(NOT fan fiction!) Kurt Cobain and Tally Fisk

Chapter One

I could probably get away with an alarming amount of crimes because no one would ever recall seeing me at the scene.

I fade into my surroundings astonishingly well.

I'm so average.

Invisible.

There is nothing remotely interesting about me. Nothing noticeable. Not one thing makes me special.

Well, except that I'm haunted by Kurt Cobain's ghost. But that's not something I publicize.

"Have you had a visit from him this week?"

That's Dr. Edgewood talking. He's my shrink.

Here's my advice to you. If a famous person's ghost starts hanging around you, don't get caught talking to it.

That's how I ended up here.

I consider lying. My eyes dart upward as I recall all the times Edgewood could tell I was lying. I glance at the light glinting off his bald head.

"Is he with us right now?"

That question startles me and I look around.

"Nope."

Not this time.

"When did you last talk to Kurt?"

That's an easy one to answer. I hardly ever talk to Kurt. He talks to me.

"I can't remember."

"And what music did you listen to on the way over here?"

Of course, you can imagine what the wrong answer is.

"Not Nirvana," I say, looking at the dark red carpet. The color has always seemed off to me. It's just not a color that inspires one to spill their guts. Not in the metaphorical sense.

But I keep looking at the carpet. I've learned that making eye contact is one of my tells. If I make eye contact when I'm answering certain questions, Edgewood knows I'm a big, fat fibber.

"If not Nirvana, then what?"

"Nothing. Silence. Birds and traffic and children playing in the afternoon sunlight."

I can tell he mentally rolls his eyes. "Very vivid."

I think he knows.

Okay, so here's the deal. My parents took away my Nirvana CDs and my smartphone. But they're not stupid. They're actually very intelligent human beings. They know I can listen to Nirvana on my computer. And I'm pretty sure they know I have Dad's old Walkman that still plays his old cassettes. I think it's their way of throwing me a lifeline.

So, maybe, occasionally, I listen to Nirvana in the car with that old Walkman. But I'm not obsessed. I'm not addicted. And I have never once watched the band on YouTube. That's the honest truth. But that Walkman...

Sometimes you just need your favorite band.

Shut up. I know what you're thinking. I'm not pathetic.

I'm haunted.

For your information, I don't even listen to the Walkman today on my way home from the shrink. I surf through the radio stations until I find the furthest thing from the alt rock subset that is grunge: country.

I'm pulling into my driveway, trying to figure out what possesses people to listen to this nonsense, when I see her.

I press my lips together and hold my breath.

"She's just a female of the species," Kurt says from the passenger seat.

I jump a bit, startled, and turn to watch him suck down half a cigarette in one drag.

"She's not gonna eat your face," he says.

I glance around, darting my eyes to the front door of the house and the living room window. I told you, I don't talk back to Kurt often, but I did get caught one of those rare times, so I need to make sure no one sees.

I'm in the clear.

So, I shoot Kurt a glare and say, "Don't you have a bright light to walk toward or something?"

Then I step out of the car and glance across the street.

She's still there, tossing her blond waves over her shoulder as she talks to some guy sitting in his pickup. I think it's Kyle Davis, football captain, but I'm not sure.

For a second, she turns her head my way and it looks like she's looking right at me. I wave.

But she turns back to Guy Who Might Be Kyle and keeps laughing and talking. I remain unseen.

Maybe I'm the ghost.

I entertain that idea, not for the first time, but my mom steps out the front door, proving that I exist.

"Spence? What are you doing out here?"

I resist the urge to glance and see if Kurt is still hanging out on this plane and say, "Just got home from my thrilling head shrinkage session."

I shoulder my backpack and hear her laugh as I head inside.

Not my mom. Her.

Tally Fisk.

When I first met Natalia Elisabeth Houghton Fisk, I was four years old.

It was the very first time my mom let me play in the front yard by myself. Four's probably a bit young for that, but we live in a cul-de-sac and I had been driving my mom up the wall, asking if I could please ride my Little Tykes scooter up and down the driveway.

I say I met Tally, but she didn't meet me. She's never spoken to me, despite the fact that we have always lived across the street from each other and we are the exact same age, to the day.

She was wearing a black leotard and pink tights with scuffed up purple sneakers, squatting in the grass, digging with a stick. Her white-blond hair was tied up on top of her head but thick pieces kept sliding out and hiding more and more of her face.

"Hi! My name is Spence!" four-year-old me called out to her. "I have a scooter!"

She looked up at me and cocked her head to the side but just as she opened her mouth to reply, her mother opened the front door of her house and said, "I told you to get in the car, Tally!"

I will never know what she would have said to me. I just watched her scramble toward the dirty black sedan and close herself in the back seat.

Minutes later, when her mother joined her and drove away, I watched that car until I couldn't see it anymore. I waited for it to come back but my mom made me come back inside.

I think I somehow, even then, knew that I'd missed my only chance to ever talk to Tally. I pressed my face to our front window, waiting for that black car to come back for what seemed like hours. But time goes a lot slower for four-year-olds and even half an hour seems like an eternity.

Living across the street from Tally Fisk has seemed like an eternity. It's a purgatory where I wait to either be accepted or rejected by her. It's a limbo that I know can't last forever. School's almost out for the year and then we'll be seniors after this summer ends.

I just can't accept that we could go through our entire upbringing, living so close, going to the same school, never having even one conversation.

The power of my invisibility can't be that strong.