Page 22

TWENTY-TWO

Gloria’s house hadn’t changed much inside, still as opulently furnished as a small cathedral. Though I’d never seen it host so many people, bustling with remaining family and friends after the post-burial lunch. Most of them wore dark hues, if not black, just as traditional as her. They looked right at home amongst her crosses and saints.

I didn’t see Cris.

“This explains a lot,” said Alastair.

I nearly hushed him, like an unwelcome guest I had to get out of sight. As soon as our eyes met, my skin caught fire, remembering the last time we’d seen each other. He shouldn’t have been able to step into my mother’s house. It felt like this was consecrated ground, and he was a malevolent spirit.

He reached out and caught something, all nonchalant, like the porcelain saint had fallen on its own. I wanted to knock it over, with my hand this time. But I’d always felt a rapport with St. Anthony.

“Sorry, Tony,” I said, then crossed my arms, looking up at Alastair. “What are you doing here?”

“Is this not the kind of event where you bring a date?”

I shoved him. His eyes lit with anticipation for a moment, before going out again. He’d thought I’d pull him closer, not push him away.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“What have I told you? You shouldn’t be.”

I could only hope he was still desperate for a drummer. Not that he’d read into our regrettable makeout.

I didn’t even feel like making the effort of rolling my eyes anymore. “Are you bored yet?”

“You don’t know boredom.”

I raised my eyebrows, but before I could try and turn it around on him—didn’t he make enough entertainment for himself on this side?—he turned away from me, beginning to pace.

I wondered if he were only feigning interest in the family photos on the walls, or if they really did distract him. I sidled up to him, like we were strangers at an oddly intimate little museum.

“You’re not in any of these,” he said.

I raised a finger to point out one of the smaller pictures. In the yellow phosphorescent light of an old camera, a bunch of costumed kids stood on stage, putting on a nativity pageant. My sister had been well-behaved enough as a baby to play her namesake, replacing the usual plastic doll at my mother’s insistence. She took up the center of the photo, as usual. Off in the corner, far from my flock, I stole the show as a wandering sheep.

He stared for a long while, his fingers pressed to his mouth. I’d wanted him to see me as a kid. As if that might make him more sympathetic, learning not only that I’d had a family, but that I’d been a child once, with so much potential, so much life supposedly ahead of her. I dug my nails into my palms, trying not to think too hard about it, myself.

At last, he cleared his throat. “You know, it’s a myth about hair and fingernails.”

“What about them?” I asked, trying not to let my voice sink.

“They don’t keep growing post-mortem. The skin simply shrinks back as it decays, creating an illusion of change. We don’t keep growing after death.”

I got it, then. He saw what I’d been, what I’d become, and now, what I’d always be, until the trumpets rang.

“How about the soul?” I asked. “It grows all the time, doesn’t it?”

“On the other side, it might, sometimes. But here? With no world around it, nothing to nourish or challenge it?”

I hadn’t expected the melancholy weighing down his eyes, his face unmasked as he searched mine.

“That can’t be true,” I said, allowing some gravity in, before I grinned. “We could always get worse.”

His laugh was labored, but I got it out of him all the same. “We might not grow, but we sure do rot.”

He lifted his fingers up to my face, casually, not questioning whether I’d welcome it. I might’ve already gotten my fill of touch earlier, but I still had to keep from letting my eyes flutter closed.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said, as he leaned in. I pushed his face away. If I gave an inch, I’d end up taking a lot more, judging from the way he filled out his pants. Maybe then, he’d quit pestering me. Or he’d become even more insufferable. I could wait to find out.

“What’s the deal?” he asked.

“Did you forget where we are?”

“We should get out of here, anyway,” he said, now more sober. “There’s nothing left to see. It’s all over.”

He brushed my shoulder, like he thought I might be slipping. Some of the china in the cabinet trembled with a nerve-wracking ting. I was still convinced my mother had collected all those breakables just to punish me when the inevitable happened.

“It’s not,” I said. “Not yet.”

I hadn’t seen Cris.

“When will you be satisfied?” he asked. “You’re really determined to go geist, aren’t you?”

I shrugged off his hand. “What’s my alternative? Forget who I left behind? You want me to fucking rejoice in that?”

“Not forever,” he said. “But you’ll never make it to forever if you don’t start—”

Thankfully, he didn’t follow me when I disappeared, though I’d only spirited upstairs.

***

Cris lay curled up in bed in her old room, full of technicolor musical posters and high school softball trophies, left behind when she moved into her apartment. The rest of the room had been picked over. On the wall above her head a white space glared, the opposite of a shadow, where a cross used to be.

“There you are,” said Gloria.

I moved aside so she wouldn’t pass through me. But she remained in the doorway, staring with her arms crossed.

My sister didn’t reply, or even move, just lay there wrinkling her dress suit.

I wondered how it went down after I left the wake. Perhaps she’d anticipated what our mother would want, as usual, and apologized without being asked. Or she’d been berated, exactly like I would’ve been.

Most likely, neither of them had acknowledged it at all.

“Are you praying?” asked Gloria.

Cris rolled over on the bed, pulling herself up and hugging her knees as best she could in her stiff clothes. “No.”

“You should write to your professors,” said Gloria. “They’ll understand you need time off.”

“I don’t want to get behind.”

“You can stay here,” said Gloria. Only my sister and I would be able to hear the plea hanging off the edge of her words.

Cris shook her head, slightly, not in protest, but as if to settle the words in her ears. “I thought you’d want me to go back.”

There she went contradicting our mother again, like it was nothing. I hadn’t even realized I’d tensed up, my shoulders practically aching.

Gloria’s breath pitched as her mask finally gave, just a little. Brows raised, her mouth tighter. She drew herself up and gave a taut nod. “It would be best to try returning to normal.”

She always stated, never asked.

“It’s not just that,” said Cris.

I didn’t think my mother could draw up any straighter, yet somehow, she managed it. “What is it?”

Cris still couldn’t muster the courage to look at her. I never could, either. It took enough nerve to talk back without seeing its lack of effect, like standing in the eye of a storm. Back when I used to believe, it felt the same as blaspheming. You never knew when lightning might strike.

No wonder she and I had both developed the habit of clenching our fists like that, digging nails into our palms.

Finally, she spat it out. “I can’t stay here with you.”

“Why not?” asked Gloria.

Cris couldn’t hold up her mask anymore. When it crumbled at last, her eyes were hard. “You cast her out.”

Gloria snapped.“?Cómo te atreves!” I’d heard that often enough not to forget it: How dare you. In English, she said, “I did not! She refused to come back.”

Cris didn’t flinch. I’d never seen her eyes blaze like that, the same cold fury I’d grown up fearing turned back on our mother. “What did you expect? That you could shut her out and wait for her to change on her own, return the prodigal son? You just made it that much harder for her to live, fending for herself, when you knew—” Her voice cracked. “Suicide runs in the family.”

My dad had drunk himself to death. Maybe on purpose. I had to find out reading old newspapers online at the school library, because if I ever dared bring him up, I’d be sent to bed without dinner.

Gloria raised her chin, too late to knock back the tears. She ignored them, her mouth twitching and voice shaking with rage. “You weren’t there for her, either!”

I wished I could be surprised that she would try to deflect the blame, deny any wrongdoing. For a Catholic, she didn’t handle guilt well.

“I took her back,” Cris snapped. “Just because she didn’t believe, that didn’t make her a bad person. You were just too prideful to admit you didn’t know how to help her.”

Gloria’s volume made me tremble like a scolded child. “How can you talk to your mother this way? I raised you better than that.”

Cris got up, approaching her. For a moment, I thought she’d take it back, revert to the golden child. Go for a hug, nothing like the stiff embraces I used to get. It stung. Instead, she tried to edge past her in the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” said Cris. “I can’t do this.”

The curtains billowed, though the window wasn’t open.

Gloria didn’t budge. The tears had dried on her face. Her voice was flat, if slightly husky. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Cris stared, as though struggling to put the apology in her eyes into words.

Then she turned around and dove for my old escape—outthe window, down the trellis. I almost laughed in sheer surprise.

Gloria stumbled after her, sticking her head out the window and screaming, “Cristina!”

But my sister had already taken off running across the lawn.

“You stay the hell put, or—”

She didn’t say the rest, not out loud. It hung in the air unspoken. You can never come back.

Last time she’d said it, it had come true. Now she only had one child left.

Something crashed. One of the old trophies fell off the dresser and into the lamp, shattering the bulb.

This time, I knew not to linger. Not alone.

And aside from the Haunt, I still had one other option for company.

***

Ren slept on his usual schedule this time, all covered up but for his hair. I didn’t expect the mere suggestion of him under his blankets to make my dead heart skip a beat. Just as I considered spiriting straight off again, he stirred.

Somehow, he always seemed to wake right when I showed up. As if he could sense my presence. I wondered how he managed to get any sleep at all with geists around.

He sat up and pried down his headphones, rubbing his eyes as though he half-expected I’d vanish like a dream. “Mal.”

“So, here’s the thing.” I couldn’t help but pace, my feet not ready to take root anywhere. “If I don’t want to end up a poltergeist, I can’t be alone. So, uh, I’ve changed my mind about hanging out. That is, if you’re still down?”

He smiled, before a yawn interrupted him. It lingered in his voice. “I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”

My chest ached suddenly. “Actually, that’s probably for the best. I wasn’t thinking. I should just—”

“Stay,” he said, quick, before I could disappear on him. “Seriously, you can crash as long as you want.”

I hadn’t planned to hang around long enough to call it crashing. “Are you sure?”

He just shook his head at me, pulling his laptop out from under the mattress. “What do you wanna watch?”

I sank beside him on the mattress, folding myself up, head on my knees. It had been years since I’d been so nervous on someone else’s bed. I’d never had a roommate who didn’t eventually become my bedmate, as well. If I couldn’t push him back down on the mattress, I didn’t know what exactly to do with him, or myself.

It took way too much concentration to simply sit quietly and watch the show he’d put on while the ones I used to watch in life were downloading. He eventually lay back, falling asleep again. His head rested awfully close to my lap.

He’d only be around half the time, and mostly unconscious, anyway. I’d have the place to myself, not much different from my own. At least here, it would be quiet. I wouldn’t have to forget.

“One more thing,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“You remember how we, um…” I didn’t want to bring up the kiss-that-wasn’t. “I mean, that time we went to the movies?”

His lips curved up. “Yeah?”

I gulped, my throat going painfully dry. “Could we just agree none of that happened?”

He sighed, but still went ahead and asked, “What movie?”

My voice cracked. “Exactly.”

That made it easier to settle down beside him, resting my chin on my hands. It didn’t count as sharing a bed if we couldn’t touch each other.

***

Liam scared me. I took him for a geist as he spirited in, springing to my feet with all my muscles tensed. Ren had gone to work, and I didn’t particularly want to tangle with one of those things alone. Then he laughed. I uncoiled a little.

“What are you still doing here?” he asked, glancing down at the chattering laptop. “Were you planning on hanging out till somebody else moves in? Or did you want to stay and haunt the poor bastards?”

He must’ve mistaken this sad, empty apartment for my old one, thinking it had been mostly packed up already. No need to correct him. If I did, I’d have to explain my weird new rooming situation.

I wrapped my arms around myself. “I’ll be fine.”

“Why settle for that, when you could be better off?”

My stomach dropped with dread.

“You know what you’re missing, right?” he asked. “You’re the one who showed me the Haunt.”

I couldn’t look at him, my feet already bearing me away, seeking an escape. I settled for prying back the tacked-up blanket and looking out the window, as if there were much of a view. No reflection peered back at me, so I couldn’t see how well my mask held.

“Why aren’t you in the band already?” he asked. “We should be doing this together. It’s like a second chance.”

I closed my eyes. “Please, just…shut the fuck up.”

“We don’t even have to play together, if you want. I could take a different shift.”

“I mean it, you goddamn traitorous asshole.” I whirled on him, letting him see as well as hear me snap. “Thanks for the quickie, but there’s no need to get clingy. I’m not really looking to make up.”

He stepped back like I’d struck him. “Well, shit. I mean, I didn’t think we were getting back together. But you don’t have to stay away on my account.”

“It’s not all about you.”

“Then what is it?”

I shook my head in disbelief. “If you wanted to keep up to date on my deepest, darkest thoughts, you shouldn’t have left me on an IV.”

“I’m just trying to make it up to you.”

“If you mean that, you’ll give me some space.”

“You don’t need space,” he said. “We’re not supposed to be alone.”

Someone had given him the 101. Damn it.

He reached out to put a hand on my shoulder, but I jerked away. “How can I keep partying knowing you’re here on your own?”

“I dunno, how’d you manage last time?”

His jaw clenched. “I didn’t.”

I curled my hands into fists, recalling the satisfying splinter of his guitar against the floor, how it went from being so heavy to much lighter broken in half.

“Look,” I said. “If you can’t handle the guilt of the lurch you left me in, that’s your problem, not mine. I don’t have to fucking forgive you. Just leave me to rot.” I couldn’t help but add, “Again.”

His eyes glistened as he shook his head, looking just like he had the last time I’d driven him off, right before a nurse escorted him out. “How can I make this right?”

“I already told you, get the fuck out of my face.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he said. “If you go geist—”

Somehow, whether I meant it or not, I always knew the worst thing to say. “I almost did already. It made me relive the worst moment of my life, over and over. And you know who I saw? You. So if it happens again, think of it this way: You’ll still be here. I’ll never be rid of you.”

This time he turned away, resorting to pacing, just like in my hospital room and so many hotel rooms before that. He never had enough room to walk off my words.

“I forgot how fucking hopeless you are,” he said. “You’d take a fate worse than death over letting anyone help you out?”

“Not anyone,” I said. “But you, for sure.”

“Well, I hope someone gets through to you,” he said. “I tried.”

I blinked, and he’d disappeared, so much faster than last time. I’d missed the opportunity to watch him leave, to hurl one last insult with his back turned.

Instead, I muttered it to myself. “Have a nice afterlife.”