Haunting Zoe by Sherry Ficklin Page A

She’s lounging on her bed in a tank
top and shorts. Her feet are propped up on her fluffy pillows, and
her hand hangs off the end while she talks on the phone.
    “I don’t know if I can make it,” she says
with a deep sigh.
    I can’t hear the conversation on the other
end, but she rolls her eyes.
    “I know,” she responds. “But I don’t think I
can do it. I mean, sit there and stare at his casket. It’s not… I
still can’t believe it.”
    I sit next to her on the bed. Her face is
flawless, not red or blotchy, even though her eyes are rimmed in
pink, a telltale sign that she either has been crying, or is about
to. Goodness knows I’ve seen those eyes enough over the last year.
I glance at her nightstand. The large, blue frame that used to hold
a photo of us at the winter formal last year now sits empty. In
typical Kaylee fashion, she’d probably burned it after we had a
fight, using the ashes to put some kind of crazy girlfriend hex on
me. That happened often enough too.
    “Are you going to be there?” she asks, the
ghost of a smile crossing her lips. “I should be there too. I’ve
got to put this whole thing behind me and move on.”
    She hangs up without saying goodbye, tossing
the phone onto the bed beside her.
    I frown. Moving on sounds great. If only I
could do the same.
    “I suppose I’m dead,” I say out loud, as she
flips over onto her stomach. I see for the first time that there’s
a little box on the floor at the end of the bed, full of photos.
She picks one out. It’s a photo she took of me at the beach last
summer.
    “And I know you can’t hear me but… I want to
say I’m sorry.”
    She stares at the photo, oblivious.
    “I mean, I wasn’t a great boyfriend. I know
that. And you… well, let’s face it, you sucked as a girlfriend. But
you were always special to me, I guess.” I rub my eyes. “God, I
suck at this. I guess I just want to say goodbye.”
    As if in response, she grabs the photo by the
corners and tears, ripping my face in half.
    “Goodbye, Logan,” she mutters and tosses the
ripped picture aside.
    ***
    I stand outside the funeral home for a long
time, just watching people gather. There are a lot of people, half
of them I don’t even recognize. Even a small group of local
reporters has gathered.
    Whatdya know? My death might just be the
biggest news story to hit this stupid little town since that year
the feral pig got loose in the supermarket. It’s hard to miss the
headlines plastered all over the local papers. Heck, even the 5
o’clock news ran a feature about me and how a ‘tragic accident had
cut my promising young life all too short’. And people just ate it
up.
    I guess folks love a good tragedy.
    What really bugs me about it is that I can’t
even remember what happened. I close my eyes, reach back in my
mind, and there’s nothing. Just darkness. It feels like having
something just on the tip of your tongue but not being able to get
it out. Basically, it’s a very special kind of hell. The kind where
you get a song stuck in your head but you only know half the words,
or you know there is something you are supposed to be doing but
your schedule is blank.
    I can’t help but wonder what I did to deserve
this.
    I mean, ok. Maybe I wasn’t a ‘good’ guy. Not
like Bruno, or Captain Perfect as I jokingly called him sometimes.
I screwed up all the time, with Kaylee, with my friends, with my
parents. But I always tried to be kind to animals and little kids.
I feel like that should count for something. I mean, so what if I
didn’t recycle? So what if I hosted the occasional kegger while my
parents were out of town? Who cares if I drove too fast and ate too
many bacon double cheeseburgers? So what if I screwed up on the
little things? I never killed anyone, made fun of handicapped
people, cheated on an exam, or stole anything. And those are the
big things, right?
    Ok, so maybe this is my punishment. Maybe
this is what happens when people live a half-assed