“Don’t you want her back?” asks Carson.
A heavy silence descends as Nick stares at the dashboard. I tense up. His answer is suddenly important and I don’t know why. Before this moment I was so sure what his answer would be, but now I’m not so certain.
“Of course,” he says.
I relax.
“Then let’s try. If we believe she’s still reachable, we can call on her spirit to—”
“To what?” says Nick, his voice tinged with anger. “To meet us in a cemetery during a ridiculous ghost tour? To show up in a photograph as a lens flare?”
My gaze drops to the floorboard as his comment hits me—I was there. I would be in a photograph, if I could be, if the trick were true. I wish they could see me.
“Nick Fisher, you stop it!” Carson demands, and I recognize her tone. It’s the one she uses when I’m feeling sorry for myself and she wants me to just get up and fix whatever it is that’s bothering me. It’s a Carson signature. And she’d probably use it on me right this minute if she knew how I was dealing with death—not very well. God, I miss her.
“We’re going to get Callie back,” she continues. “I promise, she’ll be in the stands with me cheering for your first soccer game of the season.”
Oh my God, Carson’s gone crazy. She actually thinks she can bring me back from the dead. I feel a pang of intense longing, because I wish she could. I wish she possessed such power.
“Forget it,” Nick yells. His hair is in his face again—I can’t see his eyes. He slams the dashboard with a heavy fist, and I jump at his force. He’s not like this. Even when we fought—usually over some trivial something that we never could recall later—we argued heatedly, but we never yelled. “She’s gone. I wish people would just accept it and move on.”
Move on? They can’t because I’m not doing my part. They’re stuck because I’m a failure at haunting.
“You love her!” Carson exclaims. “She’s your girlfriend and you believe you’ve lost her so you’re not thinking clearly—”
“She was my girlfriend,” says Nick. His face looks tired, drawn. “Carson, she’s gone.”
“I just died!” I shout, leaning into the front seat and talking in between them. All right, it’s been a little over two weeks, but still, grief sweeps through me. Didn’t I matter more than that? I know I have no right to feel that way. I look imploringly at Thatcher. “He doesn’t need me. He’s already moved on. I know I should be happy—”
“He hasn’t moved on,” Thatcher cuts in. “Listen.”
I cross my arms and sit back, frustrated that he’s not more sympathetic, that he’s not helping me deal with all these rioting emotions. I want Nick to move on, but at the same time, it hurts.
Carson’s still protesting, but Nick interrupts her.
“Letting her go is the best thing,” he says. “I don’t need more of a guilt trip from you than I’m already giving myself. I know it was my fault.”
“Nick, you’re not to blame,” she says.
“Please, Cars,” he says, running his hand through his limp hair. “Just drive me home.”
She frowns but turns the key in the ignition and heads out.
It’s superquiet in the Bug—I can’t remember a time when there’s been such silence in this car. Usually Carson and I roll down the windows and blast the radio. Sometimes when we do that—when the wind hits my face and the scenery rushes by and the song is the perfect one for the moment, with the perfect rhythm and lyrics that push me to want more, to live more—it can feel like I’m flying. We would scream out the words, smiling and loving those frozen pieces of time, never knowing that we wouldn’t get enough of them.
Carson pulls up to the curb in front of Nick’s house, and he leans his head back against the seat, his eyes closing.
“I miss her laugh,” Carson says solemnly. “What about you, Nick? What do you miss the most?”
“Don’t do this, Carson.”
“Come on, Nick. Just tell me. Her bright red glittery toenails or the way she pulls her hair back or—”
“Her spirit, the way she’s not afraid of anything. Wasn’t afraid of anything.”
Very unobtrusively, extremely slowly so as not to draw attention to myself, so Thatcher won’t stop me, I slip my hand farthest from him around the front seat and touch Nick—or at least I think I’m touching him. I can’t feel anything. But I desperately want him to know I’m here, to sense my presence, to be comforted by my love.
“She’s talked about marrying you, you know,” says Carson quietly. “She’s that in love.”
In any other situation I’d be mad at Carson for revealing what I told her in confidence, but right now, I’m glad he knows how I feel. Felt. I never really told him.
I sense Thatcher’s eyes on me, but I don’t meet them. I’m too focused on Nick. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t open his eyes, and a tear rolls down his cheek.
“It’s too late, Carson,” he rasps. “Can’t you understand that?”
Without another word, Nick gets out and slams the door shut.
My heart is breaking for his anguish. “He’s confused,” I say to Thatcher.
“Yes.”
“He’s grieving.”
“True.”
But having my thoughts affirmed doesn’t make me feel much better.
Carson pulls away from his house, but she stops a few doors down and parks on the street. She flips on the radio, leans her head against the steering wheel, and breathes deeply.
“What’s she doing?” I ask.
“I think she’s trying not to cry,” says Thatcher, talking over the classic country DJ’s thick twang.
“Carson,” I say, leaning into the front seat again. “Don’t be too hard on Nick. I’m here; I’m going to help you—”
“She can’t hear—” starts Thatcher.
“I know,” I interrupt, annoyed. “I get that she can’t hear me. But I’m here; I want to talk to her. And maybe deep down, she can hear. I know she’d get the idea if I could just do something, like honk her horn or make the turn signal blink or something. I don’t understand why—”
“That’s not how it works,” he says. “It’s your presence that helps her. Remember how I told you about the first level of the soul, the conscious part where memories live?”
I nod slowly, still skeptical.
“We’re trying to get beyond that, to reach Carson’s unconscious sense of you. That’s the second level of the soul. And just by being here, sharing her space, we’ll do it.”
“Well, it couldn’t hurt to really show her I’m here, could it?” I ask.
“That’s the spirit, Callie.” A deep voice booms in from outside the car, and when I snap my head around, Leo is grinning through the passenger window.
“Get out of here,” growls Thatcher, his tone low but firm.
Leo slips into the front seat, his figure moving through the car door as if it isn’t there. He’s inches from my best friend, and for some reason he makes me nervous. At least he doesn’t have a hay hook in his hand. But what’s he doing?
“All you have to do is concentrate, Callie,” says Leo, twisting around in his seat to look at me. “Energy radiates off you. You have more power than you realize, than this guy will ever tell you.”
“Don’t listen to him, Callie,” Thatcher says. “You don’t understand the harm you can inflict.”
I glance over at Carson. She’s still sitting with her head down on the wheel. She doesn’t sense any of us, but I wish she did.
“Can you show me how to touch something real?” I ask Leo. “Like you were doing with the rocks?”