Neeka put his phone down on the table. She’d been reading Kota’s messages. Jared took a deep breath and held it, but didn’t feel any calmer when he let it out.
“The only way to hear the dead is to exist in this world and in the land of the dead. Very, very few beings can do that.”
“Mom can hear them,” Jared said defensively.
“Can she?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Neeka considered him and then Dent. “Do you understand the implications of this?”
“Whatevs. I have a mid-term coming up and I have to study. How much longer are you going to be here?”
“Study away,” Neeka said. She picked his phone back up.
Jared went to the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and held his head, massaging the headache that flowered at his temples. He knew she was making a point about him being different. He didn’t like what she was hinting at. He wanted her to go away now.
Are you going to hide in there all day? she thought at him.
Don’t do that.
Dent floated through the door. He checked his hair in the mirror.
“Can I have some privacy?” Jared said.
“Neeka, huh? Neeka who?”
“She’s an otter in human form.”
Dent glanced at him, then continued studying his reflection. “I meant are you dating her?”
“Dude, she’s an otter.”
“She can be a can of peas for all I care.”
“You’re dead. She’s crazy.”
“Sounds like a match made in heaven.”
Dent shouted at him a lot less with Neeka around. He stood beside Jared while Jared studied, looking all sage and wispy, like Obi-Wan Kenobi on his day off. When Jared’s brain was full, he said he needed a meeting and Neeka grabbed her purse. Dent trailed them all the way to the church, eyes riveted to Neeka like a magnet to steel.
The meeting was open and in a basement with water-stained, industrial-grey concrete walls. He liked the grunge of it, the realness. The day felt a little less insane there, even with Neeka sitting beside him.
His mom could take care of her. His mind skittered away from that thought. He wasn’t going to get anyone killed if he didn’t have to. He continued to hope that once Neeka saw how boring he really was, she’d lose interest and stop coming around.
Dent sighed and popped out of the basement. Jared realized he hadn’t been listening, wrapped up in his own problems. He tried to focus on the reading a monotone man was giving, his confession of relapse after relapse, which made him think of Kota. Kota hadn’t told him how close he was to slipping. Maybe Kota hadn’t realized it himself.
Mr. Wilkinson had said the difference between sympathy and empathy was the difference between getting in a hole with someone or getting a ladder so they could climb out of the hole themselves. He wasn’t sure if he was the one in the hole or if Kota was in the hole. Maybe they were both in deep, dark pits and that’s why they couldn’t help each other. And then there were the psychos who saw you struggling in the hole and started shovelling dirt over you.
After the meeting ended, Neeka sipped a tea and chatted with some of the guys, holding Jared in place by putting her arm through his. When she finally decided to leave, the guys looked Jared up and down, resentfully. She held his hand up the stairs, and then put her arm through his again as they walked down the sidewalk. The day was drizzly. His hoodie was damp. The drizzle clustered in her hair, where it sparkled.
“My sister’s in and out of NA,” she said. “We haven’t seen her for weeks.”
Jared glanced at her. He suspected she was playing him, because her expression was so calm. Or she was way better at detaching than he was. “Can you talk to her, you know, mind to mind?”
Neeka shook her head.
His phone buzzed in his back pocket, but he ignored it. When they approached the apartment, the Starr brothers were leaning on the rail of Hank’s balcony.
“Jared!” Pat shouted. “Come on, Hitler awaits!”
“Damn it,” Jared grumbled. “It’s a dance practice. You don’t have to stay.”
“Move,” Neeka said.
The group gathered in the amenities room was smaller this week. One of the dancers was showing the intricacies of a particular turn, while the drummers warmed their drums. Shu danced around tooting her recorder as Dent hung on to her shoulder, staring at everyone. Eliza waved furiously when she saw Jared. Barbie looked up and then broke into a smile. The Starr brothers galloped into the room to stand beside Barbie, staring at Neeka with awe.
“You made it!” Barbie pecked Jared’s cheek, then she said to Neeka, “Are you in school with Jared?”
“We’re kin through his father,” Neeka said.
“We haven’t done any tests,” Jared said, uncomfortable with the casual lie. “It’s not official.”
“I’m Neeka.”
“Welcome, Neeka. I’m Barbie. Are you from around here?” Barbie said.
“Neeka,” Jared said, trying to distract Barbie from more questions, “these are Barbie’s brothers, Pat and Sponge.”
“Robert,” Sponge corrected.
Pat bobbed his head shyly.
Eliza ran up to him. “Hi, Jared!”
“Hi.”
“Can I come watch TV at your place after?” Eliza said.
“Sorry,” Jared said, very conscious of Neeka beside him studying Shu and then Eliza. “I have to study.”
She pouted at him, but Shu whispered in her ear. They ran off. Dent wavered as he followed them, shimmering and flickering like a TV tuned to bad station.
“Get a couple of the spare drums, you two!” Barbie said. “Have fun!”
Neeka went and got herself a coffee from the kitchen. Barbie shoved a drum into his hands and a beaded beater, watching Neeka make conversation with people. Eliza and Shu locked hands and started spinning. Dent blinked out.
After about twenty minutes, Jared made his escape, Neeka following him.
At the apartment door, she kissed his cheek. “See you later, Baby Trickster.”
Jared said, “Don’t call me that.”
Good night. She walked away.
In the apartment, Dent clung to his recliner, staring at the blank TV screen, fainter than he had been this morning.
“You okay?” Jared said.
Dent nodded. Jared turned the TV on and then flipped to the science fiction channel.
“Thanks,” Dent said, shoulders unhunching.
“You’re welcome,” Jared said.
Near midnight, a small spot in the air near Jared started to glow. He put down his textbook, bracing himself for more weirdness. The glow lit the living room, intensifying until it was like a spotlight beamed through the window. Jared squinted, turning his head. A figure emerged in the centre, a bright core of radiant light like the filament in an old-fashioned bulb.
Dent popped out of the room, disappearing from the recliner. The TV picture rolled, fragmenting into static.
Everything drained from Jared, all the sorrow and anger and fear and worry. The figure darkened and he saw a young Native woman with her black hair in two braids. She wore a plain flowered dress. She smiled at him and he was filled with love, so much love there wasn’t room for anything else. He knew her now, this younger version of Mrs. Jaks. Sarah’s grandmother had finally died. His neighbour, his friend, his teacher had passed away and he waited for the grief to hit him. It never came. She touched his face, smiling at him with such tenderness, warmth poured into him like sunshine.
32
When he was walking home from his Sunday night shift, he saw David cruising down the Drive. Jared waited for the fear to wash over him. Instead, he made mental notes about the time, the pressed white shirt David was wearing, his Matsuda sunglasses, like the ones Linda Hamilton had worn in Terminator 2. David had had those glasses forever and he was careful with them.
The light changed and the Lexus drove off.
The mess of emotions he’d been
feeling recently were gone. He calmly watched the Lexus driving away in the rain. Then he continued his walk. At one stoplight, the man who stood beside him wore only a tank top, water beading and rolling down his bare arms. In the place where Jared would normally feel sympathy for the man’s shivering, he felt nothing. Jared’s message alert dinged.
Gran died, Sarah texted him. Last night. We were all there.
You ok?
No. Mom wants to leave after the funeral. I’m staying. Fighting about it. I’m hiding in a coffee shop.
Sorry.
Sarah went quiet for a long time. And then wrote: My great-aunt is here. I’m going home with her.
Take care.
You, too.
He had a new Gmail notification. His student loan had finally showed. He waited in a coffee shop until the bank opened, filled out his paperwork and popped it into his bank account. He could afford to find his own place now, but it would be either a crappy apartment he shared with others or a closet in someone’s basement. He had to admit to himself he liked living at Mave’s.
Back at the apartment, Jared took off his wet hoodie and changed into sweats and a dry T-shirt. He made himself a sandwich. He drank a tea. He studied for his biology mid-term. Though he noticed that Dent wasn’t back and the TV was off, he felt no curiosity about the ghost’s whereabouts.
The floating heads in his room had faded. The skyscraper city painted on the floor had developed a fog that made it hard to see anything. He sat on his bed. He tested the memory of Mrs. Jaks, gingerly, like poking a sore tooth. He could remember her slightly exasperated tone as she told him the difference between types of tomatoes. This one was good for sandwiches. This one was for sauce. This one grew well in sandy soil.
A shadow stained the corner of the wall. Jared turned his head to watch a bony finger poke through, wiggling in the air. The shape climbed out of the wall and crept across the floor. The place where he felt fear was empty. He remembered being disgusted, but he didn’t feel that anymore. Jared flicked his hand and the thing that lived in his wall flew back, tumbling ass over teakettle until it disappeared.
That meant something, but he had no curiosity about it. Jared considered David, who loved things and appearances. Maybe this was how he felt, Jared thought. Removed. Numb. You couldn’t appeal to David’s sympathy because he didn’t have any.
Even in this cold state, Jared didn’t want to hurt anyone. It didn’t excite him to think of David suffering.
His Lexus, on the other hand, was fair game. David was behaving inappropriately and he needed to know there were consequences. Jared could key it or pop the tires. Or set it on fire. Throw something combustible under the gas tank.
He got up and rummaged through Mave’s storage closet and found her empties. He chose a screw-top bottle of wine and scrubbed off its label. He then handled it with dishtowels so he wouldn’t get his fingerprints on it. He took some tubing from Mave’s junk drawer and put the bottle in his backpack, cushioned with brown paper bags.
He rode the Vespa out of the underground parking lot, manoeuvring it the way Sophia had showed him so many years ago. When he found a deserted park, he stopped and siphoned some of the Vespa’s gas into the bottle and screwed the cap back on. His mom was more a fan of grenades, but they’d set wasp’s nests on fire with Molotov cocktails.
Just before you release, flick your wrist slightly for a nice tight spiral, she’d told him.
As he contemplated setting David’s Lexus on fire, he knew something was wrong with him. But he didn’t care enough to stop.
The fly in the ointment was finding the car. He couldn’t scout the neighbourhood without calling attention to himself. Standing on the balcony, Jared was unable to spot the silver Lexus or David either. Maybe all his planning was for nothing. Maybe David was just commuting through the area.
Shu had saved him and had been willing to curse David. Jared thought of her and she shimmered into view, staring up at him. She held out her hand. Jared took it. The longer they held hands, the colder he became.
He pictured David and his vehicle in as much detail as he could remember, explaining to Shu that he wanted to set it on fire. Shu let go of his hand and popped away. Jared saw her on the sidewalk. She skipped down the street, playing her recorder. She popped away again. He heard her music distantly, but couldn’t see her. Jared went inside and flipped through his notecards on the couch while he waited.
When he had given up on her, she popped back beside him, she touched him, and he saw David at the pub on the corner. His mother’s ex was leaning over the pub’s second-floor balcony with a baseball cap pulled low, sipping a beer, watching the front of Jared’s apartment building. Then she showed him the silver Lexus.
Jared got his stuff together and slipped out the back door that led to the alley and the Dumpster. In the shadows of the alley a block away, Jared put on a black, disposable rain jacket and latex gloves. David had parked in an empty lot, four blocks from Jared’s apartment. The gloves squeaked against the bottle as he held it and lit the gas-soaked rag. The bottle tinkled as he rolled it under the Lexus. He walked quickly away, stripping off the gloves.
He glanced back. The dishcloth soaked in gas stuck in the top of the wine bottle burned merrily, lighting the undercarriage. He ducked down another street, stripped, and then stuffed his gasoline-smelling outer clothes in a plain plastic grocery bag before tossing it in a rank Dumpster. Then he rinsed his hands in a puddle and pulled on the clothes he’d tucked in a large zip-lock bag.
The rain quickly soaked his hoodie. He zigzagged back to Commercial. He stopped in a park, empty except for teens smoking up, to look back. The smell of skunk wafted everywhere. No explosion. No fireballs. Disappointed, Jared headed back to the apartment.
A car alarm went off, whining in the distance. As Jared turned down the alley, fire trucks screamed past. Shu appeared beside him and in his mind he saw the Lexus burning like a campfire. Shu popped away again.
When he came in, Mave was sitting on the living room couch. “Were you at a meeting, Jared? Some guy was shot just up the street and there was a car bomb.”
“Don’t worry. I’m okay. All I really need right now is a nap.”
Mave hadn’t seemed to notice a gasoline smell, but he put the clothes he’d changed into in the washing machine and then took a long shower, scrubbing with the most floral-scented soap he could find.
In the morning, he went down to the laundry room with his biology text and washed his clothes two more times then threw them in the dryer. Hank came in and they ignored each other until Jared’s dryer beeped. Hank went and stood in front of it. Jared looked up at him.
“Have you heard from Kota?” Hank said.
“Not recently,” Jared said.
Hank shook his head. “You don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but yourself, do you?” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he left in a huff. Jared took his clothes out of the dryer and went back upstairs.
Jared studied some more for his mid-term on the bus to school. He finished early, so he slowly flipped through the test. He went through it twice, but didn’t change any of his answers. After a few people had gone up and handed in their tests, he went up too.
That evening, the light was on in Mave’s room but she didn’t respond to Jared’s knock. The apartment buzzer rang.
“It’s me,” Neeka said when he answered.
She came in with a latte and a cookie. She stopped in the doorway of his bedroom, staring at the walls. The painted heads had stopped rolling. The walls were almost ordinary walls again. Neeka studied him.
“What happened to your painted people?” she said.
“Mrs. Jaks died,” Jared said. “She came to say goodbye and they all faded.”
“Did she come in person or spirit?”
“Spirit.”
“Ah. You have a wall up. It’s not very strong, but it’s palpable.”
“It’s what?”
“Here.” Neeka
put the latte and cookie down on the table, and then reached out to him. Her hand glittered as it came close. One moment he was fine; the next, something was trying to claw its way out of him, ripping through his guts and his chest.
Jared heard himself howling, but it was as if it wasn’t really him. The sounds coming out of his mouth weren’t his sounds. Neeka lowered him with her to the floor before he collapsed. He curled into himself. He was on fire. He’d swallowed gasoline and now it was lit, burning inside him.
The floor became uncomfortable. He was too tired and too embarrassed to move. He worried that Mave had heard the commotion and would come out of her room, but her door remained closed. Neeka didn’t seem bothered by him emoting all over her lap. She lifted his head off her and reached up to his desk for some Kleenex. Jared took the tissues she handed him, sat up and blew his nose. He couldn’t meet her eyes. He hadn’t expected to fall apart. Again.
“Tea?” Neeka said.
“Please,” Jared said.
“Even when you’re expecting it, death is a hard transition,” she said. She held her hand out and pulled him to standing.
While she puttered around the kitchen, he sat on the couch. He felt as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny. He stared out the window. The night was coming earlier, especially since the rainy season was in full force. The street lights flickered on.
She brought him a weak tea with lots of sugar and milk. She turned the TV to the news and sat beside him. Jared sipped his tea. Neeka ate an apple.
Grief made him heavy. It felt like a dream, a horrible, horrible dream that he’d set David’s Lexus on fire. He’d asked Shu for help. When he was as cold and logical as Spock, it had all made sense, but now he was filled with dread. He wanted to check his phone and see if there was anything on the news, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Neeka in case she took it from him and nosed through it.
Someone knocked on the door. Neeka turned her head and quirked her eyebrow. Jared shrugged. The lock clicked and the door opened.
“Jared,” Hank called from the front hall. “Are you home?”
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