Cold Kiss Goodbye

Chapter Three

"Do you need a ride home?" Ana asked, slinging her pink Adidas bag over her shoulder.

I looked up at her blankly for a second, and then back down at my cell phone. "Uh, no, I'm good." I'd rather walk home than sit in a car full of music and giggling. The harder I have to try to fake being happy, the more I find myself staring out the window, wishing I could cry. I'd prefer to spare my more-or-less friends that level of awkward.

"Okay," she said. "Are you coming to the memorial tonight? At Greensboro?"

I realized it wasn't just Ana watching me expectantly. Olivia and Grace were at the door to the locker room, waiting for Ana. Cameron stuffed her clothes and towel back into her pink gym bag oh-so-slowly.

"Yeah," I said. "Planning on it."

I was lying, and they probably knew it. I didn't know the Greensboro kids. My own griefs were enough for me. I couldn't dwell on all the suffering the world had to offer.

"Okay," she said. "I was just wondering." She sounded defensive, but she gave me a small wave and an even smaller smile before she headed out of the locker room.

There was no rush for me to return to my crumbling McMansion full of ghosts. But now that my attention was pulled out of my phone, I realized the empty girls' locker room wasn't appealing either. I yanked off my scuzzy cleats and socks and tossed them into my gym bag, sliding on my silver flip-flops. It was cold outside, but airing my feet out was worth the chill.

My toes looked mangled, blisters from the weekend's long run bubbling out from the sides of my little toes. A bright pink nail manicure was a sad attempt to paint a particularly ugly pig. School was my happy place these days. For eleven hours a day, I knew what to do, how to act. I went to classes, got good grades, ran track. On the weekend, left to my own devices, I distracted myself with novels or running. The reading part, at least, never left me bleeding.

Well, it wasn't sandal season. I had no reason to feel insecure about my pathetic-sad feet. I picked up my own pink gym bag – a bunch of us bought matching bags in 7th grade– and headed out through the empty halls of the school.

The footprints were ash-colored, worn around the edges. Ahead of me the janitor turned the corner into view, swishing his mop back and forth across the ugly green flooring, but the smoky footprints didn't fade under Pine-sol.

The janitor looked up at me and half-smiled, and then his face froze. "Are you okay, Sam?"

"I'm fine." I forced a smile. Everyone knows my name. It's a small school, a small community. Even those who don't know me personally have read the papers. Most of them came out to the candlelight vigil to remember Dad and Drew, to end drunk driving. If they didn't, they've certainly driven past the white crosses on the highway. "Just on my way to meet a friend."

On my way to meet a ghost.

"Okay," he said.

I felt his eyes following me until I turned the corner, and it made my gait stiff, knowing I was being watched.

Alone again, I followed the footsteps. They became more substantial, darkened to a soft black. I wasn't sure just how long ghost footprints lasted. I'd seen them before, but I still had a lot to learn about the spirit world – not that I wanted to. I'd become a medium when my dad and brother died. It wasn't a gift I wanted. Instead it was an awful reminder: my dad and brother died and all I got was this lousy ability to see the dead.

"Ghosts can't hurt you," I whispered. I'd felt the need to reassure myself, but the scratchy sound of my own voice in the emptiness made me doubt it more. I hoped I wouldn't meet another creeper like the boy from last night, if he was a ghost at all. I wasn't sure which would be scarier: if he were real, or if he were a ghost.

A wisp of hope unfurled suddenly; what if the ghost ahead of me was my father or brother?

I didn't know the rules yet. The ghosts I'd met were rambling, angry and disconnected. Maybe that was what tied them to the world. Dad and Drew had every reason to be angry, their last breaths leaking out in a crushed shell of a car, taken away by a man with reeking breath. I'd imagined their deaths so many times that now all I had to do was think about that day, and the images rose in my mind so vividly that sometimes I puked.

I couldn't imagine them as spirits. Increasingly, I could barely remember them alive. I could only imagine them dying. But if I saw them as ghosts, if they smiled and talked to me and told me it was all right and if we all said love you, goodbye, then maybe I'd have them back in my mind as they were.

I turned another corner to the lobby, and sitting against the dim glow of the vending machine was a teenage boy. I froze. He hadn't seen me yet. His head was tilted back to rest against the red plastic, his eyes closed.

My stomach dropped with disappointment. Not Dad, with his dark hair thinning on top and the aviator sunglasses that weren't as cool as he thought. Not Drew, with too many freckles and awkward, lanky legs scabbed from skateboarding accidents.

Time to get to work, Sam. Be a good little medium for the ghosts that show up, and stop crying about the ghosts who don't.

This wasn't the same boy from the other night. A navy blue dry-fit shirt clung over well-defined arms and a narrow waist, paired with knee-length dark green basketball shorts. He tapped his feet in blue Nike slides restlessly, his soccer socks pushed halfway down his shins. Long eyelashes rested against his faintly-freckled high cheekbones. His black hair was cropped short, emphasizing his strong jaw and long, straight nose.

He was gorgeous.

The shadow-prints led straight to him.

So he was also dead.

"Hi," I said.

His eyes opened quickly, and he turned towards me, sitting up a little. "Oh," he said, and then his almond brown eyes lit with recognition. "Oh, it's you."

I'd never met him before in my life. I sank to the cold linoleum, my legs curled behind me. "Hey," I said. "What are you waiting around here for?"

"Just killing time," he said. "I thought you shouldn't be by yourself."

The two other ghosts I'd met hadn't been so concerned with my well-being. They'd been focused on how I could help them.

"Why shouldn't I be by myself?"

"Because you're too cute to always look so lonely," he said.

I've also never been hit on by a ghost.

"I don't know your name," I said.

"Joshua Tan." He stuck out his hand.

"Sam," I said. I winced as I offered my hand in returning, knowing what would happen next. When our hands met, ice prickled through my palm, like I'd touched my hand to frozen metal.

He pulled back, his face afraid.

"You know, right?" I asked.

"Know what?" He looked down at his hand as if it had the answer for this betrayal, this lack of tangibility.

"That you're dead." He looked at me blankly, and I said, "Joshua, you're dead."

Sometimes they like to hear their names. To know they won't be forgotten.

"No." He got to his feet, throwing a hunter green gym bag over his shoulder. The same color as his shorts, it also had the Greensboro logo embroidered in white. "You're crazy."

That was probably true, but it didn't change the fact that he was dead.

He tossed one troubled look at me over his shoulder, and hurried off down the hall, his black footprints sinking into the remnants of the soft gray ones he'd left earlier.

When even the ghost was gone, I was the only one left skulking around school, not wanting to go home.