Chapter 3
Karla
I limped over to the stranger and snatched the collection of love letters from his grip. His fingertips briefly brushed against mine, and his touch felt chilled. Like a stone that had been in the shade all day.
My anger took over as I stepped away from him. “How dare you read these!” I barked, my heart pounding wildly against my chest. I felt faint. I felt violated. I felt . . . ashamed.
Because what kind of freak left love letters for their dead mother?
He held his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t know that letters left in a cemetery were off-limits to be read.”
“Anyone with half a brain would know not to read other people’s letters,” I snapped. I glanced down at the letters and noticed a smudge in the upper right corner from where his thumb had rested. As if he held the letters too tightly. As if he took in every single word.
“Unfortunately, I’m only working with a fourth of a brain,” he replied. I didn’t laugh because he wasn’t funny. He took a step toward me and held a hand out. “Karla. I’m Ashish. Ash for short.”
“I don’t care,” I snapped again. “What were you saying to her?” I asked.
His left eyebrow arched, and he made a clicking sound with his mouth. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to ask the living about their conversations with the dead?”
“Who are you?”
“I told you. I’m Ash.”
Yes, but who was he? And why was he at my mother’s tombstone?
“How old are you?” I asked instead.
“Just turned sixteen. You?”
Sixteen? He felt much older than that. Sixteen going on sixty, perhaps. Don’t get me wrong, he looked his age, but he didn’t feel like it. Mom would’ve said he had an old soul, like my father.
“What were you saying to my mom?” I asked again, ignoring his question.
“How old are you?” he repeated.
“None of your business.”
“But I told you my age.”
“That was your choice. Me not telling you is my choice.”
“I respect your choices, Karla. Sadly, me not telling you what I was saying to Nicole is my choice.”
Nicole.
Hearing him say Mom’s name out loud made my body tense up. I hadn’t heard her name spoken in such a long time. I hated it. I loved it, too. That confused me; then again, most feelings confused me. It seemed like emotions had a mind of their own and I was just the body that housed their madness.
I wanted Ash to leave immediately, because I felt like crying. I hadn’t cried in front of others since the accident, and I wouldn’t start that day.
Before I could tell him to leave, he started walking backward on his own. I should’ve looked away and got on with visiting Mom, but I kept staring at Ash as a million questions flew through my head.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I spat out.
He laughed, and it sounded like the saddest chuckle I’d ever heard. I didn’t know laughs could be sad until I heard his.
“Shouldn’t you?” he countered. Touché. “I’m new to Clover High.” He goes to my school? “Tomorrow’s my first day. I wanted to get to know the dead in this place before I had to be introduced to the living.”
“That’s weird.”
“I’m weird.” He shrugged his shoulders as his hands sat in the front pocket of his hoodie. I could see his hands fiddling with something in it, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“OK, well, leave. Weirdo.”
“I am leaving. Bigger weirdo,” he replied.
For some reason his words didn’t upset me, because they seemed to be a little teasing. What was with this guy? Why didn’t he flinch when he saw me like everyone else did? Why did he seem immune to my hideous face? I kept staring at him, waiting for his disgust to be seen. It didn’t show up.
“I asked her if she was OK,” he confessed, nodding toward Mom’s tombstone. “And I told her how lucky she was to have a daughter who left her love letters every single day. Figured it made her less lonely.”
My lips parted, but no sound came out. There was an eerie, invisible blanket of comfort that seemed to wrap around my shoulders instead. As if he cared about the woman who cared so much for me.
I wondered about that question daily, too.
I wondered if she was OK.
That slight flicker of light hit his eyes once more as he kept walking away. “I don’t want you to think I’m some freak who was just talking to your mom,” he added. “Someone I love is here, too. Two rows down.”
A tinge of guilt hit me.
He’d lost someone, too?
“You know my favorite thing about talking to the dead, Karla?” Ash asked as he continued to walk backward, as if he wasn’t scared of running straight into another tombstone. Maybe he had eyes in the back of his head or something. I wouldn’t put it past him. He was that peculiar and out of place.
I wanted to know his answer, but I didn’t want him to know that I wanted to know.
I tried my best to look uninterested as he continued speaking.
“The dead don’t judge. They don’t ask questions, and they don’t scold me for my mistakes.
They also don’t expect me to pretend I’m OK when I’m not.
They don’t ask me why I’m still here, and they don’t look at me with pity.
They just . . . listen.” His head lowered as he kept fidgeting with something in his pocket.
His brows knit together as if he had fallen into deep thought.
He seemed more invested in what was inside that pocket.
His voice was so low now, a whisper of sorts, as he continued, “Sometimes, it’s nice to be heard by things that don’t judge you. Sometimes, it’s nice to just have someone listen.”
Without looking up at me, he turned on the heel of his muddy black boot and walked away.
It took me a few minutes to feel comfortable enough to sit down at my mom’s tombstone. A tombstone that gave me exactly what Ash expressed: A way to speak to a person who wouldn’t judge me. A way to speak to a person who would simply listen.
I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Hi, Mom. It’s me, Karla.”