36

Everything I’ve been doing is wrong. It takes a kiss that can never be a kiss to make me see it. I had the best day of my death: I knew I could get through this as long as I had Ariel. We talked wonderful nonsense about living above Venus, and at some point along the way I realized.

I’m pulling her into my grave. I’ve dragged her into my half-dead existence, away from her real, breathing, messy life. I can’t live, so I’m stopping her from living too.

Her old boyfriend asked her out and she turned him down. ‘I said no, of course.’ She’d said it so casually. I know she likes Jack. They only broke up because her mum got ill and she couldn’t handle anything. Jack would have been good for her if I wasn’t around. Going out with him would be a real step back to normality for her. She likes him, but she didn’t even consider it. That’s the bit that haunts me. She said no, of course. Because of me.

I am toxic. She has to live, but I pull her towards death.

If no one found out what happened to me back then, no one will now. I’ve been selfish, as I always was. I was horrible to Lucas and, in a different way, I’m being awful to Ariel too. I resent her friends, and as long as we’re trying to touch each other and trying, hopelessly, to kiss she will turn down approaches from living boys.

And she has important exams, but here I am, greedily grabbing her attention whenever I can. I can’t see her every day when I’m just fucking up her reality.

She was upset when I told her to stop coming, and in the end she stormed off and said FINE, that she’d never visit me again. It was awful, but I know it’s right. Now I feel a peace I don’t think I’ve known since I was a tiny child.

I’m not going to fight this any more. Ariel can live, and I will find a way to inhabit my existence. I am going to craft a collection of perfect days, and then I just have to get my head round the idea of embracing them forever. I think of the other ghosts I know: Leo has found a purpose by developing his glitch theory, and by positioning himself as a hub for his paltry collection of Devon and Cornwall ghosts. Lara knits for Mabel and dances round the train. I’m the only one driving myself insane by trying to solve my own murder and I haven’t got the energy. I’m not going to do it any more. I don’t have the agency to fix anything.

First thing in the morning I sit up in bed and write a plan for the rest of my existence. I can make a week’s worth of days (not that I need to, but I might as well keep the seven-day structure since it seems to have served humanity well so far) and set it out on the back of my maths book:

Monday:	Train to Reading, chat to Lara, visit Mum and get her to bring me home.
Tuesday:	Stay at home with Dad and have a big breakfast and watch telly.
Wednesday:	Go to school, keep my mind busy and see my friends. Be nice to Lucas.
Thursday:	Call in on Anna and Sasha, then go to Bodmin and visit Leo.
Friday:	Go all the way to London with Lara.
Saturday:	Spend the day with Dad and Gus.
Sunday:	Go to school and hang out with friends.
Throughout:	Learn an instrument and a new language. Practise backflips.

I feel a strange sense of relief. I might be able to do this.

‘I love you, Dad,’ I say before he leaves for work. He doubles back and hugs me, in his goofy way.

‘Why, thank you, Jojo,’ he says. ‘I love you too! Always know that.’

‘I love you, Gus,’ I say when Dad has gone. He laughs and puts a hand on my forehead in mock concern, checking for a fever.

‘You twat,’ he says, but affectionately.

‘You’re going to have a happy future with a woman called Abby and two daughters called Zara and Coco,’ I say, talking fast. I tell him this often. He walks off, shaking his head and making a ‘you’re crazy’ twirly finger gesture. Then he turns back.

‘OK, Mystic Meg,’ he says. ‘What about you? What does your future hold?’

I shrug. ‘Ideally, I’d live in the cloud tops of Venus with a girl from the future.’

Gus laughs and pats me on the shoulder. ‘You do that, mate.’

I set off to school. I wish I could get Troy’s football trophy out of my bag. I stole it twenty years ago, and yesterday. Whatever I do it stays where it is.

I get through the day being relentlessly lovely to everyone. I don’t bother to eat bricks or plates any more because that was novelty stuff and I’m bored of it. I chat to Lucas, and find that, as Ariel said, he just wants to be my friend. I can see that I haven’t been quite as cool as I thought I had.

‘Ça va, Joseph?’ he says in what I’d always taken to be a mocking tone. I think of the adult Lucas sitting by the canal with Ariel and Izzy, and know it’s more complex than that.

Instead of telling him to fuck off, or mimicking his French accent, I say, ‘Oui, ça va. Sorry you’re not coming on the trip, mate.’

‘Me too!’ he says. ‘You’ll have a great time.’

‘We should hang out when I’m back,’ I say.

It’s easy to be magnanimous under the circumstances, and I want to test whether it’s true that he wanted to be friends.

His face lights up. ‘I’d love that,’ he says. ‘Yeah. That’d be great. Cheers.’

I hang behind after registration to chat to Mrs Dupont, since she’s my stepmum. I do like her. Quite apart from her joining my family, I know that twenty years from now she’ll still be in this classroom, but she’ll be talking to Ariel, making sure she and Sasha are all right. She’s a link between us, a person who was already in both our worlds, and she will specifically look out for the girl I love. That makes me want to say something profound, but all I can manage is: ‘Thanks for being a great teacher.’ I look quickly around to make sure no one else is in the room. Luckily, we’re alone.

She grins. ‘Well, thank you for being a great student, Joe,’ she says, and she gathers up her books and bag. ‘You’re going to go on to do wonderful things with that charm of yours.’

I sit with Troy in the canteen. He eats a plate of school-dinner curry that I can’t smell, though everyone keeps saying it stinks and holding their nose. I eat a sandwich, just to look normal, and drink some water. I wonder where it goes? I guess it’s no more real than I am, so there’s nothing to go anywhere.

‘How are you doing?’ I say.

‘OK. Not bad. I lost my trophy.’ He frowns at his plate.

‘Oh, Troy!’

It’s worth another try. Surely it’s always worth trying. One day it might work. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The words stick in my throat again. I fail to say, I took it out of your bag because I thought it was a funny thing to do. Obviously it’s not a funny thing to do at all. I feel like it was someone else who did it. I’ve been meaning to give it back for, like, twenty years. Though I shout it in my head, the words won’t come.

He looks at me. I’ve seen this look a lot of times.

I reach into my bag to take the trophy out. I close my fingers round it, but it doesn’t move. I try to pull, but my hand flies away as I lose my grip. I show the bag to Troy.

‘It’s here,’ I say, ‘but I can’t get it out.’

He reaches in too, and the same thing happens to him. We can both see it glinting in there, the stylized boot kicking the football, and yet neither of us can move it.

‘Have you superglued it?’

‘No!’

‘Fuck’s sake, Joe,’ he says. ‘You just can’t help yourself.’

Troy tips his chair over as he storms off. I know it doesn’t matter, that this glitch is only affecting me, but it’s horrible and creepy that I can’t sort this out; that one stupid thing I did twenty years ago is still fucking everything up between me and my friend.

Later I sit in the cupboard, hoping that Ariel will come, even though I told her loads of times not to. I stare at the door. Four o’clock comes. Four ten. Four thirty. Four forty-five.

She doesn’t come. I told her not to. She’s doing exactly what I asked.