“He wasn’t drinking. But we got in a fight.”
“About what?”
“He just doesn’t seem like he’s serious about us. Maybe because I’m older. Or broke. Or depressed.”
I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, even in her broken state. “Why do you even see him?”
She put her face in her hands. “When Grandma died . . . I didn’t realize how much it would hurt to not have her around. It was like I lost my whole sense of who I was. Like I was a little kid again without her. And then he came right away and comforted me. I couldn’t ask you to do it and I didn’t have anyone else. She was the one who had always comforted me. The only reason I was able to have you by myself, without the support of a man, was because I had her. Other women can do it, but I couldn’t.”
She started to cry and I sat very still, feeling the heat of her body, the wet of her tears on my face. Part of me wanted to dissolve into her and part of me wanted to run away, but I said, “It’s okay. I understand.”
I thought of Grant. How he had made me believe I was special, how I had allowed him to kiss me. How vulnerable I still was. At least Luke was alive. I never wanted to have to depend on someone like that again, especially not someone who didn’t deserve my trust.
“I just miss you. I’m scared. I feel really alone,” I sputtered. “It’s like you’re not here.”
“I guess I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure I could live without my mommy.” She closed her eyes and leaned back against the pillows.
“I can’t,” I said.
“You won’t have to anymore,” she mumbled.
But it wasn’t true. When I started to tell her about my nightmare, she was already asleep again.
I went into my room and sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to clear my mind and focus on breathing the way Amrita had taught me, but I was assaulted with images from the hospital, the dream about Ally, and especially Grant standing in my kitchen, telling me and Clark to go to hell.
BEFORE SCHOOL THE NEXT day, I found Ally Kellogg applying lip gloss in the mirror she’d attached to the inside of her locker.
“Hi, Ally. Can I talk to you?” I was trying to hide the urgency beating in my throat.
She gave me a disinterested smile. “Sure. What’s up, Julie?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I feel weird about this, but I had a dream about you.”
She turned from the mirror and frowned at me. It was odd to see a crease in her smooth face. “Uh-huh.”
“I mean, the dream doesn’t matter, it’s just that . . .”
“I have to get to class,” she said, not unpleasantly but without her usual smile.
“Wait, I’m sorry, it’s just that I was kind of freaked out by this dream. And I thought I should tell you. Because I think sometimes dreams can mean something or . . . that you should listen to them.”
She waited, tapping her fingernails on her locker. I noticed little decals of different flowers on each finger.
“I just think you should be careful around Jason Weitzman,” I said softly.
“Around who?”
“Jason Weitzman.”
“Okay. Yeah, sure. I’ll be careful. Thanks, Julie.” She was watching me with narrowed eyes and I realized I had made a mistake in telling her. But I was worried about her safety after the dream. I was worried about everything, it seemed. My mom, Grant, and Clark.
When I saw him in math, he just said, “Hey,” and I realized that he didn’t know anything about the accident. Evidently it was Grant, not Clark who had answered the phone when I called, but I’d been crying so hard that I hadn’t noticed. I told him that my mom and Luke had been in a crash but they were okay.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked when the bell rang and we left the room.
I almost whispered my answer. “I did.”
There was a silence between us that stretched for the length of the entire hallway.
“It happened again,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Can I come over after school?” he asked in a voice that was deep with tension, but still his voice, not his brother’s.
“I think you better.”
“It’s really time, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
THAT EVENING, WHEN MY mom was asleep, I got out the tincture and gem essence from the cabinet but when I opened the refrigerator for the rosewater I put my hand over my face; the stench was like rotting meat even though the fridge was empty and clean.
“What is that smell?” Clark asked when he got there, handing me a pot of chestnut, wild rice, and cranberry kicharee he’d brought.
“It’s been here ever since we first went to Daiyu,” I said. “Ever since we got the essences.”
Clark grasped a dry sliver of cuticle between his teeth and pulled.
And then I realized . . .
“He started it when he knew we were planning to get rid of him,” I said. “He’s pissed.”
“Shit. I guess it is time.”
“But he said he’d have to go back anyway, on the anniversary of his death,” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I have no idea. He said he’d have to go back where he came from unless you went instead.”
Clark continued to gnaw on his fingers. “Go where? This is getting more f-ed up all the time.”
We stood staring at each other, not moving. But the smell from the refrigerator was so foul I had to cover my mouth again.
“Come on,” I said.
We went into my room, away from the smell, and I sprayed Clark and then myself heavily with the rosewater—it was spicy rather than sweet, yet very delicate, and felt both warm and cool at the same time. For sustenance we ate the kicharee, and for strength from fear and grief we dropped the tinctures into our mouths and applied the essences to the insides of our wrists. When we were done, we lit a circle of white candles and set the sage on fire in the flames, moving the bundles in circles with our arms as we faced each direction so that the smoke surrounded us.
Then we sat on the floor with the Ouija board, dried mugwort scattered over its surface. I took a series of deep breaths to clear my mind and calm my body and concentrated on my cells vibrating rapidly, as Amrita had taught me, too fast for anything to penetrate them.
“Grandma, please help us,” I said. “Please tell me what we’re supposed to do.”
Clark nodded soberly, his mouth pressed closed so that the skin around his lips looked white.
The marker began to move almost immediately, gliding toward the G on the board. But before any more letters were revealed the marker careened across the surface, arcing back and forth as we tried to keep our fingers on it, until it slid off and onto the floor. The candles flickered and went out and I heard the bang of the refrigerator and smelled the rot even in my room, as if it had permeated my nostrils. I tried to get up but I was dizzy, and my legs were so weak they couldn’t hold me. I took the rosewater and sprayed the air around us again; my hands were shaking as I tried to light the candles and the match went out. Clark took the matches from me and struck one, lit one candle, and cupped his hand around it to protect the flame, but it flared, sputtered, and went out again. He threw down the matches and sat on the bed.
“Fuck! I don’t want him to go. No wonder it’s not working. I don’t even want him to go.”
I managed to get up and sit next to him in the dark room. “I know,” I said. “But I think we have to do it now.”
“We go to all these people, all these wise healer shamans or whatever they are, and they don’t tell us anything. Except we have to find it inside ourselves. I can’t find anything inside myself. I’m more empty than he is. Emptiness and fucking devastation, she said. It’s better when he just takes over. I’d rather he just do it and replace me.” He was breathing hard, pulling at his hair. I wanted to make him stay still.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true, though. He was the one that
should have lived.” Clark got up and jammed his fedora onto his head. “I have to leave,” he said.
He stopped at the door. “My parents are going to San Francisco over winter break. I wasn’t going to go, but I think I better now. I need to get away. We’ll be back on Christmas Eve.”
“Please, Clark,” I said. “I don’t think it’s safe. He said things about you. He was really angry.”
Clark shook his head and wouldn’t look at me. He turned and left, closing the door behind him with a sound that resonated throughout the apartment. I realized there was nothing more I could say to keep him from leaving, nothing I could do to protect him or anyone else. The grief and fear I’d been trying so hard to ward off flooded me like an icy wave crashing into an empty cove.
CLARK TEXTED ME TO say he wasn’t coming to school the next day; he wasn’t feeling well. When I texted him back, he didn’t respond.
There was a cluster of kids around my locker when I got there before school. Someone had written Psycho Bitch on it, in red Sharpie. My face was probably the same color as I hurried away. I hoped that Ally Kellogg hadn’t told Jason what I’d said, as much for her sake as my own, but it was probably too late.
After English, I asked Ms. Merritt if I could speak to her. I really wanted to tell her the whole story, but I knew I couldn’t.
“Is everything okay, Julie?” she asked in that kind voice that always made me feel like crying.
“Yeah, it’s fine.” I couldn’t tell her.
“How’s your report coming?”
“I want to do it on Dickinson, but I’m a little scared to,” I said.
“Why?” she asked. “You know I love her work. Obviously.” She made a sweeping gesture of her body, from bun to brown dress to sensible heels, and laughed.
“It’s kind of emotional for me, to be honest. My grandma loved her poetry and I’m afraid it will bring up too much for me to look at it that closely.”
I’d written about my grandma in my essay, so Ms. Merritt knew she had died. I’d never noticed how much even my teacher’s wide-set brown eyes were like the poet’s, in that one uncanny photo.
“I understand. But sometimes that’s the best way to deal with things like that. It might help you feel closer to her. Maybe I’m not the most objective source, but poetry can sometimes have the answers. I think you should definitely do your report on Emily Dickinson, Julie.”
It was hard to say no to my grandmother’s favorite poet’s doppelganger.
MRS. CAROL WAS CLOSING the store for two weeks to visit her daughter up north, so I had more time to take care of my mom during winter break. I stayed in the apartment watching movies with her and making soup, only going out for groceries. It was Hanukkah, but without my grandmother, we didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t even buy candles for the menorah.
My mom didn’t return Luke’s daily calls, the refrigerator didn’t bang. I worked on my Emily Dickinson project. It was going to be about death in her poems, but I hadn’t quite figured out what to focus on. I did the eye exercises from Tatiana’s book on how to read auras and took my herbal tincture and applied the gem essences and set up an altar as Amrita had instructed. I tried to breathe deeply and meditate. But sitting still for even a few minutes when I wasn’t about to go to sleep made me wired with anxiety, as if I’d explode from the heat in my circuitry. Still, I continued to try.
Whenever I got really anxious I texted Clark. He texted me back but not as promptly as he used to, and I remembered the cold wave crashing in my belly the last night I’d seen him. I wondered if he’d still want to see me when he came back.
I took the jade urn of ashes into my room every night, and lay on my bed and talked to my grandmother, asking her to come to me in my dreams.
I didn’t see her. I saw the car, a bright red car, speeding around sharp curves. I couldn’t make out the driver’s face but I knew who he was. Smelled like formaldehyde and rotten meat, made your stomach heave up into your throat. Called Grim by some, called Reaper, called Azrael, Thanatos. If you Googled slang words you’d find hundreds, from A through Z, Adiosland to Zombie Factory. Emily Dickinson had many names, including “Visitor.” In a lot of her poems she even sounded like she was in love with him, like she wanted him to take her away.
Was that what I wanted, too? Was Grant the driver of the car? Was it the red Honda he’d died in?
When I woke up, I wrote down the dream. I knew what I was going to write my report on: Death. As the Lover.
ALTHOUGH WE DIDN’T CELEBRATE Christmas, my grandmother always did something special like order really good Chinese food and make cookies and then we’d go see a movie—usually one of the big fantasy films that came out around that time of year. That Christmas Eve, I took two separate pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream out of the freezer and put in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits for me and my mom to watch. She’d named me after the main character, who is haunted by ghosts, though I knew my mother had no idea how accurate that would prove to be. She opened a bottle of wine and had a couple of glasses. I shouldn’t have let her.
When the phone rang, she answered it. I knew right away who it was by the nervous, light sound of her voice and the way she wouldn’t look at me.
“Can you excuse me for a second, honey?” she said, not meeting my eyes.
She couldn’t get up easily because of her cast. I wanted to tell her no, I couldn’t excuse her, there were no excuses for what she was doing, but I got up and went to my room and slammed the door instead. She knocked a few minutes later and told me Luke wanted to come by with some presents. I didn’t answer her.
Before I went to bed I texted Clark.
He didn’t respond. Was he still angry about what happened?
I fell asleep almost right away and woke to the sound of something hitting against my window. Pebbles? Really? Were we in some kind of a tween movie? I got up and looked outside and saw a hatless boy standing in the street. The Christmas lights made everything except his dark figure glow with a soft silver haze like he was the only thing real in a ghost world.
“Hey, Julie,” he said. “I’m sorry about what I said. I was just so scared. Can I come talk to you?”
I looked at the urn of ashes that I’d kept by my bed from the night before. Where was my grandmother? I felt as if I was a walking sack of ash myself. “Devastation and emptiness,” Daiyu had said. That wasn’t just Grant; that was me. Even Emily Dickinson allowed Death to court her.
I let him in.
My mother and Luke were in her room; I could hear him playing a CD of his band The Descent. I still hadn’t gotten used to my mom as a heavy metal fan.
Luke’s music throbbed through the walls. My mom was “gone” again.
Clark had not responded to my text. Grant had come.
Grant and I hardly spoke; for once we both wanted the same thing.
We sat on the bed. I needed him to knock me out like a sleeping pill, like a pain pill, kill me with sensation until I didn’t feel anything. Without a word, he fixed his lips to mine, slid his tongue into my mouth, and I was comforted by the warm rhythm, like music. He stroked my throat and I tingled, the delicate flesh parts of my body rising toward him. Then he reached his hand gently across my belly, slid it up between my ribs, between my breasts. I was sweating.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“You mean because you are possessing Clark’s body or because you are touching me?”
“The touching part.”
“That part is more okay,” I said, tugging at the hem of his T-shirt.
“I don’t want to make things harder for you,” he said. “But I don’t want to go.”
He put his arms around me and pulled me so close, I could feel how our bodies fit together if we were lying horizontally. I was trembling and he held me against him like he was trying to make the tremors stop.
“Just be with me once,” he said. “I never had the chance.” He was really crying, not trying to hide it. My heart felt like a p
iece of raw meat. What about Clark?
I might have said his name out loud because Grant said, “He’ll understand. I think he will understand. I’d do the same for him if it were the reverse.”
He ran his fingers lightly over my breast, lingering on the nipple that flicked up to meet him in spite of the fact that he was a spirit inside his brother. He pulled my shirt up and put his mouth there. My body dissolved beneath him, nothing left of me but that spot of sensation where he was. Until he pushed his other hand between my thighs, pressing so that the seam of my jeans dug gently into me, in exactly the right spot. I writhed against him and he left my breast and came back up to my mouth, falling on top of me in a kiss that included every part of both our still-clothed bodies.
“I am so fucking done with being dead,” he said. “Thank God for you, baby.”
No boy had called me baby. No boy had ever thanked God for me. I hadn’t really cared, before, if any boy did. Now I cared.
I helped him pull his T-shirt over his head. His chest looked slender but stronger than I’d expected, and his skin was very smooth and so warm. I clenched around his thigh. We were both breathing in this raspy way so I couldn’t tell who was who. I wanted him to push his way inside me and for him to come alive like that, or for me to be dead. I didn’t care which, just some transformation, terrible and profound, a ghost brought back, a girl taken away. Sweat dripped off his brow onto my face. I thought of Clark, his silly smile, his hats, his kicharee. I loved him. But he was here, too, in a way. Wasn’t he? The aching in my body was speaking louder than my heart, justifying what it wanted me to do. My hands skimmed Grant’s hips and I felt something in his pocket.
“What’s this?” I whispered, sliding out a crunchy condom packet.
“Are you ready?” he asked me. “Is it okay?”
Then I remembered my mom in the other room. With Luke. Probably doing this same thing. To heavy metal.
She and I with our dead men, trying to be dead, too.
We were exactly the same.
I started to cry and Grant stopped moving above me.
“What?” he said. His voice was harsh now.
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