Let me tell you a story/ about a boy and a girl/ a different one than you’ve ever heard.
-The Dilemma, You Me at Six
One of the few similarities I’d ever had with Bella Swan is that I’d never given much thought to how I would die. I’d had a crushing fear of it; something I’d lay awake at night thinking about, but I’d always assumed that it would be in old age. ‘Assumed’ is probably not the right word. More like ‘hoped’. I’d hoped I would live a long and fulfilling life before like everything else, I came to an end. I think the thing I was most afraid of was oblivion. I was practically petrified by the thought of well, not thinking. Not existing. Going, leaving, which ever words you can associate with it. Yet I never thought or even contemplated the idea that I wouldn’t live to be eighteen. And if that wasn’t strange enough, being an Atheist, I assumed that death would indeed entail oblivion. Turns out that I couldn’t have been more wrong.
As if it wasn’t already apparent, I died. I died when I was half way through being seventeen, probably the most annoying age for any adolescent. Everything is legal but not quite. You can smoke on the streets, but you can’t buy cigarettes. You can drink alcohol, but you can’t buy it or drink in a pub. I guess the only thing that was completely legal was sex when I died, which I hadn’t experienced. Yes, I, Wendy Smith, died a virgin. Not that I would have particularly minded if I’d actually achieved oblivion once I’d died, yet the universe couldn’t have even granted me that. If you’d wondered how it happened, it wasn’t very glamorous or romantic. I think I was just happy it was quick. I got hit by a car. I’m now on the list of people included in the one million that die from car accidents each year. It wasn’t anything stupid either; I was simply crossing the road and some idiot ran me over. And I’m not even bitter because I died. I’m bitter because it was a red light and the idiot still whizzed over me.
I knew it when it hit me. It was quick and it was very painful. But it was only painful for a couple of hours, when my lungs wouldn’t work and my twenty six broken bones ached. Plus the fact that I had millions of cuts, bruises and a dented head. I can only assume I looked hideous. My last moments couldn’t have even been graceful. There is no way to romanticise a car crash. But if I’d actually attained oblivion when I’d died, I wouldn’t have cared. But like I mentioned, I was dead, but not ‘dead’. Not in the way that I’d have guessed by any science that I’d at all learnt in my thirteen years of schooling. Life is selfish, holding on to anyone and anything she can. Death takes what he can get, even if it is the bare minimum of the person that is cursed to remain on earth. Though what I didn’t understand was the complete lack of ghosts in the world around me. I was alone, and I didn’t know why I was. If I’d turned into a ghost, shouldn’t everyone else have as well? Shouldn’t the earth be populated by billions of dead? There are fifteen dead people for every living one, and yet I was completely alone in the grave yard of which I’d been buried. But that was before I’d met Peter Grace, the boy who I’d come to deem important in my not-so-life.
The first time I saw him was when I’d been coming to terms with what being dead was. I sat on the mound that was my grave, leaning against my headstone in a way that completed any stereotypes of ghosts or zombies or any undead being. Though I doubt an undead rabbit, for instance, would fit this stereotype. On the contrary, if it did what I had been doing, it would have broken any stereotypes about rabbits, or undead ones at that. I shook my head. I’d had far too much time to think. Anyway, I was sitting on my grassy bed when I saw him. He sat a little way from me, leaning against a gravestone and holding of all things, a book. This baffled me slightly. If this boy is indeed holding a book, and he is indeed a ghost, is the book a ghostly reincarnation of said book, or was he buried with it, making it a part of his ghostly form? I think that was the moment when I came to the conclusion that taking GCSE philosophy had been a very bad idea as it looked as if I was going to spend eternity contemplating my existence. The next thought I had was that there was a boy, sitting a little way from me, holding a book. There was another! There was another, for want of a better word, me! By this point, he’d noticed my staring eyes and raised an eyebrow.
Even though he was vaguely transparent, his beauty still captured me. Not so much captured as held me in an iron grip while pulling a steel whip tighter around my stomach. This was a happy revelation as well, that even as a ghost I still had feelings. That a beautiful boy could still turn my brain into mush. Beautiful he was, and handle it I couldn’t. That was one of the many things that were unholdable, but handled (or in my case not) all the same. It was the kind of thing that I thought about even when living. His bright green eyes, though slightly muted by the fact that he was translucent, were striking and almond shaped. I wanted to squeal at his utter beauty. Though I did wonder, was squealing possible for a ghost? I didn’t want to test it in case either way I made a fool of myself. His blonde hair was straight and around ear-length, falling in a shaggy fringe over his perfectly curved eyebrows. He was tall and from what I could see, lean. He was dressed in a black t-shirt and raggedy jeans, his scuffed sneakers showing through the bottom. I gulped. Fantastic. The only company I had as a ghost (or whatever I was; I still hadn’t deduced how I was possible) was a boy who made me mush.
“Can I help you?” His soft voice was haunting (no pun intended) and oh so beautiful, even though it was slightly sharp. After all, I was just a strange girl staring at him; he had a right to be a little sharp.
“Sorry, no.” I said, feeling like I should blush, but having no blood of course made that impossible. But a more important thought was whizzing through my (not) brain. I could speak! Yes! Point Wendy. It wasn’t at all congruent speech, but I’d take what I could get.
The boy looked at me curiously. “I’d have never thought a ghost could blush, but your cheeks have become a little more opaque.” he mused.
“Have they?” I gasped, bringing my translucent fingers to my face. Nails still bitten down and stubby, I’d noticed.
“Well, you won’t be able to feel it. You are a ghost after all.” The boy said to me, a little mockingly, I thought.
“How was I supposed to know? I’ve only been in the loop a couple of days.” I retorted irritably. Oh the puns. I was surprised that what I said actually made sense, and was not a string of gibberish.
“Yes. I noticed.” The boy flicked his eyebrows that very clearly said to me ‘well duh’ and shrugged. “How are you adjusting?”
“Um... as well as one can, I guess. I’m still trying to come to a conclusion on how I exist.” I said.
“Don’t. It makes your head hurt.” he advised. “I didn’t think we could, but ghosts can get headaches.”
“So is that what we are?” I questioned.
“Is what what we are?” He replied.
“Ghosts.”
“Well of course, can you think of anything else we could be?” He looked at me curiously. I vaguely recognized he was waiting for an answer, but I was taken aback from how he’d referred to us as a ‘we’. I was never the kind of girl that was included in ‘we’ by those kinds of boys. It was always very ‘us’ and ‘them’. Us being the odd girl at the back with the mousey hair and thick glasses (which I still had in death; can’t I catch a break?), and ‘them’ being well, boys like the one in front of me. I quickly regained my composure and tried to speak.
“I don’t know. But ghosts seem too much part of stories and fiction to actually exist.” I said.
“Well all fiction has to stem from somewhere. Why not from things like us?” He shrugged. Well, this was just a shrug fest. “So, what’s your name?” He added.
“Wendy Smith.” I replied.
“And how did you die?” He asked bluntly.
“Well thank you for so sympathetically addressing such a delicate subject.” I responded wryly.
“Sorry.” He said. He didn’t sound sorry.
I sighed. “I got hit by a car.”
“I’m sorry.” This time he did sound sorry. I guess someone who’s dead can understand the trauma of dying.
“How did it happen for you?” I asked, trying to sound as nonchalant about it as he did.
“Suicide.” He replied blandly.
“Oh.” What did you say to that?
“My name’s Peter, by the way.” He added. “Peter Grace.”
“That’s a nice name.” I said without thinking. I was just happy to leave the subject of death. Even when dead I didn’t like the idea of being dead or any other thought of death. I couldn’t handle it. Death was another one of those unholdable things that I couldn’t handle, which actually made a lot of sense. It was one of the few that did.
“I guess so.” He shrugged.
An awkward silence ensued. I stared at the ground and he stared at the book in his hand. Aha! A possible topic of conversation that could be interesting for both me and him without death coming into it! Hopefully. “What book is that?”
“This?” He lifted the paperback, “This is a comic from the newsagent down the road. If you’re wondering how I got it, which I suspect you are, I wanted it and it appeared for me.” He smiled at me. I couldn’t... I almost had a seizure, but regained my composure as quickly as I could. It took ten seconds.
“Can you do that as a ghost?” I finally replied.
“I assume so, as I have.” He shrugged again. What was it with this boy and shrugging? It was starting to annoy me. “You try.” he said.
I closed my transparent eyelids over my translucent blue eyes (which seems pointless if they’re transparent, but I still couldn’t see anything) and thought of the thing I wanted at that moment. After talking to this boy, Peter, I was thinking of books and my favourite one... It had to be Our Differences, by Josephine Alderg. It was my all time favourite book that I’d been given for my fourteenth birthday. It was the kind of book that questioned everything and everyone and perspectives, while being upbeat, funny, but also a little sad. It wasn’t a philosophy book, but the heroine tended to question things. Maybe that was why I was still trying to philosophically conclude how I could exist, even though I should be wallowing in teenage death angst.
To my surprise, it appeared in my hands, my ragged old book, almost every page dog-eared and the binding practically destroyed from the amount of times I’d read it. I clutched it to my chest before cautiously going to open it. It opened. I was honestly surprised as I was assuming my fingers would go straight through the pages. But it opened easily, at the page I’d turned to so many times, at my favourite quote. ‘What do I fear most? I am afraid of fear. You may say that is wise and careful, but in reality every time something remotely scary happens I find myself worrying if I’m scared or not. It’s awfully tiring and doesn’t amount to anything. If I were scared of spiders for instance, or snakes, I could avoid them, or try and overcome it. But you can’t avoid human emotions.’ I read it silently, smiling slightly as I read. It always managed to make me laugh. It wasn’t just that quote that made it my favourite part, it was the fact that barely a paragraph later the heroine stalks out of the Catholic Orphanage, much to the horror of the Matron with the most fantastic line ever: ‘Matron, God is there or he is not there, but from what life has handed out, I’ve concluded that he has no interest in me.’
“What book is that?” Peter’s voice broke into my consciousness, snapping me out of my reverie.
“What? Oh, this? Something I got for my birthday a while ago.” I shrugged. What was this? I never shrugged. This boy was already wearing off on me and it’d barely been ten minutes.
“What’s it called?” He persisted. I didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure if he’d make fun of me about my book. It wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to flaunt. I wasn’t the kind of person that didn’t try to recommend books to people, but for some reason I felt like it was mine. It was such a personal viewpoint for me, and really changed my perspective of life and the universe. Yeah, that’s really cheesy, but if you think about it, aren’t most opinions?
“Um...” I hesitated.
“I won’t judge you. I’m the one holding a crappy comic that I practically stole from the corner shop. You’re holding a book that seems so precious to you that you’re clutching it to your chest.” I pulled it away, realising it looked a bit odd. Peter sighed. “If you didn’t realise, we’re going to be spending the majority of eternity in each other’s company, so you might as well trust me a little.”
Forever in each other’s company? That was a long time. Didn’t I have a choice in this? “Is that some rule?” I asked, dubious.
He blinked. “No, but I’ve never seen anyone else here for three years and I am so desperately lonely I will never leave you alone because even if you hate me (which is not unlikely), I will have some sort of company.”
I gaped. That was more honesty that I was expecting. “You’ve been... like this... for three years?”
“What, dead? Yes. And blunt for the same amount of time. Most of my life I lied and hid back, so in death... lies aren’t worth it.” He shrugged. Did he never get like, a neck spasm or something? Oh right, he was dead. He couldn’t. I nodded non-committedly. “So, what about that book then?”
If he really was never going to leave me alone... I kind of wanted someone to talk about the book with. He didn’t seem unintelligent. “It’s called Our Differences. By-”
“Josephine Alderg?” Peter put in. “I’ve read it. It’s good. I personally thought that the girl, Alena, was very-”
I stared wide-eyed at him. “You’ve read it?” I interrupted. He looked very offended. “I-I mean, um,” I backtracked, “I just mean that you don’t seem like the kind of person to have read this.”
“Why not?” He still sounded very offended.
“Because... well, because I guess, you look kind of-”
“You’re judging me based on my looks? Let me tell you something Wendy Smith, what you think of as the kind of ‘beauty’,” he said the word harshly, raising his fingers in mocking quotation marks around it, “did not make me any happier. Can you imagine? What would a boy who looks like this, ever have to hate in life? Even people like me have things to be unhappy about. Do you want to know why I killed myself?” I couldn’t say anything. He ploughed on anyway. “My family was devoutly Christian, in a way you don’t often come across. And I was gay. I was gay in a house full of crazy God-lovers. Do you know what my mother did? She tried to get me exorcised. I wasn’t even going to tell them, I was just going to run away. I was having an argument with her about girlfriends and it came out. “I haven’t had a girlfriend,” I said, “Because I don’t like girls.” That shut them up, but only for a little while. They locked me in my room until my mother deemed my ‘satanic phase’ to have passed. Needless to say, it didn’t, and I killed myself to escape my cell. And if that’s the reason I’m a ghost, I have a lot to say to that fucking god. I’m not a bad person! I worked hard, I loved my family, I had friends who accepted me, I even had a boyfriend. And yet I was so unhappy I was driven to kill myself. Doesn’t their God have any sympathy?” Peter’s voice hitched at the end and he turned away.
I was aghast by his story and I hated myself for even thinking this, but I was disappointed he was gay. There goes my chance. Not that I had one anyway. I wondered if that was the reason we were both left on earth. I was a proud atheist after all, and he went against what was supposedly biblical law. Not that I agreed of course, but that was what the bible supposedly said. No, if I’d learnt anything from supernatural films, it was that ghosts remained on the earth because they had unfinished business and I was going to find out what both of ours was. I felt a rush of sympathy for Peter and a feeling of determination that I’d never felt before. I was wishy-washy, I’ll be the first to admit it, but this sense of blatant purpose was uplifting. I pushed myself up and ran towards the image of Peter, slowly fading as he walked away from me. “Peter!” I called. “Peter Grace!” My voice was still like wind, but it was louder this time, and apparently he could hear it. He turned to look at me, and I was almost distracted by the ghostly tear tracks down his pale face. Almost. “Peter.” I said, “If I’ve learnt anything by ghost books and films, it’s that ghosts are only left on earth because of unfinished business. I don’t know what mine is, and you don’t know what yours is. So let’s find out. We could both use the help.”
He looked an odd mixture of dubious and surprised. “Unfinished business?”
“Yes. We’ll start with you, because we have somewhere to start.” I said firmly.
“Where is that place to which we have to start?” He asked dryly. I knew he was humouring me with this, but I carried on anyway.
“We have your family. It has to be something with that.” I said.
“Okay then, Sherlock Holmes. Do you want to know where they live?” Peter was half smiling at me.
“Very much so, Doctor Watson.” I returned the reference.
“I’ll take you.” He said. He started to walk away from me, and I followed, still a little wary of him. He suddenly turned back. “Wendy, I’m sorry for blowing up at you. It was uncalled for and very rude of me.”
“I understand Peter. We all have our problems.” I smiled.
“Don’t be patronizing.” He said, and walked away. He didn’t seem annoyed so I followed. Maybe I was patronizing. Good god that would be terrible. I could not put up with his mood swings.