In the Echo of this Ghost Town

by CL Walters

  I change my clothes and get started on my assigned move in day tasks. By the time the pizza arrives, I’ve swept the bedrooms, laid the tarps for the mattresses; Dad and I have moved our mattresses and important boxes from the trailer hitched to the back of the truck. We’ll have the rest to unload in the morning, because the sun has gone down, and without electricity until tomorrow, we’re living by lantern light.

  “Dad, you have definitely underestimated how long this house is going to take,” I say, drawing a piece of pepperoni from the box. “I mean, Holmes Street was about this size but didn’t have as much work. We were there for two years.”

  “True,” Dad says and takes a sip of his cola he just opened. “But it also had a basement that I finished, and I had that full-time job.” He takes a bite and finishes it. “Remember Misten Avenue? That one was terrible, and we were there for less than a year.”

  I’d forgotten about that. “Give me that.” I take his soda and hand him his water bottle. “You can’t drink that.”

  He gives me one of his looks, his lips thinning out with impatience. He shakes his head. “I didn’t hire anyone to help at Holmes or Misten. And I like soda.”

  “Soda is diabetes juice, and you’re predisposed.”

  He chuckles. “Look at this temple.” He flexes, which makes me laugh. He always uses the same lines. “It wasn’t too long ago I was a linebacker–”

  “–averaging two and a half sacks, a game. Yeah. Yeah. Drink the water, Dad.”

  We eat in silence a moment.

  “What’s with the timeline, Dad?” I ask, plucking at a piece of pepperoni.

  “You’re leaving for school,” he says as if he’s announced the date of my birth, just matter of fact.

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  He looks up at me, and I see a look I don’t recognize on his face, but it burns out just as quickly when he covers it with a smile. “Just seems like a natural point to shoot for. Look for a new place closer to the college so you don’t have to travel so far to visit.”

  “It’s only three or so hours from here. An easy bus ride.” I point out.

  He maintains the smile, but I see it’s not in his eyes, but then maybe that’s the lack of light cast by the lantern. He nods and takes another bite of his pizza. “What am I going to do without you to keep me on track? I might go off budget.”

  I swallow and take a bite of my pizza feeling guilty. It’s always been us. Dad and Max-in-a-million against the world. “Aw, Dad. I won’t be far,” I remind him. This is why he’d relented on this place. Besides being a steal—which he loves for the eventual bottom line of the flip—the school I got accepted to was just a few hours away by car. “We have phones. Goodness. And eight weeks to flip this dump.” I wonder if the reason he’s adamant about his unrealistic timeline is because he’s as scared to be on his own as I am to be on mine. I haven’t considered the impact of my leaving on him. I haven’t allowed myself to ponder it because it’s complex and stitched together with a complicated history that I know I can’t unravel.

  He gives me a chuckle. “Don’t you worry your head. Your old dad’s got it.”

  “Can we afford help?” I ask.

  He sniffs and knuckle itches a spot on his nose which makes me wonder if he’s coming up with a lie. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s given me just enough truth mixed with a version of optimism riding the line of a lie to keep me complacent. “I’ll have to dip into savings.”

  My eyebrows raise with a question. “Dad. I need the truth.”

  He holds up his hands. “For real. I have a few side gigs lined up already—legit—and I’ll offset it with some savings so we can get started right away.”

  I nod. “And while you’re working the side gigs? How is this house—which is generous identification by the way—getting done?”

  “The hire.”

  I give him a side eye.

  “You and me plus one more. I think we could knock this out in no time.” He smiles around his bite, and I have the sense he’s telling himself this story as much as he’s telling me. “Have I ever steered us wrong?”

  I shake my head. Even though he’s taken us into some horrible houses, he’s always made it out of them just like he’s said even if his timelines haven’t always been accurate. There are always unforeseen complications, and I’m one hundred percent sure this house is full of them. “Dad?”

  “Yes, daughter?”

  “Aren’t you tired of fixing houses for other people? Don’t you ever want to find a place of your own?” This is a question I’ve asked him before, but his answers have been as shifty as the houses we’ve lived in, taking on characteristics of whatever house it was at the time. I’m expecting him to say something metaphorical about the stained-glass inserts, but he doesn’t.

  He clears his throat.

  “Dad?”

  “Home is where you are.”

  And I’m leaving.

  I don’t think he understands that this answer makes me feel like I’m carrying the world on my shoulders, like I’ve got to hold it up for both of us. I swallow the bite. “What about when I leave for school?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Dad?”

  “I messed this up, didn’t I?”

  “What?”

  “Being your dad?”

  I set my pizza on the paper plate. “What are you talking about?”

  He looks at me, his gaze connecting with mine. “I just—I thought it would be an adventure after–” He stops. I know he was going to say, “after your mom left,” but can’t bring himself to say it. His heartbreak still on his face after thirteen years; it isn’t because I think he’s still in love with her, but her abandonment had left both of us as ghostly as the houses we inhabit.

  When I was younger, I used to resent the moving, but now that I’m eighteen, I can understand it. I scoot closer to him and lay my head on his shoulder. “Our adventures have been the best,” and I’m being honest. They’ve been with him even if there’s resentment mixed in. I want him to know I love him, but I can’t—won’t—be a heartbreak, too. “I’m just worried about you when I go to school. You being alone.”

  This is the first and thickest thread wrapped around my heart. Dad has chosen me every day. He’s lived for me. He’s been my number one, and now I’m leaving him alone. If I thought too long and hard about it, my breath turns to steel in my lungs. I’d consider not leaving, even if Dad wouldn’t allow it. Going to college feels a bit like abandoning him—like mom. Worse yet, I want to leave so bad, I’m afraid it makes me just like her.

  “What’s this?” He wraps a strong arm around me. “Last I checked, I’m the dad. Don’t you worry. And if all goes well, I’ll be right behind you looking for the next place.”

  Thing is, I can’t help worrying about him.

  I was five when my mom left us. Indigo Denby—in as much as I can piece together between what my dad has said and what I remember—was a free if unstable spirit unable to be saddled with a husband and a child. A hippie wrapped up the privilege of growing up wealthy, she disappeared, and after a search, was found strung out on drugs (not the first time) and incoherent. Her parents—grandparents who I’ve had very little interaction with—admitted her to a rehab facility. The divorce papers were delivered to Dad shortly after, and he was given complete custody, her rights as my mother signed away. We haven’t heard from her—or my grandparents—since. These are fragile threads I don’t understand as clearly since I was only five at the time, but threads that stitch together my experience, nonetheless.

  After Dad and I have cleaned up dinner and escaped into our own spaces to get some rest, I wait for the quiet to steal around the house. In the dark of the new room, my lantern glowing in the horribly stark space with new shadows and new sounds, I eventually sneak from my bedroom, across the landing, and take great care to keep my steps from creaking as I move to the stairs. A strange sound reverberates through the belly of the old farmhous
e, and I freeze at the top of the stairs, wondering if I should have braved the window and the tree. New house. New sounds. I hold my breath.

  I wait.

  My dad clears his throat.

  When the silence settles again, I take a step down the stairs. It squeaks. There’s a moment when my heart speeds up with fear, thinking maybe I’m going to alert my dad, but I don’t hear any movement from his space in the house. I keep going, moving slowly until I’m on the ground floor and out the cracked front door now covered with a plank of plywood.

  As much as pizza is a first day move in tradition with my dad, sneaking out that first night is wholly mine. My ritual started at house six. Up to then, my dad and I bunked it in the same room and his presence gave me bravery. When I turned thirteen, there was a shift in me wanting to be brave and independent and to prove I could sleep in my own room by myself. My fear of the new places and my imagination of conjuring all sorts of terrifying creatures stretching in the shadows did a number on my confidence, but instead of going to my dad, I snuck out into the night where it felt safer. Somehow, that night, I found a way to claim some power. After that, I continued to sneak out every first night in a new place. Disappearing into the night of a strange place isn’t because I want to sneak around, but rather feels like one of the only things in this pattern of living over which I have control. Tonight, is the last time, I figure. It’s my last move with my dad and is more about the nostalgia of the routine of things rather than the compulsion to control something.

  House nine, he caught me sneaking back in.

  He was pissed. “Do you understand how dangerous it is?” The panic clear in his eyes. “Why didn’t you just ask? I would have taken you somewhere.”

  I saw the disappointment in his eyes, and I hated disappointing him, worrying him.

  “Why?” He’d asked.

  I just shrugged, because I didn’t know how to put into words the why, not without hurting him. I was being dragged all over the country to fixer uppers by a loving dad running from the ghost of a drugged-out mom, too broken to choose us. I had this awful truth of being an outsider—always an outsider—to face the trepidation that presses in against us every time we start over. I’d been seventeen then, and the sneaking out felt more like a sticking middle finger at the world. A loud “fuck you” to the universe, to every kid that had made fun of me, to my mom, and even my dad on some level.

  I didn’t think he’d get it, and I refused to hurt him, because even if it was a small rebellion, I knew he didn’t deserve it.

  Now, I forgot to anticipate the darkness outside the house which is short sighted on my part. I close my eyes to let them adjust. New places always require a learning curve. Always. Not just in space, but in sounds and most importantly, people.

  Part of the reason I think my dad was so panicked that night he caught me wasn’t just because he was scared for me. There is this part of him that probably thought about my mom, the way she walked out into the night and never returned to us, how he couldn’t fix that. My dad can fix anything. Seriously. He’s made nine houses look like custom homes. Any problem I’ve brought home—cuts, scrapes, and bruises both physical and emotional—he’s been both dad and mom to restore me to normal working order. He couldn’t fix my mom and I’m pretty sure, knowing my dad like I do, he gave it his best go.

  As I walk out into the darkness beyond the farmhouse, I wonder if I hide my first night sneak-out from him because I don’t want to hurt him like my mother did. I’ve thought about what it would feel like to just keep walking. The idea took root when I was fifteen—house eight—I thought about just going, finding a place to setting down for good. I was smart enough to know it didn’t work like that, which brought me home, but it made me wonder if Mom had found it easy to leave us. To leave me. I’d gotten caught up in how much that would hurt Dad, which I knew I couldn’t ever do to him, and I wondered how it couldn’t have been a part of my mom’s thinking. I don’t specifically remember the leaving. She was there one day and gone the next. But each time I walk out into the night, I wonder if she weighed us in her decision, and I can’t think she did.

  When I was younger and asked my dad why she left, he’d just say, “Indigo was a free spirit.”

  Back then, I imagined her like a bird, needing to fly. Now, as I walk toward the streetlights ahead, I don’t think of anything so romantic as a bird needing freedom. I just think she was selfish, and maybe, I worry I’m just like her.

  I’ve got eight weeks in this dump since college races toward me. I can hear the sadness and the fear in my dad’s voice when he talks about it, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am leaving him too. It’s always been us, and when I look ahead to that eight-week deadline, what I feel is the impending anticipation of freedom weighted with a heavy cost: leaving my dad behind and alone. I finally get to make the choices for me. I finally get to make friends. I finally get to stay somewhere—four years—in one place and grow some roots even if my dad jumps around business as usual. As much as I love my dad, I’m looking forward to leaving this vagabond lifestyle for something that’s mine, of creating a permanent home. As much as I want my dad to settle somewhere, I don’t know that he ever will. The thought makes me bitter, tired, and sad all the same time. When it comes down to it, I’m leaving him and no matter how I try to dress that up, I know I’m just stepping into my mother’s skin and cognizant of how selfish that makes me.

  * * *

  When the Echo Answers Available now wherever books are sold.

  The Stories Stars Tell Excerpt

  Senior Year

  14 days to graduation

  * * *

  I squeeze my eyes shut, terrified I’m about to screw this up. Three deep breaths. Slow. Steady. In. Out. The sound of my breath echoes in my head like the rush of the wind through the tree leaves in my backyard, and the fear of failure, which always sits in the front of my brain, drips down through my body into my stomach.

  I could forget my part.

  I could ruin everything.

  I could be sick.

  I picture Cameron, standing in front of his dad’s red Ferrari in his khaki pants and suspenders over his dark brown shirt ranting about conquering his fear right before he kicks the shit out of his dad’s car. Okay. He’s a fictional character from one of my favorite movies of all time, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but still. I’m going to kick the shit out of this, like, speech-Ferrari.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  “Emma?”

  The sound of my name, as though it’s being called through a tunnel, draws me back. I open my eyes and look into the familiar bright blue eyes of my best friend, Liam.

  “Emma? It’s almost time. You’re doing your breathing thing?”

  He’s dressed in a business suit, charcoal gray and red tie with those chic pants and shoes that make him seem like he’s stepped out of a male fashion magazine. Far more fashionable than most males in these competitions who look like they’re wearing their father’s Sunday suits. He is beautiful. Dark haired, thin and fit, handsome and not into me at all (I’m not into him either). We’ve been best friends since third grade in Mrs. Hale’s class.

  My insides shimmy, but I nod. “Cameron. Remember Cameron.”

  “What?” He adjusts his black-framed, hipster glasses which he pulls off to perfection.

  “Just channeling Cameron.” I tug on the bottom of my matching charcoal gray jacket.

  Liam reaches out, fixes my collar, and then takes both of my hands in his. Leaning forward, he presses his forehead to mine. He smells like wintergreen mint, familiar and comforting. “We’ve got this. We’ve practiced this. We know it. We. Know. It.”

  I close my eyes. “We do,” I repeat, and my heartbeat slows to the rhythm of his words. Liam. My best friend. “Our last time in duo,” I whisper. Tears threaten to fall. “What am I going to do without you?”

  He pulls back but keeps hold of my hands. “Do. Not. Cry.” Hand squeeze. “You have to keep your make-up
looking good. Game faces. Let’s kick the shit out of this speech, like Cameron did the car.”

  I smile, because he knows me, and I nod. “Let’s do it.”

  Our names are called. We walk from the wings out onto the stage and take our marks.

  We slay it. Of course we do, because that’s who we are.

  Later, Liam and I are at my house for our usual Saturday night John Hughes movie of the week. It’s what we always do on a Saturday night, except for that one Saturday junior year when I went off the rails. The popcorn is made, drinks are chilling, and Pretty in Pink is cued up. While we wait for Ginny — our other bestie — to arrive, we both scroll through Instagram.

  “Look at this one,” Liam says. He’s on the floor with his back against the couch. His legs — fit in cotton twill — are stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He holds up his phone.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “It’s Baker’s house.”

  “Baker? As in Atticus Baker?”

  He nods. “Party there tonight.” He continues to examine his phone, and I watch him.

  Instead of scrolling through the feed, he stops and scrutinizes Atticus Baker’s page. Picture after picture, even reading the comments. It strikes me, because Liam hasn’t ever expressed an interest in anyone specific (he’s kind of private like that). As he looks through Atticus Baker’s feed, it dawns on me how much of a risk Liam took to tell his truth. How lonely it might be in our small, conservative town. Lately, with graduation impending, I’ve thought about what kind of risks I’ve taken in my life (that one time junior year notwithstanding), and the answer has been none.

  “I see you, Liam. You think Atticus is hot,” I say with a giggle.

  “Who doesn’t? He’s gorgeous.”

  He continues to study every single picture Atticus has posted, and I recognize familiarity in his actions. I’ve done it. My own phone, at the moment, is open to Tanner James’s IG feed, as per usual. I press on his story and watch a video of him walking into Baker’s party, but I don’t show Liam. He doesn’t approve of my infatuation with one of the biggest f-boys at school. I don’t blame him; it’s suspect.