I sense the line he’s drawing in his mind, and I don’t want him to shut me out.
Without responding, I stroll over to my desk and pick up the framed photo of me and Carson. The now-familiar grief stabs me as I look at our smiling faces. “I’m so alone. Don’t you understand that . . . even a little?”
Thatcher stands up and walks toward me. He stops when he’s a foot away, looking over my shoulder at the picture in my hand.
“You’ve surrounded yourself with memories,” he says. “I know it must be very hard for you to try to let go, when they’re here with you, all around you.” He takes in my room, furnished with life, and as his gaze travels over my things, he softens, moving away from the declaration he just made.
“When I tell you to rest here, it’s because being in the Prism, letting its energy flow into you, should help you connect with a deeper level of your soul—a level beyond your memories of Earth.”
I put down the frame and turn toward him. “How did you get beyond your memories?”
“At first I didn’t remember much,” he says. “Just little flashes of my life, like a backyard birthday party, a football game . . . but it was like I was watching someone else’s home movies. I didn’t connect to the memories fully until later, when it became clear that my haunting was failing.”
“And then what happened?” I ask.
He sits on my bed. “I came here with . . . friends. And they remembered some things. Together, we had a larger collective memory than most ghosts do. As the haunting dragged on, I remembered more and more. Each memory started to come with a wave of fresh pain. I knew I had died, I knew what that meant—emotionally knew it—and it was the most intense heartache I’ve ever felt.”
I sit beside him, leaning in as close I can without repelling him. “So you’re not as immune as the other ghosts. You do know how this feels.”
“I know,” he says, his voice softer, with a ragged edge, and I can hear how desperately he wishes that he didn’t know. My heart goes out to him. I want to fold my hand around his, to squeeze, to re-assure him with a tender caress. Words fail me. I can never touch him the way I’d want to, living.
“Does that help you trust me?” he asks.
“What?”
“I need you to trust me,” he says, and his eyes are sincere, wide open. “When I leave you to rest in your prism, I expect that’s what you’ll do. You need to connect with a deeper part of your soul—it’s essential. I don’t want you to have to exist as I do.”
“Gosh, Thatcher, it almost sounds like you care about me.”
“No, no, I . . . I just don’t want you going off on your own or spending time with other ghosts.”
I smile at him, feeling grateful that he shared all that with me.
“So you’re saying we’re exclusive?” I joke.
He frowns, and I wonder if a time will ever come when he can accept my teasing. “Just . . . please,” he pleads, “do as I ask.”
“Okay.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I’ll try.”
“Thank you,” says Thatcher. “So what did you and Reena . . . do?”
I shift my eyes away from him. “We walked on the beach. We talked.” I don’t want to tell him about running into the soccer guys; I don’t think he’d approve of that part.
“Did she say anything about me?”
“Not really.” He flinches but rights himself quickly, back to business.
“We should continue with your haunting,” he says.
“You mean with my being in the same room as living people?” I ask, half joking, half impatient.
“Remember how you just said you’d trust me?” he says. “Sharing your peaceful energy with them is a much more advanced form of haunting than throwing rocks or changing the radio station—no matter what you may have heard from Reena. Let’s just see where the day takes us, okay?”
He stands up and traces a portal.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Where we’re needed,” he says. And I wonder if he’s controlling our destination, now that I know that it’s possible.
When I walk through the portal, I look around, and my heart drops. Nick’s room.
I don’t see him anywhere—it’s dark, the shades are drawn, and a dirty laundry pile is spilling over in the corner. There’s a soiled shirt on top. I want to pick it up and breathe in Nick’s scent. As soon as I imagine that, I can almost feel the soft fabric clinging to his sculpted back, under my hands.
On Nick’s desk there’s a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios. I have to bite my lip to keep from tearing up—it’s so Nick to eat cereal in his room. It must seem silly to Thatcher, the fact that dirty dishes make me emotional. I fight to control my reaction.
The desktop screen saver flashes photos from last year—Nick and me tandem parasailing, me and Carson with the top down on the day she got her VW Bug, Nick and me screaming at the top of our lungs as the bungee-like Sling Shot propelled us toward the fluffy clouds. It was such a rush. I peer over at Thatcher—and our gazes collide. I want to drag him over to the computer, make him watch the slide show, and ask him, “How can you expect me to give all this up without a whimper?”
Then he looks away quickly, his attention drawn to the bed.
“He’s asleep,” he says.
I thought it was just a rumpled, unmade bed, but now I see that Nick is here. He’s almost all the way under the comforter—just a tuft of brown curls is visible. My chest tightens painfully as grief wells up.
“It’s good that he’s asleep,” says Thatcher, looking at my boyfriend like he’s studying a science experiment. “The transitional moments between sleeping and waking are more vulnerable, more open for a connection.”
“Oh, so that means—”
But Thatcher is already leaning toward Nick. Then the comforter rustles. When Nick sits up sleepily, I stagger back a step. His face is puffy, his eyes dark and drawn. He looks like he’s been in a boxing ring with a prizefighter.
Every aspect of me—body, heart, soul—yearns to comfort him. I’m angry that I can’t, that I have to watch him suffer like this. Being in the Prism is purgatory.
“Callie, stay calm,” says Thatcher. “He’s suffered a loss. It’s natural for him to lose sleep and be upset. You’re going to ease that.”
I nod—this is for Nick. I would do anything to take away the pain reflected in his face.
“Did you wake him up?” I ask.
Thatcher nods.
“But you didn’t touch him?”
“No—like I told you, our energy affects them. They can sense our presence on a subconscious level.”
I push my hand forward, toward Nick. I can’t help myself. I want to touch him, like Reena did with Eli.
Thatcher moves to block my reach. “The internal connection is more powerful.”
“Knowing that I’m here will help him. Nick isn’t Carson; he doesn’t believe like she does—we should show him that I’m here first.” I just want to be able to feel Nick’s skin again.
“What we’re trying to do is more than that,” says Thatcher. “If you concentrate on being at peace, that’s what you’ll give to him.”
“How am I supposed to concentrate on being at peace?” I fling his words back to him sarcastically because they sound ridiculous to me. When I’m a jumble of conflicting emotions, how can I be at peace?
“Close your eyes, Callie.”
I huff a little bit, feeling stuck. “Fine.” I do it. I close my eyes.
“Any emotion that you feel, let it go. Anything physical that enters your mind is purely your imagination, so let it go. You are a soul; you are a life force that’s evolved beyond the body, beyond your skin and hair and eyes and lips. You are smooth, strong, gentle, everlasting now.”