by Val Crowe
There wasn’t much that I valued about my crazy mother, but she did teach me to stand on my own two feet, and I did that as best I could.
Olivia was nice to me. Truly nice to me. She seemed to sense that something was not great about my situation, and she used to buy me hamburgers from the local fast food joint and give them to me. Not like charity, though. She was classy about it. She’d roll up to wherever I was hanging out and she’d have a bag of McDonald’s, and she’d be eating the fries and then decide she wasn’t hungry. “There’s a sandwich in there if anyone wants it. It’d be a shame if it went to waste.”
She also clued me in to the thing that made my life less of a living hell back then, because cleanliness may not be next to godliness, but it sure is nice when you’re a cruddy, unpopular, homeless teenager. “You have to take two semesters of gym at some point, anyway,” she said. “You should just switch your schedule. I know there’s room in first period, because I heard Mr. Nichols talking about it when I was doing my office work study yesterday. They make you take a shower, but they got sued after that business with Jeremy Wentz, and now all the stalls have doors, so it’s not so bad.”
Showers.
Yes.
She was cool like that. She didn’t say that she knew how I could get a shower every day, but she told me how to make it happen. Not that Wade’s mom minded me being there or taking showers, but I didn’t ask back then. I didn’t want to wear out my welcome.
So, yeah, okay, I always liked Olivia. Who am I kidding? When I was seventeen years old, I worshiped her. I wanted to ask her to the prom, but I kept dragging my feet and freaking out. By then, I was working a job after school, and I had a little bit of money. I was still living in my truck, but I was feeding myself and I could have rented a tux and bought corsages and done the whole thing.
But I was freaked.
And then Wade asked her.
Fucking Wade.
And she said yes.
But then Wade realized how much that I adored Olivia, like I was a puppy dog, and he backed out of the whole thing, and we didn’t go to prom at all, me and Wade. We drove to the next county and used fake IDs to get into some bar and got wasted drunk and…
Wade and I made a pact that we would never let anything get in the middle of our friendship, especially not a girl, especially not a girl that hung out with the both of us all the time in a friendly way, a girl that we both…
I don’t know. I still maintain that I liked her more than Wade, but he was never going to cave on that point. He liked her too.
Point was, we swore off her. Both of us. If one of us couldn’t have her, neither of us could. It was supposed to be fine, because a chick like Olivia should leave Thornford and go to college somewhere far away. Except she didn’t. She stayed in town and went to Malbrooke University, like all the other pathetic kids who felt like freshman year of college should be an extension of senior year of high school, because that was what going to the local college was like.
And damned if she didn’t get accepted to the grad school there for psychology, and if she didn’t just stick around town until now. Until she fell out of a window five stories up in her apartment building. Until she died.
I kind of wanted to see her ghost. I didn’t like seeing any of the ghosts, not even Mads, not really, but I wanted to see Olivia again. I wanted to tell her how I felt about her. Or… no, what was the point of that? I wanted to tell her thank you. I wanted to tell her that she had made my life better. I wanted her to know that she had mattered and that I…
I didn’t see her.
No, mostly during the ceremony, all I kept seeing was the thing that was attached to Wade’s neck. It seemed to be gathering into solid form the more and more that I looked at it. Kind of like the ghosts I paid attention to, I guessed.
It was like some kind of worm with teeth, but it was attached to Wade like a leech or a… a barnacle. It swung around from one side of his face to the other, occasionally peeking over the top of Wade’s head. It seemed to be having a really fabulous time. More than once I got the impression it was laughing at me.
Thing was creepy.
It was menacing and sleek and deadly, and it slid through the air.
I wanted to rip it off of Wade’s neck. Of course, the one time that I tried to touch it, my fingers went through it like nothing. It dissipated in black smoke and the air where it had been felt cold and clammy. Touching it made me break out in a chilly sweat at the nape of my neck and the base of my spine. It made me think of blackness and endlessness and a chattering laughter that slid through my skin and made my bones scrape against each other.
I really didn’t like that thing.
After the funeral, we drove out to the graveside and there was more crying and more talk from the preacher. Everyone threw flowers on the casket and left. They didn’t lower the grave into the ground or anything. I guessed that only happened in movies.
On our way back to Wade’s truck, we were intercepted by a chick with long red hair that had been pulled into a sleek braid. She flipped it over her shoulder as she sauntered over to us. She had thick, heart-shaped lips which she’d accentuated with dark lipstick. When she moved, her hips swung back and forth hypnotically, like—
“Hey,” said the redhead. “I know you like what you see, but I don’t play for your team, so stop checking me out.”
“I was…” I squared my shoulders and cleared my throat. “Not doing that. At all.”
Wade was laughing, and it was more like a giggle because he was enjoying himself so much. “I guess you haven’t met Rylan?”
“No,” I said. But then I noticed something very disturbing. Rylan had a barnacle too, just like Wade’s. It was peering over her shoulder and baring its teeth at me. I struggled to keep my composure as I offered her my hand. “Uh, I’m Deacon Garrison.”
“Rylan Vincent.” She shook with me. She had a firm grip.
“Rylan’s a lesbian,” said Wade.
“Yeah, I got that,” I said, nodding.
“She’s into ghosts, too,” said Wade. “I know you hate that shit, so you guys are really going to get along.”
I cleared my throat again. So, maybe I didn’t just not tell Wade about seeing ghosts, but I also actively ridiculed the whole idea of the paranormal. It was a defense mechanism. I had a lot of those. Aw, what the hell? I didn’t even need a shrink. I was good at analyzing myself. “Uh, I have nothing against being, you know, um, a lesbian.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “I can kick your ass and don’t think I can’t.”
“I…” Actually, maybe it was better if I ceased to speak to this girl. I eyed the barnacle, which was sizing me up as well. It seemed to realize that I could see it, and it was pleased about that fact. I got a weird urge to touch it, like I’d touched Wade’s. Instead, I shoved both my hands in my pockets.
“You don’t believe in ghosts?” said Rylan.
I shook my head. Not speaking. It was safer.
She shrugged. “You should come on a shoot with me sometime. I’d show you shit that would change your mind.”
A shoot? Yeah, I wasn’t going to ask that question. She was baiting me. She had already decided she hated me, because I had been a dumb asshole jerk who had been ogling her, and now she was going to trap me if I opened my mouth again. Not happening. I was going to keep my mouth closed and eventually she’d get bored and move on.
“Rylan has a youtube channel,” Wade explained to me helpfully. “She goes and films in haunted houses and stuff and then puts the videos online. She makes money at it, too. Sells all these ads. Her videos are crazy popular.”
“Not that popular,” said Rylan, who actually looked embarrassed. “I’m just a horror geek who wanted ghosts to be real. And it turns out they are.”
I eyed her. “Why would you ever want ghosts to be real?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was a kid when I saw Poltergeist and it seemed like it would be neat to be the little girl in
that movie.”
“The girl gets eaten by the TV in that movie.”
“Yeah, well…” She glared at me. “I was a weird kid, okay? I guess I just wanted to be able to vanquish the monsters, you know? In movies, it’s just normal people—kids lots of times—against evil. And they find a way. I want the world to be like that.”
I found I didn’t quite know what to say to that.
“I mean, obviously, I don’t want to have to fight off monsters in real life,” she muttered.
It was quiet. Those things attached to them? They, uh, looked like monsters to me.
Wade spoke up. “I went on a shoot with her.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, eyeing the barnacles on both their backs. “Really?”
“Yeah, we went to the old dorm on campus, the one that’s boarded up,” said Wade. “You know, Ridinger Hall?”
I nodded slowly. “Did you see any ghosts?”
“Well, no,” said Wade, looking annoyed. “But it was totally freaky.”
“What happened exactly?” I said.
“I’m not convinced that place is even really haunted.” Rylan waved this away. “Look, I came over to check on you, Wade. I know that you and Olivia were close. How are you holding up?”
Wade shoved his hands in his pockets too. “It’s kind of unreal still. I can’t believe it.”
Rylan nodded.
I nodded. I looked up the hill toward the grave site, which was obscured from view now, willing Olivia’s spirit to rise up and come floating toward me. Instead, Rylan’s barnacle snapped at me.
I jumped.
Both Rylan and Wade gave me a funny look.
“We should drink,” I said. “That’s what people do after funerals, right?”
CHAPTER THREE
I invited both Wade and Rylan back to my campsite to drink bourbon out of the bottle, but they declined in favor of going to a bar. At the bar, we all sat in a booth toward the back together and Rylan talked about how Olivia was smoking hot and it was a waste that she would die like that and then apologized to Wade because she knew he was close to her.
“I’m bad with this shit.” Rylan was peeling the label off her beer bottle. “I don’t know how to be appropriate in the wake of death. It’s like, you’re supposed to be serious and stuff, and I am. I mean, I’m really upset that she’s gone. I didn’t know her that well, but she seemed really awesome. Plus, I know that Wade’s just devastated over it, and Wade is my friend, so that makes it even more heavy. And yet, I keep saying stupid stuff, like about how attractive she was. Which is dumb, because she was straight. And I’m not one of those lesbians who thinks that all girls will turn gay given the right circumstance because penises are overrated or whatever? I mean, penises are overrated, but what I’m saying is that I accept that some people like penises. And good on them, because if they didn’t, there would be no more people on earth, right? Like, we have to have heterosexual people to continue the species, so you guys are necessary. Obviously, right? Obviously. So, yeah, anyway, if you’re straight, you’re straight. The end. Because I don’t like it when people try to convince me that I’m not gay. If you’re gay, you’re gay. The end. Like when drunk guys try to hit on me and say disgusting things, I think about how I could be that disgusting drunk to a straight girl, and I don’t want to be that person, because that person tends to get a kick in the balls from me, and if I ever do that, any woman would be well within her rights to punch me in the vagina. You know?”
We both just looked at her.
“Sorry,” said Rylan. She lapsed into silence. “Really, I’m sorry,” she said again. She downed the rest of her beer. “I’m just shit at this.”
Wade slung an arm around her. “You’re fine. It’s cool.”
Their barnacles entwined. I felt that odd urge to touch them again. I remembered the bone scraping feeling. I shuddered. “I’m going to take a leak.” I got out of the booth.
“Get another round and put it on my tab on your way back,” called Wade.
“You don’t have to buy me drinks, man,” I said. I was sensitive about this, having been a homeless teenager who had relied on Wade too much.
“I want to,” said Wade. “You can get the round after this.”
I would get this round. He’d never know the difference.
Since we’d gotten the booth, the bar had gotten a lot more crowded. I fought my way to the front where the bathrooms were. There was a line of women. I went past them, waiting for one of them to say something to me, because there weren’t stalls in the bathrooms. There was only one each—one for men and one for women. So a lot of times, a woman would be in the men’s room, and she’d have someone stop any guy from going in, since the men’s room didn’t lock, owing to the fact that there was a urinal and a toilet.
I didn’t begrudge women using the men’s room, but I also didn’t want to walk in on anyone either.
When no one said anything, I pushed open the door.
There was a woman in there.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, starting to back out.
And then she walked through the sink, holding out her hands to me. “You!”
Damn. It was a ghost lady in the men’s bathroom. And I’d spoken to her. Damn it. Now she knew I could see her. Sometimes, it seemed like the ghosts had a sense about me. They knew that I was special or different or whatever. But if I ignored them, they eventually seemed to give up. When I acknowledged them, though, they never did.
I walked through the stupid ghost. She was in her mid-forties in an ugly blue dress with her hair piled in a severe bun on top of her head. When I went through her, the air felt cold, like it always did going through a ghost. I usually tried not to touch them, but I wanted to make a point with this one. I went over to the toilet and unzipped.
“You can see me!”
I did my business and flushed. I turned to the sink.
“Please, I need you to go and find my husband,” she said. “I have something very important to tell him. I’ve been waiting for someone to carry the message to him.”
I washed my hands. I walked back through her and out of the restroom as pointedly as I could.
At the bar, I stopped to buy drinks, but when I got back to the booth, neither Wade nor Rylan was there. Instead, the ghost lady was sitting there. “Please, my husband’s name is Roger Michaelson. He lives at 202 Northwest Avenue. Please go there now. We don’t have any time to waste.”
I turned away from the booth and then I spotted Wade across the room at the bar, talking to a blonde in a tiny black tank top. I went over to him and handed him his beer.
“Hey, you found me,” he said. “This is Cammy and her friend Lisa.” He pointed behind Cammy at another blonde, this one in a tiny red tank top.
Lisa waved at me. “Hi!”
“Hi,” I said. “Where’s Rylan?”
“Oh, who the hell knows?” said Wade, taking both his beer and Rylan’s from me and setting them on the bar. “She wandered off somewhere.” He gestured carelessly.
Lisa was coming around Wade and Cammy, straight at me, a huge grin on her face. “Oh my God, did you really go to high school with Wade?”
“You know Wade, huh?” I said.
“Everyone knows Wade,” she said. “He’s been going to Malbrooke forever. He’s a fixture at everyone’s twenty-first birthday celebration. It’s like a thing around here. If you turn twenty-one and Wade doesn’t buy you a shot, then you didn’t really turn twenty-one, you know?” She giggled.
Wade had been going to college for a while. He liked to say that if you played your cards right and changed your major enough times and dropped enough classes, you could stretch the experience out indefinitely. He also liked to say that line from Dazed and Confused. The one that Matthew McConaughey’s character says. I keep getting older and they stay the same age.
“That how old you are?” I said. “Twenty-one?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a woman her age?”
I chuckled, bringing my beer to my lips. So, yeah, I was here, mourning Olivia, and there was something obscene about her even being dead, let alone about my coming back her and doing anything other than mooning over her. Wade was the one who made time with co-eds. I sat around and nursed my beer and thought about how I wished things were different—
Screw it.
It wasn’t often a blonde in a tiny tank top looked at a guy like me like that. And twenty-one was only, like, four years younger than me, which meant it was all completely kosher, and—
“Hey!” Mid-forties bun ghost, Mrs. Michaelson, had appeared between me and Lisa. “We need to leave now, buster.”
“How old are you?” said Lisa. “You’re not like old or something are you? Like thirty?”
Mrs. Michaelson snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Look at me. This is important. My husband needs to hear from me.”
I sighed.
Maybe there was a reason for my never hooking up with co-eds, something that went beyond my undying unrequited love for Olivia Shields.
* * *
Eventually, I went home.
The bar was loud, and it was hard enough to concentrate on Lisa, who was cute and really nice but seemed kind of annoyed that I was so preoccupied.
When ghost Mrs. Michaelson summoned all her strength and knocked my beer into my lap, that was the last straw.
Screw the stupid ghosts.
I told Wade I was out of there. He barely looked up from his conversation with Cammy. Then I went back to my truck—the same one I used to sleep in when I was a teenager—and I drove it back to the campsite where the Airstream was parked.
When I got inside, Mrs. Michaelson was standing at the sink.
What the hell was she doing there? Most ghosts haunted a place. Maybe a person. Maybe an object. But there were things that they were tied to. She should have stayed at the damned bar, not come back here with me.
I made a face at her and walked through her again.
She screamed in frustration. “Stop acting like you can’t see me.”