by L. K. Kuhl
“Sophia…it’s you. I hadn’t seen you around in so long, I figured you must have packed up and moved back home.” He laughed with his weird snorts, like he had made one heck of a joke.
“No…I’m still here.” I ignored him. Then, a thought struck me—if there was anyone I would like to make think I was crazy, it would be Brian Tarris—at least this way he would leave me alone once and for all. “Brian, I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Tate Forester. Tate, this is Brian.”
Tate held out his hand as I fought back a snicker. Brian grimaced, giving me a look like I’d lost it. “Uh…I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sophia.” He looked around for someone to show up. “There’s no one here. Who are you talking about?”
“Yes he is.” I pointed to Tate as he stood there smiling. “He’s right here. What do you think I am, crazy?”
Brian shook his head, confused by my delusion. “No, Sophia, there’s no one here. Is the heat getting to you again?” He reached out to feel my forehead.
I slapped his hand away, fighting to stifle a laugh. “I can’t believe you don’t see him. Are you calling me a liar? Just leave us alone, Brian. Just leave me alone with my Tate.” I rubbed my cheek on Tate’s shoulder, grinning inside at what this must have looked like to someone who couldn’t see anyone there but me.
“No…no…I wasn’t calling you a liar.” His voice squeaked even louder. “It’s just that I think you need help. Maybe you need to go back home. I think the heat and sun might have taken a toll. But I’ll leave you alone. If that’s the way you want it…I’ll leave you alone forever.” His feathers were ruffled, and I’d crushed his ego. He turned from me and stalked away.
I sighed and dusted off my hands. “Whew, maybe…once and for all, I got rid of Brian Tarris. Most of the time it’s hard for me to be that mean to someone, but I think I’m growing up.” The proudness took over, and I puffed out my chest, throwing myself down in my lounge chair.
Tate didn’t comment. He just looked away. Finally, he spoke. “Don’t change, Sophia. And if growing up means treating someone meanly, don’t do it. Stay a child. You have such a soft, innocent demeanor—I don’t ever want you to lose that. That’s one of the things I love about you—your gentleness and kindness, treating everybody with dignity and respect.” The hurt flashed in his eyes.
“But, Tate, I had about all I could take of that guy. Ugh…ready to strangle him. A person can only handle so much. I decided to take Mandy’s advice.”
Tate cut me off. “Don’t listen to Mandy. You’re not her, and I don’t want you trying to change to be the way she thinks you should be. I mean, I loved Mandy to death…but some of her ways of going about things were a little messed up.”
“Well, I can’t listen to Mandy anymore now, can I?” I fought back a brutal sob, the reality of everything that had happened crumbling beneath me. “She’s dead…Matt’s dead…for Pete’s sake, Tate, you’re dead.”
My chin trembled, and the grief consumed me again. I covered my face with my hands, and Tate pulled me into him. This was the end for us, I knew it, and my heavy sorrow had started wearing me down.
“Shh, everything’s okay, Ladybug. I know it hurts, but everything’s going to be fine.” He worked to soothe me, stroking the back of my head.
“That’s easy for you…you don’t have to live without you.” I dug inside my bag for a tissue, scooting to the edge of the chair. “Even sitting here is hard to do…in this place where the four of us had such good times together. It’s too lonely.”
“I know how it must feel, and I’m sorry that we deceived you about all of this. But since you have to leave first thing in the morning for Denver, I thought we could talk about my plans.”
“You are coming with me tomorrow, aren’t you?” My eyes popped wide as I scooted back, easing my head against the chair, trying to keep my crying episodes at bay and gain at least a small amount of composure. One more irritating sniffle did manage to escape, so I blew my nose and dabbed at my eyes. “Sorry I acted up like that. I don’t want to take things out on you.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be there.” He threw his arm up over the back of my chair. “You’re not going anywhere, now, without me.”
“Okay…well, fill me in. Let’s hear your ghost story.”
Chapter 17
“Hum…where do I begin…? I guess at the beginning. You said you met my aunt Lidia, right?” He threw a chew bone to Symphony.
“Hold on…back up. Let’s start at the very beginning with my picture—the eighth-grade picture that should be used to scare intruders away or for target practice…take your pick.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s beautiful. That picture made me fall in love with you—it brought us together.”
“I still can’t believe it.” My voice rose a pitch, and I shook my head in disbelief. “But, anyway, go on. Sorry to interrupt.”
“Mandy told you the story of how I made her promise to call you the morning after homecoming, which in reality, turned out to be eight months later.”
“Yeah, she did…that was her unfinished business…getting us together….”
“Mandy did me a huge favor by calling you.” Then he paused, intertwining his fingers through mine. “Soph, I wasn’t able to tell you the complete truth before. I need to tell you everything, starting with Lidia.”
“I still can’t believe Lidia was talking about you when she told me she was going to see her niece who had lost her son in an automobile accident…. So, why did I meet Lidia? Does she have unfinished business with me, too?”
He waited…hesitant. “Lidia is a Livid. But…she’s a good Livid.”
I gasped, my head flinching. “Well, I did see Lidia dressed in a black cloak and dancing with the other Livids. Guess that explains it. But I thought all Livids were bad?”
“Lidia’s an exception. She chases the other Livids away—helping us good ghosts. That’s why you saw her when they were swarming around Matt and Mandy. I couldn’t let on that I’d seen them, but they were right in front of me, too.”
“I wish I would have known her when she was alive. She seems daring and full of energy. Did she really kill her husband like the paper said?”
“Yep, she also had five children with him. They were all close in age, from twelve all the way down to three, when they died.”
“They died…?” I gulped. “Oh goodness, what happened?”
Tate’s eyes swept over me. “They’re the reason she killed him. You see, Lidia’s husband, Samuel Forester, was an oil tycoon. But he flaunted his money and spent almost all of it on booze and women. He caroused, and he had many, many women—all after his money. Aunt Lidia was left to stay home and raise their kids.
“One day, she left all five of them at home with Samuel while she took a shopping trip to Paris. When she was gone, their house started on fire, and all of the children died. Samuel was the only one who miraculously got out and lived. Aunt Lidia believes he was drunk and passed out with a cigarette, and that’s what started the fire. He didn’t even try to help the children—only making sure he got himself out.”
Disbelief widened my eyes and I shook my head. “That’s horrible and so sad. I can’t believe that anyone could do that to their children.”
“He never got charged with anything, but Aunt Lidia was certain that it was his fault, and he could have helped them if he hadn’t been so drunk. That’s why she ended up killing him. She carried a vendetta against him all those years for killing her children, and she wanted to get back at him.”
“Wow, she was a gutsy lady, but I don’t blame her. So that’s why she’s a Livid—for killing her husband.”
“Yeah, she didn’t let anything hold her back, and it’s also the reason she’s considered a good Livid.”
“How’d she kill him?” I grimaced, preparing myself for something gory. “The paper mentioned something about a skydiving accident.”
“Samuel wanted to skydive, so they went up in a small airplane. Jus
t as Samuel was about to jump, she cut the cord on his parachute. She thought she was being discreet, not realizing that the small plane had a camera on it. He jumped and fell to his death, but the whole thing was caught on tape.
“She walked around free for nineteen years before they investigated and found out she did it. In those days, they thought it was faulty equipment and never pursued it, until Samuel’s brother pushed the issue, and they started investigating. Prison held her captive for twenty years before she ended up dying in there of old age.”
“He never did leave her for another woman?”
“No, he threatened to all the time, and even after being gone for weeks with other women, he would beg to come back home. Not wanting to part with all of his fortunes, she always took him back. He kept her in riches—she never wanted for anything.”
“I see. Will Aunt Lidia always be a Livid, or can she go on to the next level?”
Tate looked me in the eyes. “She’ll always be a Livid. Since she was a good person—only killing Uncle Samuel because he hurt her children, she can cross over between a good ghost and a Livid, but she can never go on. Wanting to help me go on to the next level, she fights off the evil Livids. And it’s also why she was seeking you out on the plane that day—to bring you to me.” He paused. “She also left me her fortune—I was her only living heir.”
My eyes flashed wide. “Her fortune? How much did she leave you? Did you get to use any of it?”
“No, I didn’t get it until I turned eighteen, which was on June eighteenth. I got killed in September, so there wasn’t enough time. She left me twenty million dollars, and it’s buried in a cave up by the cabin I took you to.”
“Good grief, Tate, twenty million?” I stood up, pushing my fingers through my hair, pacing back and forth in the sand.
Two guys walking by gave me a strange look but kept on going. I glanced at them. They looked back over their shoulder, pointing with their thumbs. Then, they started laughing. But I brushed it off, didn’t care what they thought. “Twenty million dollars…that’s amazing.”
“Yeah…it’s quite a boatload.”
I shook off my shocked appearance and sat back down. “Whatever happened to your parents? Do they still live around here? And wouldn’t they be an heir to Aunt Lidia?”
“No, they were killed in an automobile accident when I was fifteen. I’m an only child, so everything was left to me. That’s also when Matt and I moved into Mandy’s house on Maple Avenue.”
I nodded. “I see. Tate, your life just seems to be filled with tragedy and heartbreak. How did you ever survive?”
“I didn’t.” He chuckled, pointing to his pale body. “But, seriously, it wasn’t easy. My parents taught me a lot of good values in the short time I got to spend with them. They were both organ donors and helped out a lot of people when they died. Wanting to follow in their footsteps, I became an organ and sperm donor after they died.”
“That’s such an honorable thing to do, especially for a young guy. Most kids never give a second thought to doing such a thing.”
“Well, the way things turned out, they couldn’t do much with any of my organs, anyway, they were too damaged, but the sperm will be put to good use.” He laughed timidly. If he wouldn’t have been a ghost, I imagined his cheeks would’ve blushed a bright red with that statement.
“That’s a good thing….” I shrugged. “Even that will help a lot of people.”
“I was also a part of the Super Siblings mentoring program. A lot of my time was spent with a ten-year-old little boy named Isaiah White. He’s fighting brain cancer.”
“Man…and I thought I had it bad with being broke. How’s he doing?”
“I think he’s in remission, for the time being anyway, but with a brain tumor, the outcome is almost never good.”
“I bet he misses you something terrible.”
“Yeah, I think he took it pretty hard. I miss him like crazy, too. He’s an awesome kid.”
There was no way I could live without Tate, I now knew this. He was my world, and I couldn’t imagine my life without him. I needed him like I needed food, or a flower needed the rain…without him…I would die.
But the heartburn gurgled just below my throat, welling up from worry…burning through. The subtle difference in him was evident last night when we came back to his house. In the light, the paleness rubbed through, worse than when I’d first met him. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was how Mandy started out when she had fulfilled her unfinished business—each day becoming a little whiter. A bolt of fear zipped through me, and I shook, preparing to ask the next question.
“I’ve been skirting around my next question, Tate, ever since I found out about how the whole process works. You know what I’m talking about, but I don’t even know if I should ask…hoping that if we avoid it, it’ll all go away. My future is with you, for forever, and I don’t want you going anywhere.” I choked back a sob. “But your unfinished business is…me…right?”
Tate sat there, mesmerized by a seagull flying overhead. Soon the seagull swooped down, taking a small fish that Tate offered him. He took flight again, until I couldn’t see him anymore.
Tate clasped his hands together, letting them droop toward the sand, and cleared his throat. “I could spend eternity being a ghost, Sophia…but I’m not sure I want to…. As a ghost, I have nothing. I just bump around in an endless sea of nothingness. At times, I can talk to other ghosts, but we’re all going through the same things, trying to reach the next level. We can’t feel, smell, or taste. It’s a dull, almost insane existence that we are trapped in forever. Like I said earlier, we can feel love, sadness…emotional senses…but it does us no good.”
“When we kiss, or I touch you…you can’t feel any of it?”
“No, none of it.”
“That’s awful. Had no idea. I mean, I knew you didn’t ever eat, but I just thought it was because you couldn’t or didn’t need to.”
“It’s mostly that, but we have no sense of taste, either.” He took my hand and squeezed it so tight, my circulation seized. My hand turned a reddish-purple. I knew he didn’t know the impact of his own strength, and he eased up when he glanced at it. “Oops, sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Remember that night when I took you to Party Cove, and we had our huge fight?”
My gaze shot to the sky, and my cheeks grew hot. I nodded. “How could I forget? Leave it to me to make a complete fool of myself by starting that fight, thinking that you didn’t like me anymore. I’m such an idiot.”
“Don’t feel bad, you didn’t know…it’s a normal reaction. I couldn’t explain to you the reasons why we had no future and that only made it worse.”
“But we can have a future together, right?” I squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to go anywhere. We can be together just like we’ve been doing. Hope I don’t sound selfish, but there’s no way I can live without you.” Desperation filled my voice.
His eyes locked with mine, the longing sweeping through me. “You had no way of knowing it then, but that night…that night…my unfinished business was fulfilled. It was July twentieth. The night I got killed I vowed to myself I would make you fall in love with me.”
The word fulfilled made my heart jump from its perch and plummet, on a long descent to my toes. I looked at him, tilting my head, confused. “From our fight?”
“I tried to stop you…clasping my hand over your mouth.”
“That’s…your unfinished business…?” I stared into his eyes, probing them for the answers that I needed to hear. “When I tried to tell you I loved you? But…I didn’t say it. You did stop me…remember?”
“You were thinking it, and that’s all that matters. Plus, you yelled it to me as I drove off.”
My head dropped to my chin and tears flooded my eyes. “Unbelievable. So, this is it? It’s the end? You’re leaving me? No, Tate…no. I won’t let this happen. We need to fix this. How can we fix it? There has to be some way
.”
Tate wiped my tears and pulled me up, taking me by the hand. We walked along the beach with Symphony trotting along beside us. “I love you, Sophia, and I can’t bear to be without you, but there’s no way we can make it work, the process has already started.” Then he paused. “There is a way we can stop it, though.”
“There is?” My eyes lit up.
“If you get me out of your mind and quit loving me, the process will stop, but each time you think of me with the love that you have now, or tell me you love me, it starts up again. If you stay away and get me out of your life, that’ll slow it down, too. But each time you are heavily filled with thoughts of me, the process will begin again. It’s your love for me that sets me free.”
“Can the Livids help keep you here?” I rubbed my face, trying to comprehend and come up with a way.
“They try to stop it, and they can slow the process down some, but I have to fight them…become one of them. It’s just no good.”
“But the other way isn’t going to work, either. There’s no way I could ever stop loving you.”
He shrugged and held my hand even tighter. “It’s all up to you. You have the free will to do what you want. If you want to continue loving me, we have about seven weeks, if not, let me go, and I’ll spend eternity bumping around with these ball and chains as a ghost, but I’ll always be around you. You can take comfort in knowing that I’ll be with you for the rest of your life.”
“If I love you, and you move on to the next level, will you still be around me?”
“At times, but I’ll be in another form. You’ll never see me like this again. We’ll never be able to talk again. I’ll move into a different realm of existence.”
This tug-of-war effect wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t fathom the idea of not seeing Tate’s beautiful face. But I couldn’t quit loving him either. The whole scenario was just too hard. “So, in order to keep you here, I can’t love you. But if I love you, I can’t keep you here. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’s pretty much it.”