I pass through a door into an empty room with a four-poster bed and ivory crown molding. I imagine it’s called “The Peach Room” because all the walls have a pink-orange glow.
Then I hear the toilet flush and a door open, and I realize that there’s a connecting bathroom here and someone’s been smart enough to find it.
I peek around the corner and watch as my best friend leans toward the mirror and reapplies her favorite lipstick—Chanel’s Muse—with a deft hand.
“Carson.”
Her glossy brown hair is pulled back into a purposefully messy updo and lined with fish-tail braids. She’s wearing a strapless seersucker dress and white sling-back Tory Burch sandals—her tan shoulders and browned legs seem to glow against the pale colors of her outfit. She looks so pretty.
Smiling at her reflection, she blots her lips with toilet paper. Jessica Furlow is in here, too—she and Carson go to youth group together.
“Thanks for making me get out of my house,” says Carson.
“It’s good for you,” Jessica says, and I feel a pang of regret that I’m the reason Carson isn’t living her normal life. I have to admit that there’s also a pinch of jealousy—Jessica can help her move on from losing me.
“This is good for you, too.” Jessica smiles as she hands Carson a bottle of Miller High Life, and my best friend hesitates for just a second before she throws her head back and takes a swig. She coughs a little and says, “I don’t even like it much.”
I smile. So Carson.
“You’ll get used to it,” says Jessica, which kind of annoys me. But I’m not here to begrudge Carson a drink after she’s lost her best friend—me.
I follow them out into the peach room, and then back to the main throng of the party. Jessica stops to talk to someone, but Carson walks gracefully down the stairs, around the girls who line the steps. She smiles at their compliments on her ensemble with signature sweetness. “Aw, y’all are so nice! Thank yooou!” I can tell by her tone that she’s a teensy bit drunk. The swig she took upstairs was apparently not her first.
When Carson wanders into the kitchen, she takes in the scene without breaking her stride. There’s a tray of Jell-O shots, and Austin Getts is mixing brownie batter with some of his friends. They’re laughing hysterically, and I know that if I were alive, I’d be able to smell the pot that they mixed into the batter.
“Hey, Fisher!” Austin shouts. “We’re about to bake, man.”
He puts down the bowl and moves to the sliding glass door next to the kitchen, opening it a crack. Then he starts chuckling and comes back inside.
“Fisher’s already wasted,” he says.
Carson balls her hands into fists and marches outside. I’m right behind her.
“Nicholas Fisher!” she shouts, and it’s her no-nonsense voice—the one that could snap me to attention almost as quickly as one of my father’s military-style commands. Nick’s condition has obviously served to sober her up.
“Hey, Cars,” Nick slurs. “Come have a drink with us.” He has his arm around Gina O’Neill, which makes me stop for a moment, frozen in the doorway. But he’s drunk. He’s just being friendly. Nick holds out a red plastic cup, his hand wobbling back and forth.
“You must be out of your mind,” she says, walking closer to him.
“Aw, don’t be pissy just because that little séance of yours didn’t work,” he says.
Carson rolls her eyes. Then she leans back, like a wave has hit her. “You reek! How much have you had?”
Nick looks up at the sky like the answer to her question is out there in the darkness. “Let’s see,” he says, letting go of Gina as he counts on his fingers. “I think I had three beers at home and then something in the car. . . . And I’m pretty sure this is my third round of jungle juice so . . . seven?”
He lets out a loud, sloppy laugh and starts to reel forward. As Gina steps away, Carson moves in and holds him up, draping his arm around her shoulder.
I cringe, hating to see Nick like this.
“Good Lord, you’re trashed!” Carson is staring at Nick angrily, and her fish-tail braids are loose with undone pieces now. “What is the matter with you?”
Nick lets out a burp in Carson’s face, and she fans her hand in front of her nose.
“Gross,” she says. “Do you think Callie would want to see you like this?”
I see Gina flinch. Good. Part of me is happy that Carson mentioned me, that I’m still there with them somehow, even if it’s just in their memories. But another part of me is just plain worried. I mean, we all started drinking last year, but just for fun, just to get a little buzzed. Nick is drinking alone now, I know, and getting completely plastered at this party. Everyone else seems to think that’s fine, and I feel a rush of affection for Carson, who knows this is not okay, that this isn’t Nick.
“Wake up!” she shouts, slapping Nick on the arm as his eyes droop closed.
He opens his eyes wide and says, “I’d give anything if you’d just shut up.” Then his head tips forward and his body follows—I try to reach out, to summon enough energy to catch him, but he falls right through my arms, crashing to the deck as he blacks out.
Twenty-One
“JESUS!” Carson shout-whispers. “You are a mess.”
She struggles to get him to his feet, and I move in, trying to help her support his weight. I can’t hold him up, but I do manage to make contact with his arm enough so that she can hoist him onto her shoulder again.
Nick mumbles for her to leave him alone, but Carson has a single-minded fire in her now—I’ve seen it before, like after Mama died and I wouldn’t come out of my house for days. She marched over to our place one Saturday afternoon with a bottle of soap bubbles and filled my room with the transparent, glossy globes. Then she said, “This is more fun outside,” and I followed her into the yard and sat in the sun for the first time in a week. We were six. She doesn’t take “leave me alone” to heart.
They leave Gina on the porch as Carson leads Nick through the house and past the kitchen, where Austin and his friends give him a thumbs-up. He opens his eyes long enough to acknowledge it, then slumps back over Carson, who holds his weight expertly despite his wobbly legs.
When she finally gets him past the girls on the stairs and up into the peach room, she dumps him on the bed and closes the door behind them.
I sit down by Nick’s side while Carson goes into the bathroom and turns on the water.
Leaning down, I whisper in his ear. “It’s going to be okay.” I feel so helpless—I’m not a part of his life anymore in any tangible way, but I want him to feel that I’m here. . . .
Carson comes out of the bathroom, and I step back as she presses a wet cloth to Nick’s forehead.
The anger is gone from her face; there’s just sadness now.
“I get it, Nick,” Carson says. “Summer’s ending. School starts soon. Callie won’t be there with us. It totally sucks. But you can’t be doing this.”
Summer’s almost over? Already? And they’re still floundering because I’m not mastering this haunting thing. Guilt and remorse swamp me. The time I wasted with Reena—I could have been helping them.
“I don’t care about school, Carson,” Nick says. “I’m just tired of thinking about her, of people telling me how sorry they are. And the whispers that it was my fault.”
“Don’t listen to the whispers, Nick. The accident wasn’t your fault,” she says softly, kindly. And for a moment, it’s like she’s the ghost, trying to make him realize that she’s here for him.