Page 12 of Starrily (Perks of Being #2)

Chapter 12

W hen Simon had talked with Stan, his advice of simply trying to communicate had seemed sound, easy, even. Simon was good at talking. He also liked to think he was pretty reasonable.

But when it came to Calliope, he was none of those things.

It had been over two weeks since the apartment incident, and the only thing he’d done thus far was keep showing up in her office at the appointed hours. Even when he got a chance—when Jessica stepped out for a break or when she left before Simon did—he still didn’t speak up. He sat there for hours, making vague remarks or answering Jessica’s questions about his company and the collaboration, and sometimes, he’d steal a look at Calliope and try to discern if there was any regret on her face.

But she’d closed up. They were back to the first days, where she found him insufferable, and he … he wanted her to smile just one more time, at him . He wanted to negotiate what music they’d listen to and grab coffee with her to see whose line would be faster this time, and most of all, he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and ask her what the hell was wrong and how he could fix it. Whatever they had—whatever friendship, or perhaps even something more, their painting excursion and the evening at her place represented, he wanted it back.

A smarter man might move on. He, apparently, wasn’t smart—only masochistic.

One day, Calliope greeted them in the morning with special news: she’d been invited to do a talk at a school the city over. Simon may not have been able to tell what she thought of him, but from her shining eyes and restless hands clutching the paper with the invitation, she was excited for the opportunity.

And Simon was happy that she was happy.

Jessica would go with her, of course; an opportunity like this had to be documented. But then she looked at Simon while tapping a pencil at her chin and said, “And you’re gonna come too, right?”

Simon looked at Calliope before he could stop himself. Their eyes met for a second, then rapidly cut the contact as if shaken by electricity.

“If you wish.” Calliope addressed him but kept looking at her computer screen.

“Oh, yay!” Jessica stood. “Road trip!”

And so, three days later, they packed into Simon’s limo. Calliope took a corner and spent the hour and a half of the trip sifting through the notes for her talk. Simon sat as far away from her as possible, and Jessica in the middle of the seat across from them, bobbing her head to the music in her headphones and tapping on her phone.

They looked like a deranged divorced family.

The limo stopped in front of a sprawling red brick building in a peaceful neighborhood. Calliope and Jessica got out first, and Simon followed, stepping into the shade of a giant oak tree.

Stan rolled down his window.

“We shouldn’t be more than two hours,” Simon said. “I’ll call you when we’re done.”

Stan hmmph-ed and nudged his head toward Calliope, walking to the entrance with Jessica.

“Now’s not the time.”

“Any time is a good time.”

“That’s easy for you to say. Your wife is a perfect angel, and you’re impossible to quarrel with since you don’t say much.”

“Hmmph,” Stan repeated, rolled the window back up, and drove off, probably to the nearest corner where he’d spend the next two hours enjoying the peace and quiet of the limo.

Simon breathed in and turned to the school’s entrance.

They said before the moment of near death, your whole life would flash before your eyes. He didn’t know about that death moment—he certainly didn’t remember his life flashing back then—but it did now, in clips and pictures, as if his eyes were connected directly to some promotional video of the school.

Valley Middle School.

Kids hanging around on the lawn in the front, chatting in small groups, until the bell rang, and their high voices filled the halls.

The parking lot over there—fourth parking spot from the left side, his.

This oak. This very oak. He used it and an apple to explain Newton’s theory of gravity to his students.

He moved in a daze, eventually catching up with Calliope and Jessica, talking to a middle-aged woman in a beige pantsuit in the entrance hall.

“And you must be Mr. Montague.” The woman turned to him. “I’m so pleased you’ve decided to come. After Dr. Guidry’s talk, I’m sure the kids would love to speak to you as well. Oh, but where are my manners.” She extended a hand. “I’m—”

“Principal Hernandez,” he said.

“You know me already.” She put a hand to her chest. “I’m honored that such an important entrepreneur would bother looking into our little school.”

Pull yourself together. “Sure,” he said with a practiced smile. “No school’s too small.”

“We’ve gathered the kids in the gym,” Principal Hernandez said, focusing back on Calliope. “I hope you won’t mind that?”

A big place to hold a talk. Simon checked for Calliope’s reaction—she may have thought it would be a smaller affair. Would the nerves get to her?

“It’s perfectly fine,” she said. A bit nervous, perhaps—but more than that, she seemed … electrified. Perhaps Phoenix had found her calling. It wasn’t all about being locked up in the office, alone, all day long.

“Wonderful,” Principal Hernandez said. “I have some last-minute business to take care of, but I’ll find someone to show you—”

“I know where the gym is,” Simon’s mouth uttered without much approval from his brain.

The heads of the three women snapped to him.

“Uh …” he ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, they’re always in the same place, right?”

“Of course.” The principal didn’t appear entirely convinced. “Down the hallway, all the way to the back, yes?”

They headed that way, eventually running into a teacher who showed them the rest of the way and led the group into a side room where Calliope could prepare before she took the stage.

“I’ll go mingle with the kids,” Jessica said. “Get some first-hand accounts.”

“Spoken with the confidence of someone who’s never been bullied in school,” Calliope said, then paused with her mouth still open as if she’d just realized she’d spoken directly to Simon.

Come on. You can talk to her. Maybe not about the intricacies of your friendship, but at least about everyday stuff.

“Jessica? Nah, you can tell she was the popular kid.”

“You must’ve been, too.”

Simon probably had been. “ And you, star of science class,” he responded instead.

There was a flash of hurt in her eyes, and she looked away, making Simon instantly regret his quip. What was it about her early life that made her so cautious, so unwilling to speak about it?

“I’ll take a walk,” he said. “See you later.” He had to admit—he didn’t do it only to make her feel better by relieving her of his presence. A part of him—the part of his life he didn’t want to, or rather, couldn’t talk about—was so curious and demanded that curiosity be satisfied.

He was here, so he had to see.

He wandered through the empty hallways, passing classrooms, looking at the posters, art, and notifications hanging on the walls. Marching band practice moved to Thursdays. Sign up for the drama club. He rounded the corner and nearly collided with a chubby man with a receding hairline.

“Oops, sorry,” the man said. “Didn’t see you there.”

Eddie. Simon barely stopped himself from saying the name out loud. Eddie Grenville, math teacher, unironic lover of dad jokes. They used to be such good friends.

“Oh, hey! It’s you.” Eddie waved a finger at him as if trying to remember.

Did he? It didn’t seem possible, but Simon himself didn’t know—

“You’re the tech guy. Aries, yeah?”

Of course. What was he thinking? “Yup, that’s me.”

“Nice meeting you.” Eddie nodded and continued on his way.

He needed more. He needed to see. It was easy to find the science classroom—he didn’t even need to think about it. The same old wooden door, the same old sticker on it, with a molecular structure of penguinone and a cartoony picture of a penguin next to it. He tried the door—unlocked—and slipped inside.

It was like a punch in the gut and an explosion of joy in his heart at the same time. So much of the classroom remained the same. The paper mache models of the planets of the solar system still hung from the ceiling; looking at the neatly arranged desks, he could see the day his students hand-painted them—the desks in disarray, glue and paper and paints scattered all over, the buzz of the kids chatting and laughing. Bright-colored posters of prominent scientists were still plastered along the wall; Marie Curie judged him sternly, while Rosalind Franklin’s picture seemed to say, “Really, you came back here? What did you think would happen?”

He turned away, and his gaze landed on the teacher’s desk. A round sign with a funky font proclaimed Mrs. Levahn’s Class . The last bits of joy evaporated as he slid his fingers over the sign, only the pain from the gut punch remaining.

What did he think would happen? They’d never give the classroom to someone else? Rename it into Raleigh Tate Memorial , keep it undisturbed, bring flowers and candles to the door every year?

He stumbled toward the door, nearly overturning a cut-out globe displaying the Earth’s interior on the way. Outside, he shut the door and leaned on it. What was he doing here? Digging into useless memories? It wasn’t as if he could come strolling in, announce to everyone he was back, and life would return to normal.

It wasn’t even his life anymore.

“Raleigh!”

He whipped his head at the call. A boy ran down the hallway toward him, and Simon froze.

The boy ran past. “Riley!” he shouted again at another boy exiting a classroom a few doors down. “Come on, we’re gonna be late!”

The two boys ran back past Simon, who stayed frozen to the spot for a few more moments.

Silly him—the boy wouldn’t be one of your students. They’d all have moved on to high school by now.

A part of him wanted to dig more, desperate to find some sign of reassurance, of remembrance, something that would ease his pain. Nothing will. It’s too late. The only way to ease it now is to not think about Raleigh anymore.

He forcibly shut the memories away—or tried to, at least—and returned to the gym. Calliope had already started her talk, and he watched her from the back of the stands. She’d adjusted the contents of her presentation to a younger audience, and at the end, a woman—was she the new science teacher, Mrs. Levahn?—came to the stage. Hands popped up one by one as students asked more questions, Calliope’s face brightening with each answer she gave.

The principal joined them and asked for a round of applause, which promptly followed. The students were dismissed back to their classes, some running away as if they couldn’t wait to get out of here, others lingering behind.

Jessica took a few more pictures by the stage, then went to talk with Calliope.

He should go, too. Congratulate her on another successful talk. But as he moved down the stands, he stumbled and would’ve lost his balance if it weren’t for the back of a seat he instinctively grabbed.

He looked down, expecting a gum or an empty drink can—something a student would’ve dropped.

His foot was inside the stands, sunk into the floor as if the latter were made of water, not metal.

Sheer panic swallowed his scream.

Simon sat on the same seat that intercepted his fall and lifted his foot. He touched it—and his hand passed through it.

His heartbeat rose into his throat, and his ears rang. He glanced around frantically, unsure of what he was looking for—someone to help, or making sure nobody saw what had happened? The students had left, and Calliope was still on the stage with her little group, engulfed in a lively discussion.

Simon closed his eyes and tried to bring his pulse down. After a minute, he gingerly put his foot back on the ground. It made contact. He breathed out.

Three times now. And this time, it was the foot, not the hand. As much as he wanted to brush away these strange happenings, an alarm at the back of his head started to ring, louder and louder.

Something was horribly wrong with him.

Simon hadn’t suffered another incident by the time he got home, but that didn’t soothe him in the slightest. He paced around his house, wearing down the pristine wooden flooring, until he gave up and sat down with his laptop.

He knew searching the internet was a bad idea, but he couldn’t help himself.

He tried “resurrection,” which led him to “reincarnation,” but nothing seemed helpful. Famous figures from myths and legends and ancient history, who died and were resurrected, made immortal even, by the gods.

Simon didn’t believe any god, if it existed, would care for him so much to bring him back to life and make him immortal. And with his recent incidents , he felt anything but immortal.

His fingers hovered above the keyboard while he thought, and then he searched for another word.

Ghosts.

Naturally, a whole lot of conflicting information came back.

Ghosts weren’t real.

Ghosts were real.

Ghosts were vengeful spirits.

Ghosts were souls of the departed, here to watch over their loved ones and guide them.

You couldn’t see ghosts.

Top Ten Ghost Encounters—With Pictures!

He sighed and leaned back on the couch. What was he doing? This was insane. He wasn’t a ghost. He was clearly human. He breathed, he slept, he ate food, and he was perfectly material.

Most of the time.

He rubbed his hand and raised it toward the ceiling light. What could he even do about it? Go to the doctor? Nonsense—they’d think he was crazy. So would Everett if he asked him for advice.

Besides, he didn’t want to talk with Everett.

He wanted to talk with Calliope.

He wanted to tell her his worries and ask if he’d be fine, and she’d give him some wonderful, scientific explanation that would make every piece of the puzzle slide into place.

But the truth was—she probably couldn’t. She was a scientist, and what had happened to him went beyond science. He was all alone.

He closed the laptop and got up to get a drink. He swished it in the glass while he battled away the burning in the corners of his eyes. Enough. He’d have to believe this would pass. Bodies could heal injuries and fight off disease, so his body could fight this off, too. He wasn’t fading away, and he wasn’t turning into a ghost.

But then, how can you explain your life? The little doubt deep in his mind whispered.

Simon leaned on the counter and gazed into the slowly darkening sky beyond the windows. I’m not explaining it. I don’t need explanations. Whatever had happened, he was done with it. Everyone else was—they’d buried him and moved on. He was living this life now, and it was a damn good life.

And surely, it would stay that way.