We Are the Ghosts

by Vicky Skinner

“I don’t know why I did that,” I say instead of answering her.

  A crease appears between her eyebrows. “Ellie, cut yourself some slack.”

  I turn away from her, facing a wall. Halfway up, there’s a painting of a cowboy on a horse, and it makes me feel like I haven’t left Texas at all.

  I feel her fingertips on my scalp, moving the hair away from my face gently. “So, what’s going on between you and Cade?” On any other day, a question like this might upset me. But today, it’s easier than talking about anything else that’s going on.

  “Nothing, really.”

  I roll back over, and she lies down beside me. She pulls her arms up between us, wrapping them around herself. “I remember him,” she says, her voice quiet. But even though she’s whispering, her voice seems to fill the whole room. “From when I used to come over to your house. You guys were pretty flirty back then.” Her mouth makes a weird shape, and she doesn’t say anything else.

  I shrug, my clothes rustling as they move against the clean sheets. “We went out once. Nothing happened after that. I guess we’re just friends.” It’s a weird way to describe him now. Cade and I were friends before. But things are different now.

  After a minute of quiet, I start to think about what happened back at the party. I squeeze my eyes shut, like I can block it all out, erase it, go back to before and just say no to the party in the first place. “I said shitty things. I shouldn’t have been so mean.”

  She sighs. “He wasn’t exactly an angel to you. Wes will get over it. He knows you. He knows you didn’t mean those things.”

  How can Wes know me when I don’t even know myself?

  The door opens at our feet, and I hear the rattle of ice in a bucket before the door slams shut again. I close my eyes and listen to Cade move around the room. The water in the sink runs, and then he comes to the side of the bed, and I can feel him standing beside me, even though he doesn’t touch me.

  “Is she asleep?” he whispers.

  Gwen doesn’t say anything, but I hear her shift. Maybe she nods her head or shrugs, but I pretend to be asleep either way. I can’t look Cade in the eye right now.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to put this water on the nightstand.” I hear him set something beside my head, and then I listen as he goes into the bathroom, and then I really do fall asleep.

  * * *

  Cade looks over at me with his lips clamped together. “Peanut butter?”

  “It’s a perfectly normal milkshake choice, Cade Matthews, or it wouldn’t be on the menu.”

  Cade scoffs and takes his vanilla milkshake from the counter before handing my peanut butter one to me. He pays for both of them, and we walk back to the car. It’s a double feature, but the first movie, a movie about a woman trapped in a haunted hospital, was so bad that I don’t have much faith in whatever’s next.

  “They also have fried pickles on the menu.”

  “Don’t you dare blaspheme fried pickles.”

  “They’re gross.”

  I shake my head at him. “What a boring life you must lead, only liking vanilla ice cream and regular, unfried pickles.”

  “I don’t even really like normal pickles.”

  “You know what your problem is?”

  Our feet crunch over the gravel of the parking lot, and we get back in his grandmother’s car. It smells a little floral and antiseptic, but I try to ignore it.

  “What?”

  “You’re not a real Texan.”

  He throws his head back and laughs. “Is that necessary in order to like peanut butter and fried food?”

  I shrug. “It can’t hurt.” We’re quiet as the screen lights up, immediately jumping into two teenagers being killed during a camping trip. They can’t be much older than Cade and me, and I can’t imagine a world where my mom would let me go off camping with him. I ignore the movie and pick up the conversation again.

  “Where did you come from?” He sends me a confused look, and I laugh. “I mean, before you moved to Eaton.”

  Cade moved to Eaton when we were in the fourth grade, but no one seems to know that much about where he came from, including me.

  When I ask him now, his eyes seem to dim a little. “Indianapolis.”

  “That explains it. There’s no way you’re being brought up on fried pickles and funnel cake in Indiana.”

  He smiles, but the shadows are still there, so I shut up. When he speaks, his voice is easy, amused. “They have fried pickles in Indiana. It’s Indiana, not Antarctica.”

  I smile down at my feet. “Try a sip,” I say, holding my cup out to him.

  He grimaces. “Absolutely not.”

  I yank the cup back quick. “You’re not allergic to peanuts, are you?”

  “No. Peanut butter is just gross.”

  I shove the straw in his face again. “Just one sip.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Come on, what are you, man or mouse?”

  He chuckles then, his eyes bright, and I watch, awed, as he wraps his lips around the straw and sucks. I have to look away because the act feels too intimate, but I look back when he makes a choking sound. He looks away from me and shudders, and I have to laugh. He coughs dramatically and then lunges for his vanilla milkshake.

  I shake my head and drink from my shake again, trying not to focus on the fact that my mouth is exactly where his was a second ago.

  He sets his head back and sighs. “And here I thought you liked me. You don’t try to kill people you like.”

  I scoff. “I never said I liked you.”

  I sip from my milkshake, and he grins over at me.

  * * *

  The air is wet. Wet and thick. And then it’s not the air. There is no air. I’ve slipped below the surface of the water. It closes around my head, and I fight, clawing and thrashing, trying to get back to the sunlight, but I can’t. I sink to the bottom like a rock and stare up at the surface. My lungs are closing up, filling up. I feel dirt under my hands.

  And then I’m in a pit, a closed pit of rock and dirt. As I’m screaming, pounding for someone to let me out, it begins to fill with water. I panic, tearing at the earth around me, but nothing happens. I scratch and rip and pry, but the pit stays the same, closed over my head. I scream, and I feel hot tears on my cheeks, but it does no good. The pit fills, and I’m submerged, gasping and clawing.

  I wake up in a sweat. Outside, it’s storming. Fat, heavy raindrops slam against the window. Lightning flashes. My heart rate spikes, and I clutch handfuls of the hotel comforter. Beside me, Gwen is fast asleep, snoring just slightly, and I can see the shape of the boys on the bed next to us in the moonlight coming in through the window.

  I sit up, clutching my stomach, certain I’m going to be sick again. I find the glass of water that Cade left on my nightstand, gulping down half of it. But then thunder crashes again outside the window, and I drop the glass on the carpet.

  “Damn.” I reach for the glass, but the carpet is wet.

  “Are you okay?”

  I gasp and spin around. Cade looks over at me from his side of the room, his skin pale in the moonlight. He’s not wearing a shirt, and even in the darkness, I can make out the planes of his skin.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  The party comes back to me in a flash. His lips on mine, the anger on his face, the way he watched from the open door as Wes and I fought. Last night, I had Cade’s hands on me. And maybe they were drunk hands or maybe they were pitying hands, but I can’t possibly look at the boy in front of me now and not remember the way he pressed his fingers into my skin.

  “You should go back to sleep.” I turn away and pull the covers up to my shoulders, staring at the wall and pretending to sleep.

  * * *

  In the morning, we pack the car in silence, and even though I send Gwen desperate eyes, she sits up front with Wes, leaving me in the back with Cade.

  I can’t stop thinking about last night. Not just the kissing. But the other stuff. Getting mad at Cade,
yelling at Wes, puking in front of that house. I have to have better control over myself. College parties are not why I’m doing this. Without thinking, I reach into the bag at my feet, my fingers finding the paper edge of the map. I run my fingers down, feeling the places where the tip of a pen made an indentation. This is why I’m here. I just have to make it to Dexter.

  We’re almost an hour down the road when I glance at Gwen and Wes and decide that even though I don’t have a whole lot of privacy here, I need to say what I need to say before we have any more road behind us.

  “I’m sorry about what happened at the party,” I tell Cade, as quietly as I can. “I acted like an idiot.”

  His expression changes, from casual to concerned so fast he doesn’t even look like the same person. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true though. You didn’t deserve any of that. I—” I look at Gwen and Wes again. They’re probably not listening, right? I swallow, but I still feel a little bit like I did when I woke up in the middle of the night, like the whole world is closing in on me. I tell him the truth anyway. “This is just harder than I thought it would be. I’m sorry.” I’m not good at apologies, not sincere ones at least. But Cade deserves an apology, if only for getting mixed up in my screwed-up life. Once we’re back in Eaton again, I’ll cut him free like I did before. I ache at the thought.

  Cade bites his bottom lip in a way that is both appealing and childish and leans in close to me, his voice quiet under the noise of the air conditioner. “It wasn’t all bad.”

  It takes me a second to understand what he means, but when I do, I blush. For the last hour, I’ve been trying not to think about what it was like to kiss Cade. But right here, with Cade looking at me with his clear green eyes, I start to think about what it would be like. Something real. Maybe in another life, Cade and I could have been something. Maybe I would be sitting here, his doting girlfriend, driving across the country with him with hearts in my eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t have damaged the whole thing last year. He’s so close, but I can feel that it’s ruined, the way rotten fruit is soft to the touch.

  I lean away and watch Louisiana fly by outside the window.

  SEVEN

  We pull over when we cross into New Orleans.

  “What are we doing first?” Wes asks, turning around in his seat to look at me. This is the first time we’ve spoken in the six hours since we left Shreveport, and I’m so shocked to see his attention on me that at first, I don’t even really know what he’s asking me.

  “What?”

  Wes raises his eyebrows at me. “Where are we going in New Orleans?”

  I think about the map in the bag at my feet. I can feel it there, like a small sun that I’m trying to cover up with a backpack stuffed with clothes and toiletries.

  “Oh, um. Mississippi River?” I almost choke on the words as they come out, thinking about the day we put it on the map, about the way Luke got so excited and immediately drew a long line along the path of the Mississippi as it moved through America, a big smile on his face.

  Wes doesn’t say anything. He just plugs something into his phone and then we’re off.

  * * *

  The sun is high in the sky when we get to the river. People mill around Jackson Square, sitting on the benches and chasing their kids at the edge of the water. We walk until we’ve reached the river, finding a concrete staircase that leads right down into the water without stopping. We sit on the steps, scattered, like we can pretend that we’re not all here together, our feelings still bruised about everything that happened last night.

  I’ve been to beaches, to the Brazos, to the Gulf, but there’s something about being here. Maybe it’s because it’s the first time I’ve been to the water without Luke. I think about the time we went to Padre Island, and I got so caught up in the fun that I forgot to put on sunscreen and got a second-degree burn. Luke drove me to the store and bought me aloe gel, rubbing it on my back in the hotel room while my mother scolded me for not being more careful. If I close my eyes, I can almost pretend I’m there again, under the sun with Luke, the waves roaring loud around us. For a second, the smell of the river in my lungs extinguishes everything else inside me. I’m sitting closest to the water, so close that the gentle lapping starts to wet the tips of my shoes.

  I open my eyes when Wes’s shoes scrape on the concrete step behind me. He shifts and nods in Cade’s direction. “Hey, you know history stuff, right? Got any facts about the Mississippi?” He asks the question like he’s talking to a search engine, but I can see what he’s doing, trying to reach out to Cade, offering him a lifeline after the way he acted last night. It comes out stilted and awkward, and when I look over at Gwen, she sends me a close-lipped smile, like she can see what Wes is doing, too. I should be grateful that he’s even trying.

  Cade smiles, but he doesn’t take his eyes away from the water. “Well, I know it’s the second longest river in the United States. Fourth longest in the world. And that the first riverboat to sail it was called the New Orleans.”

  We all wait, but Cade doesn’t offer any more information.

  “That’s it?” Wes asks. “I thought you were like an encyclopedia.” I kind of hate the way he says it. Cade’s encyclopedic knowledge of things that no one else in Eaton tends to care very much about is one of the reasons that people like Luke and Wes said he was odd. As if intelligence and passion about an academic subject are the thing that could make a person the weirdest.

  Cade shrugs. “I don’t study bodies of water very often. Sorry to disappoint.”

  I hear someone shift behind me, and I know without looking that it’s Cade. I know that he’s coming to sit beside me.

  “What else is there to do around here?” I ask when he’s settled, his hip almost entirely pressed against mine. I focus on a weed floating down the river so I won’t be so distracted by the heat of him.

  Cade looks sideways at me. “What makes you think I know?”

  I smile down at the murky water. “Maybe you don’t know much about the Mississippi, but I find it hard to believe you don’t know anything about the French Quarter. Especially since we read about the Louisiana Purchase in world history last year.”

  Cade looks at me, obviously torn, and then he rolls his eyes. “Yes, okay. I did a little bit of research on Jackson Square over Thanksgiving break. I finished the textbook so I was looking for something else to pass the time.” He says this part quietly, and I can’t blame him. Even I think reading a whole textbook over break is a little much. I can’t imagine what Wes would have to say about it. “Jackson Square is actually the very spot where Louisiana was declared part of the U.S. in 1803, and it’s actually modeled after a square in Paris. And that statue behind us”—he doesn’t look back, but I do, at the large, black, horse-bound statue in the center of the square—“is Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans, and the seventh president of the United States. There’s a shit-ton of history in this square, and honestly, it would take all day for me to recount it all to you. But I could, you know, if you wanted me to.”

  He smiles at me, and I just watch him, watch the way his mouth moves and the way his eyes light up. He’s looking at me, and I’m looking at him.

  “You’re kind of a fucking nerd,” Wes says, and we both whip around to look at him, to see the humor in his eyes, but the movement makes me lose my balance on the edge of the step, and even though Cade reaches out quick to grab me, I plummet into the Mississippi.

  The murky water closes over my head, and I fight not to immediately suck in a breath. I can feel the concrete ledge beside me, but the current is already moving me away. I scrabble for something to hold on to, my hands finding the ledge I just fell off, my chest constricting in utter panic, my nails scraping along the concrete.

  Something splashes into the water beside me. Arms encircle my waist, and I’m being yanked up, my lungs finding fresh air in seconds.

  Someone pulls me up onto the concrete step from above while a pair of arms are still w
rapped around me. I gasp and wipe the grimy water off my face. I grab at the hand that’s clutching at my stomach and look over my shoulder. It’s Cade that has a hold of me, just as wet as I am and refusing to let go even though we’re on solid ground again. Wes has a hold of him, wet up to his elbows and still clutching the soaking fabric of Cade’s shirt. Gwen clutches my other arm, her hand wrapped around my wrist in a death grip.

  “Shit, Ellie,” Wes says, his words quiet, but he’s not really being quiet. The commotion around us is just so loud. People have gathered around us, most of them pointing phones or offering to help, and I turn my face away from them, holding on harder to Cade.

  “So, we’ve seen the river,” Wes says behind us, and I set my head against the concrete and shut my eyes.

  * * *

  I struggle in the back seat of Wes’s car, trying to shimmy out of my dripping jeans without getting the seats wet. Cade, Wes, and Gwen each cover one of the windows with their backs so that no one can see in, and I move as fast I can out of my wet clothes and into dry ones. I smell like the dirty water, and I consider asking them if we can get a hotel room now, so that I can shower, but I’ve already been enough trouble as it is.

  When I’m dressed, I switch places with Cade, standing with my back pressed to the passenger-side window while he changes. Beside me, Wes grabs my wrist, quick and insistent, before dropping it.

  “What?” I ask. I’ll never be able to get the picture out of my head of him breathing heavy, his hands holding tight to Cade. His arms have a sheen of mud on them.

  His eyebrows are furrowed, and there’s something desperate in his eyes. “Hey, look, I think we should tell Gwen about the map.” He says it so quietly, leaning in close so that only I can hear him.

  I glance over at Gwen, the width of the car between us. She notices and smiles at me. I look away, immediately feeling so guilty it makes my stomach hurt. She held me when I came out of that water, and all I’ve done is lie to her. “I thought you said it was a bad idea.”