Haunted

by Susan Oloier

  “I have to go.” I spin around, yank the door back open, and rush down the hall toward Physics.

  “Hailey!” Eli calls. But I don’t turn around. I don’t want to face him or the past or the fact that my world from before and my life now have collided. For the first time ever, I’m glad to have an appointment scheduled with Dr. Wheeler later in the day.

  When I reach Physics, I realize I left Mr. Buckheimer’s paperwork back in the practice room. It’s crumpled and scattered alongside Eli’s sheet music, and I’m not going back for it.

  Hailey

  “So…” he says, staring at me from his place across the room. A pen moves almost imperceptibly beneath his chin. A notebook lays flayed on his lap like a gutted fish.

  “So,” I say back.

  “You made an appointment for a reason.” Dr. Wheeler always refuses to be the first one to breech the boundary between us, to bring up my motive for being here at all.

  “I need something,” I begin. “I’m not getting any better.”

  “Something?” He says, acting like he has not a clue, not a hint, of what I’m referring to. “Like coming clean about your feelings?” he asks.

  “No.” I grow frustrated. “Like medication. Drugs. A prescription of some kind,” I bark at him. I rub a hand over my face and poke my fingers into my eyes as if doing it will remove the stigma I feel, as if it will make everything okay.

  “Medicating is not the answer. Have you written your letters? The ones we talked of last time?” Dr. Wheeler asks.

  “Yeah.” I peer out at him from behind my fingers, ready to curl my hand into a fist and completely pummel him.

  “And?”

  I lower my hands to my lap. The fists are clenched. So is my jaw. “They hate my guts. A letter means jack shit to them.” I hear my voice elevate. “A piece of paper isn’t going to bring him back in the flesh. It’s not going to bring him back at all!”

  I want to keep going with my tirade and unleash everything onto Dr. Wheeler and his relaxed, yoga-esque demeanor, but now there’s a knot in my throat, and my words close up, quickly replaced by sobs that come out of nowhere.

  “Do you think they deserve to hate you?” His eyes are on me, and I swallow down the lump in my throat as I simply stare at him. The pen has made its way to the side of his lip, and all I want to do is break it in half, then stab him with the jagged edge.

  “Yes. Of course. What the hell do you think?” I ask, not sure where all the swearing is coming from either, “That they should throw me a party?”

  “Maybe they don’t hate you at all,” he starts. And I know he’s going to lay on the psychobabble in nice, thick layers. “Maybe you think they hate you because you hate yourself.”

  “Please tell me something,” I say, my voice already thickly peppered with sarcasm. “Where did you get your degree? On line at the grocery store? Because it seems to me your simple questions aren’t really helping at all. You’re not really helping me at all.”

  It’s like Wheeler expects this. Nothing fazes him. His expression remains unaffected by insults or tirades. He’s a mannequin, a robot, with no human emotions whatsoever.

  “Anger is good. Very good,” Dr. Wheeler surmises. “Looks to me like you don’t need something after all.”

  But I do. And if he won’t give it to me, then I’ll get it myself.

  Eli

  “Wait,” Nate says. “You’re what?” He turns his black and metal spiked bracelet around on his wrist and if he’s gearing up to hit me. Somehow he’s found me in the practice room at the furthest corner of the school. I wanted it to be my own private oasis apart from home, from the band, from anyone really. He stormed in with a sense of entitlement, as though I owe him everything.

  “Quitting the band,” I say.

  “Yeah. So Rick told me.”

  For so long I’ve wanted to do my own thing and part ways with the band and the library. Rock ‘n Roll is good, entertaining kids is great, but my heart belongs to classical piano. Not the guitar. Not seedy bars. Not in the middle of activity rugs and children’s books and the musty smells of unopened tomes. Those things aren’t real. At least not to me. I want to be the modern-day Chopin, churning out beautiful and timeless pieces that can only be understood by deciphering the nuances in the keys. Not merely through lyrics that tell of broken hearts and faraway dreams.

  “What the fuck are we going to do about a guitarist?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, flipping through my own personal sheet music, a bit distracted. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “The fuck we will,” he says, snatching the papers. He looks at them closely. “What is this? Some sort of classical shit?”

  “Will you stop with the expletives already?” I ask. “It’s just something I’m working on.”

  I try to get them back, but Nate is like the bully in the elementary school hallway, holding my lunch money just out of my reach until I call uncle. Finally, he throws them on the floor.

  “Pick them up,” I demand.

  “No.”

  “Do it,” I say standing immediately before him to confront his sorry ass.

  “Fuck no.”

  I shove Nate. He shoves me back. Soon we’re in the middle of a fight. An actual punching, dodging, shoving-type of fistfight. He clocks me right on the cheek, and I stagger backwards. My hand instantly flies to the spot where I know, soon, a bruise and a large swelling bump will be. “You fucker,” I say.

  “God, man, I’m sorry,” Nate says through stifled laughter.

  “Yeah, I bet you are.”

  He laughs harder. “I am. Truly.” There’s a pause where I lightly touch my stinging cheek and Nate turns serious. “Why didn’t you tell me? I mean fucking Rick? Who the hell is he?”

  “The drummer,” I joke.

  “I’m your friend,” Nate continues. “You should have come to me first.”

  I nod.

  Nate nods.

  We’re good.

  Hailey

  “Can I borrow the car?”

  My mom and dad gape at me over their newspapers and coffee cups, as if I’ve just grown an extra head. I’ve not driven since…well, since.

  “You want to drive?” my dad asks.

  I nod.

  My parents look to one another. They hadn’t expected this, obviously.

  “Sure,” my mom says. “The keys are in my purse.

  “Great.” As I fish them out, I can feel their eyes on me.

  “Going anywhere special?” my dad asks.

  “Not really. Just out.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Just be…” He stops himself from finishing the sentence. It’s futile to drive the point home. I was already as careless as I could ever be.

  I get inside and plug in my iPod. I head onto the open road, knowing precisely where I’m going. In time, I wind up at the flower shop.

  “Hi,” the familiar and smiling face of the shop owner greets me. “Here for your boyfriend again?” She’s in her own chipper and oblivious world.

  I nod, mindlessly selecting a fistful of flowers, which she wraps for me. “He’s a very lucky guy.”

  My pulse quickens, and my temper rises, but I manage to keep it all in check. I toss the flowers on the passenger’s seat and creep out of the parking lot. I know I’ll eventually wind up at the cemetery like I usually do. But, for now, I have somewhere else to go.

  Snow shakes itself loose from the ponderosa pines, dusting my windshield. I flick on the wipers—yet another reminder. The road is mostly clear, but one false move and I could find myself in the ditch alongside the road. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  Somehow my car and my subconscious lead me here—to the one place that will bring everything back and make it real. Though I remember next to nothing about the night, I slow down and veer onto the shoulder.

  I remain inside the car with the engine idling, trying to remember. It comes back in jigsaw pieces: The party, the drinking, leaving during a dark and rai
n-slicked night. Beyond that, it’s fuzzy. I look around. The only visual reminder anything happened here is the skid marks etched on pavement.

  I step out of the car, still jittery from being behind the wheel after all this time, from the adrenaline of returning here. I instantly feel I shouldn’t have come. My stomach feels sick knowing this is the place he died. Wheeler strongly suggested I stay away for now. I understand why.

  I leave the door open as I walk to the edge of the road and study the long-ago scene. The one I was so much a part of. The one I have to work hard to recollect. An other-worldliness has taken over, and I no longer feel a part of myself or responsible for my actions. I wonder if this is how I had felt at the end of last spring when I took possession of the keys, stepped behind the wheel, and let my life spin completely out of control.

  I return to the car and pick up the bouquet of flowers I bought at the shop. Winter ones: a fistful of Lady Slipper orchids. Even alive, I know Jeremy wouldn’t care about them. He wasn’t a flower guy. Despite the stigma of being a male dancer, there was nothing feminine about him except the gracefulness of his movements on the dance floor. And just thinking of those times makes my heart physically hurt. My chest feels weighted with lead, as if a three hundred pound ball has been heaved onto it and left there to push all the air from my lungs and kill me, too.

  I sink to the ground, clutching the stems so hard they are likely to snap like a neck. There’s no way he can be gone. Forever. Never to be seen again in his skin. Maybe never to be seen again in any form at all. His voice eternally carried away with the impact of the crash. His being slowly fades day by day until, I’m afraid, I will someday forget what he looks like. Forget he even existed.

  A car passes by, and I pull myself together. I drape the flowers on the ground, hoping somehow Jeremy will know I was here.

  I get back in the car, completely drained from my simple drive to the scene of the accident. The moment I sit down behind the wheel, I lose it. Sobs slowly loosen their tightening grip on my throat and emerge. Tears, snot, ragged intakes of breath.

  “This is all your fault!” I yell into the insides of the car. But I know the words are only meant for me. I did this. Taking the keys, pulling out of the driveway—I should have found a designated driver, called a cab. Could have, should have. There’s no turning back time. It’s done. I have done this, and there’s no way to fix it. Not with an apology, not through letters.

  I turn the ignition, feeling anger race through me. Then I peel out onto the highway in a race to get away from all the things that haunt me like Jeremy’s death, my parents’ tiptoeing around me, my almost forgotten friends, Eli, and—most of all—the inner demons that won’t leave me alone. Maybe I can shake them off like criminals do in a high-speed chase, leaving them behind in the wake of my speed.

  I crank the volume on the stereo, push the accelerator a little closer to the floor. It’s a county road. The 55 speed limit whizzes by, and I glance at the speedometer, which reads 70. Not fast enough. Pine trees blur in my peripheral vision. I no longer care how dangerous it is to ride so fast around the mountainous curves. It would be a blessing to careen off the road into one of the ponderosas. Maybe that was my plan in the first place: to end it all right now, so I don’t have to bear the burden any longer of what I’ve done. Maybe Jeremy and I can be together again after all.

  Suddenly an animal darts out of the woods—a squirrel of all things. I brake and over-correct, veering onto the shoulder. My front passenger’s side wheel dips into the drainage, but I manage to bump my way back onto the road. My hands tremble, my blood pressure thrums violently. Then a car blows by me through the passing zone. When I look at the speedometer, it is all the way down to 40. As much as I want to be with Jeremy again, I realize I am not yet ready to die for it.

  I get home, cut the engine, and slog into the house. The rush of adrenaline has passed, and I suddenly feel weary and depressed.

  My mom instantly sees me. She scrambles from her chair and rushes to me. “What’s wrong? What it is, Hailey?”

  “I can’t do this anymore,” I confess. “I need help.”

  “Should I call Dr. Wheeler?” she asks.

  “It’s not enough,” I say.

  Jeremy

  I stand behind her, watching both images of her: the one in front of me and the one in the mirror’s reflection. Both of them look surreal. Anymore, I can’t easily decipher what’s real and what’s not. Am I really here with her, or am I seeing her in my mind’s eye from a far-off place? I could stay in this room with her forever, but things will never be the same or go back to the way they once were.

  My hand rests on her shoulder, but she can’t feel it. My breath is close enough to tickle the hairs on her neck, but she doesn’t notice. I whisper an I love you against the back of her head, but she hears nothing. I am not even a ghost to her. I am nothing but a memory. She can still find me in pictures and video, and in the slowly fading recollections of her mind. But what we had together is gone.

  I spy the red feather perched on our trophy, and my heart feels light with the thought of it. Hailey reaches for the top of the chest of drawers and picks up a prescription bottle. She turns it in her hand, studying and considering it. Fluoxetine (Prozac) is inscribed on the label. Depression. Oh, how I wish it hadn’t come to that for her. For both of us. I don’t want her to have to take medication to get through life on a day-to-day basis.

  “What can I do to help, Hailey?” But, of course, she doesn’t hear me. She never does.

  She uncaps the bottle and shakes a pill into her hand. I look to the capsule, the green and white of it meant to make everything okay, this piece of pharmaceutical magic that will chase her right into the arms of Eli. It’s not that I want her to be sad, but the melancholy is what keeps Hailey from moving on with her life and away from me. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t help myself. So much was taken from me; I need something to cling to. If I knew Hailey could be happy without ever finding someone else to love then I’d want her to take the capsule. But I realize deep down inside the science in the Prozac will give her just enough of a lift to let me go completely—a helium balloon floating into oblivion.

  So I do what I can to stop her. I muster everything I have to move the feather from its resting place. It floats from the chest of drawers to her feet. She immediately notices, glancing around for a breeze from the closed window and the motionless door. Her eyes dart around, and then the pill is momentarily forgotten, abandoned near the bottle, as she stoops toward the feather.

  “Jeremy?” she asks. Her voice is barely audible, as if by speaking my name she will accidentally conjure the dead.

  Hailey stands back up, feather in hand, as she considers whether the whole thing is a coincidence or weighted with meaning.

  “If that’s you,” she says, hesitation and fear peppering her voice, “do something to let me know.”

  Do something? I just did something. I lifted the damned feather with the force of my mind, the energy of my soul. “What more do you want, Hailey?” I ask in exasperation. “Tell me.”

  But she remains silent, waiting for another sign that will never come. I am helpless to convince her I’m still around. If I was still alive, I’d down a beer or…

  “Please,” she begs. “I need to know it’s okay…”

  …Or kick something in frustration. Kick something. That’s it. I launch my foot at the closet door as she continues to speak. I’m not even listening anymore; I’m so angry.

  “…to move on.”

  There’s a bang, and the door moves.

  Hailey stands stunned, and I register what she said while I was in the midst of my angry tirade.

  “Oh. My. God,” she says through gritted teeth. And I can see the revelation and terror spelled out on her face.

  “No! No, no, no!” I yell. “It’s not okay! It’s not okay to move on!” I grab for her sleeve, but get no purchase. Hailey rushes for the door and stumbles out.

  I follow
on her heels. “Hailey, no. I can’t lose you. You’re all I have!” But I’m a mute as far as she’s concerned. I’ve not only convinced her of my ghostly presence, but also that she has my blessing to move on. “I tug on her hand, pull on her arms, do everything I can to propel her back to the moment before I made the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life—outside of letting her drive.

  God, what have I done?

  Hailey

  The white daubs of clouds give way to a powder blue sky. A newly-fallen snow hangs from the canopies of the pine trees. I watch as a drapery of crystal white flakes falls in a flourish around the ankles of the forest.

  “I’m glad you called,” Layla says from the driver’s seat as she hands me a Styrofoam cup of oolong tea. “Your favorite. Stevia, no sugar.”

  We’re stationed near the park where the river snakes in and out of it. A couple walks hand in gloved hand over the bridge and along the winding path.

  “Thanks,” I say, turning away from the passenger’s side window to finally look at her.

  It was a silent ride. So much time has lapsed with little to nothing spoken between us. But Layla’s the one I need to see, the one I need to ask.

  “I didn’t think you’d ever call,” she says, warming her hands on the sides of her cup. “I’m surprised you did.”

  I study the perfect curve of her eyebrow, the pretty blanket of caramel hair peeking in and out of her designer pea coat. Layla’s so familiar—so like the old me—it’s painful.

  I watch the couple stroll into the distance and disappear within the trees where the pathway curls into seeming nothingness. “Where do you think he is?” I ask. I have yet to take a sip of tea, which sits like a sleeping cat in my lap.

  There’s quiet, a long breath of silence, before Layla answers. “Heaven, I guess. If there is one,” she adds.

  I run the back of my gloved hand along the foggy window to clear a path for my eyes. “Do you ever think maybe he’s still around, watching over us?”