Under the Light (16 page)

“And get this.” Billy held the paper so we could look through it using the light from the window. “See?” He pointed out where the misspelled word
sacrid
had letters underneath that had been erased. “He misspelled a word on purpose.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Because he was pretending to be you?”

“Looks like it.”

“Smart boy,” I whispered. That the ghosts had to pretend to be us, the way I pretended to be what my parents wanted me to be, made me sorry for them. First you’re alive, then you’re dead, then you get a chance to be alive again and you have to walk around in disguise.

Billy stretched out on the bed. “Here’s where that picture of us was taken.” He examined the room from this position. I lay down beside him, my head next to his on the pillow—he put his arm behind his head to make room.

“Think of the stuff they probably talked about,” he said. “How did you die? And why are you a ghost? Didn’t heaven or hell want you?”

I rolled on my side to see if he was joking. “You think heaven wouldn’t take them?”

“Well, how do you become a ghost?” He shrugged. “It’s not like everyone who dies ends up like that.”

That seemed sad, but at least they had each other. For a while. “I wonder when they first met,” I said. “She was haunting Mr. Brown.”

“I had Mr. Brown for English,” said Billy. “So they were in the same classroom every day for fifty minutes.”

He was lying on his side now, his head propped in one hand. A sheet of cold air came over me and I had a random thought that didn’t seem like my own:
You have to step into a body if you want to smell grass again.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

I closed my eyes and hid my face on his chest. As he put his arm around me, the wintry feeling lifted off my skin and I breathed in the heat coming through his shirt. I wasn’t nervous anymore. I relaxed into him, safe and at home. I imagined we were lying under the stars, stretched out in a field of grass.

“I thought of a knock-knock joke,” he said.

I must have heard him wrong.

“You know,” he said. “Something you can’t do alone.”

I opened my eyes and used his arm as a pillow. “Okay.”

“You really remember me from junior high?” he asked.

“I do.”

“Will you remember me from now on?” he asked. “If you see me on the street someday, you won’t pretend you don’t know me?”

“I don’t go around sharing amnesia ghost possessions with just anyone,” I reassured him. “I will always remember you.”

“Good.” He sighed. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Billy.”

“Billy who?”

“I told you you’d forget me.”

I groaned. Sometimes he seemed like a twelve-year-old.

“Sorry,” said Billy.

I laughed, but then I explained. “I’m not laughing at the joke. Do not take this as encouragement.”

I jumped when the bedside table gave a shake. Nothing there but a clock. It was already almost eleven. Billy narrowed his eyes and pointed his hand at it like Darth Vader trying to strangle the clock to death.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m trying to stop time.”

CHAPTER 21

I
T WAS A SIMPLE, DORKY THING
for him to say, but it felt like a comet went through my chest.
He stopped time for me.

“There,” he said. “Now we can lie here as long as we want.”

He’d kissed me once before, when we were standing in my bedroom—a quick touch of the lips, but now he gave me a real kiss. My first. It should have been awkward, but it was like we’d been together forever. The room seemed to expand and the ceiling disappeared. I was loved and I was in a huge open field with all the air I could ever need.

I felt the seams of his shirt, turned wrong-side out, and the warm skin of his back as I slid my hand underneath. He pulled out of the kiss long enough to tug the shirt off, forward over his back and head. I could see the ceiling behind him, and the stars, too. I was afraid he would disappear, so I rose up and threw my arms around him so he wouldn’t fly away. As we kissed he pulled the sleeves of my cardigan off one arm and then the other.

As long as we’re touching,
I thought,
wherever he goes, I’ll go too, and wherever I go, I’ll take him along.
It felt natural when he untucked my shirt from my pants so he could lay his palm flat on my stomach.

I thought someone was in the room. I turned my head to the side. He kissed my cheek, my temple, under my jaw, pressing me into the pillow. With my face turned to one side, I saw that there was someone beside me—too dim to see clearly, though. A boy on the grass, speaking, but I couldn’t hear him. He sat up—he was trying to tell me something. I knew him, but I couldn’t see him well enough.

“Wait.” I gasped in a breath.

“Okay.” Billy shifted his weight off me.

The room was back, the sky and the grass were gone—the ordinary daylight of autumn was almost blinding. I searched the ceiling and desk and clock. There was just me and Billy.

“This will sound crazy.” I sat up and slid away from him.

“I doubt it,” said Billy. “Compared to what?”

My throat tightened up—I didn’t want to say anything about what I’d just seen. I didn’t want it to sound like a dream, or a daydream, something I made up that means nothing. My eyes were hot—tears started down my face.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

I shook my head no. I was embarrassed to be crying in front of Billy.

“Are you scared? We don’t have to do anything else.”

“I’m not scared.” My voice broke. “I was thinking about somebody . . .” I couldn’t explain it.

Billy watched me, sitting on the side of the mattress. At first he held my hand. “Like who? Your parents?”

I shook my head, trying to dry my eyes with my bare hand.

“Like another guy?”

“Sort of.”

His grip on my hand relaxed, his fingers slipped away. “A boyfriend.”

“No,” I said. “It’s stupid. I don’t even know his name or where he lives.”

“A guy you like?” he asked. “From school?”

“No.” I took a sharp breath, trying to suck my tears in and stop acting like an idiot. “It’s ridiculous.”

“I’m just not him,” said Billy. “That’s the problem, right?”

“No,” I told him. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“But you can’t stop thinking of him when you’re with me?”

I wanted to climb onto the roof and hide.

“I get it.” Billy stood up and grabbed his shirt from the floor. He pulled it on, right-side out this time. It had a picture of a zombie on it. He sat on his desk chair.

“I think I met someone during the time I had amnesia,” I told him.

Billy studied me for a long moment. “It’s him, the ghost who was in my body.”

I’d wondered that before, but no, it still didn’t sound right. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re remembering him, that’s why you can’t think of his name.”

I shook my head. “When I left my body I didn’t go to school or here,” I said. “I was far away. Where there was lots of sky and air.” It sounded so childish, but that’s the best way I could describe it, because it was just on the outside edge of my memory.

Billy stared me—all the color had faded out of him.

“Our bodies were here, but our spirits weren’t,” I told him. “Where did
your
spirit go?”

He shrugged. “Maybe my spirit was asleep.” Then he picked up my sweater and held it out to me. “I’ll take you back to the library. If you want me to.”

It felt like he was kicking me out. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Forget everything I said.”

“It’s okay. I get the idea.” He was still holding out the sweater, so I took it. “I’m not mad,” he told me.

I pulled the sweater on and looked around for my shoes, but I knew I should say something else.

“It’s not like we’re in love,” he told me, but the more he talked, the less he sounded okay. “People I love end up in the hospital or jail. Better to stay clear of the curse.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “You’re not cursed.” Even though I had been feeling like there was someone else and that kissing Billy was sort of like cheating, the idea that Billy wasn’t in love with me and that he didn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore made me feel sick to my stomach.

“Here.” He put my shoes into my hands in a rough way that made me stare at him. Looking embarrassed, he backed away a step, bumped into his desk, and leaned against it. “Sorry.” He sighed. “Take your time.”

As I was putting on my shoes the bedside table shook again and another gust of cool air rushed at me—I could feel the pressure of icy fingers gripping my arm, pulling me to my feet.

But Billy wasn’t touching me.

“What is it?” he asked.

Then we both heard a car door slam. I ran into the hall, hoping I could act as if Billy and I were visiting in the living room instead of his bedroom. The front door opened just as I was struggling to get my heel into my second shoe, balanced on one foot in the entryway. Billy set my book bag down next to me as Mitch looked from one of us to the other.

“What did I tell you?” Mitch slammed the door.

“She’s just leaving,” said Billy. “Don’t worry. She dumped me.”

I stood up and realized my shirt was not tucked in, but I was too shy to fix it in front of his brother.

Mitch looked me up and down, and even though his fists were tight, his face relaxed as he picked up my bag. “Time to go,” he told me.

I hoped Billy would try to stop us, or at least come with us, but he sat on the arm of the couch looking exhausted as Mitch led me out on the porch.

I wanted to go back and tell him that I loved him, even if he didn’t feel the same. I opened my mouth but no words came out.
I can tell him at school,
I thought. Only we would never go to the same school again. I panicked at the idea of losing him. With the ghosts gone, there was nothing linking the two of us anymore. If he didn’t want me, I was lost.

Mitch shut the door and was leading me down the steps by the elbow as if I might run for it. I asked him to take me to the library and he gave me a funny look.

“My mother’s picking me up there,” I explained.

He smiled at the idea that I had lied to her about my plans for the day. On the way there he held an unlit cigarette in his mouth for a while, finally flicking it to the dashboard when there were only a few blocks to go.

“Did you really break up with him?” he asked.

“I guess,” I told him. “I’m not sure what happened.”

Mitch didn’t look at me—kept his gaze on the road and the rearview mirror. “He’s a good kid, but he doesn’t need another heartbreak right now.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted Billy. Maybe I didn’t deserve him, but it was too sad how short a time together we’d had.

“I know you’ll probably change your mind in a few hours,” said Mitch. “I’m not blind. I can see how you are together, but we don’t even know what’s happening to him after tomorrow.”

“What’s tomorrow?” I asked.

“Did he really not talk about any of that?” Mitch sighed. He reached up and caught the cigarette again as he pulled up to the curb outside the main branch. He put the car in park and took a lighter from his pocket, waiting for me to get out before he lit up.

“Is Billy in trouble?” I asked as I opened my door.

Mitch paused with the flame ready. “Nothing for you to worry about, kid. Have a nice life.”

A puff of smoke trailed after the car as it drove off.

CHAPTER 22

A
LL THE WAY HOME FROM THE LIBRARY
, Cathy was lost in thought. She didn’t notice that Jenny was sad. At home, the dining room table was stacked high with organized file folders, photocopied papers stapled or paper-clipped together; accordion files with titles such as
HOUSE
and
MONTHLY EXPENSES
stood beside open file boxes.

Jenny reached to open a file labeled
PARENTING
but withdrew her hand when Cathy came into the room.

“Dad was the one who left us,” Jenny told her. “He can’t get custody of me.”

“He says legally—”

Jenny interrupted her. “He doesn’t know how the law works.”

“He knows how to make deals,” said Cathy. “He knows how to blackmail people.”

“But you won’t let him take me.” Jenny came up and stood beside Cathy’s shoulder. “Right?”

Cathy was looking over her documents, eyes flicking nervously from one to another.

“I’m trying,” she said absently.

“You’re my mom,” said Jenny.

I wanted to sweep her away from rejection, but she needed to ask her mother for help. She needed to see with her own eyes, and hear for herself, if Cathy was not up to the task of loving her.

“Don’t I get to say who I want to go with?” Jenny asked.

Cathy put a belated arm around the girl’s shoulder. A hollow gesture, not even an afterthought. “I didn’t get your homeschooling materials yet,” she said. “I can go tomorrow.”

“It’s okay.” Jenny rested her head on Cathy’s shoulder. “Mom?”

She answered automatically. “Yes?”

“You know during the time I can’t remember . . . Did my voice sound different?” Jenny looked up at her mother, waiting. “Did I use words I don’t usually use, or did I have an accent or anything?”

“What?” Cathy separated from the girl, her brow tight and strained. “Of course not. Why?”

“Not even the last few days before I went to the hospital?” Jenny seemed oblivious to Cathy’s fear, but I could feel it like a grating vibration in my teeth. “I didn’t talk funny?” Jenny asked.

Cathy took another step back. “Funny in what way?”

Jenny shrugged. “Old-fashioned, maybe?”

Cathy grew pale and walked into the living room. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Jenny followed her, watched her mother straighten things that were already neat. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to me,” said Jenny. “Weren’t there moments when I seemed like someone else?”

I remembered vividly the conversation Cathy and I had after her women’s group meeting. We stood on the sidewalk in the dark and I told her I wasn’t her daughter. Cathy had been in tears. Even now I could almost hear the sprinklers in a stranger’s yard and smell the wet pavement. And Cathy recalled it too—I could see it in the lines around her eyes and where a smile should have been.