IT WAS ALMOST TODD’S LAST day as a ghost. Which ghosts know.
Released from Greevy and Daniels, for whom he imagined he was now a piece of history, he spent most of his time in his mother’s home. Where his mother slept on the couch next to his pile of boxes, the TV on all night, on the shopping channel because his mother was always afraid of waking up to silence.
After his funeral, Todd floated into his room for one last time, hovered over his bed, and wished things were very different for the millionth time.
You don’t think about a lasting legacy when you’re alive. When you’re alive, you just think about what’s happening in that moment. Because it’s not your last thing. When you’re alive, everything feels important. Every little thing. When you’re alive, you don’t realize what’s actually big is the everything you leave behind. The whole story. A thing so big most people will never know it. Just pieces.
On the last day he was alive, before he “went to the movies,” Todd had a frantic feeling the whole day. Like his stomach was a kettle boiling. Like his limbs were turning to jelly.
It started when Mark and Trevor cornered him during gym class and told him what they’d done with the answers. It had never occurred to Todd, when he first thought of it, that giving Mark the answers would result in anything more than Mark getting a better mark on his midterm. Of course, he’d realized that it was possible that Mark would share the answers with Trevor, because they were friends.
But he didn’t know until that morning, standing in his too big gym shorts to a chorus of bouncing balls, that Trevor had sold the answers, answers Todd had copied from the notebook he stole from McVeeter’s apartment and then stealthily returned while McVeeter made hot cocoa, to fucking EVERYONE.
The day of the midterm Todd HAD seen Chris Mattieu before class reciting something that sounded like the answer to the essay question in the hallway, but he’d figured he was just being paranoid.
“You ALL”—Todd’s knees were suddenly jelly—“MEMORIZED the answers? ALL of you?”
“Well, what did you think we would do?” Mark asked, seemingly genuinely.
“McVeeter will know.” Todd gulped, rubbing his arms, his back pressed up against the white painted wall of the gym, overwhelmed by the sounds of basketballs slamming against the floor in the background.
“NAH,” Trevor cooed. “McVeeter doesn’t know shit. He thinks it was me, not that I was ever at that perv’s house. He fucking lost his shit at me in the hallway.”
Trevor looked at Todd when he said perv, a little bit of spittle bouncing off his lip.
“So he DOES know?” Todd tried to keep calm, keep cool. He was clearly failing.
“Don’t worry about it,” Trevor scoffed. “McVeeter can’t PROVE shit.”
“We have your cut of the money,” Mark offered, upbeat. “I can meet you tonight and give it to you.”
“I don’t want any money.” Todd tried to stand straighter.
“Aw.” Trevor put his arm over Todd’s shoulder and jostled him in an aggressive bro half hug, his funk enveloping Todd. “That’s so sweet, Todd. Helping us out of the good of your heart.”
“It’s only fair,” Mark pressed. “I can meet you tonight. With the money. Okay?”
Mark pushed his hair off his face, revealing the deepest, darkest brown eyes.
Todd loved Mark.
Ever since he walked into class in grade nine and sat down in front of him in bio with his giant body and his black mop of black hair. He had the nicest, deepest voice. A strong voice that went with his giant hands, in Todd’s opinion. Todd used to think about what it would be like to hold Mark’s hand. He’d imagine Mark squeezing his hand, like before they’d enter a room together. Like the squeeze you give someone to let them know everything is going to be okay.
Mark had shitty friends, but when he and Todd were together, alone, he was really nice. He was never funny, like in a telling jokes kind of way, but he always looked like he got Todd’s jokes when they studied together, anyway. When Todd went to his house and Mark brought him up to his room that one time, they talked for, like, an hour not even about school. Just. They talked about everything, like, what it was like going to an all-boys school and this idea that kids who went to Albright were stuck-up assholes and what it meant that their parents were spending so much money to send them there. Mark wasn’t even weird when Todd mentioned his mother’s books, which Todd had always liked. Mark said he wasn’t a big fan.
“It’s just, like,” Mark said, shrugging, “her version of things, you know? I, like, don’t even read them anymore. My sister fucking HATES them.”
Mark was the only person who made Todd smile, which was something he pretty much never did at school. You smile, and people know they have an in on you. They know they’ve got you.
And maybe Mark knew that he had Todd, because sitting in his room, he told Todd he was screwed.
“Just, like.” Mark had sighed. “So fucking screwed.”
He needed at least a high B grade in social studies for his college applications. His grades were bad. Todd offered to tutor him more, but Mark said he had practice and he was worried. He couldn’t afford to screw up. He couldn’t take the chance.
“I worked, like, four years to get on the team and get better and now, like, if I don’t get better grades it, like, doesn’t even matter? It’s, like, what the fuck am I going to do?”
No one had ever asked Todd for help before. And really before that moment, it wasn’t like Todd was really in a place to help anyone. Todd was not a person people asked for anything other than a pencil. But he had been to McVeeter’s house. Seen the desk with all its papers.
“I could get the midterm answers for you.” The words just slipped out of his lips.
“OH DUDE! Really? Holy shit.”
Todd thought maybe Mark would hug him but he just collapsed backward on his bed with a huge sigh of relief. “Holy shit. That would be really amazing.”
Todd agreed to meet Mark that night because he wanted to see him. Without Trevor. Alone.
The night he died, Todd’s plan was to tell Mark that he was going to turn himself in. Then, the next day he was going to tell McVeeter he stole the test questions and the whole thing was his idea.
He knew if he told McVeeter, McVeeter wouldn’t tell Spot. But at least he wouldn’t be lying. He would tell the truth, and McVeeter would protect him.
He wasn’t actually planning on going to McVeeter’s house that night, but at the last minute Mark called and said he would be late meeting at the park. And McVeeter’s apartment building was right there. And everything was closed. And it was cold. And Todd thought he would get it over with. So he walked over to McVeeter’s building. And he knocked on McVeeter’s door.
“It was me who stole the test,” he said, not leaving the doorway, his neck getting warmer and warmer in his recently completed knitted scarf. “But I need you to keep it a secret.”
“It was you,” McVeeter repeated. He seemed surprised but not too surprised.
He walked back into his apartment and turned on the kettle. “Are you coming in?”
“No, I-I just,” Todd stammered. Tried to quiet his voice. “I just need to know y-you’re not going to tell on me.”
“I’m not.” McVeeter sighed, wiping crumbs off the counter. “I could be in as much shit as you about this, Todd.”
Todd breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay so. Okay. Thanks.”
“Todd.” McVeeter looked over at him, heavy. “Friends don’t ask friends to do this kind of thing for them. Trevor Bathurst … I know you didn’t do this on your own.”
Todd stiffened.
“I didn’t say a friend—it wasn’t for a friend,” Todd said. “I’m sorry I did it. It was for me. Okay? I’m sorry.”
McVeeter sunk into his couch. And said a bunch more things that blurred together. And then Todd stepped out, closed the door behind him.
And in that moment, Todd was happy. On the last night of his life. He felt suddenly light. Because they were off the hook. Mark and Trevor wouldn’t get in trouble. Mark would get into college, because of Todd.
And he was going to see Mark.
He burst out the doors of McVeeter’s building and into the frozen night, smiling as he practically skipped over the salt pebbly sidewalk to the park where a boy he liked was waiting for him.
In this park, Todd’s ghost thought, settling over the white space where he died.
In this park.
Right.
Here.