his arm around me, pulling me in further. “How do you feel so real?” My breath billows from my mouth like fog.
“Is this too close? Am I making you too cold?”
I don’t answer. I snuggle in even closer to my ice-cube ghostboy and force back the shivers that want to rake my body.
“I don’t know. If I think about being invisible—which I’m not right now—I disappear. If I think about wanting you to see me or wanting to touch things, I appear solid as if I’m still human. It’s like changing the color of my shirt, I had to kind of teach myself, force all the energy into believing it’s not impossible and then it becomes possible.”
“Wow,” I say. “But don’t you sleep? Or are you just constantly here? Where do you go when you disappear into my closet? I know you said you don’t know, but you must go somewhere, right?”
“No sleep. I’m always awake, seeing things. And I do go somewhere. If I let my mind wander, let myself become nothing, I’m in a place. I don’t know where it is, but I don’t think it’s heaven and I’m pretty sure it’s not hell—”
“What’s it like?” I’m eager to understand.
“Well, it’s nothing short of amazing. It always starts out the same, an endless sea of whiteness. A blank canvas until I imagine things filling up the space. Maybe I’ll picture a couch, and it’ll appear, or wish to read a book, and it’ll materialize in my hands. I can make it whatever I want.”
“Why don’t you just stay there? If you can imagine anything in the world, why come back? It sounds perfect.”
Embry shakes his head. “Because it never feels quite right. There’s always a pull, an unseen force that eventually pushes me back to this world. And what good is having everything if you can’t remember what you want, what you like?”
I take a deep breath, fascinated. “It’s like—it’s like you’re in the middle,” I say, thinking about the fact he’s a ghost. It must mean his body and his soul are separated because he’s not fully dead yet. A part of him still lies in that hospital bed. But machines force his heart to beat. So he’s not fully alive either. “I think you’re in a kind of purgatory. Not in heaven and not in hell, but stuck in the middle for some reason.”
He squeezes me tighter. “That actually makes sense...”
I realize two things now. One: I have to figure out how to stop Embry from being stuck in the in-between. And two: I wish I could tell someone about him. Embry could answer so many questions about what happens to people when they die, when they have some sort of unfinished business. Only, I realize I wouldn’t want people interrogating him, taking him away from me . I’m already unsure if I’ll ever actually be able to let him go.
We both lie silently, motionless. I force my body not to shiver, hiding the fact I’m cold. Only eventually I don’t have to. My eyes become heavy and the need for sleep takes over. But even then, in my last waking moment, I hug Embry tighter, not willing to let go for anything.
Chapter Twelve
I dreamt of Embry all night. It wasn’t the ghostboy who had me wrapped up in his bone chilling arms. It was the other one, the real one. We were having a picnic on the beach. Waves lapped gently against sand and rocks. The sky overhead was so clear it was hard to tell where it ended and the water began. He fed strawberries to me, tickling my lips with their sweet taste. He held me close and whispered in my ear, nuzzling my neck. We talked for hours, of stuff I can’t even begin to remember, but it was magical all the same.
Until I woke up.
My dream was nothing like this moment, and the Embry standing before me isn’t kind and gentle.
He’s angry, furious even.
“How could you keep this from me?” he says through gritted teeth, the creased and crumpled papers from the library clutched in his hand. The ink is streaked from getting drenched in my pocket, but the words are apparently still
“Is this too close? Am I making you too cold?”
I don’t answer. I snuggle in even closer to my ice-cube ghostboy and force back the shivers that want to rake my body.
“I don’t know. If I think about being invisible—which I’m not right now—I disappear. If I think about wanting you to see me or wanting to touch things, I appear solid as if I’m still human. It’s like changing the color of my shirt, I had to kind of teach myself, force all the energy into believing it’s not impossible and then it becomes possible.”
“Wow,” I say. “But don’t you sleep? Or are you just constantly here? Where do you go when you disappear into my closet? I know you said you don’t know, but you must go somewhere, right?”
“No sleep. I’m always awake, seeing things. And I do go somewhere. If I let my mind wander, let myself become nothing, I’m in a place. I don’t know where it is, but I don’t think it’s heaven and I’m pretty sure it’s not hell—”
“What’s it like?” I’m eager to understand.
“Well, it’s nothing short of amazing. It always starts out the same, an endless sea of whiteness. A blank canvas until I imagine things filling up the space. Maybe I’ll picture a couch, and it’ll appear, or wish to read a book, and it’ll materialize in my hands. I can make it whatever I want.”
“Why don’t you just stay there? If you can imagine anything in the world, why come back? It sounds perfect.”
Embry shakes his head. “Because it never feels quite right. There’s always a pull, an unseen force that eventually pushes me back to this world. And what good is having everything if you can’t remember what you want, what you like?”
I take a deep breath, fascinated. “It’s like—it’s like you’re in the middle,” I say, thinking about the fact he’s a ghost. It must mean his body and his soul are separated because he’s not fully dead yet. A part of him still lies in that hospital bed. But machines force his heart to beat. So he’s not fully alive either. “I think you’re in a kind of purgatory. Not in heaven and not in hell, but stuck in the middle for some reason.”
He squeezes me tighter. “That actually makes sense...”
I realize two things now. One: I have to figure out how to stop Embry from being stuck in the in-between. And two: I wish I could tell someone about him. Embry could answer so many questions about what happens to people when they die, when they have some sort of unfinished business. Only, I realize I wouldn’t want people interrogating him, taking him away from me . I’m already unsure if I’ll ever actually be able to let him go.
We both lie silently, motionless. I force my body not to shiver, hiding the fact I’m cold. Only eventually I don’t have to. My eyes become heavy and the need for sleep takes over. But even then, in my last waking moment, I hug Embry tighter, not willing to let go for anything.
Chapter Twelve
I dreamt of Embry all night. It wasn’t the ghostboy who had me wrapped up in his bone chilling arms. It was the other one, the real one. We were having a picnic on the beach. Waves lapped gently against sand and rocks. The sky overhead was so clear it was hard to tell where it ended and the water began. He fed strawberries to me, tickling my lips with their sweet taste. He held me close and whispered in my ear, nuzzling my neck. We talked for hours, of stuff I can’t even begin to remember, but it was magical all the same.
Until I woke up.
My dream was nothing like this moment, and the Embry standing before me isn’t kind and gentle.
He’s angry, furious even.
“How could you keep this from me?” he says through gritted teeth, the creased and crumpled papers from the library clutched in his hand. The ink is streaked from getting drenched in my pocket, but the words are apparently still
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