We Are the Ghosts

by Vicky Skinner

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  FOR ALICE

  “Their love and their hatred and their envy have already perished; neither have they any more a share in anything that is done under the sun.”

  —ECCLESIASTES 9:6 (AMPC)

  “When my time comes, forget the wrong that I’ve done.”

  —LINKIN PARK

  ONE

  I have a sex dream about James Dean the night I find out my brother is dead. I watched Rebel Without a Cause before bed, hours before my mother woke me in a panic, and it’s all I can think about while she tells me Luke’s Mazda slid on a wet road, taking him right off the side of a bridge somewhere in Michigan.

  I stare down at the dining room table, unsure of what to do. I want to tell my parents that they can’t be saying this to me right now because it’s the middle of the night and I have to work in the morning. Instead of telling them this, I think about James Dean. I think of him in my mind yelling, “You’re tearing me apart!” instead of my mother telling me that someone from the police station in Ann Arbor called her an hour ago, after they found Luke’s car upside down in the Huron River.

  “Ellie? Are you okay?”

  Later, when I think back on this moment, I’ll focus on the fact that neither of my parents is crying. Shouldn’t they be blubbering? Shouldn’t they be crawling over each other to get to me, the only child they have left? It feels like it should be that way, like pictures of parents when they’ve found out their children went away to war and never came back. But my parents aren’t crying. My father is staring down at the table, his eyes wide and unfocused, like he’s not actually seeing anything, and my mother is just staring at me. What is she waiting for? They’re not touching each other. My mother sits with her hands in her lap while my father keeps his arms on the tabletop. Neither of them reaches for me.

  “Ellie?”

  I know my mother is asking me a question, but I can’t see her anymore. Or hear her. My world goes fuzzy, and I stand up from the table, holding my stomach because I suddenly feel like all my insides are going to come spilling out until I’m nothing but a lumpy mess on the carpet.

  My brother’s body is lying on a slab in a morgue in Ann Arbor. I imagine it as I walk away from the table, his skin cold and pale the way they always portray it on TV, his chest cut open down the middle so that someone can do an autopsy. Maybe this is really how it is. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t really know.

  According to my mother, it’s pretty clear that his tires slipped on the wet road, so I don’t think they’d even do an autopsy. Luke never drove in storms. After that time he skidded on his way to school and ended up facing oncoming traffic, he did everything he could to avoid it. I want to tell her she’s mistaken. That he slid off that bridge but some kind bystander dove in after him, pulling him free and performing mouth-to-mouth on the edge of the highway.

  But that isn’t what happened. No one saved Luke. Luke is gone.

  Luke is dead.

  I’m chanting it over and over in my head as I move down the hallway toward the bathroom. I don’t make it all the way there. I throw up on the carpet outside of my parents’ bedroom.

  * * *

  I don’t want to go to the funeral. It’s more than just everyone staring at me. They’ve been staring for the last week, making my skin crawl, making me feel like I should walk around with a black veil over my face or something, like I’m on display.

  And it’s more than seeing everyone I know in the church. I know everyone from Eaton High will be there. They’ll be there because everyone loved Luke and everyone knew him and now he’s gone. To them, he’ll be the track star, the debate champion, the golden boy forever, a smiling face in the yearbook. What it must be like to be able to shed a tear at a funeral and then move on with your life.

  But it’s more than the fact that it’s Luke’s funeral. To me, funerals are some kind of social ritual, something you do so you can put your grief on display, but experts (apparently) say that not going to a funeral can stunt your grieving process.

  Grieving process. Like it’s a science experiment.

  I always thought of funerals happening on cold, cloudy days, people holding umbrellas or pulling their thick coats tight around them. But on the day of Luke’s funeral, the sun is shining. It’s a sweltering Texas summer day as we walk into the church with everyone’s eyes on us—my father, my mother, and me, trailing behind because I’d rather be the one going in the ground than the one witnessing it.

  When we get to the front of the room, my mother goes into the pew first, but my father gestures for me to scoot in before him. They’re going to trap me between them like a child at a movie theater so that I can’t make a run for it while their attention is diverted.

  I keep my eyes away from the casket the whole time. It’s closed, thank God, even though no one explained to me why. I can’t bring myself to ask any questions. Too many graphic possibilities cross my mind. My hands tremble slightly, and I’m not positive if it’s because of the attention, eyes hot on my skin, or the huge picture of Luke sitting on a stand at the front of the room. I keep my eyes off it, too, the picture from his graduation, even though knowing it’s there is enough to make something heavy settle right at the base of my throat. I think I can handle being watched by the whole city of Eaton today; I can’t take being watched by Luke, too.

  I don’t sing the hymns. I don’t listen to the scripture being quoted. My family isn’t religious, but this is Texas and funerals happen in churches. I didn’t go with my parents when they met with this priest for the service, but I imagine them picking out his eulogy like someone picking out a cool design at a tattoo parlor. The words are cold and generic. I’m sure the speaker plugged Luke’s name into the empty blanks on his handy-dandy eulogy form like Eulogy Mad Libs, though I’m sure they’re supposed to be comforting.

  He died too young. He was so loved by everyone. He was a good kid.

  He was a good kid who walked out of our lives a year ago and never came back.

  For one uncomfortable second, a picture flashes in my mind, the one that always flashes in my mind when I think about Luke, about the last time we were together. The two of us driving home from the Nova concert the night before he left, laughing, singing, acting normal. He was acting normal, even though he knew what he was going to do.

  I rub my forehead, like I can force the image out, and look around the church. Family from out of town; business associates of my father’s; professors who teach at Tate University with my mother, the school that sits in the center of Eaton; and in the back half of the room, people from Eaton High School, some of them in my grade and some of them people who graduated with Luke. Most of them are now Eaton High School alumni and current Tate students.

  I scan the faces for Wes, but I don’t see him, which makes something in my chest ache. At the very least, I thought I would see Wes.

  I don’t see him, but I do see Gwen Garcia. I almost miss her, invisible in the
corner of the room, standing behind two guys from the football team who are almost twice her size. She doesn’t seem to have a problem with them blocking her view because she’s not watching the service. Her eyes are squeezed shut behind her glasses, and she’s crying quietly, her face puffed and wet, her hands clenching a pack of tissues that she’s not even using.

  I look away from her before I can get caught up in her sadness, my eyes continuing to travel until they land on Cade Matthews, standing with his back against the closed doors, his eyes on the floor and his hands stuffed in the pockets of his black slacks. His jaw is firm with solemnity and respect, ever the perfect gentleman.

  While I’m watching him, his eyes lift from their spot on the floor and find mine. The entire room is between us, but when his focus lands on me, I feel it like a shock to my nervous system.

  My mother’s hand lands on my knee, bare except my pantyhose because she made me wear a dress, and I spin around.

  “Can you pay attention, please?” she hisses in my ear.

  I grit my teeth against the things I want to say and stare at the hymnal in the shelf on the back of the pew in front of me. I can’t look up at the rent-a-priest or the casket or the bouquet of gardenias that’s overflowing onto the podium. It all feels like a circus. Why should his funeral be perfect when nothing else was?

  * * *

  The guy my mother is speaking to looks familiar. I think he might work at Tate, and based on the conversation that my mother is having with him, she’s still trying to sell him on Luke being a good student, like he’s going to show up at any moment, ready to enroll.

  “Luke was so assertive and intelligent,” she says, putting her hand out as if she can demonstrate. “You know, he was on the debate team. I was surprised when he chose to join on top of all the work he was doing as class president, not to mention the track team, but he really enjoyed it. Cleaned house at competition.” She sounds like a commercial for Luke’s accomplishments, and she looks like one, too, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling, her hands poised just so. I’m almost able to believe that she actually liked Luke. But I have too much evidence to prove otherwise. The sound of their constant shouting back and forth plays on repeat in my brain all the time.

  Controlling.

  Ungrateful.

  Obnoxious.

  Childish.

  Tyrant.

  I’ve maneuvered myself into a corner of the living room, half-hidden behind my father, watching my mother through the unobstructed doorway and trying to be invisible to all the people floating around my house. They’re looking at our pictures and picking apart the little pieces of Luke that still remain: his high school diploma framed on the wall, his old pair of running shoes tucked under the entry table, the stupid video-game console he begged my parents for, taking up one shelf of the entertainment unit.

  They approach my father one by one, shaking his hand or pulling him into a hug and offering him condolences, only to smile at me sadly without a word before walking away. No one feels the need to tell me they’re sorry, and I’m thankful for it. I just want to stay in this corner and try to disconnect, try to pretend this isn’t all for Luke. My hands are fisted in my skirt, sweaty and achy. My father’s eyes are glassy. He’s a zombie, shaking hands with people while barely making eye contact.

  “Ellie?”

  I don’t even realize that Cade is standing right next to me until he’s saying my name, and I’m immediately caught off guard by how close he is to me, so close I’m worried he can hear my heart hammering in my chest. Can he see that every muscle in my body is tense, ready to detonate?

  “Oh. Cade. Hi.” Cade and I have been something like friends for years, always partnering up for projects, always hanging out in the halls after school. I’d known him half my life until that night I ruined everything. But I’ve never seen him like this, his green eyes uneasy, full of concern. He says something, his mouth moving slowly, but I can’t make out the words. All I can hear is my mother’s voice in the kitchen.

  “He was special, you know? That way that some people just are. They walk into a room and command the attention of every person in it.” Her eyes go starry, like she’s imagining Luke walking into this room right now. I don’t even know where this is all coming from. I’ve never heard her talk about Luke like this. If she wasn’t fighting with him, she was complaining about him. Always the Luke-induced sigh.

  Luke never picks up after himself. Always expecting me to be his maid.

  Would it kill Luke to show up to one family dinner on time?

  Why can’t Luke ever meet deadlines? I’m sick of having to do things for him.

  Sigh.

  The man, looking down into his coffee cup, nods solemnly. “I know the type.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go,” I say to Cade and walk away from him without another glance. I rush upstairs and into my room, shutting the door behind me and leaning against it. I gasp in a breath and wait to wake up from whatever this is, this dream I’m floating around in, someone else’s life. Not mine.

  I sit on the edge of my bed and take off my heels. My mother bought them, a size too small, and I spread my toes the second they’re off. I scrub my hands over my face, through my hair, down my neck. The heat is stifling, even sitting directly under the air-conditioner vent, and I’m starting to think that maybe it has nothing to do with the thermostat and more to do with listening to my mother spout those lies downstairs. There was affection in her voice. Stiff, artificial affection.

  Something becomes unsettled in my stomach, and I have to lie down, wrapping my arms around myself and curling in tight. My hands ball into fists and my jaw clenches and I think maybe I’ll live like this forever, my entire body tensed, braced for a life I don’t recognize anymore.

  I fall asleep like that, my body finally giving up the fight, and I wake up at sunset to the sound of a car door slamming. The house is quiet, and I push myself up on my bed to look out my window in time to see my dad’s boss get into his car and drive away. There are no more cars in the driveway or against the curb. Everyone is gone.

  I hear footsteps on the stairs. Without thinking, I drop back down on my bed, turning my back to my door and pretending to be asleep. My mother knocks softly and then the door opens. I squeeze my eyes shut, even though I know she can’t see.

  After a pause, the door closes again, and I listen to the sound of her heels moving back down the stairs.

  And then it starts, quiet at first, like she’s trying not to wake me, and then worse, louder with every second.

  “You barely spoke to anyone,” I hear her say. The house is so quiet that I feel like I can hear the breaths she takes between sentences. “You just stood there. You barely even looked at anyone.” I know she’s talking to my dad. This is always how she talks to my dad. It’s how she talks to everyone.

  It’s how she talked to Luke.

  “You think the world is any better outside of Eaton?” she would say to him. “You think you’re going to find fame and success and happiness if you leave? You won’t. It’s misery everywhere else, too, Lucas, just different misery.”

  “We’re supposed to be doing this together,” she says now. “We’re supposed to do everything together, but every time I turned around, you weren’t there. How am I supposed to do this by myself?”

  I listen hard, but I don’t hear my father answer her, and when she speaks again, her words are shrill, so loud, my heart pounds and my blood goes cold. “Say something!” she yells, and I’m on my feet before she can shout anything else, feeling the same chill crawl up my back the way it does every time she yells. It’s a kind of fear, even though the anger is never directed at me. I move to the window.

  Luke and I perfected the art of climbing down the trellis that separates my window from his years ago. We never did anything too terrible, mostly just went to parties at Tate or met up with Luke’s friends to go for late-night drives or play drunk pool in someone’s basement. Sometimes he snuck out without me to mee
t Gwen in the middle of the night.

  The only difference between then and now is that I’ve never actually scaled the trellis in a dress and pantyhose, and the wood is slippery beneath the nylon. But I make it to the bottom, where the grass feels nice under my feet, and make a run for my car.

  * * *

  I stand outside Wes’s house and stare at the metal knocker on the door. It’s shaped like an elephant, and as well as I can remember, I’ve never seen it before. But it’s been over a year since the last time I stood on this welcome mat.

  I lift my hand to knock when the door flies open and Wes appears, shirtless and holding a cordless game controller. I focus on his face instead of his long, dark torso. That’s a lot of bare skin.

  “Ellie?” His eyebrows come together in confusion, and I don’t miss the way his eyes glance over my shoulder quickly, like he’s expecting someone else, before meeting mine again. “I saw your car pull up. What are you doing here?” I look down at my feet, and I guess he does, too, because he says, “And why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

  I shrug but don’t tell him that I left my shoes at home in my hurry to get out. I’m second-guessing my decision to come here, even though it was the only thing that made sense when I made it to my car. It wasn’t until I pulled up to his curb that the nerves set in. But this is Wes, and I know I shouldn’t be so nervous. “Can’t be at home right now.” There are more reasons why I’m here, standing in front of Luke’s ex–best friend when we haven’t spoken in over a year, but his front porch just doesn’t seem like the best place for that kind of explanation. “Could I come in?”

  He watches me, his thumb moving over the buttons on the controller absently, and then he moves to let me in. When I step into his living room, I’m hit with a wave of nostalgia for this place where I spent more time than I spent at my own house. It smells like dinner and fresh laundry and scented candles, and I breathe in the scent of it, thinking of all the times Luke and I came here because we couldn’t stand to be at home. So many hours spent watching TV, playing video games, having burping contests, carving our names on the underside of all the beds. I’ve wished I could move in here and never go back home more times than I can count. I wish it right now. Somehow I miss it, even as I’m standing here.