Chapter 26 #2
While I hang back, Morgan ventures to the nearby swing set, where she kneels down. “Hey, Henry. Your Uncle Zach gave me this to give to you,” she says gently to Zach’s nephew. “He wanted you to have the best birthday.”
Henry steps closer. He looks shy but interested. The mention of Zach makes him drop his gaze to his shoes, until Morgan produces the dragon mug from her purse.
Excitement transforms Henry’s downcast expression. His eyes go wide. “Cool!” he exclaims, and Morgan beams, handing the mug carefully over, while next to me, Ariana stifles her sobs. Her shoulders shake.
I join Morgan, leaving Ariana some privacy. I hear her racked whisper to her father. “He should be here…”
I should have known, I chasten myself. There is no other side to loss. Grief is never gone, even if family and community and companionship can help fill the world with more and more joy. Shadows remain, waiting for whenever the light of someone’s life casts the wrong way.
I reach Morgan as Henry dashes off to show off his dragon mug to his friends. Instinctually, I know—from the shape of her back, the uncharacteristic hunched motionlessness of her posture—that she’s going to cry.
I’m there when she does. I sweep her into a hug in the corner of the yard under a tree and stroke her back until her breathing settles.
Sometimes there is no fighting the shadows or finding the joy. Sometimes there’s only this.
Eventually, her breathing evens. I hold on anyway.
“Guess we’re even now,” Morgan says, withdrawing and nodding to the wet spots near my shirt’s collar.
“My shoulder is always available for more crying,” I say honestly.
Morgan sniffles. She doesn’t smile, but she seems sturdier. More okay. “Mine too,” she says.
I open my mouth, then close it. Then—no, fuck it. No more choices I regret, right? “You make me too happy for me to cry on you again,” I confess.
Morgan looks up. The sun catches those brown eyes, setting the gold in them to dancing. She opens her mouth to speak—
Zach materializes right next to us. “This has got to be it, right?” he enthuses.
I draw back from Morgan, startled. She does the same.
“My unfinished business,” Zach continues, obliviously enthusiastic.
“I had to give my nephew one final birthday gift. Ever since I saw the dragon mug, I’ve been unconsciously moving it toward Morgan.
Then the Ouija board sent us here. Everything was just to give Henry the perfect gift.
How incredibly sweet.” He grins, seeming sincerely moved by his own ghostly thoughtfulness.
“Now I can pass peacefully on to whatever is next, and I know my family knows I love them.”
I smile. “It’s beautiful, Zach,” I say.
“Really perfectly done,” Morgan adds.
Zach bows grandly. “Of course, I couldn’t have done it without you two,” he generously concedes, Oscar-speech-style. “Sawyer, thank you for making that mug and for not letting Morgan hire priests to exorcise me even when I caused an earthquake in your house. That was cool of you, man.”
“No problem,” I laugh.
“Most of all, shout out to your messy love life for the entertainment I needed in my afterlife,” Zach commends me.
I roll my eyes playfully, forcing myself not to look at Morgan for her reaction to Zach’s very unsubtle reference. I’d prefer another ghostly earthquake to seeing her respond negatively to that.
“Morgan,” Zach continues, “thank you for giving me my last- ever hookup and for being sort of the best roommate I’ve ever had. I know it seemed like our date didn’t go anywhere, but actually it brought me a really dope friend.”
Morgan’s eyes water. “Me too, Zach,” she manages. “I’ll miss you. I’ll think of you every time my shower suddenly turns cold.”
Zach places his hand over where his heart once beat, looking sincerely grateful. “I would fist-bump you right now if I could,” he says.
“I know, Zach,” Morgan replies. “I know.”
Zach inhales and exhales in peaceful preparation. “I’m off!” he declares. “Take care of each other in your grief for me!”
He looks to the sky. The sun is shining perfectly down on us.
We wait.
Nothing happens. Zach shifts on his feet. “Time to pass on!” he states loudly. He stomps his foot, like he can shoot himself skyward or something.
Still nothing.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice dragon napkins scattering. A cold breeze is sweeping through the yard. The swings sway ominously. I lock eyes with Morgan. By now, we recognize the paranormal indications of Zach’s frustration.
Still, the ghost goes nowhere. He stares up, exasperated. The swings creak, then start to move more deliberately, swinging on their own. The effect is, well, haunting.
“We have to go,” Morgan says to me. “Now. Before Zach unintentionally traumatizes this kid on his birthday.”
The branches of our tree creak. The tablecloth flaps. Morgan and I have no time for sentimental goodbyes. We walk quickly through the house, Zach drifting with us, preternaturally popping every balloon he passes. We get out front just in time for his outburst.
“I don’t understand!” he exclaims. “We did it! My unfinished business. What else could it possibly have been?”
He sits down dramatically on the curb in front of Ariana’s house.
I hear the taut undercurrent in his impatience—the fear.
He knows how long Kennedy has lingered in my life.
He wants peace. He wants resolution. He’s starting to reckon with the possibility that we won’t know how to release him from his ghostly existence.
“I really thought we had it, too,” I say, sitting down next to him. Morgan joins me.
“We don’t have any other leads,” Zach says hollowly.
“We’ll try the Ouija board again,” I promise him. “Maybe we can get more clarity or more instruction. Maybe…” I speculate. “Maybe this was important. There’s just more we have to do still.”
Morgan reaches out to pat him comfortingly on the shoulder—only for her hand to pass right through him. She loses her balance, wobbling where she’s seated on the steps. Her elbow strikes the concrete.
“Shit, you okay?” I reach for her.
But Morgan says nothing. Her eyes have found the old Volkswagen van sitting in the driveway behind us. Zach’s van, I realize, remembering Ari’s joking irritation with her sibling’s final parking choice. The van is cool, frankly, a sky-blue VW bus with just the right level of wear and tear.
“Zach, when you saw Ariana, you called her Ari,” Morgan says, remembering. “I don’t think she’s the clue. Look,” she gasps. “The license plate.”
I follow Morgan’s rapt stare to the plate on the front of the scuffed van.
Its middle three letters read ANA.