Notes from Ghost Town (11 page)

“Just don’t touch anything in there”—Parker motions toward a pristine, antique-y looking room that could fit every room of my house inside of it—“and don’t screw with the sound equipment, okay?”

He leads us to the back deck, thick with private school kids in various states of undress, dancing or milling or spinning in silky summer dresses and bikinis through the shallow end of the giant pool, glowing with dusk light and rippling with the sway of bodies. Raina grabs my hand and squeezes it as Parker and his blond bunny peel away, high-fiving their way into the middle of a group of shirtless boys in sport jackets, holding drinks in tall, sweaty glasses.

“
Ix-nay
on the
outey-pay ace-fay
,” Raina says. Her long, silky black hair is parted in two braids today. “Let’s just have some
fun
, okay?” She waltzes us over to the bar, still gripping my hand. She pours vodka into two glasses and fills the rest with alternating splashes of cranberry and orange juices, swirling the mixture with a pinkie finger. “These are called vodka sunrises. See? They’re kind of the color of a sunrise, aren’t they?”

I grip the drink in my hand, stare at what looks like dark gray sludge to me. “Yeah. Definitely.”

She takes a sip of her drink and fights a gag. “You pour the next ones, ’kay?” She examines the crowd, sipping slowly at her drink with a permanent frown. “What do you think? Any guys worth talking to?”

“I doubt any of them will talk to
us
. They can probably smell our used cars from miles away.” I scan the giant deck. A DJ is blasting a mixture of bass-y house and pop music, and the whole party looks like a scene from a black-and-white movie projected silent and huge.

The sun is setting over the ocean, a dark crack through the gray sheet of the sky. I feel a tap on my shoulder and spin around, jumping a little. Austin Morse.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he says, smiling.

“Raina dragged me. I don’t know anyone,” I answer sharply, taking a sip of my drink, trying to hide a grimace as I swallow. Part of me is pleased to see him. Maybe he’ll whisper something in my ear, ask me what underwear I’m wearing tonight. I’ll answer in a way that’s just coy enough to keep him guessing.

It’s all a game.

And yeah, sure, maybe I like the attention, too.

Raina fixes him with a menacing stare. She still thinks the fact he “ditched” me on the beach was jerky. “Oh, Austin,
so
nice of you to drop by, as always. Liv—I’m gonna go check out the bathroom—there’s a fountain inside of it. You wanna come?”

“Um, I—no. I’m fine.”

She looks at Austin, and then back at me, one hand cocked on her hip. “You sure?”

I nod. I want for her to leave us. I want, for once, to be the chosen one.

She turns to Austin, points a finger at him. “You treat my girl with respect, you got that?”

He does a fake boy scout salute. “Got it.”

She spins on her heels and heads back into the house, drink sloshing in her hand. She has a habit of starving herself before parties so she can get drunk more easily—I guess a few sips did it tonight.

“You know me,” Austin says.

“What?”

“You said you didn’t know anyone here, before. But, you know me.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “I guess.”

“I was actually about to leave, but …” he says, taking a sip of some dark glass beer bottle with a fancy German-looking name.

“Now I have a reason to stay.”

“And what’s that, Austin Morse?”

His fingers brush mine as he reaches for my glass. “To try your drink, of course. I know you’re an expert at this stuff.” He swallows, coughs, and wipes his hand against his lips. “That’s really awful.”

“You can’t handle the big girl drinks, can you?” I take the drink back from him. I feel his eyes brush over me, some blaze ignited behind them.
What does he want from me?
I wonder. And, more importantly:
what do I want from him?

There’s a loud splash from the pool—a bunch of girls, hand-in-hand, giggle as they float, half-naked in the deep
end. But Austin doesn’t even look. He keeps his blaze-eyes on me.

“You impress me, Olivia. You know that?”

“Why?” I watch his glass-gray (blue?) eyes continue to examine my face. “Because of my amazing tolerance for shitty drinks?”

“No. You impress me in general.” He shifts his feet, coming millimeters closer to me.

I snort, glance at him sideways, stifling the desire to call him out on his staggeringly bad pickup lines—if that’s what they even are. “How drunk
are
you, Austin Morse?”

“I’m sober, actually, Olivia Tithe.” He leans closer to me and I can smell his citrusy cologne. “Will you go out with me? On a date?”

I almost choke on my drink, keep my face half-hidden behind the glass to avoid having to meet his eyes.
Go out with Austin Morse?
Austin Morse, the quintessential untouchably hot prep school boy—go out with
me
, the art girl from the killer-mom side of the tracks? I could see us,
maybe
, pressing our mouths drunkenly together in some secret place. But an actual date? An actual planned get-together where we might run into people we know?

My brain won’t stop spinning out new reasons and anti-reasons. “Listen, I really don’t—” I stop. I notice Raina step through the screen door, arm-in-arm with a tall boy in basketball shorts who looks so much like Stern, I blink. Not him. Just some random guy.

“Come on,” Austin says, “Just one date, Red. You and me.”
But I barely hear him then, my whole body flushing hot, heart jackrabbiting into my throat. Stern is lodged in my head now, the loss of him, and his ghost-presence, too.

A memory of our kiss flashes through my mind. I never got to tell him what I wanted. I never got to tell him I wanted everything from him: his smile, his laugh, his slow-easy speech, the warmth of his arms around me. His voice, singing full-lunged in the distance as he’d approach.
Oh! Susannah, don’t you cry for me, I come from Alabama …

Just as he looms huge in my mind, the now-familiar pins-and-needles chill comes over me and he’s here. Stern, the real Stern, or the ghost Stern: all wavery and pale beside Austin’s firm, tan solidity.
Shit
. I try not to stare at him, but it’s hard to avoid.

The Gray Space
, says the small voice between my ears.

“Something wrong?” Austin asks, squinting at me.

“What? Oh—I saw someone I know and—I was just—” I shake my head, smile up at him, firmly ignoring Stern. Obviously Austin can’t see or hear him. “It’s nothing.”

“You sure? Everything alright?” Austin leans closer.

So does Stern. He comes to stand right beside me, his icy shoulder sending waves of chills through me before he pulls back slightly, wincing, clutching at his arm. “We gotta talk. Now,” Stern insists.

“So, is it a plan?” Austin asks, at the same time.

I haven’t had two boys aggressively vying for my attention since tenth grade, when I got drunk at my first
off-campus party and played strip poker with a group of older painter boys. “No. I mean yes. I mean …”

Stern tugs at me; I shiver again. I smile awkwardly at Austin. “I’ll—um—I’ll be right back,” I blurt out.

“Where you going?” he asks. Raina’s no longer standing near the door, thankfully. I don’t need her to try and loop me into a round of shots right now.

“Bathroom,” I say quickly, already walking away. Stern sticks close to me.

“So, this is what cool rich kids like Austin Morse do?” Stern asks, headbanging to the awful electronica beat resounding through every part of the house, black curls flying. “Always knew it was a waste of time.”

I don’t respond. I can’t be seen talking to thin air. I need privacy. We’re walking down a long, open hallway on the second floor; the party is still visible from the massive windows that make up most of the back of the house, the torches glowing bright hot through the dark, the pool a giant glassy ripple.

“In here,” I whisper. We step inside a bedroom and I fumble for a light switch: Parker’s older brother’s room, I’m guessing. He obviously hasn’t spent much time here since he left for Stanford. A few Model Senate and academic awards are framed on the wall.

“You were thinking about me,” he says softly. “I could feel it. From Nowhere, I could feel it.”

“I was
trying
to have a normal night, actually. And
not
think about you.”

“But you
were
, weren’t you?”

I sigh. “Yeah. I was.” I eye him, his stark height, his even starker beauty, the same Christmas flannel and funny shiny basketball shorts he’ll wear for all of eternity now. “So, what?” I ask, taking a sip of my drink, which suddenly tastes even grosser than before. I set it down on a shiny shelf top, next to a shiny PlayStation beneath a giant flat screen TV. “Can you read my thoughts now that you’re dead?” I cross my arms, hoping like hell that he can’t.

“No.” Stern stares at me intently. “But I can
feel
you. I felt you tonight. It’s like I get sucked through a straw and spat back out beside you.” He rubs his head.

“Stern, look.” I have to put my foot down. “You shouldn’t be here. You don’t
belong
here. I need to have a life. Friends.”

Stern raises an eyebrow. “Like Austin? You once said he was an ‘overprivileged twat.’”

“He
is
an overprivileged twat, but he’s also … I don’t know …”

“Dreamy?”

“Alive.” I’m suddenly exhausted. The mattress is hard, like everything in the house: hard-edged, new, all corners.

I wish he would go away.

No. Wrong. I wish he had never gone away in the first place; then we could return to the party together. We’d make fun of Parker and his stupid Playboy bunny friends, and he’d cannonball into the pool, and I’d laugh my ass off. And I wouldn’t need Austin Morse and his so-cringe-worthy-it’s-
almost
-cute lines. Wouldn’t need anyone else at all.

“Is that really all it takes?” Stern asks quietly.

I look up at him, my throat squeezed practically shut. My secret still sits, burning, in the bottom of my belly—that I love him. That I will always love him. And everything I want from him is now impossible: A normal life. A normal relationship. Wrapping my arms around him whenever I want to. Not having to worry that at any moment he will evaporate.

“Maybe,” I say. Stern sits next to me and a chill passes through my whole body, as though I’ve been plunged head first into ice-cold water. I stand up, and move to the wide-screen at the other end of the room, stoop to flip my fingers through the DVDs stacked in a neat pile on the shelf below the console, just trying to put distance between us.

“Anything good over there?”

“Tons,” I answer, keeping my eyes on the stack of movies. “You know,” I tell him, swallowing the lump in my throat, “there’s an Elvira Madigan movie. Not here, I mean. But, in the world. I read about it online. Maybe we should watch it. Look for clues or something.”

He moves suddenly from the bed and stoops beside me on the hardwood floor, peering over my shoulder. “Elvira Madigan …” He looks at me, eyes wide with excitement. “Of course—the soundtrack! A theme song!”

“What?”

“It’s the piece of music I played for my recital, for …” He squints, like he’s thinking, hard.

“For Juilliard,” I remind him. “You practiced it, over and over again with my mom.”

“Yeah. Of course. That’s what it is. That must be why I remembered that name….” He smiles, victorious, like everything’s clear now.

The pointlessness of it all hits me, like a fist-drive in my stomach. “
This
was your big, important thing?” I straighten up, my hands starting to tremble. “A
music lesson
? Of course you remember a piece of music you played, what, like ten thousand times?”

“Do you really think I
want
this to keep happening? That I’m enjoying it?” Stern shakes his head, mouth tight. “The
only
good thing about all of this is that I get to see you.” He looks right at me. Looks right
through
me.

I stare hard at my lap. If I look at him at this moment, something is going to burst. All that anxiety and emotion has to come out some way or another.

Wish I could touch him. Wish I had never met him. Wish I could hold him. Wish I could stop loving him. Wish I could pull his mouth to mine and never stop kissing him, ever ever ever. Wish I could forget about him.

Impossible. It’s all impossible.

“Liv,” he starts, gently. “I know you’re scared.”

“Of course I’m scared. I can’t even
talk
to anyone about this because I’ll just seem nuts. I don’t want to realize one day I’m actually just like …” I trail off, terrified even to finish my thought.

“Look,” he says, the quiet lilt of his voice like an arrow, finding its way to the center of me, “why don’t you just talk to her?”

“Talk to who?”

“You know who,” he says. A huge shiver runs through him.

“I—I don’t—” The door creaks open and Stern disappears instantly. Austin stands in the doorway. I wonder how long he’s been here … if he heard me talking to no one. If I’m angry for his interruption, or grateful.

“I was looking for you.” He frowns, and sits down beside me on the bed. His skin radiates heat—so different from Stern’s—and his body, in its well-muscled weight, sinks deeply into the bed. “What are you doing in here?”

“I didn’t feel well. I thought lying down might help. But I think I might need some air instead.” I still feel shivery from the conversation with Stern—like he picked the lock guarding some dark, dusty part of my brain and dug out all my secrets.

“You want me to walk you outside?” Austin stands up from the bed and takes my hand in his.

“Okay.” I let him hold it and pull me upright. It feels good to be around someone alive, someone solid. “I think I should probably go home.”

“Well, I’ll walk you to your car, then.”

“Bike,” I correct him.

“Bike,” he repeats. “That’s cool. Your bike.” He says it again, like it’s something foreign, exotic. He moves his hand to my lower back—his heat vibrates through me and part of me wants to pull away but I don’t because I like the feel of him, of his hand on me—as he leads me downstairs.
I look around briefly for Raina, to tell her I’m leaving, but I don’t see her. I’ll send her a text as soon as Austin leaves me.