as usual. “Are you gracing us with your company for once?”
I ignore both the childish greeting and the sarcasm.
Mum gives Dad a Don’t! look and puts her arm out for me. “Come and join me. I’m lonely over here,” she says. “I’ll get dinner on in a minute.”
I plonk myself down on the sofa next to Mum and snuggle into her arm, my head on her shoulder. Then I spend the next couple of hours eating dinner and staring blankly at the television with the rest of them, trying to make my thoughts equally blank.
Sometime later, I realize I’m drifting off, but I don’t want to go to bed. Don’t want to go back in my bedroom at all. Phoebe went up ages ago, and Dad’s in the bath. It’s just me and Mum down here now. It’s nearly eleven o’clock, and I need to go to bed. School night and all that.
Mum gets up from the sofa and switches the TV off. She catches my eye as she turns away from the television. She comes back to the sofa and sits next to me. “You haven’t said much this evening.”
I shrug.
“You’ve been a lot happier lately. But you seem a little low tonight. Are you OK, love?”
It’s not her usual “Nice day?” that she asks every day in the middle of doing five other things. It’s a proper question. I guess it deserves a proper answer.
But what can I say? I can’t say anything. To her or anyone. After everything I put them through, after being in such a state that they packed up our lives and moved the whole family five hundred miles away to start a new life, the last thing I can land on Mum is the truth. How would I even begin?
Well, I’ve just had my first argument with the dead guy who lives in my bedroom. But don’t worry — I’ll be fine.
I’ll never be able to talk to anyone about him.
The thought slams into my mind so hard it’s like a car crash. But then I’ve never felt able to really share things before, so why should this be different?
“Honey?” Mum is still looking at me.
“Sorry, Mum,” I say eventually. “I’m just tired.” I pull myself up from the sofa.
She gets up, too. “Come here,” she says, pulling me in for a hug.
I let her hold me. Let myself take at least a bit of comfort from her. When she pulls away, she holds my arms. “You can always talk to me, you know,” she says. “About anything.”
I force myself not to laugh in her face. For one thing, I don’t want to hurt her feelings. For another, I think the laughter would turn to tears in about a millisecond. Instead I settle for a mumbled “I know, Mum, thanks” and go off upstairs.
My heart speeds up as I push my bedroom door open. I look around. He’s not here. Has he gone, or is he just invisible to me, like when I first moved in? Will I ever see him again?
I don’t know the answers to any of the questions that swirl through my mind as I get ready for bed.
But in the moment before I fall asleep, or maybe it’s in my dream — I don’t know, and at that point I don’t want to know — I hear a voice. Soft, barely audible, yet so close it feels like it is being whispered against my ear.
I’m sorry.
A moment later, I have drifted into a deep, troubled sleep.
They say a night is like a lifetime when you’re dead.
Actually, they don’t. No one says that. But only because they don’t know how true it is. I do, though.
I’m not going to wake her. I don’t even know if I could. When she came back to her room last night, she couldn’t see me. We’ve gotten used to an awkward routine where I turn around whenever she’s getting changed, and where we put up with all the things we can and can’t do. But this — I don’t know. Is it deliberate? Maybe she’s turned herself against me so much that she won’t see me again. Switched something off. Broken the contact.
The thought is unbearable.
Did she hear me apologize before she fell asleep? Will I ever speak to her again? Will she see me again?
I sit by her bed all night, asking myself the same questions, over and over again.
The deepening, darkening night offers no reply. Eventually, I curl up on the floor and drift into a troubled, stuttering kind of rest myself. A light, unsatisfying slumber that only the dead can sleep.
Thursday morning. Mum is at the door. “Darling, did you hear me?”
I drag my head from my pillow. “Whuh?” I ask.
“I’ve called you three times now. You’re going to be late for school.”
I glance at my alarm clock. She’s right. I’ve got twenty minutes to get myself up, showered, breakfasted, and out the door. Yikes.
“OK, I’m getting up,” I say, sitting up in bed. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
Mum’s still in the doorway.
“What?” I ask.
She’s looking at me with this expression on her face. Like she wants to tell me off but she’s forcing herself not to. She never does, not anymore. Sometimes I wish she would. It’s funny. Most girls my age would give anything for parents who never tell them off.
But then I guess most girls my age haven’t sunk to such dark places in their lives that their parents are terrified of doing anything to tip them over the edge.
Their refusal to treat me like any other irresponsible teenager just reminds me of everything I’ve gone through. The heartache, the pain, the fear, the anxiety — the extremes that I’ve been to.
I don’t want to be reminded. I want to forget. I don’t want special treatment; I want my mum to treat me like a normal sixteen-year-old girl. I want to be a normal sixteen-year-old girl.
Fat chance of that when I spend every waking minute I can talking to a ghost.
Or did, anyway.
My irritation with Mum mingles with my regret about what happened last night with Joe, and for a moment all I want to do is lie back down and pull the comforter over my head. I feel numb. I want to sleep the day away. Maybe if I decide not to deal with today, I can wake up tomorrow instead and it will all be different.
“Come on, love,” Mum says softly. “I’ll get you some breakfast.”
“Thanks,” I mumble as I pull the comforter off and swing my legs out of bed.
“Dad’ll run you both to school. That’ll give you an extra ten minutes.”
“OK. Thanks.”
Eventually, Mum closes the door and leaves me alone. And I am alone. I still can’t see Joe. Have I blocked him out, or has he left?
I sit on the side of the bed for a minute, gathering my thoughts. The main one that keeps circling is that no matter how much I might not want to do it, I have to break out of this thing and get on with my life. Whatever’s been going on here is crazy — and I can’t afford to do crazy.
As I get ready for school, I’m filled with a new sense of determination. I owe it to my family, if nothing else. They gave up their lives to move here, too.
It’s time I made an effort to get this fresh start under way.
By the time Dad drops us off at the school gates, I have convinced myself I can do it. I’m filled with optimism. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” and all those other clichés that grace Mum’s dish towels and fridge magnets.
But it’s true. It is. I’m ready to leave behind everything that’s held me back and start moving forward at last.
My new optimism lasts approximately thirty seconds — and half the length of the school yard — before something happens that wipes out thoughts of a fresh start so thoroughly, they might as well have been specks of dust blown into nothingness by a sudden breeze.
When I say something happens, what I mean more precisely is that for a moment, I forget everything I have taught myself about surviving school and shout the most ridiculous thing across the yard, so loud that everyone in the yard turns around to stare at me.
Then I completely freeze — cannot speak, cannot move, have no idea what to do next, and wish more than anything in the entire world that it actually was possible for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
This was not exactly what I had in mind by fresh start.
Tod throws the tennis ball to me as we cross the school yard. I bounce it a couple of times before throwing it back to him. We carry on like this as we cross the yard. Throw, catch, bounce, bounce, throw, catch, bounce.
I’m not even thinking about it. Just throwing, catching, bouncing as I make my way into school with a brain that feels as empty as the inside of the ball. Autopilot. My usual state.
Maybe that’s why it catches me off guard. I don’t know. Whatever. We’re crossing the yard and I’m half looking ahead of me and half looking out for the ball to my right when I hear it.
“Joe!”
It’s weird. I sort of feel my body freeze, and my brain go with it. Freeze right over inside my head. Like each brain cell goes cold and switches off, one by one. Dunk, dunk, dunk, frozen. Dead.
Then the ball hits my shoulder and breaks the spell.
“Sorry, dude,” Tod calls over.
I barely notice the feeling in my shoulder where the ball’s hit me. I don’t really notice anything much except that word. That name. No one has said his name out loud for months, let alone yelled it across the school yard. They’ve all been so careful. Funny, really; we moved to get away from all the sadness and pain, but you can’t really get away from it. It’s still there at school. It’s still there everywhere.
I wave a Don’t worry about it hand at Tod and turn in the direction of the voice.
A girl I’ve never noticed before is staring at me as if . . .
Yeah, yeah, OK. Sounds pathetic, I know. Clichéd and all that. But still, it’s true, and I can’t find a better way of putting it right now.
She’s looking at me as if she’s seen a ghost.
Her face is pale, but it looks like it’s probably that way anyway. She doesn’t look like the kind of girl who spends time in the sun, getting the perfect tan. She’s wearing jeans with holes in the knees and a big, baggy blue sweater that my grandma might wear. A cream beanie hat pulling her hair back.
I register all this in the two seconds before anyone speaks. In the third second, I remember that I used to look at girls a lot. They looked at me, too. Then I remember that the fourth second would usually involve a smile, maybe some cheesy line from me, and a blush from her. By the tenth or eleventh second, we’d already know if we were likely to go on a date.
That was a long time ago. Back in the life I used to have. Back when I had a life.
Now we’re about ten seconds in, and still neither of us has moved or spoken.
As our eyes lock, her expression changes. Goes from — I don’t know — maybe excitement or hope or something like that to what I could only describe as complete and utter panic.
For a moment, it’s as if there is only the girl and me in the yard. Like everything else melts or blurs or fades to gray, leaving just her and me, frozen and staring at each other.
“Oh, my God, I’m . . .” she begins. Then she claps a hand over her mouth.
I just keep staring at her. It’s like — it’s like I’ve got this wall inside me. Like I’ve spent a while building it. Six months. Since the worst thing happened. Since I did the worst thing.
And then she’s come along in a speeding car and driven right into the wall.
“I’m so sorry,” the girl is saying. “I thought you were someone else. Sorry.”
I have no idea what to say. I used to be able to talk to girls so easily. Some said too easily. I have no words now.
The girl is turning, hurrying away, apologizing again as she goes.
Tod is by my side. “Did you hear me?” he asks with a goofy smile.
I shake myself out of whatever state the girl has gotten me into. I don’t turn to Tod, though. I’m watching her back as she runs into school. “Sorry, no,” I reply to Tod without looking at him. “What?”
Tod gives me a knowing nudge. “Just that she doesn’t look like your type,” he says.
The girl has gone inside. I turn to Tod. “What d’you mean?”
He nods his head toward the door into school. “Come on, I know you’re out of practice, but she’s not exactly in your league, mate,” he says.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I can barely believe I heard him right, I’d go mental at him for saying something like that.
I settle for giving him a death stare.
“What?” Tod looks genuinely bemused, and it occurs to me that that’s probably how we normally talk about girls. Or used to. Did we?
It’s only then that I realize I have come so far from myself that I no longer know who I am.
I start walking away without replying.
Tod’s at my heels. “Dude, what is it?”
“Just leave me alone, Tod,” I say through gritted teeth. I shove my hands in my pockets, fists tight and cold.
Tod hangs back as I march toward the same door the girl used into school.
It takes every bit of self-control I have to stop myself from kicking the door open so hard that the glass splinters into a thousand pieces.
It’s as if none of it happened. We never moved. I never started a new life. Never met someone who made me feel I was worth something.
One word. That’s all it took. One stupid word.
Joe.
It’s the word in my head all the time. The person in my head all the time. Anything I do, it’s him I want to talk to about it. All the little things that happen in my day — they don’t add up to anything until I share them with him and watch him smile and laugh as I tell him the most inane anecdotes from my day.
And look where it’s led me. First, I freak out, he disappears, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. Then I shout his name across the school yard to some random guy I’ve never met before, and everyone turns to look at me. The thing I have been so careful to avoid happening since I got here.
What on earth made me think that guy was Joe? Something about the way he walked? Where was my brain? What was I doing?
I’m right back where I started, and it’s all going to happen again. The stares, then the laughs. Next they’ll be whispering behind their hands, calling me names, making up songs about me, leaving hateful notes in my desk. I can’t go through that again. I can’t. I won’t.
I sit through homeroom with my head down, pretending to get things out of my bag until everyone starts filing out of the room. Then I get up and mingle into the crowd as I slink to my English class.
I don’t dare to look up. I don’t want to see the faces turn away from me, the hands covering the mouths as they pass my shame from person to person.
Which is why I pretty much walk straight into him.
“Whoops, sorr —” I begin automatically. Then I look up. And that’s when I see it. The resemblance. His face is set and stony. It looks like Joe’s when he’s trying to hold my hand and can’t do an
ything but grip the air. The expression is the same — but everything else is different.
But then he meets my eyes and something softens.
“I’m sorry about before,” I say before he can tell me what an idiot I am. He doesn’t have to; I know.
He nods curtly. “Don’t worry about it,” he says in a cold voice. His eyes are locked on mine like a laser, as if he’s challenging me — is he questioning me?
I need to explain. “I just — I thought you were someone else,” I say.
The boy’s face darkens. “Yeah,” he says. “I know you did. Like I said, don’t worry about it. Didn’t you hear me the first time?”
And with that, he shoves past me and storms away down the corridor.
It’s no more than I deserve.
It crosses my mind to get my coat, head for the door, and cut class for the rest of the day. But before I get the chance to do anything, someone’s beside me.
“That’s Olly. Don’t worry about him. He’s like that with everyone.”
I turn to see who’s speaking. It’s a girl named Nia. She’s in my English class. We haven’t really spoken to each other before now. She’s part of the cool gang I noticed on my first day — the tight group of girls who rarely talk to anyone outside their clique. But to be fair, she has smiled at me a couple of times. She might even have tried to talk to me before now if I didn’t run away and hide every time someone so much as looks at me.
I don’t really know how to reply, so I just nod and keep walking.
Nia falls into step beside me. She’s still talking. “It’s really tragic, actually,” she says.
Something about the word tragic gets my attention. Maybe I’m addicted to drama and intense emotions. Maybe it feels too familiar to me right now. I don’t know. Whichever it is, I glance at her as we walk. “Tragic?” I ask.
Nia’s mouth tightens in that way that happens when people want to say something but they’re not sure if they should. As if the words might just burst out in a mad rush if she opens her mouth.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I add. Which nearly makes me laugh. I mean, who am I likely to tell? I wonder if she has any idea that this is in fact already the longest conversation I’ve had with a fellow student since I got here.
