Kissing Midnight (17 page)

Dev comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me, his chin resting on the top of my head as he gazes out over the frozen campus, the warmth of his touch seeming even cozier in comparison. “Come on,” he says softly. “Just one night. It will be our little belated Christmas present to each other.” He pulls me a little tighter against him, his body pressed to mine.

I see my reflection smile on the frosty windowpane.
This is reality
, I remind myself.
This is where I should focus, on the reality of me and Dev
. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“Not like we’ll be missing anything here,” he adds. “That campus is a ghost town.”

I tense at the word
ghost
, but I know what he means.

“Nobody as far as the eye can see.”

But he’s wrong, of course. There is someone. She seems to appear out of nowhere, as if our words have summoned her: the girl in the long brown dress, the one from my dream. The one Jesse said was looking for me. She looks like something off a Victorian Christmas card, with her copper curls so bright against the crisp white snow, but seeing her is anything but heartwarming. I freeze, unable to look away as the ghost turns slowly. She raises her face, as if she can feel us watching, and looks up, right at me.

I gasp and turn to face Dev, my face buried in his chest.

“What?” he says, “What is it?”

I look up into his clear blue eyes. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go away.”

Jesse

The longer it takes for Saintly to show, the more worried I get. Maybe whatever Charlotte was trying to warn her about got to her.

Or maybe she just decided not to talk to me.

I know that, technically, the second option is the best-case scenario, but it still makes my heart ache. I had been so happy when I thought Saintly wanted to talk to me, even though I knew she only wanted me to tell the one story I’d never told anyone: the story of how I died.
It’s for the best
, I tell myself,
you probably couldn’t have helped her understand, anyway
. Saintly is looking for answers about her brother’s death, but what do I know about it? I’ve had twenty years to think about it, and I still don’t understand why I did what I did. I mean, it’s not like I’ve come to terms with it. I can barely force myself to look at the clock tower, even now.

But I do force myself to look at it, and as I watch the minutes tick by, I become more and more panicked. Should I go look for her? Should I stay here in case she comes? Am I even sure I’m here on the right day? There’s a chance I’ve lost time without realizing it and I’m a whole day off, or more. Maybe she was here yesterday or the day before, waiting for me. Maybe she thinks I’m the one who doesn’t care.

That thought puts me into motion. I head in the direction of Wallace Hall. I’m not sure it’s her dorm, but most of the freshmen live there, so it’s a pretty good guess. I’m not sure what my plan is, either—I guess just to walk the halls, sticking my head through every door until I find her.

But as soon as I’m in sight of the dorm, I see that I won’t have to search after all: Saintly is on her way out the front door. For a minute my spirits lift. She’s okay! Not only that, maybe she’s on her way to meet me! But then I see the guy step out the door behind her. It’s the same guy I saw her with in the student union, the first time I saw her. He’s good-looking, tall and well-dressed with reddish hair in messy curls. I’m sure he must be the guy Charlotte was looking for, Deveraux Renard.

Saintly’s boyfriend.

My heart sinks as I watch her smile up at him. She hoists her overnight bag onto her shoulder and heads for the car, where he kisses her sweetly on the cheek before taking the bag to tuck it into the trunk.

I feel a hot spark of envy flicker inside me, but I try to snuff it out. After all, what right do I have to be jealous? I’ve only spoken to the girl once, twice if you count our little waltz in the snow. Sure, she can see me, but just because she’s the only person in my world, that doesn’t mean I get to be the only person in hers. She’s not even queer, for Christ’s sake—and I’m not even alive! So it’s not like I have a right to expectations, right? Right.

And, if anything, shouldn’t I be happy that Saintly and her boyfriend are getting off campus? Charlotte was looking for both of them, I remind myself, so they’re probably both in danger. I should feel relieved that they are getting away from here. That’s why I went to warn her, right? She’s doing what I wanted her to do. I should just leave it at that.

But I can’t let her go without talking to her at all. While her boyfriend is monkeying with things in the trunk, I call out to her “Hey! Saintly!”

I know she hears me because she stiffens, her hand poised on the handle of the car door, but she doesn’t turn around.

“Saintly!” I call again, “It’s just me. Where you going?” Okay, she probably shouldn’t answer that, just in case the ghosts are listening, but I want to know. I feel embarrassingly needy. It’s ridiculous, of course. I’ve spent twenty years alone, so what’s another day? But now that I’ve had a taste of actual human conversation, I feel like I’ll die if I don’t have more. I’m like a recovering alcoholic who’s had a swallow of vodka. I want to get drunk on her voice.

But she barely gives me a taste. Saintly doesn’t turn around. Her voice is so quiet, I can hardly hear it above the shush of the wind. “I can’t talk,” she says.

“Okay,” I say lamely, “I understand. You’ve gotta go. I’m glad you’re going, you know, for safety’s sake. We’ll talk more when you get back.”

She turns to look at me, just for a second. “No, I mean I don’t think we should talk anymore.” Her eyes hold mine for one heartbeat. “It’s too… complicated.”

The boyfriend shuts the trunk with a bang. Saintly turns away, quickly, and I know it’s because she doesn’t want him to see her talking to nothing.

Because that’s what I am.

Nothing.

I stand there, frozen in place, and watch her climb into the car. I feel so cold I wonder if I’ve gotten some of my human feeling back, if talking to a living person has made me suddenly able to feel the winter wind. Then I realize the cold is coming from inside me, loneliness setting in like rigor mortis as the car pulls away from the curb.

Only when they are out on the street do I realize I should have asked when she would be back. I should have insisted on seeing her again. I mean, it’s not like the problem is solved. We still don’t even know what threat Charlotte was trying to warn her about! And we have to figure it out because, even if she leaves campus now, she’ll have to come back eventually.

I mean, she will, won’t she?

The thought unfreezes my feet from the sidewalk and I start to run, trotting after the car like a dog whose owner has dumped it by the side of the road. “Hey!” I call, “Wait!”

I’m sure Saintly can’t hear me, but maybe she can feel me somehow, because she turns around in her seat and looks out the back window. I can only imagine how silly I must look to her.

But she only gets to watch me for a block or so before we hit Xenon Street, the farthest I’ve ever gone from campus, and I feel the familiar dizziness set in, the awful feeling someone is tugging on all the little threads of my being and, if I take even another step farther, I’ll start to unravel like an old sweater. I stop, helpless, in the middle of the road, my head swirling like water above a drain as I watch the car slide around the corner and out of sight.

Saintly is gone.

Well
, I think,
good. Maybe she’ll be safer
, but of course that’s not how I really feel. I stand for a long time, just staring after the car, so lost in my thoughts I almost let a city bus plow right through me. I manage to sidestep it at the last minute so only the corner of the bumper passes through my hip, and then I trudge back toward the center of campus. Every step takes effort, and I feel heavy and cold. I want to just let myself go unconscious, but of course it doesn’t work that way; I don’t get to choose when I lose time any more than an epileptic chooses when she seizures. The more I wish myself away, the more I feel tethered to this moment.

Well, at least the horrible unraveling feeling has gone away, but as I near the center of campus, it’s replaced by the hollow fear I always feel whenever I walk near the clock tower.

I ignore the feeling. I want to go to the library, and that means passing by the clock. It watches me like a giant, golden eye as I pass beneath it.

I hold my breath. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to hold my breath whenever I walked past a graveyard because my cousin told me if I didn’t, I might breathe in a ghost. Now I’m the ghost, but I still hold my breath, as if the clock tower is one giant tomb and it might breathe me in.

But it just sits there, watching me, and in a minute I’m past it and stepping through the locked doors of the library. I breathe a sigh of relief. I was never much of a book lover when I was alive, but in the last two decades the library has become my haven. No one else knows the place like I do—twenty years’ worth of exploring has taught me how to find pretty much anything here, and right now I’m looking for one thing: Charlotte Croft. No, not her ghost—I’m hoping I won’t run into her and have to face more questions about Saintly and her boyfriend—but I am looking for any reference to her in the library’s records. She said she was local, after all, and if that’s true I’m pretty sure there’s something about her here somewhere.

It’s dark and safe in the stacks, the books like bricks in a fortress wall. Ordinarily I would stop and savor them for a minute, breathe in the smell of them and at least read the titles on their spines, even if my hands don’t always work well enough to actually open them and read them. I like reading the titles, challenging myself to imagine the stories inside. Sometimes when my hands aren’t solid enough to turn the pages, I can still manage to lift the books themselves. I stack them so that the titles make little poems. I don’t think anyone ever notices.

Tonight, however, I don’t have time for that stuff. I’m on a mission. I slip down the stairs to the basement, where the archives are stored. Ignoring the files of microfilm, I go straight for the real deal: filing cabinets of newspapers and school records that go back over a century. Maybe if I find out what happened to Charlotte and the other ghosts, I’ll know what they want with Saintly and Deveraux.

It’s slow going at first. It takes a while for me to even turn on the light, since my hand keeps slipping through the switch, but eventually I manage and start thumbing through the yellowed scrolls of newspapers and the musty yearbooks. It’s not hard to find mentions of Charlotte’s family. The newspapers are full of pictures of her dad—one posing by the door of his hotel on opening day, one dressed in a fancy suit at a church function, one shaking hands with a well-dressed man in a bowler hat. But what I want is a clue about Charlotte. I switch to checking the obituaries, but there’s no mention of her. How can that be, I wonder? Charlotte came from such a prominent family, it seems only natural her death would warrant a big obituary, but—nothing.

I’m about to give up. I’ve been at this for hours and I’m pretty sure it’s close to dawn. I want to be out of the library before anyone else shows up. Besides, I’m getting tired. It takes a ton of energy and concentration to make my fingers solid enough to turn the newspaper pages and, as my concentration wanes, moving the weathered pages is getting harder and harder. I decide to call it a night and shut the paper I’m reading.

And there it is, splashed across the front page: Local Businessman Offers Reward In Disappearance of Daughter. Above the headline is a date, Jan 2, 1900, and below the article is a picture: Charlotte, dressed just as she was when I met her. Even looking at the yellowed black-and-white photo, I can still picture the red of Charlotte’s hair, the shiny copper color of her dress. Only her face looks different: instead of the cold, bitter expression she wore when we met, the Charlotte in the picture is smiling.

But it isn’t Charlotte I’m staring at. My attention is caught by the well-dressed young man standing beside her, smiling down at her fondly. His suit is old-fashioned, his hair shorter, but there’s still no mistaking him. I scan the caption under the picture, sure I must be wrong, but there it is: “Miss Charlotte Croft and her fiancé Mr. Deveraux Renard, both last seen Dec 31, 1899.”

My tired mind rebels. It can’t be him. How could it be? Deveraux isn’t a ghost. I’m sure I could tell if he were. Besides, I’ve seen him talk to Saintly’s friend, and she couldn’t see him if he were a ghost, right?

No, Saintly’s boyfriend is definitely alive. So how am I looking at a picture of him over one hundred years ago, looking almost exactly like he does today?

My mind scrambles for an explanation. Could it be a relative of the same name? That would make sense. Whole families have come through this college, right? Grandsons, named after their grandparents, following in their footsteps…

But the resemblance is too uncanny. I skim the article. “Well known socialite Charlotte Croft was reported missing when she failed to return home after a New Year’s Eve celebration at the home of Miss Cynthia Winton. Also missing is her fiancé, Mr. Deveraux Renard. The two had become engaged only two weeks prior and were planning to wed in the fall of the new year. Although there has been some speculation that the couple eloped, police suspect foul play…”

Foul play
. My heart is beating fast. Even as I try to explain it away, a creeping feeling in the pit of my stomach is spreading like a blood stain. Something dark happened to Charlotte Croft. Something that has everything to do with Deveraux Renard.

What if Charlotte wasn’t trying to warn Deveraux about something? What if she was trying to warn Saintly about
him
?

I have to talk to Saintly,
now.

But how? I just let her leave with the chief suspect, and I have no idea where they went.

And even if I did know, would Saintly talk to me again? And if she did, would she believe me? I think of the way she looked up at Deveraux Renard, the admiration in her eyes. Why would she listen to my suspicions about someone she loves?