9

ETHAN TOLD ME I COULD SLEEP with him in his bed like I used to when his parents were out of town, but I said no. The invitation seemed loaded with meaning I couldn’t decode. It’s never been easier to shack up—invisible, hello!—and I can’t bring myself to do it. Not just because I don’t sleep either. I’d lie wide awake next to him for all of ever, but I can’t shake this feeling that he’s upset with me—for the argument I can’t remember? For dying on him? For Caleb? Plus, my being here is so unfair. What is he going to do, putt around his basement with his dead girlfriend while the rest of the world rolls on aboveground?

As guilty as I feel though, I can’t deny I’ve been enjoying our alone time.

He stayed up with me most of the night, holding my hand and asking me questions about being a ghost. He finally succumbed to sleep an hour before his mom came down to check on him on her way out to work. It was the first time I was relieved when someone didn’t see me.

Once Mr. and Mrs. Keys have both left, Wendell pads down the basement steps and nudges Ethan’s hand with his snout. When Ethan doesn’t awaken, the dog curls up on the floor next to the bed with a dejected sigh.

I look at him and say, “I know the feeling.” His tail swishes from side to side, barely missing my leg. I sit next to him and hesitantly brush my palm along his bushy golden tail. The slight tickling sensation actually feels like light hairs brushing my palm instead of needles destroying my insides. Promising, even though he didn’t seem to notice.

I pull my hand back and stare at his snout. It’s his bliss button. Rub one finger back and forth on that dog’s nose and he lets out a low groan of pleasure. It was kind of embarrassing when Ethan and I first started going out, but after we got to bliss-button status ourselves, it became an inside joke. If I was going to get a solid touch through to Wendell that was the spot. When I suck in a long, albeit airless, breath—I can’t help the calming habit—I realize that the unmistakable dog smell Wendell always carries with him is missing. I lean closer and still don’t smell anything, not even the bayberry candle that keeps Ethan’s bedroom from smelling like boy.

I can’t smell.

Infuriated that I’ve been reduced to four and a half senses, I make a deliberate poke for Wendell’s shiny black nostrils. Instantly, needles stab at my finger.

“Ouch!” I shake my wrist until the glittery particles of my freakishly disembodied digit settle.

Ethan sits up in bed and whips his head from side to side. “Cassi? What’s wrong?”

I sigh. “Sorry. Guess I’ve gotten used to people not being able to hear me.”

“Heckuva wake-up call.” He yawns.

“I was trying to pet Wendell.”

“Did it work?” His voice is high and excited.

“Not so much.” I scoot across the floor and lift myself up onto his bed.

As if sensing how much I need to feel real, he rubs the sides of my arms from wrist to elbow with his fingertips. It feels amazing. “What did you remember last time when you…” He doesn’t finish.

I move away from him and avert my eyes.

“If you don’t want to tell me—” He holds up his hands. “Never mind. I get it.”

I don’t deserve his understanding or the warmth of his fingers on my icicle arms. I’m starting to think it was better when I didn’t remember anything.

When I don’t respond, he changes the subject, hardly managing to hide his frustration. “You know, I bet Wendell is aware you’re here even though you can’t touch him.” He reaches under the bed and tosses a grimy tennis ball out his door. Wendell hops up and chases after it.

“Wait.” I hold my hands out. “So you think Wendell knows I exist even though he can’t see or feel me? How?”

Ethan pulls the covers back and stands to retrieve the slobbery ball Wendell just dropped in front of me. He lobs it underhand up the stairs, and Wendell leaps after it. I’m momentarily distracted by Ethan’s navy blue boxer-briefs. They’re the only thing he’s wearing. I start to regret not spending the night in his bed until the unnatural pulsing in my chest reminds me why I didn’t.

“Yes,” Ethan answers. “I think he knows you exist, it’s just—” He shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“What?”

He hesitates. “It’s sort of out there.”

I put my hands on my hips, looking annoyed, which takes considerable effort since I’m still swoony over his abs. “I’m a ghost, Ethan. Can’t get much farther out there than that.”

He exhales, long and loud. I lean forward, hoping for a whiff of his breath even if it’s sour, morning scented, but there’s nothing. I frown.

“Okay,” he says, probably thinking I’m disappointed at his reluctance to explain. “I think he knows you’re in the room because he can smell you in the way that animals can smell fear and stuff. A dog’s reality is in scents.” As if on cue, Wendell trots back into the room. “No smell, no you.”

“That’s ironic.” Ethan gives me a curious look that I pretend not to see so I won’t have to explain about not being able to smell. I tilt my head to the side and glance down at Wendell gnawing on his ball. “So he’s operating on some sort of doggie sixth sense, but why can you see me?”

Ethan grabs a T-shirt from the floor and tugs it over his bed head, then steps into a pair of loose pajama pants. Watching him dress sends this enlivening crackle-surge through me. “You said I’m the only one who’s seen you since—”

“I died,” I finish for him so I won’t have to hear him say the words.

His Adam’s apple slides up and down his throat as he swallows. “Right. Are you absolutely sure no one else can see you? Maybe they were ignoring you because they thought they were going crazy or something.” He sits next to me on the bed.

I turn his face toward me with one finger on his chin. Feeling his scratchy stubble is the most amazing sensation in the world. “You’re not crazy. And I’m sure. I screamed my head off in the morgue and no one even looked up.”

His throat works through another hard swallow. “So I’m the only one.” His voice sounds thick, worried, but under that I can hear something else. Something prideful.

Sunlight shines through the part in the blinds and draws a stark white angle across his bedroom. Ethan takes my hand and holds it up, watching the sun dance off my pearlescent skin. His pulse races under my fingertips.

“Does your whole body shimmer like this?”

“Haven’t peeked under the clothes,” I respond, trying to keep things light.

“You should,” he says excitedly. My eyes widen. “Er, that’s not what I meant.”

I press my lips together. “Fair is fair. I got to see you half naked this morning.” I attempt to push my sleeve up my arm, but my hand slides over the top as if my clothes are painted on. I shake my head and say, “That’s embarrassing.”

Ethan tucks one leg underneath himself as he turns toward me. “Maybe you’re not concentrating enough.” His voice is eager, curious.

I shrug and say, “It’s possible.” But before I even finish the sentence I’m dreading that it’s not possible. I can tell Ethan’s working up the courage to try for the zipper on my coat. Fear fills every part of me. Embarrassment and regret mix with fear as I imagine him reaching for my coat and passing right through it, right through me like Joules did.

I reach around him for his pillow. My hand predictably slides through the blue-gray cotton case. “This is beyond frustrating.”

He thinks a minute. “Maybe you have to want to touch it.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I want to touch it.”

Ethan cocks an eyebrow. “It’s a pillowcase, Cassi. Doesn’t exactly prompt intense desire.” I give him a wry smile. “Think about it. If you want something bad enough, you can almost always accomplish it.”

“What about flying?” I say sarcastically.

“I got you back from beyond death. I think that’s a little more impossible than flying.” We’re both quiet, absorbing what he’s said.

After a long minute, he opens the drawer of his nightstand. Inside is his cell phone, some pencils, a wrinkled to-do list, and a Band-Aid box that only he and I know is filled with condoms. “If you could talk to one person besides me right now, who would you call?”

“Aimée.” It comes out so automatically it surprises me.

“Try to dial her number.”

I look from his cell to the Band-Aid box, wondering which one offers a greater incentive to touch. Another enlivening surge courses through me. “This is dumb. Aimée doesn’t need a postmortem prank call.”

“I’ll do the talking if she answers.” He opens the drawer farther. “Try.”

I meet his eyes. His expression is the same as Joules’s was the day she learned how to ride her bike without trainers. The hesitation I saw there last night is nearly gone. I look back at the drawer. The phone seems a million miles away. “I can’t do this, Ethan. I’ve already tried.”

“Cassidy.” Ethan has this way of saying my name that makes me feel up for anything: a math test, strip Uno, shots of hundred-proof liquor, Rollerblading. Anything.

“Okay, I’ll try, but I’m not making any promises.”

He nods. “Think about something specific you want to say to her. That might help.”

I slowly lean toward the open drawer. Aimée’s tearstained cheeks are the only thing I see when I reach for the phone. I imagine my fingers wrapping around the plastic rectangle and dialing her number of their own will, then my mouth forming the words I would say—the confession I’d make. I extend my index finger to start dialing but then yank my hand back.

“What happened?” Ethan asks.

“I—I can’t…” Say what I need to tell Aimée in front of you, I finish in my head.

“You didn’t even try. What are you afraid of?”

I don’t say, I’m afraid that if it worked and Aimée picked up I’d have to listen to my best friend cry over the phone, which is indescribably worse than in person. Instead I say, “I didn’t make any promises.”

He says something under his breath that sounds sort of like “Yes, you did.” He picks up his cell and tosses it to me. He purses his lips when it lands between a fold in the sheets, under my leg. We reach for it at the same time and there’s this suspended moment where our hands touch and all the years of good and bad memories between us fall away and it’s just us: two inseparable beings.

“We’ll figure this out,” he says as some footnote to a thought.

I want to tell him that I don’t deserve his help, but his hands slide to my hips, across my waistline to the small of my back, and up. His fingers twist into the soft curls at the nape of my neck, making it impossible to resist leaning in to his touch. My fingers slowly trace a line down his arms, then guide his hands to my hips. My skin starts to tingle and burn in all the right ways.

I shift so I’m up on my knees and gently push him down onto his bed. My hair cascades around our faces as my hands slip under his T-shirt. Responding to my advance, Ethan wraps his legs around my ankles and rocks against my hips. Airy moans of pleasure escape my lips as I tilt my head so our noses touch. We’re so close now that I can almost taste his breath. I want to kiss every inch of him, slow and deep, to prove that he’s the only person I was ever meant to kiss.

Abruptly he pulls his hands away and untangles his legs from mine. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t mind,” I say, sounding out of breath.

I don’t drop my gaze from his eyes. I’m sure my afterlife mission isn’t to hook up with my boyfriend—especially after what I just remembered about Caleb—but I can’t ignore the allure of his touches. Besides, I don’t actually know what happened with Caleb. I came out of the memory before anything really wrong happened. Still, I have this itching feeling that I did something I shouldn’t have.

“Didn’t you feel that?” I whisper. “My hands moved your shirt.”

“Cassi, you didn’t move my shirt.”

“Then how come I can feel—” I look down at my hands on either side of his rib cage, not under his shirt but through it. “Oh.” He rolls out from under me, but my hands reach instinctively for him, holding him close so we’re lying face-to-face. “Didn’t you feel that rush though?”

“Yes.” His expression softens into something between longing and apprehension.

I bite down on my lip as I move his hands to my hips again. “Don’t you want it, like, so bad that nothing else seems real?”

“Yes,” he murmurs, looking down at my lips.

Then kiss me! I silently beg with the same fevered anticipation I had for our first kiss and about twenty hundred thousand times more lust.

His hips press against mine and my entire body awakens. Being this close to him kick-starts my heart. My chest rises and falls with deep, quick breaths. My lungs fill with air—real air!—taking in every enlivening bit of this moment. I wonder if this is how I would’ve felt if I’d been shocked back to life on those river rocks by paramedics. Revived.

The tension in Ethan’s muscles lets loose and his hands explore every part of me that isn’t bundled in my clothes. I melt into his embrace, his lips temptingly close, until an image flashes behind my eyes. A hand on my neck—different hands gripping my shoulders.

Pain starts at my feet—stinging, burning cold—then seizes my lungs, stills my enlivened heart. The absence of that brief whisper of life is worse than if I’d gone a century never breathing again.

This time I’m the one to push away. “This can’t be why I’m here, Ethan.” It takes me a while to get the words out, and they sound harsher than I intend.

“Then what is?” He sits up and swings his feet over the side of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

I stay on my side, clutching my middle. I grit my teeth, hiding how much pain I’m in. “Do you really think we’re supposed to pretend like nothing’s happened?”

Ethan shakes his head and pushes his hands through his hair. “Is that what we’re doing?” The question hangs between us.

He absentmindedly runs his fingers over the silver buckle on my shoe. Each spot he touches reveals a new tear in the leather. Suddenly, the heel splits down the center and spills out freezing cold water. I sit up with a jerk and gasp. My hands grope at the comforter to contain the pool, but it’s already flooding over the edges of the bed, drenching the carpet.

“What’s wrong?” Ethan asks me. “Did you lose something?”

My hands are still pawing at the covers, melting through them. “Can’t you see … my shoes…?”

Ethan’s eyes dart to the frayed strap on my right shoe and back up at me. I hear him say, “Again?”

I reach for his worried face, but a familiar voice telling me to relax stops me. My raised hand drips icy water down on Ethan as I melt away.