The funeral was a small gathering. There weren't a lot of friends of Grandma, but those who were knew of her a hell of a lot more than Mom or Dad or me.
They kept telling me how much of a great woman she was. I knew she was. She was my grandma.
I caught a couple of stink eyes pointed at my mom, probably for good reason. Mom didn't even bother hiding her disdain. I think she's bitter about the will, apparently Grandma left the house to me and donated the rest for charity.
I didn't tell her that I found the body or Dad or anyone, actually. I just came back home after I called the ambulance, pretending to be a neighbor.
As much as I didn't want to think about it, it disturbed me. I can't ignore the facts now.
Whether I want this or not, for some reason I can see the dead. I can see them, they cannot be ignored.
It's like now I can see them, they're everywhere. I can see them walking around the street, graveyards, even at school. Some of them are walking around looking for someone—they feel lost—and others are so numb that it's so hard to tell the difference between them and the living.
Even at the funeral house I see one or two. They're staring at people like they're animals in a zoo. I don't make eye contact with any of the ghosts, except one.
Jack is wearing the same outfit from the party, and he's just staring at me.
I'm walking towards him, hissing through my teeth, "Let's do this somewhere else." I nudge with my head towards a vacant alcove.
He nods as if coming back to reality, going in the same direction I am. God, this is strange. If anyone sees me, I'll be looking like a nut job.
His hands were wide, ready for a hug. "God, I missed you, Rachel."
I sidestep him, being careful to not touch him if he realizes that he can't touch me. He might be sent over the deep end.
His face immediately falls. "I'm sorry. It's been a couple of weird days," I trying not to mumble this time.
He nods appreciatively. "Yeah, I get that. I'm sorry about your grandma."
I respond, "Thank you," because I don't know what to say besides that.
He scratches behind his ear, opening his mouth, and looking at me before he says, "I'm sorry about what I said."
My eyebrows rise up in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"At the party," his lip puttering out, and I find myself staring at it for way too long. "I shouldn't have said you were a whore. When I saw you at the parking lot, I wanted to ask you if you would go out with me."
I start protesting, but he raises a hand, stopping me. "And when I saw you at the party practically naked in front of all those people, I got so pissed off. But then you wanted me, and I thought… I thought you might have regretted it."
I find myself in the strange power balance with him now. He's the stuttering one. I don't want him to stop talking. He's nervous, and I kind of like it. "I just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. I was an ass. I am so sorry."
First time I'm dumbfounded on anything to say. Because this beautiful dead boy liked me. I was a nerdy nobody who liked doodling in bio class, and my idea of fun was doing homework. He was way out of my league, and now he was dead.
He liked me. He liked me, I repeated it in my mind, but it didn't sound real.
I fondled with the words with my tongue, "you liked me"
Apparently he heard me because he nodded. "I still do."
"Jacks," I reached out, touching his arm. A strong jolt of energy runs up my spine.
For only a second I felt something.
A flicker of energy coursing from his body to his and mine back to his.
He looked at me, there's so much fear there. It looks like every muscle in his body locked, his eyes went starry white. Then he faded out of existence, nowhere to be seen.
----
I haven't seen Jacks ever since the funeral, but I've been looking for him everywhere. I'm actually really worried because everybody's starting to go on search parties and putting up missing posters of him.
I started looking for Grandma's stuff for answers, but all I could manage to find was art supplies and romance books in her house.
I actually started to give up, but when I was coming back from school, I saw him walk down the street. I ran on a sprint, meeting him halfway. He looked up. "What happened to you, Jacks? Are you okay?"
Clothes from the party looking crumpled and worn off is if he's been run over. He looks paler. Is he fading out somehow? It looks like he's running out of ink.
His hand shakes, but he fists it as if forcing himself to stay still. "Ever since the party, things have been weird. I keep forgetting stuff and feel cold all the time. What's happening?"
I bite my bottom lip, it doesn't look very good if I tell him.
He shakes his head, his words becoming more firm. "I don't know why I'm even asking you. I just feel like I'm drawn to you for some reason. I know it sounds corny and strange, probably creepy, but I feel like …"
His words stop because he's apparently at a loss for them.
I don't say anything because I don't know what to say, I just stare at him. Come on, say something, yelling those words in my head.
He doesn't say anything, and we seem to be caught up in the same silence we always get stuck on. "Listen," I start breathing through my nose, trying to get this right. "I really don't know what happened to you, but I think it's something really bad because…"
My words get stuck in my throat again, like always, fuck.
My memory gets caught on the last time I touched him at the funeral when my hand touched his being, or whatever it's called, essence. I don't know, and then he seem to have seizure. Do ghosts even have seizures in the afterlife?
God, this is weird.
"Do you remember what happened when I touched your arm last time you saw me at the funeral—my grandma's funeral?"
He seemed to pinch the furrowing around between his eyebrows.
Continue not wanting to be caught up with my words again, I say, "Do you remember how you got there? How you heard that my grandma died?"
"I must have heard it from someone at school, I don't know." He swats off my claim with one hand.
I insist, "no one at the school knew. Only you did. Do you remember how you even got there?"
I don't even know what I'm asking at this point because I'm lost just like he is right now. He's trying to concentrate. The frown between his eyebrows deepens even more.
Tell him, tell him he's dead, the voice in my head echoes my doubts on this.
I don't know why I'm even trying to deny this, but part of me wants him to still be alive, to still be around. He was a piece of shit, and his ghost currently haunts me, but part of me wants him to still be alive. I didn't hate him even though he apparently slept with me, called me a whore, and then left.
Maybe you stayed here because of me because he wanted to say sorry. I dismissed the motion because that is stupid, my arrogance.
I feel like slapping a palm on my face, but I have to deal with the giant mess currently staring at me.
There was so much confusion and doubt on his beautiful face. "My family has a gift to see people who have died." I bear on not wanting to let him be focused on whatever is going on in his head because he's warring with something here.
"And I've been seeing a lot of them. Some of them don't really remember what happened to them or what they're doing here. You know who was the very first ghost that I saw, Jacks?"
He slightly nods as if he already knows the answer, because I'm sure he does.
My expression is so pained, realizing I'm going to tell him. Why me?
This is so fucked up. "It's you, Jacks. You're dead."
He shakes his head as if denying it, but he looks at the streetlights now blinking in and out, clearly affected by his inner turmoil. "What is happening to me?"
"This are your emotions, Jacks. Calm down. You're affecting the surroundings around you. The other side has an effect on objects in the living world," I quote my grandma's words to me when I was a kid when I asked her about the strange blackouts at her house. It was the norm in her house. We used to even make a game out of it.
Without without even thinking about it. I go over to touch his palm.
Instantly all the lights stop blinking out. He takes a sharp intake of breath as if lungs fill up with air. I look at his palm, feeling it firm under my grip, and I look into his eyes. He seems shocked and somehow more visible. "How can you touch me?"
"I don't know," I mutter. I tried to wrench out my hand, but he gripped onto it. He exhudes a sigh of relief, and some of the color is returning to his features. What the hell is going on?
This feels weird and uncomfortable. I back away a couple of steps as he steps even closer to me. "Don't leave. You always leave."
I frown up at him, annoyed that I got stuck with him. "I can't do this, Jack."
Refueled by whatever I done to him, he pulls away from me and starts tattering in thought. He clicks his fingers, doing that together, and grins wide. "Let's make a deal."
I quirk up an eyebrow in question. "What kind of deal?"
"The kind that benefits both of us." He inches even closer to me. His body, now visibly more firm, feels ominous right now. "Help me figure out what happened to me. If I'm really dead, help me find my…" He stops on the word, gritting it out of his teeth, "body."
I grimace, crinkling my nose in disgust. "Helping you find your dead corpse? No way."
Somehow now that I know he's now more of a presence, I feel confident, although I definitely shouldn't.
"No way. You're not going to get rid of me." He crosses his arms, waiting for my answer.
I look up at him and the dude that I had a huge crush on for years. I trying to cling on to the memory of what was essentially a pretty nice dude, sometimes at least. He deserved to be in peace. I sigh griefly and expel the words that seal my fate with this asshole. "Fine."