by Natalie Lund
She was relieved he understood. They couldn’t afford to waste energy now on anything but being there for each other.
“What time is her appointment?” Callie asked. He’d been on the phone with the doctors for an hour after the incident the day before.
“In about forty-five minutes.” He moved his hand closer to her mother’s nose on the pillow, waited a second, and then relaxed. Callie wondered if he’d been there all night, testing to see if she was breathing.
“Has she been awake at all?”
He shook his head. “Not since you went to bed.” Callie heard the catch in his breath. “We used to do this when you were a baby,” he went on. “Sit and watch you sleep.” And check that you were breathing. But that he didn’t say aloud.
“What if we talk to her?” Callie said. “Maybe she can hear us and she just doesn’t have the energy to say anything.”
Her father studied her. Callie didn’t blame him. After all, until now, she’d avoided as many opportunities to be with her mother as possible. “Okay,” he said finally.
Callie thought for a second. Maybe it didn’t have to be anything heavy. Maybe her mom just needed someone to be the jolly one, since her dad couldn’t manage it anymore.
“Mom, Dad and I are playing hooky. We’re going to eat ice cream for breakfast and even—gasp—sit on the chaise in the living room.”
Her dad smiled, catching on. “We’ll put our feet up on it—with our shoes on.”
“And leave damp towels on the bathroom rug.”
“And a knife in the peanut butter jar.”
Then Callie’s smile faltered as the painful reality set in: they could do all those things now without her mother even noticing. The rules they followed and the way they lived together would change. It had already.
“We’ll save the house, Mom,” Callie blurted. Her father looked at her sharply—a look that Callie understood to mean Don’t make promises you can’t keep. But Callie did intend to keep it.
“We’ll register it as a historic place,” she said.
“Callie, that won’t pay a mortgage.”
At that, Callie’s mom woke, rolling onto her back and wincing in pain.
“Here, Cath.” Her father gently lifted her mom’s shoulders and shoved another pillow behind her.
“How are you feeling?” Callie asked.
“Okay,” her mother croaked.
“Do you need anything?” her dad asked.
“I’m thirsty.” She rocked her shoulders back and forth, trying to sit up more.
“I’ll go get you some water. And you should eat a piece of toast too.” Her father headed downstairs.
“Did you hear us talking about playing hooky?” Callie asked, perching on the side of the bed.
“No.” Her mother patted her head. So she probably hadn’t heard Callie say that she would save the house, either. “Where is my hair?”
Callie laughed, surprised by her mother’s sense of humor. Maybe the day before had been an anomaly. Maybe they still had plenty of time.
Callie found the green scarf on the bedside table and started to wrap it around her mom’s scalp—something she wouldn’t have done even a few days ago. But her mother batted her hand away. “No. Where’s my hair?”
“You lost it, Mom. With the treatments.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes at Callie, but then her face relaxed and she nodded, remembering. Callie tried again to tie on the scarf, but her mother bobbed her head away. “I hate that thing.”
There was a knock on the bedroom door then, and Mrs. Vidal appeared. Apparently in the habit of letting herself in.
“The damn ghosts don’t let us have any peace,” her mother said.
Callie froze. Had her mom heard—and seen—Mrs. Vidal? Or did she just associate the knocking with the usual haunted house sounds?
“Mom, can you see her? It’s Eleanor Peterson, who owned this house before the Gallaghers.” Callie gestured in the direction of Mrs. Vidal, who was dressed in the same floral dress, now hopelessly wrinkled. There was a patch of scaly red skin on her forehead, like she’d had an allergic reaction to something. Was something wrong? Could ghosts become ill?
“No, I can’t see anyone,” Callie’s mom said. “But I heard something.”
“She is closer to us now,” Mrs. Vidal said.
“There, I heard that. Quiet as a whisper.” Her mom grabbed Callie’s elbow and lifted herself into a sitting position. She focused her eyes in the direction somewhat to the right of the woman. “What will it be like? The after?”
Mrs. Vidal frowned and seemed to be chewing something. “The problem is that I can’t describe it. Or maybe I can’t remember it clearly enough. I know that I wasn’t myself—not the person I am here. And it’s not a physical space. More like a sensation. What are you afraid of?”
Her mother shook her head and looked to Callie for help. “I couldn’t catch it all. It’s so quiet. Could you?”
Callie nodded and repeated what Mrs. Vidal had said.
“I’m afraid of being alone,” her mother said. Tears sprang to Callie’s eyes. The thought of her mother alone made her feel like something was tearing inside her. She’d been so focused on deflecting her own feelings, on avoiding the pain of losing her mom, that she hadn’t considered how scary it was for her mother to face losing everyone.
“You won’t be alone. This is Mercer,” Mrs. Vidal answered. “All our parents’ souls and grandparents’ souls are here, holding this place up. Watching over it. You’ll be right there with all of them.”
Callie’s mother was leaning forward, her eyes now closed, as though it would help her hear better. “What about God?” her mother asked.
Mrs. Vidal looked at Callie like whatever she was about to say was for her especially. “Oh, I’m sure He’s a big fan of the place.” This acknowledgment of the possibility of God flooded Callie with nostalgia, a desire to go back, to return home.
Callie’s mother heard Mrs. Vidal and laughed. A brash bark, loud and clear and as much her mom’s laugh as always. And then Mrs. Vidal laughed, clutching her belly. Callie watched the two women in wonder. This, too, was a lesson in dying. And, she realized, in living.
Joshua finished tacking up flyers for his LGBTQ+ group at lunch before finding Brenna in the cafeteria. She was at a table with her yellow-haired friend, a grungy dude who wore kilts to school, and a girl who looked like a vampire with green eyes. The past few months had taught Joshua to expect even outsiders like Brenna’s friends to ignore him. But he decided to push past the invisibility and do what he needed. For himself.
“Hey,” he said.
“How’s it goin’?” said Brenna.
“Callie wasn’t in pre-calc today.”
Brenna twisted on the bench. Yellow Hair glanced at Joshua, but then returned her attention to the conversation that he was interrupting.
“Did you text her?” Brenna asked.
“Yeah, I just asked if everything was okay and if she needed anything. She said no.”
Brenna nodded. “Come sit,” she said, gesturing at the bench across from her. “Dutch and Jade, scoot so Joshua can sit.”
His stomach flip-flopped in excitement. This was the chance he’d imagined the moment Brenna had picked him up in her car. No, the one he’d been imagining since before the first day of high school.
Brenna introduced the group. Her friends glanced up from their lunch trays or stopped their conversations long enough to meet his eyes. A baby step, but still a step.
“We should do something,” Joshua said, when Brenna was finished with the introductions.
“Like what?”
“Maybe go visit and bring her something. She might need a break from whatever’s happening.”
Joshua didn’t remember the days following his father’s death; hell, he could barely rem
ember the man. He only had a sense of what it felt like to have a father and then to not have a father: an ache he associated with dropping a string of beads onto the tile, watching them scatter beneath the couch and under the table, knowing that you’d never reassemble them the same way, that some would always be gone, while others would grind into the heel of your foot when you least expected it.
He could more clearly remember the days surrounding his grandparents’ deaths, years later. Tyler had come over, and Joshua had been so grateful to have a reason to read comics and think about something, anything else.
“Good idea,” Brenna said.
Joshua flushed with pride. “Oh, I wanted to give you something.” He opened his binder and slid out the hand-drawn flyer he’d copied and posted earlier.
“‘Safe space for LGBTQ+ and allies,’” she read aloud. “Our school needs something like this.” She passed it to Amy, who gave it a cursory glance and nodded.
“Will you come?” Joshua felt as though he’d unzipped his chest so that everyone at the table could see his stupidly hopeful heart.
“Sure.” Brenna smiled, and a wave of relief washed over Joshua. She snatched a few French fries from his tray. “Friend tax,” she said with a grin.
He offered her every last one.
* * *
* * *
After school, they stopped at the Fill Station to buy candy bars using Brenna’s mom’s employee discount before walking to Callie’s. They found her sitting on the porch, bundled in a jacket several sizes too large. She looked so pale, so lost.
“Hey,” she said. “You came.” She said it like she’d been hoping they’d come all along, her smile tentative but bright.
Joshua fanned out the three candy bars, offering them to Callie. She shook her head. Brenna sank onto the step next to Callie and draped her arm around the girl’s shoulders. It came so easily to her, being close to someone else without awkwardness. Joshua sat on Callie’s other side.
“Mrs. Crawley was asking the class where you were,” Joshua said.
“What’d you say?”
“Oh, just that you’d decided to winter in the French Riviera.”
Callie laughed. “I’m sure she’s very jealous.”
“Nothing to be jealous of. She gets to spend her summers teaching driver’s ed. So it’s pretty much the same,” Brenna said.
“Ouch,” said Joshua.
“Well, she once told me that remedial math was better for someone like me,” Brenna said.
“She said that to you?” Callie asked.
“Yeah, you’d be surprised what people say to my face.”
“I wouldn’t,” Joshua said, thinking of Tyler. Brenna met his eyes, and he thought he could see his pain mirrored there.
“No, you probably wouldn’t,” she said. “How is your mom, Callie?”
“She’s starting home hospice.”
Joshua had heard the phrase often enough to know that her mother would die soon.
“Do you need anything?” he asked.
Callie shook her head. “My aunt and some of my mom’s friends are helping with meals and cleaning and stuff. And Leslie's mom called to say she’d drop off my homework.”
“But, like, do you need anything?” Joshua pressed.
Callie looked at him as though it had never occurred to her that there was more than food and homework. “Like what?”
Joshua thought for a second before unzipping his backpack and pulling out his sketchpad and a pencil. That was what he would do if he were feeling sad. He handed it to Callie. Brenna smiled over Callie’s head at him.
“I’m terrible at drawing,” Callie said. Still, she opened the sketchpad and began to flip through. Joshua regretted the gesture, ashamed of the drawings of himself in thinner X-Men bodies. She laughed out loud at the drawing of Mr. Nelson as Beast and paused at him as Nightcrawler. He wondered if she recognized his likeness, could see him in the hero’s body. She brushed the page gently with her fingers, and Joshua felt something drop in his throat. Whether or not she recognized him, he wanted to cry—surprised by and grateful for her tenderness when her own world was so shredded.
On a fresh page, Callie lifted the pencil and began to outline what appeared to be a house. Brenna removed her arm from Callie’s shoulders and dug through her own backpack. She pulled out cigarettes and offered them to Joshua, who shook his head. Brenna began to write in a lavender notebook, cigarette hanging unlit from her lips.
Joshua leaned back against the steps and savored the moment, the scratch of graphite and pen on paper, the closeness to these girls who not long ago were strangers. It felt like a miracle, like a gift from Mercer.
Callie’s drawing was beginning to take shape, to resemble the very place where they sat—except there was a man on the stoop—lanky and bearded with a top hat.
“Is that your house?” he asked.
She nodded. “The medical bills are too much, and my dad says we have to sell it.”
“And who is that on the stoop?”
“Lincoln,” she said. “He’s going to save the house.”
“How is Lincoln going to save your house?”
“If I can prove he visited, I can show the historic significance of our house and no one can tear it down.”
Inspired, Joshua rubbed his hands together, pulled out a spiral notebook, bit into his chocolate bar, and started solving his own problems.
Tomorrow would be the first meeting of his club. Then he’d see. Surely, he wasn’t alone. Surely, there were others who felt like ghosts of themselves. Together, they’d have power. Together, they’d be a community. It was what Luke and Eddie had needed so many years before.
What Joshua needed now.
Brenna left Callie’s early to attend her aunt’s birthday party with her mother and brother. Her mother’s family lived in the Cities in a neighborhood that made Brenna yearn for Houston: panaderías, churches with tall spires and names like Sangre de Cristo, and, at this time of year, sugar skulls for Día de los Muertos. They parked outside the resale shop Brenna’s uncle owned. The family now lived above the shop in two spacious apartments. As soon as they got out of the car, Brenna could smell the carne asada her uncle was grilling on the back patio and hear the accordion from the norteño he loved. It filled her with nostalgia for the few family celebrations she had attended as a child, when she didn’t yet understand how complicated her mother’s relationship with her abuela was.
Her grandmother greeted them at the top of the stairs, kissing Brenna’s cheeks and pinching the fat above her hips with a cluck. The woman was the height of a child and thin, too, like Manny. All Brenna’s life, she’d bragged about being called flaca.
Manny smirked at Brenna, but wasn’t free from their grandmother’s judgment for long. After releasing him from a hug, she made a scissor motion with her fingers and told him he had the hair of a woman. She patted down the flyaways that framed Brenna’s mother’s face and clucked about the bags under her eyes.
Brenna kissed the air near her aunt’s ear with a whispered Feliz cumple. Her tía was much taller, like Brenna’s grandfather had been. Saint Camila, as she and Manny jokingly called their aunt, was a pious, gentle woman—too gentle, in Brenna’s opinion, to live in a household with five children who walked all over her.
Manny slunk into the living room—a room that reeked of male body spray and was papered with school photos of the cousins arranged haphazardly above the couch. Amid the collage, there were two wallet-sized pictures of Brenna and Manny that their mother had sent when they were kids. Their actual cousins were sprawled across every piece of furniture: two on the couch, one balanced on the coffee table, and another two squeezed in the armchair. Manny snatched the remote, settled onto the floor, and flipped the channel. “¿Este quién se cree?” Who does he think he is? Mariana complained. Manny didn’t appear to hear. Or h
e simply ignored her, as he did all their cousins.
Brenna slipped through the room, muttering greetings and ignoring the smirk on her cousin Tomás’s face, which was usually a response to her standard wardrobe—torn jeans, ribbed tank, flannel, and boots. She wedged herself into the corner of the room, her elbow against a bookshelf filled with old VHS tapes, and took out her notebook.
On Callie’s stoop, she’d started imagining the parts of Dot’s story she didn’t know yet, all the moments that weren’t overshadowed by her terrible father. For the first time, her writing pulsed and beat. It practically bled. She hadn’t had to force anything. Instead a vision of Dot—or the Dot she imagined—came to her and her pen didn’t stop until Callie had to go inside. The Dot she’d described roller-skated across hardwood floors while her parents were out. She bit the first boy she kissed, holding on to the pink underbelly of his lip with her incisors. She cheated at pool. She could hear a song once and sing it back to you.
She wanted to write more, to hear more from Dot herself, to ask about auditions and first songs and inspiration. She wanted to record her life. Not as the talk-show proof Joshua had imagined, but for the sake of their town’s history. An archive for the shelves of the historical society museum. Here was a person who lived and breathed and wrote beautiful music for far too short a time. And then Brenna could write Luke’s and Mrs. Vidal’s stories too. She would share a new kind of ghost story with the world.
Brenna was thinking of what to write next when Tomás ripped the notebook out of her hands and fanned the pages. Brenna leapt up.
“¿En serio?” she said. “Are you twelve?” She tried to snatch it back.
Tomás was just a month younger than Manny, taller and much wider than Brenna. He used his ass to block her, and held the notebook out of reach. “Whatcha keeping from us?”
She tried to swivel around him, but he ground a hip into her pelvis.
“Who is Dot? You a marimacha?”
Brenna dug a knuckle into the soft flesh where his kidney must be—buried beneath the fat her grandmother never commented on. Not with Tomás, who Díos had smiled upon with football talent when he was in high school.