“No,” I cried, sliding down to the floor. “No.”
This couldn’t be it. Except it was. Logan was no longer a part of this world. I’d known that for a long time, but this was the first moment I truly felt it.
Suddenly, I understood why people lit candles on the High Holy Days. Why they stayed behind in synagogue to recite silent prayers that were only for mourners. Why they visited graves on cold November nights. It wasn’t because we needed tangible things to find our way back to the ones we’d lost. It was because the dead were invisible, and it was up to us to mark the places they’d left behind.
I felt Jamie’s hand on my back, soft and warm. And I realized that the connection I felt between us, the electricity, was real. It was what Logan had meant about the universe not being able to tear us apart. Because we’d torn apart the universe, and rearranged the pieces, and making a connection like that was rare.
“You going to be okay?” he asked.
I nodded, wiping away my tears.
“I think so,” I said, glancing out the window at the crisp slant of late afternoon sunlight. “Come on, there’s something I need to do.”
I pulled open the door of Logan’s nightstand and removed the little blue box that contained his EpiPen.
Jamie shot me a confused look.
“You’ll see,” I promised, and then I took his hand and we walked out into the preserve.
We didn’t stop until we reached the cluster of honeysuckle bushes that had haunted me for so many years, the ones I’d stopped to look for on so many bike rides. The breeze was cold, and the trees moved with a slow whisper, as though guessing at what we were about to do.
“Hey, Cleo?” Jamie asked with a frown.
“So I had this idea,” I said. “Remember how, in ancient Egypt, they buried things the dead might need to bring with them?”
Jamie’s face lit up with understanding. We knelt down, and he passed me a rock, and together, we dug into the earth. I popped open the smooth plastic case, staring at the EpiPen that Logan had forgotten all those years ago.
It felt right to leave this here, in the preserve, a place that was designed to look after things, to keep them safe.
I pressed dirt on top of it until you couldn’t tell anything was buried here at all. And then I took a step back, crying with an intensity that surprised me. Logan was gone, and I’d never truly mourned him. But I’d never truly lost him, either.
For some reason, I thought about the phrase “giving up the ghost,” which means the opposite of what you’d think. It has nothing to do with letting go of someone you’ve lost. Instead, it’s a euphemism for dying. But maybe that’s not so strange, because losing someone can feel a lot like becoming lost yourself.
We read into fortune cookies and found pennies, looking for a sign that we’re on the right path, that the road ahead of us isn’t about to crumble away. Except no one ever tells you that, if the path does crumble, and you get lost in the wilderness, you can sometimes find your way back again.
It isn’t easy, but it’s possible.
I knew that as I sat with my friends at lunch, on our grassy slope where we never had to worry about having enough seats for everyone. As we carpooled to SAT prep over Christmas break, laughing because we couldn’t ever agree on the music. As we tested each other at rehearsal, making sure we’d be okay when we had to know our lines from memory. And I knew it as Jamie drove us through the dark canyon, hoping we wouldn’t see anyone else’s ghosts, but knowing that we’d handle it together when we inevitably did.
I’d made so many spurious correlations, and I saw that now. I’d started to doubt myself and question where I belonged even before Logan’s death. It was only after that I’d tried to find meaning in the mess of it all. I’d scrutinized my worst days, looking for some tangible thing that connected them, some omen I could use to recognize impending disaster. But the past doesn’t tell you all that much about the future, no matter how hard you wish it did.
Sometimes you look around at your life and you see a ghost of a different one. It watches from the wings like an understudy that knows it won’t go on. The play unfolds, and eventually, when you glance backstage, that life you knew is gone, and no one watching ever knew it was there at all.
Acknowledgments
When I was twenty-four, I found a time machine in Brooklyn. Technically it was the bathroom in a bar, and it had been decorated to look like the TARDIS from Doctor Who. To this day, I remain utterly convinced that I wouldn’t have a writing career without that bar, that bathroom, or its owner. So here’s to Andy Heidel and the Way Station. Without his glowing recommendation, I never would have found my incomparable agent, Merrilee Heifetz, who has been a mentor and friend for the past six years. And without my agent, I never would have found my incredible editor, Katherine Tegen, or my home at HarperCollins. And without my publisher, I never would have been on that flight to BookExpo America where I met Daniel, the boy I would eventually marry. And without Daniel, I never would have written this book. You’re probably not supposed to thank a toilet in your acknowledgments, but thanking a television show or an online fan community is probably worse, so I’m going with the toilet. And now, a few additional side dishes of thank you: To my parents, always. To Julie Buxbaum, for joining me in the trenches. To Nadia Banteka, for letting me borrow some superstitions, and for luring me all the way to Greece to finish writing this novel. To Ari and Jenna Lubet, without whom this book would have been finished two months earlier. To Yvonne Tam, who brought me scientific ghost stories and spare pieces of philosophy. And to Yulin Kuang, who asked if I had any ideas for low-budget kissing scenes, a question that eventually led to this book.
About the Author
Photo credit Emily Sandifer Photography
ROBYN SCHNEIDER is the bestselling author of The Beginning of Everything and Extraordinary Means, which have earned numerous starred reviews, appeared on many state reading lists, and been published in over a dozen countries. She is a graduate of Columbia University, where she studied creative writing, and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where she earned a master of bioethics. She was never cast in a single high school play, and disaster always seems to strike on her birthday. She lives in Los Angeles, California, but also on the internet. You can find her at www.robynschneider.com.
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Books by Robyn Schneider
Extraordinary Means
The Beginning of Everything
Invisible Ghosts
You Don’t Live Here
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
INVISIBLE GHOSTS. Copyright © 2018 by Robyn Schneider. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art and design by David Curtis
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943385
Digital Edition JUNE 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256810-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256808-3
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1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
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