The Ghost and the Goth

“William, stay put, I’m going to get you checked out of here. Don’t think you’re off the hook, though, young man. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

I’d never been so happy to have my mother angry with me. “Okay.”

She turned on her heel and marched off down the hall.

Miller trailed after her. “But, Julia …”

“Thanks,” I said to Sara. “What can I help you with?”

“My brother gave me his St. Michael medal when I went into the hospital. It’s still in my file. They took it off when they did X-rays. I want him to have it back.”

I nodded. “I think I can do that.” Getting into the file room might be tricky, but I’d have help. “I have to do something else first, and then I’ll be back.”

She cocked her head to one side and gave me an evaluating look. “You’re going after the blonde.”

I nodded.

She shook her head. “Good luck with that. She seems like a pain.”

It was only after Sara rolled through the door that I realized everyone had left me still in restraints. Damnit, I could have been up getting dressed. I had no idea how much time Alona might have left.

“Sara?” I called. “Mom? Hello?”

Fortunately, the door to my room opened again right away.

“Oh, good,” I said. “I thought you might have been too far away to—”

It took my brain just those extra few seconds to process what I was seeing — someone, not my mother, backing into the room with a wheelchair. An already occupied, modern wheelchair, its passenger slumped to the side at an odd and unnatural angle.

“Will!” Joonie cried, her voice all high-pitched and kind of crazy sounding. She spun the chair around to face me, and Lily, her eyes as dull and empty as they’d been for the last eight months, stared blankly in my general direction. A Ouija board rested in her lap. “We’re so glad you’re awake.”

17 Alona

It took me forty-five minutes, twelve cars, and one tow truck to get home, using a convoluted system of sliding into one vehicle and riding until they veered off my desired course. Then I’d jump out — or better yet, wait until they reached a red light — and try to find another car going in the right direction.

There had to be a better way for spirits to travel, but I was not going to be around to find it. The strange pressure I’d felt in Killian’s hospital room was only getting stronger.

I walked the last three blocks home, watching grown-ups pull into their driveways after a long day of work, kids playing one last game of tag before being called into dinner. Summer, my favorite time of year, was coming. Mornings to sleep in late and still get out of the house before my mother was awake. The whole day free to do whatever and go wherever I wanted. The ability to spend almost every night over at Misty’s house without anyone suspecting it was because, more than anything, I didn’t want to go home.

When I looked at my house, I saw it differently. I don’t remember much from the first twelve or thirteen years of relative happiness, mostly because now it felt like everything had just been building toward these last few years of misery.

That’s where my mother knelt on the driveway and begged my father not to leave. There’s where he drove over the then-carefully sculpted flower beds, nearly taking out a concrete birdbath, to keep from hitting her, not that it stopped him from leaving. That boarded-up window on the second story, that’s right next to the shower where she “slipped” on wet tile, fell, and broke the window, slicing open her arm. When I found her, the shower was bone dry. Mother, however, was not. She reeked more of alcohol than blood, and considering the massive amounts of the latter on the floor, that was really saying something. And the garage door … don’t even get me started on that. How hard is it to remember to look behind you to make sure the door’s open before you start to back the car out?

Just walking up to the house, I could feel a familiar tension making my jaw ache and my shoulders tight. She’d never hit me, no matter how drunk she’d gotten. Oh, no, not Cheryl Dare. Instead, she’d just suffocated me with her neediness. Cherie was a victim of an adulterous and inattentive husband. None of this was her fault.

The saddest and most pathetic part of all of it is she did it all for my dad. Like, if she showed him how vulnerable and messed up she was without him, he’d have to come back. Where is the logic in that? I’d have pretended that I didn’t need him, that I’d never needed him. Actually, it wouldn’t have been pretending. I would never let anyone turn me upside down and inside out the way she let my dad.

That was the problem with my mother. She was beautiful, and she didn’t know how to be anything else. Not like me, she was nothing like me. I got her looks, but Dad’s brains. When he chose it, he could be a very cold and calculating son of a bitch. The only thing my dad did, whenever word of Mom’s problems and escapades eventually reached him (some of the neighbors were still friends with him and the new wife), was call me.

Everyone wanted to know what I was doing that day, the day I died. What made me cross the street without looking? What took me from college-bound cheerleader to black-and-white memorial material for the yearbook?

God, I wish it was something cool. Interesting, at the very least. The truth is, it was just another day.

My cell phone rang right before I slammed my gym locker shut. If my dad had waited another couple seconds to call, or if I’d ignored the ringing, my life would have changed dramatically. He was scheduled to meet with my mom at Eickleberg and Feinstein’s at 7:30 a.m., before he went to work. They were discussing changes to alimony, child support, and how to handle my college tuition. It had already been decided, mostly by my father, that I would be attending school within easy driving distance, obviously. Someone had to stick around and keep tabs on my mother. Hence, my graduation present, the Eos.

Anyway, it was now 7:00, and my father wanted to know, could I please go make sure she was up and on her way?

I could have explained I was already at school. Details are so not my dad’s thing, so he probably didn’t remember my schedule or, more specifically, that I’d signed up for zero-hour gym. But I didn’t bother. I knew he wouldn’t call the house or go over there, just as I knew that my mother was probably at home waiting for him to do just that. If she missed this meeting, Gigi, the new wife, wouldn’t hesitate to pressure my dad to scale back his payments to us even further. She wanted kids. He said they couldn’t afford it.

It should have been a simple thing, something I’ve done dozens of times before. Make up an excuse, slip out of school or cheerleading practice or a party to go home, clean up whatever mess my mother had made in the hopes of attracting my father’s attention, and send her back to bed or the hospital or whatever, depending. Then go back to my normal life, pretending nothing was wrong.

But on this day, a cool and beautiful first morning in May, something inside me snapped. She ruins everything.

I hate her. That’s what I was thinking when I stepped off that curb on Henderson. If karma came in bus-size servings, some people would probably say I got what I deserved for thinking that. After all, logically speaking, all of it was as much my father’s fault as it was hers. He was the one who’d cheated and left, the one who used me as a shield against her. But she was the only one with the power to stop it, to pull herself back into something vaguely resembling a parent instead of a giant black hole of neediness. She just refused to do it.

Now, standing outside my house, her house alone as of Monday morning, I felt a familiar surge of resentment. I’d died, and she was still controlling my life, holding me hostage as my “unresolved issue” as Killian liked to put it.

I swallowed back my frustration, lifted my chin, and stepped onto the porch. I would forgive her for being her: flawed, imperfect, human. I could do that, right? Looking down at my feet, now flickering in and out of existence again, I guessed I’d have to.

Just get in, say you’re sorry and you forgive her, and then get out. If I hurried, maybe I could make it back to Killian. I was worried about him trapped in that hospital with no one to help him. Plus, if I was leaving, really leaving for good, I didn’t want to be alone. He’d kissed me. Maybe he would wait with