Invisible Ghosts

by Robyn Schneider

  At least he had the good sense to look embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “I really was rude at the coffee shop. You have every right to be mad.”

  I folded my arms across my chest, waiting, because no way had he come all the way to my house just to apologize.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Also, I think you took my calc notes,” Jamie finished.

  So that was it.

  “Oh,” I said lamely.

  My bag was still on the bench. He watched as I unzipped it, and I sighed, trying to make it clear that I was only going through my stuff under duress. Because there was no way that—crap. I had taken his calc notes. They’d gotten mixed in with mine while we were sitting on the grass.

  I handed them over, my cheeks burning.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” he said as I went to close the door. “When do you want to work on our scene?”

  “You memorize your lines, and I’ll memorize mine,” I said. “Done.”

  Jamie looked appalled.

  “Gardner told us to work on it together,” he reminded me.

  “Despite what the teachers want us to believe, not everything is a group activity.”

  “But this one is. And I wouldn’t want to cause a repeat of the Great Art Packet Disaster of Sixth Period.”

  “Oh my god, you’re impossible!” I glared, and Jamie smiled, like he’d scored some great victory.

  “You’re only saying that because I’ve bested you with my infallible logic.”

  “Infallible logic?” I blurted. “Who even talks like that?”

  “Professor parents.” Jamie shrugged. “My friends used to keep score. They called it the SATs of Shame.”

  I knew he meant it to be funny, but it came out sad, as though he was remembering a life he hadn’t wanted to leave behind. And it struck me that, out of all the annoying things that were his fault, moving back to Laguna Canyon wasn’t one of them.

  “Fine.” I relented. “Since you’re here, let’s work on the scene.”

  I opened the front door a little wider, and he hesitated a moment before stepping inside.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled, setting down his bag.

  When he started taking off his shoes, I snorted.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  Our house definitely wasn’t that formal. Although I did have a vague memory of Jamie’s mom insisting on it when we were kids. And of their home being filled with expensive-looking art and figurines. It occurred to me that some of the things we’d taken out of glass cases to play with had probably been precious antiques.

  “Just so you know, the cookies are burning!” Logan called from the kitchen.

  “You should get those,” Jamie said, wedging his sneaker back on.

  I went very still.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “The cookies,” Jamie answered, straightening up.

  We stared at each other, realizing what had just happened.

  “Oh shit,” Jamie muttered.

  8

  JAMIE AND I were still staring at each other in disbelief when Logan drifted into the living room. He was positively vibrating with excitement, which made him even more transparent.

  “I knew it!” Logan crowed, pointing at Jamie. “I knew he could see me!”

  “Since when?” I demanded.

  “Since yesterday,” Logan said smugly. “At the coffee shop. And I was right. I love being right.”

  I glanced at Jamie. He’d gone pale, and his mouth hung slightly open, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. But it wasn’t Logan’s presence that seemed to throw him. He was acting as though I was as fascinating as a ghost in mesh shorts and holey socks.

  “How long ha—have you—” Jamie spluttered, but he never got to finish, because the smoke alarm in the kitchen went off, pitching everything into chaos.

  “Crap! The cookies!” I said.

  I raced toward the kitchen, the smoke alarm bleeping out some of my more colorful swears.

  The kitchen was filled with smoke and smelled strongly of scorched chocolate. I should have set the stupid timer. But then, I hadn’t been expecting company.

  I yanked open the sliding door to the backyard, trying to let out some of the smoke. Jamie turned on the ceiling fan, and between the two air currents, the alarm mercifully stopped beeping.

  “I warned you that they were burning,” Logan whined. “And you ignored me.”

  “Well, I was kind of busy,” I said defensively.

  The cookies were charcoal. I grabbed a spatula and scraped them into the trash.

  And then Jamie, Logan, and I stood there staring at one another in the dissipating smoke, a million questions hovering between us.

  Suddenly, something occurred to me.

  “Wait,” I said to Jamie. “You can see him.”

  Jamie nodded, clearly wondering where I was going with this.

  “And you could see him yesterday,” I continued, “at the coffee shop.”

  “We’ve already established that,” Logan interjected, sounding bored.

  We had, except I hadn’t realized what it meant. Now I understood why Jamie had reacted the way he did when I’d walked into Billz. Why he’d slunk over to the counter as though I was the last person he wanted to see. It wasn’t my presence that had horrified him. It was Logan’s.

  “Um, yeah,” Jamie mumbled. “But I didn’t know that you could.”

  That stopped me in my tracks.

  “What?”

  “I thought—well, I thought you didn’t know Logan was there,” Jamie clarified. “So I panicked. Sorry. I didn’t realize until afterward that I must have come off as a complete dick. But there isn’t an easy way to explain that, uh . . .”

  “You see dead people?” I supplied with a hint of a smile.

  It did sound ridiculous. Like we were rehearsing a play, and Sam was waiting in the wings, dusted with flour and fake blood.

  “I’ve never told anyone,” Jamie admitted.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, “ Logan interjected. “I’m great at keeping secrets. The only thing I can’t do is take them to the grave.”

  Jamie snorted.

  “Don’t encourage him,” I pleaded. “He’ll keep making awful jokes for hours.”

  “You mean awesome jokes,” Logan insisted, floating upward.

  I could tell he was trying to be impressive, showing off his supernatural powers or whatever, but mostly it made me nervous how close his head was to the ceiling.

  “Get down from there,” I said. “You’ll go through and screw up the plumbing. Again.”

  Logan shot me a dark look.

  “It was worse for me than it was for you,” he muttered, dropping to a more reasonable eye level.

  Jamie laughed, and there was something oddly reassuring about that moment. About the three of us standing around the kitchen making jokes. In the past four years, Logan had never felt as real as he did right then.

  There’d been a part of me that had worried it was all in my head. That my brother hadn’t really come back as a petulant ghost with very particular Netflix demands. That I’d gone crazy, quietly, and it was only a matter of time before my crazy became audible.

  But Jamie confirmed it—Logan’s ghost wasn’t a figment of my imagination. And knowing that, really knowing it, lifted a weight I didn’t realize I was tired of carrying.

  “So what’s the plan?” Logan asked eagerly. “We could have a Firefly marathon. Or wait, Jamie, have you ever seen Sherlock?”

  “Every episode,” Jamie said. We exchanged a wry look over Logan’s out-of-date pop culture references. And then Jamie winced, massaging his temple. “Ugh, sorry. Do you have any aspirin?”

  I told him to check my parents’ medicine cabinet. Jamie disappeared upstairs, and the moment he was gone, Logan whirled around, positively vibrating with e
xcitement.

  “Can we keep him?” he asked. “Please?”

  “He’s a person, not a puppy,” I pointed out.

  “I know. But it’s been forever since I’ve had someone else to talk to.”

  Logan pouted, laying it on thick. Or maybe he wasn’t pretending. It had never occurred to me that he might be lonely.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  Logan was starting to fade, which he actually looked upset about. And I realized that, for once, he was going to miss something bigger than sitting on the sofa and getting to pilot my Netflix queue.

  “We’ll hang out later, okay?” he said. His voice was tinny and far away, like I was hearing it through laptop speakers. I nodded, even though I had a suspicion he meant the three of us.

  Jamie came downstairs a few minutes later.

  “Where’s ghost bro?” he asked, frowning.

  “Don’t call him that,” I said. “And he comes and goes.”

  “You mean he comes and ghosts.”

  Jamie grinned, pleased with his own joke. And while he did, I was able to fully appreciate two things: that Jamie Aldridge and I were alone in my kitchen, and that, however accidentally, we had just discovered each other’s secrets.

  “So, about our drama assignment,” I began.

  Jamie snorted, like that was the last thing in the world on his mind.

  “Oh, we’ll get there,” he promised. “But first, I have questions.”

  “Well, I have lemonade, and some leftover dough that I swear I can bake into edible cookies this time.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he challenged.

  I expected him to take a seat at the table, but he opened the fridge and got out the lemonade. He grabbed some glasses, too, filling them with ice.

  It was such a small thing, the way he made himself at home in my kitchen, like the past six years had never happened. He’d made himself at home in Sam’s crowd the same way, acting as though he just belonged. It was a good trick, and I wished he’d show me how to do it.

  “So how long has Logan been, uh . . .” Jamie asked, handing me a glass of lemonade.

  “Coming and ghosting?” I finished, borrowing his phrase. “Four years and nine days.”

  I put the cookies into the oven and made a big show of setting the timer.

  While they baked, I told him everything.

  It was a story I’d gone over in my head a million times, but one I never thought I’d tell. Because who would believe it? Except the answer to that question was right in front of me, slouched at my kitchen table in the most expertly fitted jeans and T-shirt I’d ever seen, sipping a mason jar of lemonade.

  “Your turn,” I said, taking a seat on our kitchen counter.

  Jamie scrunched his nose, embarrassed.

  “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Okay, Cleopatra, here’s the deal. I don’t know why I can see ghosts. And I’m not sure how long I’ve been doing it.”

  He drank the last of his lemonade, crunching some of the ice. My mom would have died, since she’d lectured me enough on how it destroyed your enamel.

  “You didn’t have some near-death experience?” I asked, because that was how it always went in books.

  “Yeah, right after my Hogwarts letter arrived.”

  Touché.

  “You’re seriously telling me you don’t have any theories?” I pressed.

  “Maybe a few,” Jamie allowed. “You know about tetrachromacy, right? Some people have a fourth cone in their eyes that allows them to see, like, a hundred times more colors than the rest of us. The thing is, this condition isn’t actually that rare. But only a fraction of the people who have it can see anything different, and no one knows why. Maybe there’s an extrasensory receptor that makes some people see ghosts.”

  “Ghostchromacy?” I suggested.

  “Exactly. Or maybe we played with some weird artifact of my mom’s when we were little and got ourselves cursed. Doesn’t matter how it happened. You get Logan back, and I get harassed by dead strangers. End of story.”

  Jamie went to the fridge and poured himself another glass of lemonade, offering me the carton. I shook my head no. And then something occurred to me.

  “Are there a lot of ghosts?” I asked.

  “Not so many here,” Jamie said. “I’ve mostly seen them in cities.”

  “Then it was lucky you came back,” I said. “To live with your dad.”

  Jamie shrugged, even though the answer was clearly yes.

  “I’d totally wreck my class rank if I had to go to international school in China,” he said, making a face. “Besides, I figured it’s better when the ghosts speak a language you can understand.”

  Jamie tried to look like he hadn’t just admitted something so personal, but it was no use. I felt terrible for him.

  “That sucks,” I said, not bothering to sugarcoat it.

  “Completely,” he agreed, sounding grateful I hadn’t.

  It was strange, realizing that Jamie’s life had broken apart twice in five years. I understood all too well what that was like. Because Logan’s death had been the first thing to wreck me, but walking away from my friends in the aftermath had been entirely my doing.

  I’d gone quiet under the weight of it all, crushing myself into a tiny, invisible ball. And Jamie had gone cocky, giving the impression that nothing was wrong. But we were both putting on an act, trying desperately to fit in. And deep down, I could tell he was just as unsure as I was and just as alone in figuring out how to handle it.

  “Did you ever think you were going crazy?” I blurted.

  “You mean that the ghosts were all in my head?” Jamie shook his head. “Nah. After the first few times, I looked up local obituaries, and unless I was hallucinating dead people I’d never met, it wasn’t likely.”

  It suddenly occurred to him why I was asking.

  “Rose,” he said, looking horrified. “You didn’t think you were imagining it?”

  I shrugged.

  “No, of course not,” I lied. But I could tell he didn’t believe me.

  “So, uh, time?” Jamie asked.

  I was confused for a moment until I realized he meant the cookies.

  “Less than a minute,” I said. “And this isn’t chem lab, you don’t have to double-check me.”

  The corners of his lips twitched slightly.

  “If it were chem lab, you’d have already blown us up,” he accused.

  “No, you would have been so insufferable to work with that I probably would have stormed out and left you with the whole experiment.”

  The timer beeped, and I triumphantly pulled a batch of golden cookies out of the oven.

  “Told you they’d come out perfect,” I said.

  And then we were both very quiet while we ate the cookies warm, picking them straight off the tray.

  “My mom would die if she saw this,” Jamie mumbled with his mouth full.

  “Mine too,” I agreed.

  Jamie hesitated a moment, but I could tell he wanted to say something.

  “What?” I prompted.

  “I really am sorry about yesterday,” he said. “I was scared Logan would realize I could see him. And based on my previous encounters, most ghosts aren’t as chill as your brother.”

  “Chill isn’t the word I’d use to describe Logan,” I said, reaching for another cookie.

  “Well, normal then,” Jamie amended, as though that was a better fit. “I guess it’s because he has you to hang out with.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  Jamie, who had just shoved an entire cookie into his mouth, held up a finger, chewing quickly.

  “You’ve really never seen another ghost before?” he asked.

  I was about to say no, but something made me remember that afternoon in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. The blurry man in the blood-soaked coat, who had appeared in front of my car one moment and disappeared the next. I’d screamed and backed out in such a panic that I’d h
it a pole. And then I’d driven home, answered for my sins, and never asked to borrow the car again.

  “Oh, god,” I said, realizing.

  A beat of understanding passed between us.

  “If you thought Logan would be like that, then why did you come over?” I asked.

  Jamie grabbed another cookie, his impossible smile returning full force, like I’d just asked the most ridiculous question.

  “Well, you did take my calc notes,” he pointed out.

  9

  MY PARENTS WERE in rare form at dinner that night. Mom was still worked up from seeing her nightmare patient, Tiny Bladder Lady, who’d insisted she had to pee not once but twice during her filling. And Dad kept glancing longingly at the shut-off television as though, if he stared hard enough, it might flicker on and display the baseball score.

  I made sympathetic noises over my mom’s story, but mostly, I was distracted by everything that had happened with Jamie. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there had been this enormous shift in the universe that afternoon, and it shocked me that the rest of the world had carried on undisturbed.

  I could barely wrap my mind around it—that Logan’s ghost wasn’t in my head. That through some twist of fate or science or luck, I was able to see what others couldn’t.

  I hadn’t realized I’d felt so alone until I had someone to share it with. Not just someone—Jamie Aldridge, a boy who, until a few hours ago, I’d been prepared to loathe for all eternity.

  “Rose?” Mom said, and I looked up guiltily.

  “Huh?”

  “I was asking if you’d had a chance to read that Kondo book. I left it in your room weeks ago.”

  I had a vague memory of this.

  “The book about tidying up?” I asked. “I thought it was a hint to stop throwing my clothes all over the floor. I didn’t know you actually wanted me to read it.”

  “Rose.” Mom sighed, in no mood.

  “I resisted at first, too,” Dad told me. “But give it a chance, Rosebud. It’ll change the way you think about everything.”

  I highly doubted that.

  “This is the same book that wants me to find joy in refolding my socks?” I asked skeptically.

  Mom nodded, her mouth full, and Dad gave me an encouraging look, and more than anything in the world, I wished Logan were there to make fun of them with me.