Page 12 of Ghosts Don't Cry

Unlike them, Ididknow where he was sleeping, and how obsessed with washing he was. I knew things they never bothered to learn, and never cared to understand.

The line moves forward. I don’t.

“Maybe she liked bad boys. The whole dangerous and mysterious thing. Or maybe she could see what he was going to grow up and become … because I’d be willing to climb that man like a tree.”

Kate snorts a laugh. “He wasn’t dangerous back then. Just … intense. Do you remember all those times in English when?—”

“Oh my god,yes!When he went off about Steinbeck and class divides. Mrs. Preston looked like she was going to cry.”

I remember that class. The way his voice had cut through our comfortable analysis, sharp enough to make everyone shift in their seats. He’d talked about the Joads like he understood them personally. As though their hunger and desperation weren’t just themes to analyze but lived experiences.

Mrs. Preston had tried to redirect the discussion, but he wouldn’t let her. His hands had gripped the edge of his desk hard enough to turn his knuckles white, and his voice had shaken with something more than passion. Rage … at being surrounded bypeople who read suffering in literature and dismissed it, while helivedit.

“Think that’s why Lily liked him? Maybe he was Heathcliff to her Cathy?” They both laugh. “All that seething passion under a brooding exterior.”

“More like she thought she could save him.” Amy’s voice turns smug, satisfied in a way that makes my jaw tighten. “My cousin was on duty the night they arrested him. Said when they found him, he was?—”

“Maybe if you’d put as much investment into your own relationship as you seem to be putting into what happened seven years ago, you wouldn’t be in the middle of a divorce.”

Both women spin around, eyes wide, mouths forming perfect Os of shock. I walk out before they can say anything. Before I say something worse, and tell them exactly what I think about people who turn someone’s suffering to gossip over overpriced coffee.

The cold air hits my face. My chest is too tight, ribs compressing around lungs that won’t expand properly.

They don’t get to reduce what we had to their small-town theories or pretend they understand anything about him. Aboutus. My hands shake as I fumble with my car keys. They slip through my fingers twice before I manage to unlock the door.

I sit in the car, unable to make myself start the engine. Someone glances at me through the coffee shop window. Their gaze lingers a second too long. I start the engine, not wanting to become another piece of gossip.

Three blocks later, it dawns on me that I’m heading toward school. Wrong direction. Wrong day. I pull into an empty church parking lot, fingers gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.

Kate and Amy’s conversation loops through my head.

The old building on Maple. The arrest. Prison did him good.

The way they talked about him turns my stomach. Like he was a story they could tell, a cautionary tale or a redemption arc, depending on their mood. They have no idea what it’s like to see someone drowning and be powerless to pull them to shore.

The dashboard clock blinks 11:47 at me. I need to go home and put away the groceries melting in my trunk.

I pull back out into the traffic, driving past the high school with its empty parking lot where I’d first spoken to him. Past the library where he used to hide during lunch, tucked into the back corner with whatever book had caught his eye. I'd catch him there sometimes, so absorbed he wouldn't notice me until I sat down across from him. He'd startle, then relax when he saw it was me.

That momentary softening of his features, the way his shoulders would drop half an inch, the ghost of a smile he never quite managed to complete … I'd lived for those moments.

When I do eventually make it home, the silence inside my apartment hits me the second I let myself in. I dump the grocery bags on the counter in the kitchen, then stand there staring at the contents.

I pick up the ice cream three times, reading the label each time like it might tell me something I don’t already know, before setting it on the counter. It’s already soft, the container sweating condensation. I should put it in the freezer. I don’t.

Last night’s dishes are waiting in the sink. Next week’s lesson plans sit on my desk, half-finished. The calendar on my wall shows three upcoming birthdays, each one marked in my neat handwriting. All signs of the life I built after everything fell apart. All proof that I survived, that I moved on, that I’m fine now.

Except I’m not fine.

I never have been.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket. I take it out and open the text.

Mom: Are you still coming tomorrow?

I set it down without answering.

Another buzz. This one from Cassidy.