Chapter 34
Morgan
I savor the satisfying rip of packing tape as I seal my first box shut. I wish I could pack away my heartbreak as cleanly as I can my gardening tools.
It’s been two weeks since I left Sawyer’s.
Two weeks in which I’ve applied and interviewed for every landscaping and gardening job I could find.
This morning, I got my first offer. It’s in Massachusetts.
The pay is shit and the company is uninspiring, but it’s corporate landscaping and they want me to start as soon as I can relocate.
They have no idea how soon Morgan Lane can relocate.
I went out and bought moving boxes immediately.
It’s a Friday afternoon, so I figure I’ll pack all weekend, then tell my current job I’ve received a new offer on Monday morning.
I can be out of this cursed city by the end of the week.
Just the thought of shipping my possessions across the country makes me breathe a little easier.
I don’t want to leave a single trace of myself behind here.
Of course, I’m an excellent packer. I can look at any room and know exactly how many boxes to buy and in what sizes. I know how much weight I can pack before I risk damaging the contents or being unable to lift the box by myself.
Usually, leaving a city is bittersweet. I don’t like to stay, but I allow myself some sentimentality. It’s how I’ve ended up with small souvenirs from every place I’ve lived despite my spartan existence. Art, local jewelry, decor—things that last.
I have nothing from Los Angeles. It would have been the purple coleus, but I left it at Sawyer’s and there’s no way I’m returning for it.
Besides, I couldn’t stand to look at it. Sawyer likes to surround himself with misery. He can keep it. I’d rather forget Los Angeles anyway.
The Sharpie I’m reaching for rolls spontaneously off my bed.
Okay, it’s not entirely true that I have no mementos from my time here. I have a ghost. Who needs a souvenir when you have your dead ex for the rest of eternity?
I reach for the Sharpie, glaring where I hope Zach can see me. He’s going to be a hindrance to my packing, I can tell. He makes few things in my life easier, and after he’s spent the past weeks guilting me, I have every reason to expect packing up my room will be my biggest challenge yet.
I do feel bad. I know I’m taking him away from his home, his unfinished business, his family. But I have to live my life. His existence isn’t worth more than mine just because he’s dead. Arguably, that’s even more justification for not letting him derail my actual existence.
Still, I want him to be happy, even if I can’t do everything he wants. I reminded him that the beaches in Massachusetts are where Jaws was filmed, and this cheered him a little. Then I told him it’s only temporary. Everything in my life is temporary. Except for him.
He’s welcome to choose the next city we live in, I promised.
Maybe he can still get something out of this afterlife.
We can travel to every beach he wanted to surf, go whale-watching, follow Carly Rae Jepsen on tour, maybe even try living on a houseboat or something.
I can make anything work but Los Angeles.
He’ll be okay. We both will.
I finish labeling my box and return my Sharpie to the bed. It promptly rolls off again, then continues to roll all the way under my closet shutters.
I sigh. I hope in my next place, Zach’s haunted nook isn’t where I keep my most expensive sweaters. Maybe he could haunt the cabinet under the bathroom sink or something.
I decide I might as well tackle my paranormal hot spot now. All the clothes I didn’t bring to Sawyer’s, like my winter gear, are in danger of Zach’s “accidental” psychic shredding until I can fold them neatly in boxes. In Massachusetts, ruined sweaters won’t do me any good when winter comes.
I prep a new box, using the exactly perfect amount of tape needed, while my hangers rattle ominously behind the wooden slats I always keep shut now. Yes, better to do this now, while the sun is still up.
Steeling my nerves—and pushing away all memories of facing down Zach in a dark garage while wearing Sawyer’s shoes—I throw open the closet doors.
Quickly, I grab hangers without seeing them and toss them carelessly back onto my bed.
My heart pounds. It’s not that I’m afraid of Zach, exactly.
When he’s Zach, my ghost friend, I’m not startled at all to see him floating through my walls.
But over the past couple days, there have been more instances of him doing serious ghost shit.
He’s stood in dark corners, staring through me and talking nonsense to himself.
I woke up one morning to water dripping on my face.
The frozen pizza I made the other day caught fire as I pulled it from the oven.
I think he’s upset because we’re leaving, and his subconscious is lashing out psychically. When we move, it’ll be better, I hope. Or maybe I can condition myself to ghost scares by watching every horror movie ever since this is the rest of my life now.
With my sweaters rescued and no ghost goo or phantom plasma in sight, I decide to push my luck. I drop to all fours to pull out my shoes. It’s suddenly ten degrees colder on the carpet. I shiver, remembering my hair dripping down my back while Sawyer guided me carefully through the dark—
I pull myself out of the past, focusing on my purple heels. Frantically, I fling shoes behind me. In the very back of the closet, behind my now empty shoe rack, I find my gym bag. Inside are the rock-climbing shoes I was looking for a month ago.
The bag is icy to the touch. I hiss in shock, dropping it sharply. The contents spill out across the carpet.
I suppose it makes sense. Zach has a lot of psychic energy attached to the gym bag. It’s familiar to him. I brought it to our first and only date. It’s actually the only part of my life that intersected with Zach’s while he was alive.
I consider leaving it behind entirely, but I don’t know how ghost powers are affected by cross-country moves. I can’t risk Savannah’s next roommate having a haunted gym bag in their room.
I back out of the closet, instantly feeling warmer, and grab a scarf I tossed onto the ground.
Wrapping it around my hand, I clasp the frozen gym bag and shove it in the bottom of my box, then cover it with my snow boots and parka.
Next, I turn to the contents that spilled onto the carpet.
My rock-climbing shoes, of course, some Band-Aids, my water bottle, tampons, and—
I feel suddenly cold again. Frozen in shock, I stare at something that definitely isn’t mine on my carpet.
A set of keys with a shark key chain.
“Hey, those are mine!” Zach exclaims chipperly, appearing inside the closet. For a moment, he flickers spookily, but as his eyes lock on the keys, his appearance sharpens. “Morgan,” he says, his voice shaking. “Those are the keys to my van.”
My heart races in my chest. “Why are they in my bag?” I get out, swallowing hard.
All this time, they were here. It doesn’t make sense.
It can’t. I reach for the keys, prepared for them to feel burning or icy.
They don’t. I pick them up, still moving slowly with disbelief.
I’ve never seen these keys before in my life.
“I put them in your bag while we were climbing because I didn’t want to forget them in the gym, and you were giving me a ride anyway, and then I—” His eyes widen as he realizes.
I straighten, gripping the keys hard enough for the jagged edges to dig into my skin. “You forgot,” I say.
He gave me his keys, and he forgot, and I never knew, and I didn’t go on another rock-climbing date until—until after he was dead and his paranormal activity kept me from my gym bag.
“To be fair,” Zach says, “I forgot and then I also died.”
My hands start to shake. “The closet was a clue all along,” I murmur. “It was right here.”
And we ignored it. Zach may have forgotten, but something in him remembered, causing his supernatural powers to flare whenever I was close to what he needed.
“If you hadn’t driven my date away a month ago, I would have found your keys. None of this would have happened…” My voice breaks, crushed beneath my realization.
If I’d gone on that rock-climbing date, I would have found the keys. I would have returned them to Zach’s family. I never would have needed to go to the haunting support group. I never would have met Sawyer. I never would have driven Kennedy away.
I wouldn’t be heartbroken right now. Neither would he.
“That’s not true,” Zach replies sternly, his gaze finally leaving the keys to look at me.
“If you’d found the keys then, you’d have had no idea what to do with them.
Without Sawyer, we wouldn’t have learned about the hardware store.
We wouldn’t have looked up my family. You wouldn’t have talked to Ari or heard about my car.
You wouldn’t even know unfinished business is how to send a ghost on.
You probably would have found the keys and thrown them out.
I’d be stuck with you forever.” His voice softens.
“Not to mention, if you hadn’t met Sawyer, he and Kennedy would still be stuck—”
I hold up my hand, not wanting him to finish that sentence. I hate that he has a point. About everything, except Sawyer and Kennedy, obviously.
“I guess we don’t know what would have happened, and there’s no point wondering about it,” I say, eager to end this discussion.
Zach narrows his gaze. He knows I’m deflecting. I don’t let him call me on it.
“Zach.” I hold up his keys. “This is it. This is why you’ve been haunting me.”
It wasn’t random bad luck or because I was the last person he kissed. It wasn’t that we had some special connection, like Sawyer suggested. I didn’t steal his ghost from his family and loved ones, like I feared. I only stole his car keys.
I laugh suddenly, overcome. Fate isn’t some invisible, incomprehensible force hurtling you into pain and frustration.
Fate is just a puzzle you don’t have all the pieces to yet. With enough time, enough information, the picture starts to make sense. Maybe the picture of Sawyer and me will make sense one day, too.
I sink onto the edge of my bed. Maybe I wasn’t just another senseless tragedy in Sawyer’s life. Maybe I’m the lost car keys in his closet. Unfinished business. A missing piece.
God, I hope I’m a missing piece.
I don’t know why Kennedy had to die. The truth is, she didn’t. But she did have to move on. If I hadn’t come into Sawyer’s life, someone else would have. He’s too good, too worth loving, to spend the rest of his life lost forever. I know that. It just sucks that the cost was my heart.
Still, with Zach hovering in front of me, I know there are worse prices to pay in this world.
He’s silent beside me. He doesn’t even seem like a ghost right now. For just a second, I let myself believe he’s not. I let myself imagine he’s alive. He’s my friend. He’s part of my future, not just my past.
That picture is a lie, though.
I look up at him, summoning a much stronger bravery than packing up haunted closets.
“Are you ready?” I ask, my voice a whisper.
Zach sits next to me on the bed. Between us are the keys—the literal keys to whatever is next for him. For a moment, we’re silent.
Finally, he shakes his head.
“We don’t have to unlock your car,” I tell him.
“We can go to Massachusetts, then in a year or so, we can go wherever you want next. Like we said. You don’t have to finish this unfinished business.
” I hear it in my voice. Hope. Impossible hope.
Maybe part of me does want to keep this one souvenir from a city I can’t quite forget.
Zach meets my eyes. He smiles sadly, and my heart sinks.
“I need to go,” he says. “I can’t explain it, but being here, it’s like”—he looks around the room, the place his car keys brought him—“it’s like I’m always wearing someone else’s clothes.
Nothing quite fits. This isn’t my life, even if it is a life I might enjoy.
” He reaches for my hand, his touch slipping through me.
“I understand.” I try to return his smile. I can’t.
I didn’t expect to like Zach by the time he moved on. I didn’t expect to have to do this part alone, either. When he moves on, I’ll be…
“You can take some time if you need. I can decline the new job. I haven’t even put in my notice. We can stay as long as you want,” I offer.
Zach stands. My ceiling fan spins lazily above him, disturbing none of his unruly hair. “I want to unlock my car,” he says, his voice decisive. “I want to find out what I left behind. I just…I don’t want to do this without…” He looks tentative. Like he has impossible hope, too.
“I know,” I say, resigned. Now, I do smile, just a little. “You don’t want to do this without him.”