Giving Up the Ghost (6 page)

Even with these limited expectations, Timmy wasn’t really up to the task. He even had me break up with Laura on his behalf. It had been a crisp spring morning in front of Walter C. Crenshaw Junior High School.

“Hey, Patterson,” I yelled as I walked past her before school one morning. “I just talked to your boyfriend Timmy yesterday.”

“Oh yeah?” she replied.

“Yeah … See, that’s the thing … He said he doesn’t want to go with you anymore.”

Laura looked like a tomboyish pixie: short hair, small features, and big dark eyes. At that moment, she looked like a tomboyish pixie who was about to cry.

“It’s no big deal,” I consoled her. “He really didn’t like you that much anyhow.”

It seemed like a comforting thing to say at the time.

She ran away and didn’t speak to me for a year or so.

We ended up at the same high school and exchanged occasional hallway greetings, which sometimes had a tendency to linger for a bit. We’d catch each other’s glance at pep rallies or assemblies. However, I didn’t make much of an effort to get to know her until she started dating this guy named James, who I really hated.

Some friends and I had pulled off an amazing prank against our assistant principal, which I won’t discuss here because of Ohio’s liberal statute of limitations. James and his friends spread rumors that
they
had been the real perps. I figured the best way to get him back was to flirt openly with his new girlfriend.

Laura and I had study hall at the same time. This was the perfect opportunity to make my move. By this time Laura had grown into the perfect little fresh-faced A student. She wore cute sweaters, Docksiders, and peg-legged jeans.

After we started talking at study hall, I was surprised at how witty she was. Previously, she’d come across as quiet, almost painfully shy. But the more time I spent around her, the more brightness emerged. She was funnier than me (not a high mark, but I was still impressed), she was way smarter (again, not a tough standard), she knew more about music and books than I did (which really got to me), and she had a comeback
for every smart remark I volleyed in her direction. Eventually we were sitting together every day and talking about everything: politics, religion, the twisted imbecile logic of people, whatever. James was pissed, but that stopped being the point, and he’d soon be out of the picture anyhow.

I never seriously thought of her as anyone I would date or see outside of school; she was just someone fun to pass time with. The summer after her sophomore year she left to spend her junior year abroad, and since I knew I’d graduate before she got back, I figured that was the end of it. There are times when injecting even the smallest amount of separation into a friendship makes reconnecting uncomfortable.

I fumbled with the phone to buy a second or two to think of something to say.

“So how was …”

“Finland?” she replied.

“Yeah, how was Finland?”

“Finland was fine,” she said. “I spent a lot of time traveling. I visited eleven countries.”

“Eleven, huh?” I said, trying not to sound impressed. Outside of one summer in Jamaica and a trip to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, I’d never been outside the United States. I hadn’t even visited my fifth state yet.

“In Europe they have tons of music festivals, so I saw a lot of bands. Incredible bands.”

While I was drinking, masturbating, and being haunted by the Little Girl, Laura was widening her lead on cool music. I needed to instantly juice my cred.

“Yeah, well, I’m in a band now.”

This, technically, was not a lie. Jimmy and I had put an ad in the local record store looking for bandmates. Despite a list of “influences” that clearly set out that we were destined for punk-rock greatness, the only calls we’d gotten were from heavy-metal wannabes. What we wanted were punk-rock wannabes, but we were patient.

“Oh really? What’s it called?”

“Ritzo Forte.”

“Really?”

“
Forte
means loud,” I explained. Having been to eleven European countries, I assumed she would know that. “
Ritzo
just sounds good with
forte
.”

“So, when you aren’t rocking out, what do you do with yourself?”

“Now that school is over?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I have a shit job as a janitor at T.J. Maxx.”

“Is it really a shit job? Do you have to clean up shit?”

I could hear some giggling in the background from Cassandra and no doubt some other girls who had egged Laura into talking to me in the first place.

“Actually, I do. The other day I got a call from the women’s
fitting room. A woman had gone into the back stall and, well, you know.”

“And you had to clean it up?”

“Well, first I went into the actual bathroom, which was twenty yards away, if she had even asked, and threw up. Then I went back and cleaned it up.”

“Do they pay you extra for that?”

“What? For cleaning up human waste in a fitting room or because I puked?”

“No, the cleaning.”

“No, that’s included in the $3.35 an hour they pay me.”

After a few more minutes of back and forth, we decided to get together the next afternoon. I was given some very clear instructions about picking her up. I was to drive to her parents’ house and wait. I was not to get out of the car, approach the house, or knock on the door—just show up when I was supposed to and sit there.

I got there a little early. Laura’s house was small—really small—maybe three or four rooms. Even if the attic had been finished, I couldn’t quite get my head around how Laura, her two parents, and her two brothers could fit into that space. Her house sat in a neighborhood that looked like it had been built all at once during the 1950s. The homes had rarely been updated since. There wasn’t a lot of landscaping or trees. In our study-hall conversations before she went to Finland, it was obvious that Laura cared about her family, but she equally went out of her way to avoid talking about them. She only shared what she wanted to share, which was little. Her mom was a social worker and her dad did some kind of construction work that often had him away from home for long stretches. I also knew that she had a large extended family that had lived in the area for generations. But even that took some prodding.

I also knew Laura had gone to a special grade school for gifted students. The gifted kids came from two extremes of the spectrum: affluent families, who expected their kids to excel, and poor families, where the kids stuck out so much that they ended up in the gifted program. To kids like Laura, the program was a way out, not an expectation.

I put the seat back and shoved a tape into the deck: The Smiths,
Meat Is Murder
. It seemed like a good choice to demonstrate my coolness. I found three warm beers in the backseat and started on one. I’d begun to doze off when I heard the door open quickly and slam shut. I looked over and was shocked out of my light buzz by this smiling thing in my passenger seat.

Her hair was jet black, lying dead flat in some areas, wildly askew in others. It was cut to different lengths, looking like she had trimmed it herself without a mirror (which, I’d soon learn, was the truth). It hung over her face, completely covering one of her eyes, which were underscored with thick black eyeliner. She wore a ratty white T-shirt that had things written on it in Magic Marker that I couldn’t read, despite a preponderance of exclamation marks next to the words. Her black jeans looked like they’d been put through a tree mulcher, then taped and pinned back together. But she still wore the Docksiders I remembered her for.

She looked as if someone had brined her in a vat of punk rock, then forgotten to rinse her off afterward. It was a metamorphosis. I didn’t want her to know how mesmerized I was.

“Looks like you had an interesting year” was the only thing I could think to say.

“What makes you think so?”

“Come on,” I challenged. “Who are you? I mean, I almost thought you were a homeless person about to steal my car.”

“I’m just me. Maybe you never noticed before.”

“Fine. Where are we going?” I asked.

“Wherever.”

“That’s very helpful.”

“Why don’t we go someplace you want to go?” she offered.

We rolled down the windows and started off. We just drove.

Once we pulled away from the curb, I can’t remember a single word we said to each other for the rest of the day. I don’t even remember enough to reconstruct what might have been said. Even if I could remember, how do you describe a moment like that? A moment that simply stuns you. A moment when everything seems to suddenly freeze and explode. Perhaps you just discovered the best friend you’ll ever have, or perhaps you just fell in love, or perhaps everything you thought you knew suddenly changed.

We left her house as minor-league acquaintances and returned several hours later as best friends. Even though I remember a lot of other times with her, that day has been put somewhere where I’m not allowed to access it. It’s like my memory wanted me to simply keep a few images of that day and that’s all.

I remember that it was sunny and warm and the sky was blue.

I remember her hair flapping in the wind.

I remember noticing, for the first time, that she had very small teeth.

I remember that the roar through all the windows meant we had to yell our entire conversation.

I remember that I kept making jokes and she laughed a lot.

I remember that she’d always try to push her hair behind her ears whenever she was about to make a point.

I remember fumbling a lot with the tape player.

I remember that she punched my arm at least three times for making smartass comments.

I remember that I didn’t think once about getting high or about the Little Girl in a Blue Dress.

I remember that when I dropped her off at home, we exchanged tapes. She gave me a dub of Killing Joke’s
Fire Dances
, and I gave her my copy of Brian Eno’s
Music for Airports
.

I remember knowing, even then, that I’d remember that day for the rest of my life.

“Eric?”

“What?”

“Spider.”

Giggling.

What if others could see you for what you really are? Not what you think you are. Not how others perceive you. Not what you want to be. But the truth.

The dead can do that. I believed it as a child, and I still believe it now. Whenever I’m asked to explain what about ghosts makes me so afraid, I always point to
A Christmas Carol
. I have a very Dickensian view of the dead. I believe the dead see clearly—they know the truth of our past, present, and future. I think that when we die, all our questions are answered and all mysteries are revealed. If you believe that ghosts are dead souls trapped here for various unknown reasons, that means a ghost knows all. A ghost may know more about you than you do.

“Michael?”

“What?”

“Spider.”

More giggling.

Like any kid, I spent my early childhood desperately wanting to fit in, but I really didn’t have a lot to build on. Some kids dressed funny, acted like geeks, had crooked teeth, sucked at athletics, weren’t popular, wore glasses, were generally awkward, or did poorly in class. I was a perfect storm of all these, a tsunami of dork. Early on, I resigned myself to being “the weird kid”—a mantle that, while not ideal, gave me some kind of anchor in the world, a place, a role to fill.

In many ways, I grew up a pretty typical kid. Specifically, a pretty typical boy. Young boys are creatures of intense, loyal, and deep passion. When I was a young child, I was passionate about exactly four things: the TV series
The Six Million Dollar Man
, Kiss,
Star Wars
, and writing to elected officials.

To the other kids at school, I was just a fairly unremarkable kid who was occasionally funny but did and said a lot of weird stuff. Even though I loved to learn, school ended up becoming a bum deal for me before I’d even hit the third grade, squeaking by with just enough C’s to keep from being held back. Whenever I was interested in or curious about something, I had an ability to quickly learn and absorb everything about it. The problem was, I was rarely interested in or curious about my classmates or the things they were learning in school. So I’d sneak my way into drawing or writing or daydreaming—or phase out entirely.