It didn’t bother me much, being dead. I hadn’t really been living anyway. At least now I’d never have to do the dishes in the sink, or worry about the bills piled on the table, or nurse any guilt about staying in every night. Nothing urged me to get out of bed anymore. It felt like I’d been rehearsing for this a long time—how to be a ghost.
But I couldn’t haunt my apartment forever. No doubt it would be back on the market soon, despite being cramped and badly lit, the walls always thumping with aggressive bass, often accompanied by the banshee wail of sirens. My presence would be easy to clear out: just secondhand furniture, piles of laundry both dirty and clean, empty bottles of whiskey and packs of cigs. No decorations, like I’d barely moved in. I hadn’t gotten around to buying plants, or finding art that spoke to me, or making enough friends to showcase on the fridge.
I could linger for however long the place remained unoccupied. But after that, I didn’t really want company. If the next tenant walked around naked, or hosted lots of overnight guests, or brought a bedmate along with them, I didn’t want to see it—well, unless they were hot. I had to wonder how many ghosts had once ogled me in the shower, or on the toilet, or getting busy. I liked to think they’d paid me the same respect I’d give anybody now, not looking.
If I’d been successful enough to afford a house in life, I could’ve stayed longer. Maybe forever, if I didn’t mind someone moving in eventually. There would’ve been way more room, enough for me and them. I could’ve kept to an attic or basement if I wanted privacy, coming out to wander the halls at night. Then again, if I’d been better off, I might not have died so young.
It might’ve been days since it happened. I had no way to keep track, and nothing to do to pass the time, since I couldn’t touch anything. I failed to make the curtains float, or knock the unopened mail off the coffee table, or force the lights to flicker. It felt like weeks already, but it couldn’t have been that long, because someone ought to have shown up for my things by now.
The cops had probably found my purse on the scene, used my driver’s license to identify the body. From there, they could look up my birth certificate to find my next of kin. They’d have no way of knowing my mother and I hadn’t spoken in years, that she shouldn’t have been the first to find out.
I wondered how it went down. If they’d woken her in the middle of the night and, once again inconvenienced by my existence, she’d asked what I’d gone and done this time. It didn’t hurt much. Just a quick sting, like a muscle twinge, an accidental regression to my young and tender self, before I remembered and calloused up again. I’d been dead to her for years, anyway.
But I tried my best not to think about my sister. I would rather have nobody in the whole world give a shit than remember I had just one person who’d care.
Well, probably. We used to fight a lot.
The sound of the lock turning in the door made me jump. After leaving my body, my mind hadn’t gotten the memo, supplying phantom limbs in its place. Hopefully it would just be the cops again, or my landlord.
I hauled myself up from bed, as heavy as if I still had bones. My chest thumped with the figment of a heartbeat.
Cris hovered in the doorway, reluctant to come in uninvited. Her eyes stared right through me.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and shot her some finger guns. “Hey, sis.”
She didn’t reply, of course. I barely dodged in time to avoid her walking through my incorporeal form.
I threw up my hands. “Make yourself at home.”
It didn’t feel like I’d gone anywhere. More like I’d said something to piss her off, make her slam the door on her way in, give me the silent treatment. And yet, my stomach twisted with a chilly sense of dread, like the feeling of being watched. As if she were the otherworldly presence, not me.
Or maybe I couldn’t accept the reality of being separated by so much more than a couple of feet.
Cris’s makeup looked a little smudgy, hastily done, or redone. We looked only somewhat alike, with the same deep, dark eyes, and admittedly good cheekbones and chin, but not much else. She had a flatter nose, way more lip, not to mention actual curves. Lately, she’d gotten more sun than me, tanning almost as brown as our mother, while I’d only gotten paler, like my late dad. She bleached our near-black hair blonde, though she’d skipped straightening it today.
It made my chest tight with nostalgia to see those waves bouncing as she drifted around. I used to tug them to hear her indignant squeak. Later on, I’d braid them.
When we met again as adults, I’d told her outright that I hated her new hair.
“You look like hell,” I said, as if I looked any better. But I didn’t have a reflection to check anymore. Not to mention, the state of the entire apartment made me cringe. Even without any acknowledgment from her, I went through our usual motions and deflected attention from myself. “Late night?”
If she could hear me and see my wink, that would’ve gotten a scoff. She’d always been such a prig, easy to provoke. But her face was unmoved, stone cold as a porcelain saint. The same old family mask our mother and I used to wear just to get through a conversation without yelling. I’d never seen my little sister try it, but she must’ve been a natural.
“Tough crowd.”
It wasn’t so fun trying to tease her without any reaction. But I couldn’t help it. I had to fill the silence.
She kept circling the apartment. At first, I thought she must’ve been appraising the mess, taking inventory of all the stuff she’d have to pack up and give away. But then she started a second round, turning on the lights, rifling through the junk on the counters and coffee table, going through drawers.
“Whatcha looking for?” I asked. I couldn’t touch the kitchen counter, but I propped my elbows over it anyway, suspended in the air, pretending to lean. “If you want drugs, all you have to do is ask.”
Actually, I didn’t have any. I’d gotten pretty boring in the last couple of years. No prescriptions, either, though I probably could’ve used some.
Cris picked up my trash can and dumped it on the floor.
“What the hell?”
She unfolded every crumpled-up piece of paper, squinting to read, before balling up the old résumés and overdue notices again and tossing them across the room. Through her teeth a strangled noise escaped, like the tea kettle shriek she used to make when we fought as kids. It made me cringe in instinctive terror, as if she were about to scream, bring our mother’s wrath down upon me.
The ceiling lamp flickered.
Somehow, she reined it in, shaking but stony-faced. Apparently, she had an idea. She grabbed the notepad left on my kitchen table, scrawled with the half-hearted notes I took to look attentive at job interviews. After flipping through older scribbles, she turned to the next blank page. Then, she used a pencil to fill up the whole thing. There were no pale indentations revealing words I’d drafted, only to change my mind and tear out the page.
The notepad and pencil ended up across the room as well. She buried her face in her hands. Good, because I couldn’t bear to see the look on it.
Last time she dragged me out to dinner, I told her I’d been doing better. That I’d gotten hired at another call center, and I’d text that guy at her church for a date, and I’d even drop by one of the charity bingo nights or cake walks or whatever else she helped organize, in lieu of going to Mass with her.
She must not have believed me. Not if she was looking for a suicide note.
My eyes stung. I never thought I’d feel that again.
It had been bad, for a while. I couldn’t deny that. But I’d gotten so close to turning my life around.
“I didn’t—” I dug my nails into my palms, clearing my throat like I couldn’t let her hear me choke up. “You don’t think I’d actually—?”
Both of us flinched as the light flickered again—once, twice—and then blew out.
All this time, I’d been working so hard to get a reaction out of my surroundings, interact with the world like I used to do. I hadn’t been trying that time.
Cris didn’t read into it. She just opened the blinds for what little sun the room could get.
She finally got with the present and headed for my bedroom, grabbing my old laptop from the nightstand and perching on the bed. I climbed up behind her, looking over her shoulder as she set it up on her lap. She twisted her hair as she frowned at the password screen. I would’ve bet the cops hadn’t tried all that hard to get in.
After warming up with the obvious, my birthday, “qwerty” and “password123,” she guessed her own birthday. Damn it. Then she checked all my folders, opening every document she found, no matter the name. It mostly consisted of old job stuff, renter’s insurance, nothing personal.
“What are you hoping you’ll find?” I asked.
It didn’t take long before she’d opened literally everything. She gave up, and went to my browser history.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I’m not an amateur.”
Whenever I browsed for porn, or researched whether certain below-the-belt medical symptoms could flare up during a dry spell, or looked into the prognosis of various mental illnesses I might’ve inherited, I always did it incognito.
Finally, she slammed the laptop shut. I bristled, like she’d snapped at me.
“I didn’t plan anything,” I said. “It was an accident.”
Cris shot up and went to rifle through the clothes hanging in my closet and even more still piled in a laundry basket. It didn’t take her long to sift through all my boring old work blouses and skirts, none of which were fit to wear for my trip six feet under.
She picked nearly at random, then swept back out of the apartment as quickly as she’d come. I returned to my bed, and the silence, with a sigh—only to scramble up again as the lock clicked. She threw the door open without closing it this time.
“Did you forget something?”
She went back to my room, opening my underwear drawer, the only one she’d just eyed rather than raiding earlier. But they couldn’t bury me without underwear. So she gave in and rooted around. I couldn’t watch.
“You’re not gonna like what you find,” I said through my fingers.
Sure enough, once she’d figured out the purpose of the toy she’d found among the fabric, she shrieked. I almost laughed, but it didn’t quite have enough momentum to leave my throat.
“It’s not real. Your purity pledge is still intact.”
She went to wash her hands, as if I wouldn’t have kept it clean. After that, she gingerly peeled off the first bit of faux satin her fingers touched and a bra from the top of the drawer, hid them between the blouse and skirt she’d picked, and hurried off again.
I considered following, just to see the look on her face when she handed my clothes to the funeral home and found she’d grabbed a thong. I hadn’t worn one in about three years. Now, I’d be wearing it forever. Too bad she wouldn’t find it funny.
While I’d been floating around the apartment in a daze, she’d been busy. I’d left her a body to bury. She wouldn’t be shoveling the dirt herself, but she still had a lot of work ahead of her. People to call, paperwork to fill out, arrangements to make. All the while believing I’d put her in this position on purpose.
I’d barely come back into her life, and already, I’d disappeared again. For good this time. But I hadn’t meant to leave her alone, especially not with our mother.