Chapter 24
That night, my parents insist on taking me out to dinner.
The thought of being in a car again today makes my stomach feel like it’s trying to French braid itself, so I pick Pontillo’s Pizza because we can walk there.
Nate is thrilled; it’s his favorite. I sit, detached, half listening to him try to convert my parents into fans of his favorite YouTuber while he waves a piece of cheesy garlic bread around for emphasis.
It all feels so innocent and sweet that it makes me sleepy.
I suddenly have an overwhelming desire to go to bed.
Once I’m finally in my room, though, I can’t sleep after all. I start thinking again about this morning in the car. Why the hell would Mason do something like that? Was that supposed to be some kind of practical joke? How could anyone think that was remotely funny?
I need to talk to him—alone this time. I start playing top ten pop drivel to bait Mason into showing up, but it doesn’t work.
I can’t sit still anymore. I throw my door open, pound down the stairs, and head out the back door.
It’s almost ten p.m., but it’s also my birthday, so all my mom says is, “Take your coat!” I don’t even do that.
Near the line of evergreens that mark the back boundary of our property is a big old oak tree with a swing.
I used to spend hours on the swing, going higher and higher until I felt like I was flying, enjoying the way it let me think about nothing at all.
But I haven’t even been in the backyard since the summer. I feel about a hundred years older now.
I sit on the swing and kick back hard to get going.
I’m determined to swing until my mind is blank.
But it might be awhile. I keep thinking about what a mean trick that was from someone who’s supposed to be my friend.
The wind is icy as I soar through the air, and I regret not taking a coat like my mom said, but I can’t bear to go back inside to the brightness and dry artificial heat. It’s claustrophobic.
So. Mason was my friend, but this isn’t really Mason we’re talking about anymore.
We’re talking about the ghost of Mason, which might mean all friend bets are off.
Maybe his soul isn’t his own anymore. If he’s in some version of hell, he could even be like a demon now or something.
Not that I think he deserved to go to hell, but that’s based on the rules I know, rules that were basically just made up by living people. Who knows what the real rules are.
Oh man. I’ve been thinking he was appearing to help me, but maybe he’s doomed to torment me.
I have felt sort of tormented by him lately.
To care this much and then be trying to navigate his unpredictability, his mysteriousness, his total inaccessibility, is near impossible.
Even as I’m thinking it, it doesn’t sit right, but fuck, it does seem like I’ve been entirely too trusting about this whole situation.
Just then, I hear the snap of twigs. I drag the heels of my boots through the crust of ice-covered snow to stop myself from swinging.
“Finally,” I say. Time to find out what side he’s really on.
“Oh, my apologies, did we have a date? I must have neglected to put it in my calendar.”
“Don’t. Don’t be cutesy. It’s not funny. You’re not funny.” I want to unleash some major scorned-woman fury on him, but the lump in my throat threatens to ruin my attack.
“So you don’t like my sense of humor. That’s fine. You don’t need to look so depressed about it,” he says.
I get up off the swing and walk a few steps toward the woods, turning my back to him so I can brush away the angry tears that are gathering.
He catches it. “Hey, okay, I’m sorry, what’s going on?”
“Why the hell did you do that to me?” I don’t really want an answer. I just want him to know how bad it hurt.
“What’s that now?”
“You made me think I had run over a real live person! Do you know how scared I was? That was too brutal. Too mean. Even for you.”
His voice is overly calm. “I don’t want to fight with you about this, I really don’t, but I feel like I should point out that you were the one doing the running over. I was just standing there.”
“Standing right in my blind spot!”
“Your blind spot directly in front of you?”
“Yes! It was the sun! And I was just coming over the hill, and … and …” Why is the truth so hard to say? Why does it get caught in the back of my mouth like a too-big spoonful of peanut butter?
“And I can’t see!” I finally splutter.
He takes my place on the swing. “I know.”
“No, I mean I really can’t see. And not just the stars. Like I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to the house right now if the yard lights weren’t on. Like I’m going to end up entirely blind, same as my dad. My retinas are rotting as we speak.”
“I know,” he repeats.
“What do you mean you know? I sure as hell never told you. What, did Saint Peter or Mary Magdalene or some other heaven-type character grab one of those stone tablets and chisel in ‘BTW, Hattie has a genetic retinal disease’ right under ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife’?”
“Ha. Not exactly. Just, when you could see me, and no one else could, I knew that your eyes were different.”
“You mean bad.”
“In some ways, I guess, but definitely not all.”
Suddenly, an idea pops into my mind. “Wait, so if I took you into my living room now, do you think my dad could totally see you? His eyes are even more different.” The thought makes me nervous, but there’s also hope mixed in.
Maybe seeing a ghost would jolt my dad out of his denial-based personality.
He shakes his head. “No, I think there’s more ingredients in this recipe.” He chuckles. “Clearly, the fact that you’re obsessed with me has something to do with it.”
He’s so freaking consistent.
“Well, if I was obsessed with you before, you cured me of that with your ‘what’s it feel like to be a murderer’ prank.” He’s not getting out of this that easy.
“Oh, so tricky Dick can stop right in front of you to test your skiing ability but I can’t stop in front of you to test your driving ability?”
“Wow, stalk much? And I didn’t like it when he did that, either, by the way.” I hug myself, rubbing my arms to warm them up.
“Yes, I could totally tell that when you had him stick his tongue in your ear as a punishment.”
“God, could we just get off of Richard already?”
“Gladly. Back to the driving. What’s your takeaway from that, by the way?” God, he goes from serious to snarky and back again in dizzying fashion.
“You mean, besides that you’re an asshole?”
“Do you think you’ll drive again?” he persists.
Oh. Fuck me. “No,” I say. “Never.”
“Well, that’s something, right? Now you know. I mean, if someone had given me a trial run on taking the boat out that night, who knows where I’d be now.” He pushes off with his feet and starts to swing, pumping his legs to get some height.
All the anger I have left drains out of me. He did it as a wake-up call. To protect me from me, from my own tendency to make disastrous decisions. “I was right,” I say, half to myself.
“About what?” he asks as he swoops past me.
“About why you’re here. That you were sent here to help me. That you’re like my guardian angel.”
At the word angel, Mason jumps off the swing, and he’s so far from the ground my chest clenches in fear. Relax, Hattie, I remind myself. People who are dead can’t break their leg.
Sure enough, he jumps up from where he landed and casually brushes snow off his pants. “Is that what you’ve been thinking?” he asks.
There’s an energy in his voice that makes me think he’s about to tease me, but then I realize he’s genuinely curious.
“Yeah, I guess. Aren’t you?”
“Beats me. Lately I’ve been thinking I was here for another reason,” he says.
“Another reason like what?” I push. I don’t want any more cryptic, riddle-like responses from Mason. I want answers.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s a punishment and sometimes I think it’s a reward.”
“Those are two very different things.”
“What can I say? The afterlife is complicated.” Mason sits in the swing again and twists it around and around until it won’t get any tighter. Then he lets go, spinning, his head back.
The word punishment makes me think about hell again. I really hope he’s not condemned to flames and fire when he’s not with me. “Like, how are you punished? And why?”
He staggers off the swing now, dizzy, and collapses back in the snow. He is incapable of sitting still tonight. Is it because this conversation is torture for him? I try to be patient. I wait.
“Well,” he finally says, “you know how at church they always say that suicide is this terrible sin?”
“Suicide?” The word tastes like acid in my mouth.
“Calm down, Murphy. I didn’t die by suicide. Don’t go all psychotherapist on me. I just think, you know, I didn’t take my own life, but I didn’t really save it, either. Could be a half-terrible sin.”
“And how are you being punished?”
“Like life is taunting me. It’s all a big tease. The things I wanted, the things I miss. Almost living it, but not quite. It’s excruciating.” He picks up an ice chunk and chucks it.
“But then how can you sometimes think it’s a reward? What happens then?”
He laughs now, softly, and his voice cracks a little when he says, “Strangely enough, it’s sort of the same thing. Except sometimes I really like how excruciatingly sweet almost living can be.”
“Wait. What do you mean?”
But instead of explaining, he disappears. The trees groan in the wind and I turn my head toward the sound for a second, and when I look back, he’s gone. No matter how many “come to Jesus” moments we have, one thing is unchangeable. Mason is an enigma.