Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (22 page)

“Officially?”
“I think he killed himself.
Otherwise he probably would’ve haunted me.”

Right.
To become a ghost,
your death has to be a surprise.
(Boo.)
People who thought it’d be easier
to be a ghost
than to be alive
found that out the hard way.

“How old was he?” Mickey asks Krista.

“Eighteen.
Like you.”
Another bite,
another struggle
against the blowing hair.
“You’re thinking of doing it, aren’t you?”

If I had breath,
I would hold it now,
waiting for Mickey’s answer.

“I don’t think of dying,” he says,
“so much as I think of not living.”

It starts to rain,
suddenly,
strenuously,
as if heaven itself
is bawling,
spitting,
pissing
on my brother
and his death wish.

You go, God.
If he doesn’t want his life,
can I have it?
I’d be a miserable,
pretentious
son of a bitch
if it meant living again.
I’d be him.

“Keep most of the lights off,”
Krista tells Mickey
as we enter our cousins’
beachfront condo,
where our family has stayed
since I was fourteen.
“That way I can still see Logan.”

“I’ll get you a towel.
And do you want a dry—”
He looks away
from her sodden T-shirt.
He has a girlfriend,
after all,
a girlfriend he’s barely touched
in 233 days.

He heads down the hall,
but she lingers by the front door,
checks that it’s unlocked.

“He won’t hurt you,” I tell her.

“I know,” she whispers.
“But after that Cindy girl died
at spring break,
my parents gave me the Talk.
They said,
‘Just because you graduated a year early
doesn’t mean you can’t be stupid.’”

We go to join Mickey,
passing the open door
of Siobhan’s room
and the closed door
where my younger brother Dylan and I
used to stay.
I’ve been there a hundred times
since I died.

Mickey stands before his bed,
his suitcase open.
“My sister’ll kill me if I steal one of her shirts,
so take this.
Keep it.”

She unfolds the army-green T-shirt,
and the light spilling from the hall
reveals the skull-and-shamrock logo
of the Keeley Brothers.

I blink hard,
memories bathing my brain
like acid.
“He never wears that,” I tell her.
“Why does he have it with him now?”
She asks him.

Mickey slaps shut the suitcase,
but not before I see
the hint of
dull
black
metal
tucked into the corner.

“Don’t leave him alone,” I tell Krista.
“He’s got a gun.”

She steps back,
fear in her eyes.
“Is it loaded?” she asks him.

He stares at her,
making the connection.
“Not yet.”

She snatches the dry towel splayed across the bed.
“Turn around. Both of you.”

I watch him instead of her,
count the ribs showing
through his skin
when he changes his own shirt.

“Now what?”
Krista’s stuffing her wet bra
into the front pocket of her jeans.
Mickey’s shirt is huge on her
but not huge enough
to hide her curves.

I spy the guitar case in the corner.
“Ask him to play.”
We have to get something
into his hands
besides that gun.

Music was always my savior.
Maybe it’ll be his too.

He tries a few tunes
by candlelight
on the living room sofa,
but his fingers seem numb,
his voice, starved.
Krista looks dubious.

“Mickey’s much better than this,” I tell her.
“He got accepted to a conservatory,
but don’t bring that up.
He’s not going.”
I answer her quizzical look with,
“Because of the money.”

Mickey stops
at the start
of the third verse.
“I forget the rest.
You should go.”

He looks through her,
toward the hallway,
toward the bedroom,
toward the gun.

“Wait!”
I jump out of my seat.
“Ask him to play my song,
the one he’s writing for me.”

“Play Logan’s song,” she tells him.
He glances in my general direction,
then focuses on her.
“Dylan told him?”

She nods when I nod.

“Brat can’t keep a secret.”
Mickey sets the guitar in his lap again,
tunes.
Tunes some more.
And then some more.
Tunes
tunes
tunes,
But never plays.

Krista shifts in her chair,
stretches her bare feet,
which are probably
falling asleep.

Her movement stops Mickey,
fingers on the guitar’s pegs.
He lowers the head
and lets the instrument
roll forward,
strings facing down
in his lap.

“I haven’t written it yet,” he says.
“Not one note, in all these months.”

Krista holds up her hand,
speaking for herself.
“Why not?”

He traces the curve of the guitar’s body
with his palm,
and I want more than ever to be him
for one moment,
touching the smooth wood.
I would make it sing.

Finally he says,
“Writing his song
would be too much like saying good-bye.”

I can’t believe I’m hearing this.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it!”

Before she can finish translating,
I point straight at his heart.
“You’ve been saying nothing
but
good-bye
since the night I died.
All you care about
is me passing on,
getting out of your life.”

Krista speaks my words,
inflecting them just like me,
and I wonder how much anger
is mine
and how much is hers.

Mickey says,
“I just want him to be at peace.”

“No!” I hurl back.
“You want
you
to be at peace.
And you think dying—
or at least not living—
is the best way to find it.
And I totally don’t get that.”

Krista says what I said,
then turns to me.
“I get that,” she chokes out.
“He thinks he could’ve stopped you.
He thinks he could’ve saved you.”

“I could have.”
Mickey grips the neck of the guitar.
“I could’ve kept the drugs
out of his hands.”

I shake my head.
“You saw me turn it down,
just like you and Siobhan—”

“I should’ve known,”
Mickey says over me.
“I should’ve known
that record company rep
would push him harder
when I wasn’t looking.
He was always so eager to please.
I should’ve asked later.
One question: ‘Did you keep the cocaine?’
But I was too busy
and too annoyed,
thinking, He’s a such a big shot now
he can take care of himself,
and if he can’t,
that’s his fault.”
Mickey closes his eyes.
“One question.
It could’ve saved his life.”

I turn my head
from the sight of the pain
that’s twisted Mickey’s memory
and broken his soul.
I did this to him.

“He knows that’s not true,” I tell Krista.
“He knows I would’ve lied.
I always lied
to keep from pissing him off.”

He gives a bitter laugh.
“Yeah, or to keep from pissing off
Dad.”

Then Mickey freezes,
his eyes creasing harder than ever.
“Oh God.”
He clutches his elbows,
bends forward like he’ll be sick.
“He was afraid of me.”

Krista raises her hand.
“He still is.”

“Why? When?
I thought . . .
I thought we were friends.”

I try to remember
when Mickey and I were friends.
Before we were
the Keeley Brothers
with a capital B?
Maybe when he was George Clooney
and I was Brad Pitt.

“So what do you want?”

I realize Krista’s talking to me.

“Huh?”

“What do you want?” she repeats.
“You brought us together
so you could talk to him.
What do you want him to know?”

Mickey braces himself,
hands squeezing his knees,
eyelids squeezing each other,
like he’s about to be sprayed
with poison.

After 233 days,
I have no eloquent speech,
no moving lyrics.

“Besides being alive again,
I want . . . more than anything . . .”

I wait while she translates,
then continue,
so she won’t have to stop
through this next part.

“I want you to know
that I love you, dude.
And no matter what you think,
it wasn’t your fault.
It was mine.

But I forgive you
for not saving me
from myself.”

I wait for him to explode with,
“
You
forgive
me
?
That’s a good one.
You should beg
me
to forgive
you
for ruining my life,
for hurting
Mom
and Dad
and Dylan
and Siobhan
and everyone else
stupid enough to love you.”

But instead,
Mickey’s shoulders rise
and fall
in the longest,
fiercest
breath
I’ve seen him take in months.

He closes his eyes
and pulls the head of the guitar
toward his own,
presses the pegs
against his forehead,
so hard,
that when he turns
to look straight at me,
not through me,
there’s a dent
in his skin.

“Thank you.”

And then.

(Uh-oh.)

He starts to cry.

I haven’t seen this
since the night I died.
I don’t know what to do.

But Krista does.
She kneels before him
and takes the guitar from his lap.
He sinks forward
into her arms,
adding his tears
to the water from her hair
speckling her new shirt.

They cry together
for their
loved,
lost,
dumb
brothers.

Kurt Cobain
didn’t die in the bathroom,
because he died on purpose.
Anyone with a plan
wouldn’t choose the bathroom,
unless they’re super considerate
and thinking of the mess.

I don’t know
if Mickey was thinking of Cobain
when he decided
Ocean City would be the last stop
on the road trip of his life.
I don’t know
what he was thinking
when he packed
that gun
and that shirt.

But the important thing is,
Krista now has both.

When the rain ends,
we take Mickey’s guitar
to the beach,
find a spot where I sat
when I was alive.
He plays
with trembling fingers
and a voice
rough from weeping
but stronger than before.

Others gather around,
in twos and threes.
Mickey takes requests,
but mostly he plays
our old favorites.
For once, I carry the harmony
instead of the melody,
since Krista’s are the only ears
that hear me.

Siobhan and Connor appear,
fiddle and guitar in hand,
summoned by a text from Mickey.
And now it’s like
a Keeley Brothers
acoustic reunion gig.
Perfect.

But after a while,
I fall silent
and just watch
my brother and sister
sing without me
smile without me
live without me.
They’ll be okay.
Without me.

I give Krista a soft “Thanks”
and brush her shoulder
with a hand she can’t feel.
She watches
as I stand and turn away.

I’m pretty sure
what she’s done tonight
wouldn’t count as
an official Senior Week
“Play It Safe” activity.
But Mickey was long past
being saved by safety.

I walk to the edge of the water
where I can still hear their voices
mixed with the ocean.
The lifeguard stand beside me
is empty and bare
except for one thing:

a long black ribbon
faded to gray,
the name
Cindy
printed in gold-turned-yellow.

The girl who drowned at spring break.
That’s how she’ll be remembered—
for her death,
not her life,
as people our age always are.