Haunted

by Susan Oloier

  That is the question. The fact that she dashed off after seeing me with Madeline must mean she cares a little about me. And that’s more than enough to make hope soar.

  Hailey

  “Remember the time when he came unglued over the waitress who dumped a platter of shrimp on him? I thought it was hysterical as hell. But he was so far outside of livid that he spazzed out? It was like a classic John McEnroe moment.” Layla takes a long drag off a joint and cracks up as if reliving the event in the Red Lobster.

  “Yeah, yeah. I do remember.” Erik laughs, too. As he shifts his weight on the ground, dead leaves crunch beneath him.

  We’re way out in the woods in the middle of junipers and tall trees. The smell of ponderosa pine is heavy in the air. A meager flashlight was all we had to illuminate the trail we took, one well enough into the Weminuche Wilderness to be unmet by patrolling human eyes. A fire fed by kindling and long-gone trees look like demonic fingers clambering toward freedom from the underworld. As the autumn wind shifts, the smoke detours in my direction. Despite how much it stings my eyes, I move closer to stay warm.

  “I’m glad you came out,” says Cal, the soberest of the group, “Glad you called Layla.”

  “Yeah,” Erik chimes in. “We’ve been worried about you.”

  Erik offers me the joint, but I shake my head. The old me may have accepted it, but not anymore. No alcohol either. I decide to stick with the bottled water I bought at the convenience store while waiting for them to pick me up.

  “We miss him, too, ya know?” Cal says.

  “I know.”

  “Remember the party at Griffin’s where he let loose and did that break dance?” Erik reminisces. “He was so drunk.” They all think back, roil with laughter.

  Somewhere along the line, someone has turned on music. Landslide plays in the background, which makes me all the more sad.

  It’s hard to hear all the stories, especially since the memories Cal, Erik, and Layla have don’t mesh with my own. All of theirs seem to feature Jeremy as some drunken guy who did all sorts of stupid and embarrassing stuff. And while I was there for almost all of those moments, I choose to remember him differently: as a masterful dancer, a gentle boyfriend, and a far classier guy than the portrait they paint of him.

  This is why I hadn’t called them before tonight. It’s hard traveling down memory lane with them. Not only reaffirming Jeremy is dead, but also knowing this is the legacy he left behind for his friends.

  “One of my favorite memories,” I talk into the fire, “is the time Jeremy took me to the bird sanctuary at twilight.”

  “It was his favorite place,” Layla chimes in. The others nod.

  “The sun was just beginning to set,” I continue, “turning the sky this incredible blend of pinks and purples only found in nature and paintings. It really was surreal. I can still—even now—hear the sounds of a bird song. It was almost like a courtship serenade.”

  Their eyes are trained on me, I can tell. But I continue to watch the flame lick the sky, opening its mouth as if to kiss a lover in the wind.

  “He brought his CD player. Played our song. And then we danced. No judges. No competition. Just Jeremy and me.” I can feel his arms circling around me, our bodies moving as one in perfect musicality with no thought whatsoever to technicality. Only in tune with each other. And for a moment, I close my eyes and believe I’m back there with him. That he’s still alive and well. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” I say.

  The group remains speechless. They have nothing to compare with my story. They didn’t share the same things with him as I did. They knew him in other ways; in his crazy, partying ways, maybe. But not the soul of him. That was all mine, and now it’s gone.

  I feel tears trickling down my cheeks, and I sniffle them back before someone notices.

  Layla drives me home. She gives me a great big hug before pulling away.

  I tap on my parents’ room where their door is ajar, waiting on me.

  “Have a good time?” my dad asks in a groggy voice. My mom is already asleep in the dim light of the corner lamp.

  I nod. “See you in the morning.”

  “Good night,” he says, and I close the door.

  I go to my bedroom closet and take down a box I stuffed on the top shelf because I wasn’t ready to deal with it. I rummage through it, pulling out DVDs and a photo album. I lay them on my bed while I change into my pajamas, then tiptoe down to the family room. I click on the television and push the first DVD into the player. The screen goes from black to an animated version of myself dressed in a short pink Latin dress with a Rhinestone choke collar. I’m backstage, mentally prepping for competition. Then Jeremy steps into frame. He wears a matching costume lined in black. His chest is bare. He looks streamlined and gorgeous. And as I continue to watch his image on the screen, pangs of loss choke me and writhe throughout my body. It physically hurts to see him there, moving around. Then he speaks and his voice jolts me back to the past—to a place I can never return to again in body and spirit. All I have left are my memories. I quickly click off the TV. I open the photo album and realize how much I’m crying. The tears drop, one after the other, onto the protective covering of the pictures. Because page after page, there he is.

  Seeing Jeremy on the television, hearing his voice, gazing into his eyes in the pages of the photo album, make me realize the gravity of my loss. All those things also make it oh-so clear that absolutely nothing can happen between Eli and me. Ever. How can I betray Jeremy by moving on with my life when he’s forever frozen at seventeen? After all, it’s entirely my fault that he’s gone. As much as I find myself attracted to Eli and his brilliantly sweet demeanor, as much as I’d love to hold his hand again and gaze into his gorgeous blue eyes, as much as I’d love to get to know him better and listen to his songs and watch him with the kids and his brother, I can’t. I can’t because it’s unfair to Jeremy who will never, ever again have those feelings. He’ll never graduate from high school. Never win another dance competition. Never have children or grandchildren. He’ll never have anything at all. No future. No life here on Earth ever again.

  I pull the red feather from my pajama pocket and study it. It has to be a sign. And if it truly is, that means Jeremy’s around, watching over me. How can I love another while he bears witness to that kind of betrayal? No, I tell myself. There will be no more friendliness with Eli. It’s best to deny my feelings for him and nip things before they go too far.

  Eli

  So Nate and Stella tell me I fudged things up royally with Hailey by allegedly flirting with Madeline. As if. But all right. If that’s how Hailey perceived it, then I need to fix things.

  She skipped out on English Lit yesterday, so I lay in wait in the hallway for her today. She can’t avoid me forever. At the very least, she owes me her time to finish up the Hamlet project. It’s due by semester’s end, and we are so very far behind on it.

  I bite down on the black cord of my necklace, moving the pendant back and forth across the string. I’m nervous as hell. I really like this girl and to think I messed it all up by giving any time at all to backstabber Madeline makes me sick.

  I spot Hailey in the sea of people, making her way toward the classroom. She’s alone. She’s done a stellar job of avoiding Stella, too. When she sees me, her face drops to a scowl and she stops in her tracks like a deer considering retreat. I push away from the lockers and move toward her. She turns tail and heads in the other direction. Every sensible part of myself tells me to stop, go back to the classroom. I don’t need anymore girl heartache. I’ve had enough to last a lifetime. But the emotional part shoves me down the hallway, and I zigzag between an upstream current of students to get to her. Hailey finds the doors and pushes herself to freedom. I pursue her.

  “Hailey!” I yell after her. “Stop!”

  I gain on her. “Please.”

  She jogs several more feet, then comes to a halt and turns. Her eyes are filled with hurt. God, was it reall
y that bad?

  “What did I do?” I plead. “Please tell me so I can fix it.”

  “Who says this is about you?” she stabs at me.

  I suddenly feel like an absolute, egotistical fool to think her mood has anything to do with me. Except everything took a complete one-eighty after my encounter with Madeline at the party. Nonetheless, I’m stunned to silence. How do I answer a question like that without sounding totally self-absorbed?

  “You’re avoiding me,” I point out calmly.

  She looks away, so I know it’s true.

  “Why?” I ask, keeping my voice at the most tender of timbres. “I thought we had something…” I let my sentence trail off not wanting to come across as overanalyzing the sparks I felt between us last Friday night.

  “Something?” she shoots. “We held hands. So what?”

  I know she’s trying to hurt me. It’s working. The desire I felt couldn’t have been one-sided. Could it?

  The bell signaling the start of English Lit sounds. We pause for a moment and glance toward the building, but neither of us breaks away from the tension, the fraud of our conversation.

  I nod, resigned. I take a few deep breaths and head back toward the school. I feel totally crushed, but there’s nothing I can do about it. She’s made up her mind.

  “I can’t work on the Hamlet project with you,” she shouts after me. Her voice breaks up under tears that choke her throat.

  I pivot slightly and glance at her over my shoulder. “Fine.”

  I’m ready to leave, but then she puts her head in her hands. I remain frozen to the pavement as a chill autumn breeze sends leaves down on my head. I want to go to her, drape my arms around her, but it’s not my place. She doesn’t want me. I turn back to the school, my stomach knotting because I’m powerless to help her.

  “I can’t hold hands with you again,” she announces to my back.

  I face her again. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  Her breaths are shallow, and I know tears will spill forth at any time. “But you want to, right?”

  I pinch my eyes tight. I have no clue where this is going or what she’s after.

  “What do you want me to say?” I ask. “I don’t get you, Hailey.” I bridge the gap between us. “What are you so upset about? You’re talking in riddles here. Tell me what’s going on or let me go. I don’t want to play games, all right?”

  Suddenly, I’m right in front of her, and she falls into my arms.

  “I’ve failed on epic levels,” she says into my shoulder.

  I tighten my hold on her and pull her further into me. I feel her tears soak my shirt, but I don’t care. Even holding her in whatever emotional crisis this is sends jolts through me. I close my eyes and absorb it before it gets snatched away again.

  “What do you mean?” I say into her hair.

  “I’m a terrible person.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Hailey pulls back and looks me in the eyes. Her lashes and cheeks are wet with tears. “I used to be a cheerleader. A dancer. I had lots of friends. Was considered popular. Now? Now I’m a cheater. A liar. And worse yet, a murderer.”

  “What are you talking about?” My eyebrows have a puzzled, knit-together feel.

  She takes my hand—the one she said she could no longer hold—and pulls me to the grassy knoll out of view of hall monitors, teachers, or invasive eyes. She musters courage to confess something to me. “I killed my boyfriend.”

  I don’t want to, but I feel myself retract a bit. Of course someone as gorgeous as Hailey would have skeletons in the closet. Of course she’d be too good to be true. But she seems undeterred by my physical reaction to her news; she’s too absorbed in the telling of her story.

  “There was this party. Drinking, drugs. I was the designated driver. He gave me his keys. I never should’ve taken them. He trusted me, and I failed him. I crashed his car and…and…he died.”

  She’s all sobs and weeping now. She folds to the ground, and I catch her, drop down to the grass with her. Her eyes reach up to mine. “I love him. I do. I can’t be with anyone else.” Tears snake down her face like water on a windshield. “I want to hold your hand,” she confesses. “I just can’t.”

  God. My heart splits wide open. This I never expected. I feel like an idiot to think she was jealous over seeing me with Madeline. Obviously, the party triggered all these memories and feelings in her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper in her ear as I tug her to me. Sorry in so many ways. Not just for her pain, her loss, the death of her boyfriend. But for selfish reasons, too. Because even though she may feel the sparks between us, she won’t do anything about them, except let them die away.

  “I wish it would have been me,” she cries into my chest.

  “I don’t,” I say to her. “I don’t.”

  “I don’t deserve someone like you.”

  I glance around at the clouds blustering in the sky, threatening an autumn storm. Leaves pirouette off the trees, dancing delicately to the ground. It’s hard to believe only a couple of months ago these same trees were full and alive and blooming. Nothing is as it seems, including myself.

  Hailey

  As the clock ticks away behind my head, and Dr. Wheeler lightly taps his pen against the side of his mouth, I wonder how much these sessions are costing my parents. Dr. Wheeler talks in circles and never gives me any practical advice on how to deal with what’s happened. Is he really earning each dollar? I doubt it. Especially now, when the silence is so loud I can hear it. I mean, neither of us says a thing. I’m the first to crack the quiet.

  “Have you heard the song, Landslide?” I ask.

  “Sure. Fleetwood Mac.”

  Silence again. I scour the room. Same books. Same certificates. At least the fragrance burner is turned off this time.

  “Did you bring the song up for a reason?” he asks. His eyes are trained on me.

  “Well, at first I thought it was aimed at old people. You know with the children-getting-older part, but now I wonder…”

  He allows for a pregnant pause, then asks, “Wonder what?”

  I drop my train of thought. It’s pointless anyway. How can a song help me escape the ghosts of the past? It can’t, so I let it go.

  “I went to a party,” I venture. “With a guy.” I want to see if I can get a rise out of Wheeler. The only thing he raises is his eyebrow.

  He grins on the inside, as his expression remains pretty much unchanged. “How did it go?”

  I shrug, not wanting to delve into that either.

  “Are you interested in this guy?” he pursues.

  “Interested is a relative term,” I say, catching on to his psychotherapy word play. “Interested.”

  “I suppose it can be.” He reshuffles his thoughts. “Do you like him as a friend?”

  “No. I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Then what would you say?” Wheeler’s questions feel like an interrogation.

  I pick up the pillow with the fringe again. The conversation has taken an uncomfortable turn. “I like him.”

  “As more than a friend?”

  I wish I hadn’t mentioned Eli at all now.

  “No. I mean, I don’t know.”

  “You’re hemming. Why?” The pen is at Wheeler’s lips. After all the sessions I’ve had with him, I’ve learned this shows he’s fully engaged in the conversation.

  “I can’t like him.” My esophagus gets this tight, clenchy feeling which precedes the tears.

  “Why not?”

  “As if you have to ask.” I turn away from him and focus on the book spines along his shelves, tracing the letters in the titles with my mind.

  Wheeler nods. “Do you feel you’re undeserving of love because of the accident? Because you were driving the car?”

  “Aren’t I?” I ask. “Undeserving?”

  “I don’t think so. But clearly you do, and that’s more important than what I think.”

  Another hush. The only sound is from the metron
omic ticking of the clock. It must be getting close to the end of my session. I cross my legs one way, then the other. I want to go home and lock myself up in my room where the rest of the world can’t find me. I want to lose myself in my memories of Jeremy and return to the before where everything was naïve and safe. I don’t like the new me who’s emerged from the knowledge that people can die. That my seventeen-year-old boyfriend can die. It means none of us is invincible. We’re all vulnerable at any time.

  “Look at me, Hailey.”

  I struggle to meet Dr. Wheeler’s eyes. Finally, though, I do.

  “You deserve love. You deserve to have someone show his feelings for you and you’re entitled to have feelings for him. It’s not a reflection of your feelings for Jeremy. You don’t have to punish yourself for what happened.”

  “I appreciate what you’re saying to me, Dr. Wheeler. I know you mean well. But, honestly, you have no clue what it’s like to murder someone because of a stupid mistake.” I’ve told no one except Eli about drinking the night of the accident. Dr. Wheeler, like everyone else, thinks I’m exempt from punishment. He believes I crashed the car because I was sleepy or because it was raining outside. They don’t know the truth. If they did, they’d hate me forever.

  “It was an accident,” Dr. Wheeler pounds into me. “Something you couldn’t control.”

  “Yes, I could control it,” I stress. “You see, Dr. Wheeler,” I overemphasize his name to show him how little he actually knows despite the credentials on the wall, “it is my fault. You know why?” It’s rhetorical. I don’t wait for him to answer. “Because I was drinking that night, too.”

  He remains unfazed. I continue nonetheless.

  “That’s right. If I had never accepted the keys to Jeremy’s car, I wouldn’t have killed him, and he’d still be alive today. So,” I clench the pillow so tightly between my hands that the stuffing threatens to come out at the seams, “I don’t deserve any of those things you claim I should have. I don’t deserve this sweet, new guy I met. I don’t deserve happiness. All I deserve is to be punished for what I did.”