Cris did most of the funeral planning at home, in the studio apartment our mother paid for instead of a dorm: tiny but upscale, the kind with exposed brick and a shiny kitchenette. I’d never warmed up to her minimalist style, all-white furniture and weirdly textured throw pillows, the only color in abstract art reproductions that didn’t do much for me. It always looked so blank—like an empty canvas, undecided.
I’d moved out as soon as I could after crashing for three months, a little over two years ago. I’d felt like such an intruder in her neat, clean space. I couldn’t take eating her food and using her expensive shampoo for long, even if she wasn’t the one paying for it. Especially because of that.
She’d made a real mess of her desk and kitchen table lately, littered with pamphlets and samples from the funeral home, and old photo albums featuring way more baby pictures of her than of me. She’d found some old Polaroids I’d sent her, taped to gas station postcards from my tour days. I looked a lot happier in all of those than in any from my childhood, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t dare use them. Gloria wouldn’t approve.
Cris made frequent stops at our childhood home, a tall, severe white-and-black Victorian. Meaning our mother had to be involved after all. So, there would be no acknowledgment of my life post-disownment. It would be like I’d died on that day, still an obedient daughter, my future all planned out and tragically cut short.
I couldn’t bring myself to go into that house. During their check-ins, I made do standing in the rose bushes, eavesdropping. Through the window, I’d catch glimpses of pink. Gloria’s old dressing gown, which she hadn’t broken out since divorcing my stepdad. I could almost smell the chamomile tea, which she went through like I used to go through whiskey, using my late abuela’s good china. Maybe she wasn’t quite as unaffected as I’d thought.
But I kept tagging along everywhere else with Cris. Out and about to go pick the funeral wreath, order the flowers, print out the programs and photos. All along, I tried to mess around again: peeking through the flowers, dragging the photos she’d picked, reading in obnoxious voices. Even if she didn’t giggle—if she didn’t even realize my presence—I didn’t want her to be alone.
* * *
After that first night, I imposed a new routine on Ren. After each day shadowing my sister, by the time his phone alarm rang at five o’clock, and he emerged groaning from his blanket nest, I’d be there.
“Morning, sunshine! Or… moonlight?”
I might’ve been more aggressively cheerful than necessary; I envied his ability to sleep at all. He wouldn’t dignify my presence with an answer. But he did give up trying to hit snooze.
I had to wait while he showered, trying not to think about him naked, how good it must feel to wash the passing of time right off his back. He wasn’t so shy about singing anymore, as if to rub it in. He did look somewhat bashful when he came out in a towel to grab some clothes, retreating to the bathroom to change. He probably didn’t think twice about getting to wear a different outfit every day. My own clothes had begun to feel like a second skin, not getting crusty, but ever the same, bordering on claustrophobic. And my left slipper still came back every morning. I started leaving it in the closet.
Once he got decent, he’d pull his shitty coffeemaker out of a locked cabinet and wait around while it percolated, watching carefully for any geists through heavy blinking eyes. Every time, I couldn’t help but breathe in, imagining I could smell the coffee. When he took his cup out to the fire escape to pair with a cigarette, I’d chat to him, try to prove my sentience. Even if watching him drink and smoke made the white noise in my skin pitch.
I had plenty of stories I’m sure he’d never dream up himself. So much for not opening up anymore.
“It’s not like I needed to steal it; I had friends with good fake IDs. I just did it for the blasphemy. Only the jugs turned out to be really heavy. Of course, I dropped them, and one of them exploded. The blood of Christ all over the rector’s office. It looked like I crucified him myself. Anyway, never send your kids to Catholic school.”
Sometimes, he nearly cracked, his mouth twitching in a smile that he tried to hide behind his coffee. But he couldn’t hide his blush when I started sharing my dirtier exploits.
“So, I show up at the frat house where they’re holding auditions, and I’m like, oh shit, I’ve been here before. Sure enough, the lead guitar comes to say hi, and I can see in his eyes that he recognizes me. Turns out, I gave him some generous head at their last party. I didn’t even know him, but he totally thought I’d tried to casting-couch my way into their shitty ska band. And the worst part is that they didn’t even choose me! After my moving performance! The head, not the drums. Joke’s on them, ’cause I ended up joining an all-girl punk group and dating that lead guitar instead.”
That was the only music-related anecdote I told. From before my career officially started, so it didn’t count. I had way more stories from after my real band took off and started touring. Getting kicked out of a hotel for streaking. Gluing a few keys on a douchebag fellow opener’s keyboard. Nearly brawling with a prominent emo singer after kissing his girlfriend.
But after what had happened—how it all ended—none of it seemed so funny anymore.
I left him alone when he went to work, graveyard shift. When he got home in the early morning, I’d be there again, my stomach gnawing with the memory of hunger while he made himself dinner. Since he always looked tired, I kept it low-key, partly because he usually watched something on his laptop while he ate. I missed TV almost as much as cigarettes and coffee, so I couldn’t help but sit on the edge of the mattress, trying to catch a glimpse. Eventually, he’d let me, scooting over enough for me to see.
Sometimes we were interrupted by geists. Most of them simply hovered, barely even getting his blanket to billow up. Some announced their presence with noise, scaring both of us alert as they banged the walls and cabinets, or spurted water from all the faucets, or even made the laptop crash with a blue screen of death.
I’d make myself scarce whenever one showed up. Or when he got a call that he answered in a tone I recognized, even when he switched to speaking Japanese. That edge of exasperation could only come from familial intrusion. It made a fitting cue to go check on my own family.
* * *
Cris hesitated before ringing our mother’s doorbell. Usually, she didn’t stop to look at the rose bushes, and she definitely didn’t reach out and press her forefinger to any thorns. But I got it. Drawing blood had always been easier than talking to that woman. I used to play with matches, prepping myself for hellfire.
Our mother answered the door in her now everyday robe, clutching one of my abuela’s porcelain teacups.
I resigned myself to the foliage as usual, peeking through the curtains and listening.
Gloria clocked her right away, not that she usually bothered with niceties. “Did something come up?”
Her voice always shocked my back soldier-straight. It made me taste the word “ma’am,” like biting too hard on a fork.
“We’re going to have to change our plans for the wake and service,” said Cris.
That garnered a breath too low to be a sigh, bordering on a hiss. It tensed me up, fight or flight. Cris wouldn’t know what it meant. I doubted she’d ever been on the receiving end of it before, if she’d ever noticed it at all.
“Madre mía,” muttered Gloria. “What did you say to Father Daniel?”
Cris pressed on, oblivious to any impending danger. “You think he didn’t remember? We asked him to pray for her so many times.”
I might not have been breathing, yet my lungs still seized up. Once upon a time, the sin of suicide earned an unmarked grave. But that was medieval. These days, the only thing that could deny me a Catholic burial would be renouncing my membership in the first place. And, of course, no amount of prayer had brought me back into the fold.
“We’ll go to another parish,” said Gloria.
“Wouldn’t they tell us the same thing?” asked Cris.
Not necessarily. There were priests out there who valued kindness over tradition. One of them ran the AA meetings I’d attended a couple times.
Gloria would’ve hated him. She must’ve been really desperate.
“I already booked a room at the funeral home,” said Cris. “And updated the obituary—”
I gulped. I’d rarely witnessed anyone, let alone my sister, contradicting our mother.
“No me digas,” Gloria interrupted. “We’ll talk to another priest.”
I’d heard that pitch before, the octave just before snapping. Only I had ever riled her up enough to yell. Never her favorite, my baby sister.
“You want to lie that she died a Catholic?” Cris asked.
“Better than burying her like—”
I cringed, waiting for her volume to explode. But instead, she went silent. I peered closer through the window. What little I could make out of my mother’s face looked worn, wrinkled eyes shut, mouth lined and trembling.
Her voice cracked, thin and strangled. “Like some godless—”
She didn’t finish the thought, interrupted with a gulping, wet sob. I turned from the window, slumping against it, as if it could hold me up. Though I’d heard her through the walls, sometimes, she’d never cried in front of me. We weren’t about to start now. It was a little late for her to suddenly give a damn. I didn’t need her fucking crocodile tears.
My fists were shaking. Through the wall came a muffled crash and a gasp as something shattered. Abuela’s teacup. Had she dropped it, or had I done that?
I spirited right the hell out of there.
“Shit,” said Ren.
For once, he flinched at the sight of me, the spoon in his hand clattering to the floor.
He startled me right back. I hadn’t meant to end up at his place, slouching through his kitchen cabinets, slowly sinking to the floor.
The kitchen light buzzed and dimmed.
“Sorry,” I said.
He crouched to pick up the spoon, sugar glittering on the tiles. At least it hadn’t been his coffee mug. I couldn’t even help clean up the mess.
But he didn’t seem to care. Once he’d stooped closer to me, he lingered, meeting my eyes for once. “You OK?”
He bit his lip, blinking hard, regretting ceding even this little bit of ground to my possible existence.
I laughed, preparing to deflect with a joke. Except he’d caught me so off guard by acknowledging me that somehow, I ended up matching his sincerity.
“Not really.”
His lips twitched, so close to a smile, if a rueful one. “I hear that.”
After pulling himself up, washing the spoon, and sweetening his coffee, he turned back to me, blinking thoughtfully. Then, he reached down, holding out his hand.
I stared at it, my phantom heart skipping a beat. But I must’ve waited too long, because he changed his mind, pulling away.
Maybe I didn’t really want to know what would happen if we tried to touch. Nothing, probably. We wouldn’t feel anything at all.
Once he got to the fire escape window, he turned back, waiting for me. “You still up for story time?”
I hoisted myself up on my own, laughing.
Ren and I must’ve gotten pretty used to geists by then. When we headed back in, neither of us flinched to see a wide, pale, baby-faced man with a wisp of a beard looming on the other side.
“You disgusting waste of breath,” he said. “Don’t you ever go outside?”
Ren slammed the window shut, quickly tacking up the blanket again. I hadn’t realized before that it not only blocked out the light, but also cushioned the glass, which already had some spiderwebbing cracks. If he hadn’t believed ghosts were real before now, did he think he’d broken it? That he’d been responsible for all the damage the geists left in their wake? Maybe he’d meant for all those locks and chains to protect his apartment from himself.
“No one will ever want you,” said the geist. “Why don’t you kill yourself already?”
Ren unlocked his closet, carefully creaking it open as little as possible while he fished out some jeans and his usual gray hoodie, trying not to expose any of his other possessions. Perhaps he intended to get away from the geist by walking, or going for a drive.
I wondered what he did for a living. Even if no one else could see his geists, their effect would be hard to miss. Then again, that would be too weird—too noticeable. They probably didn’t act up around other people. Or there weren’t many around except the ones following him—only catching up if he stayed in one place long enough, like home.
“Let me try something,” I said.
For once, I had a plan before jumping in. As I approached the geist, I took a last look at Ren. If it went all wrong, that face wouldn’t be a bad last sight. I grinned at him, then grabbed hold of the geist’s wrinkled shirt.
This geist’s memories unfolded more clearly than the last one’s. We were always in the same apartment, but furnished differently, crammed with a bed and a desk with multiple computer screens. Every detail, down to the paint strokes of album cover art on the walls and dark soda rings on the desk, must’ve been long memorized, because aside from a slight flicker, like a film reel, his memories were crisp. He must not have left home much.
You disgusting waste of breath, said the pixels on his computer screen. No one will ever want you. Why haven’t you killed yourself already?
He had one of my albums on his wall.
I let go of his shirt. We were in my family’s old church, from back when I still went. I hadn’t planned to bring him here, but it would do.
He tilted his head at me, and the knot in the pit of my stomach eased. In a reedy voice, he sang some familiar lyrics. “I can’t hate my guts when I’m nothing but bones.”
I blinked, back at Ren’s place. He rushed to me.
“What happened?” he asked. “Where’d you go?”
I still hadn’t gotten used to meeting his eyes, especially not when they were so fixed on me.
“I left him in church,” I said. “It seemed like someplace he could rest. I’m not sure if he’ll try to get back to you, but it’ll be a way to walk.”
“What do you mean, can’t he just… blink in and out, like you do?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see. I’ve got a feeling he’s not all that deliberate, in his state.”
“So, um…” He ran a hand through his hair, down to his neck, rubbing distractedly. “Let’s say, for a second, that maybe you and the rest aren’t schizophrenic hallucinations, and I’ve been misdiagnosed, and… whatever’s wrong with me, it’s in my soul, not my brain, and there’s no psychiatric manual for that. If that’s the case, do you know why those things follow me?”
I could only shake my head. “Sorry to tell you I don’t know that one. You might just have shit luck. But maybe it’s turning around?”
He kept looking and looking at my face, making up for all the time he’d spent trying to ignore it. “Mal, right?”
“That’s me.”
“So… you’re really dead?”
“I’ll prove it,” I said. “Read my obit already. Come on down to my wake. You don’t think you’re so far gone you could make that up, do you?”
“I hope not.” His eyes went distant for a moment, but then he pulled back from the rabbit hole, looking back at me. “Though… I’m starting to think I didn’t make you up.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Would I have had a bigger rack?”
His laughter caught in his throat, nearly choking him. If only I could pat his back.
“Don’t die on me, then we’ll both be screwed.”
That quieted him suddenly, making him blink. “Why are you helping me?”
I gaped, before turning it into a grin. “I’m helping?”
“You just vanished one of my demons right in front of me.”
Time to shoot my shot. “Well… you’re not the only one with demons. But mine are probably way easier to vanish. And, uh, I won’t lie—it would be really cool if you could help me out with that.”
He raised his eyebrows warily.
I rushed to clarify. “It might even be good for you. I mean, if you talked to my sister, that would prove I really exist. Or, you know, I did.”
“Talk to her about what?” he asked.
“It’s, um—” I didn’t usually get tongue-tied like this. “The thing is, she—”
I’d only gotten as far as the urge to reach out. Now that I had the chance, I needed to figure out what the hell to say, then cough it up for someone else to pass on. Suddenly it felt weird having to involve a stranger in this.
“It’s all right,” said Ren. “I mean, sometimes I don’t know what to say to my family, either. We’ve got time, right?”
“Uh… what day is it?”
“Friday.”
I winced, shaking my head. “My wake’s tomorrow.”
His jaw dropped. “Aww, you’re kidding.”
“Well, you had to be so fucking stubborn.”
I stopped, hoping he wouldn’t take offense. He still hadn’t agreed to anything.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It wasn’t you. I even ignore other people, sometimes, until I’m sure they’re not just in my head, either.”
I didn’t expect how heavily that weighed down the phantom heart in my chest. “That’s rough.”
His mouth twitched into a tentative smile. “Not anymore. You’ve changed my life. Even if the rest of the world still thinks I’m crazy, I’ll know better.”
I hated to bring it up and risk the hope in his eyes. “You might still be a little brain-sick, thanks to whatever’s up with your soul. Take it from someone with her own bad Brian.”
“No shit,” he said, and then, for some reason, his pale skin flushed with color. It made him look less dead. “Uh… is it too late to go back to you not being a person? Because if you are, you’ve seen how I live.” He gestured at his sad empty apartment. “And—me naked.”
“I didn’t look,” I said, holding up my palms, Scout’s honor. I had to bite my tongue to keep from mentioning how badly I’d wanted to. “Sorry, my creep factor must be off the charts.”
He gave me the benefit of a shrug. “I mean, you’re a ghost. It comes with the territory, right? Besides, you look so… normal. Like I could’ve bumped into you on the street.”
I would’ve much preferred to meet him that way. Only I couldn’t think about that. For a moment, I missed him not looking right at me.
Suddenly, his face fell. “Evie Green is really dead?”
“Sorry to say.”
He looked away, his voice going rough as he stared at the wall. “I had no idea. It’s been years since I brought her flowers at the hospital. She was in a coma for the longest time. I guess I just… I thought she’d still be there.” His hands clenched in self-reproach. “Fuck, I missed her funeral.”
I wondered if she knew how much he’d liked her, after all. “If it makes you feel any better, I could pass on your… uh, regards?”
“Yeah, my condolences, to both of you.”
I didn’t expect that to put such a lump in my throat. Usually, condolences went to the bereaved, not the deceased. Aside from the effect on my family, and the general inconvenience of being severed from the physical world, I hadn’t really given much thought to my feelings about dying. They ran so deep, it felt like peering over a ledge to glimpse a long drop.
I could wait to make that descent, probably over someone else’s glass of whiskey.
“Right,” I said. Hopefully, he didn’t notice how my voice rasped.
He gave a sympathetic nod. “I guess this is the least I could do.”
My whole body unclenched, but not for long.
“Just talking, right?” he asked. “I don’t have to solve a murder or anything?”
“I wish.” If I’d been murdered, there’d be someone to blame. Way more cathartic than the explanation I’d be passing along.
His eyebrows shot up, but before he could voice his confusion, I went on. “I’ll coach you through the whole thing. Let me go get the time and address and all that.”
“I should do a few rides, then.”
So that’s what he did for a living. That would buy me some time to figure out what to say.
“I so hope you’re real,” he said.
This time, I couldn’t help it. Before spiriting off, I winked.