Summary: I didn’t ask to be haunted, but these kinds of things are hard to control.
Joel was still there when I got home.
“You’re not leaving?” I said, putting my suitcase down, and Joel said, “Nope.” He grinned, which was familiar but still kind of creepy, considering it was familiar.
I sighed and crossed my arms and looked him up and down. Joel was sitting on the couch–well he wasn’t actually sitting, but it definitely looked like it.
“Are you just going to stay with me for the rest of my life?” I asked. “Or are you doing this by choice? ‘Cause you should let me know now, before I call the Catholics.”
“What are the Catholics gonna do about it?” Joel looked amused. “And I’d say for the rest of your life, but you know me, so. It’s by choice.”
“That’s it,” I said. “Get out.”
*
Obviously I couldn’t actually kick Joel out, but I could start praying and see his silhouette drift away.
“Wilson! You can’t do this!” he said as wind started inexplicably howling around my living room, even though it was perfectly calm outside. “Wil, you gotta listen to me if–if you pray a ghost away, it gets stuck in limbo!”
I stopped and he caught his breath and said, “Thanks.”
“Only because of Inception so I kind of understand what limbo is, in a heaven-and-hell sense,” I said. “It’d suck.”
“Yeah,” said Joel.
“How’d you know about the ghost praying thing?”
“I grew up Catholic.”
He’d gone back to sitting on the couch and watching TV, where reruns of Friends were playing.
After a moment, I asked, “How’d it feel?”
Joel snorted. “You know how it felt.”
“I know, but–actually dying?”
“Can’t say.” Joel shrugged. “It was more of an in-my-mind thing. Once I was conscious again–well, I don’t think it counts as conscious–I was dead. It just happened.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Just like that.”
*
A few days passed with Joel just floating around my apartment while I continued on with my daily life, still on hospital leave time. It wasn’t too different from before, because before the accident and when Joel was alive, he’d always come over and lounge around anyways. I started forgetting that I’d ever missed him.
One day when I came from the kitchen after making lunch, he wasn’t watching TV like usual. (I’d turn it on for him every morning.) “Joel?” I called, placing the food on the table.
“In here!” floated his voice, because apparently that was how ghost voices worked.
“In where? I can’t tell anything by the sound of that!” I said.
“Your room!”
I rolled my eyes. Fucking opportunist, going through my things while I wasn’t looking.
He was in my closet, staring at a pile of old porno mags I’d had while I was in college and was too sentimental to throw them away. Joel looked wistful, but said, “You haven’t gotten rid of these yet?”
“You know me,” I chuckled, and then picked one up. I flipped through it. Thank god for the internet.
“Can you even get ghost boners?” I asked him.
Joel shook his head.
“That’s the thing,” he said. “I’m a ghost, I’m not even remotely–attracted to these, or anything.”
“It’s okay.” I pat his ghostly crotch area, and he gave me a funny look. “Y’don’t need sex, right?”
“Coming from you,” he grumbled, but started drifting toward the doorway.
“Hey,” I said defensively. “I’ll have you know that I haven’t slept with anyone for a month–”
“–what a record–”
“–since I was discharged from the hospital, okay?”
Joel stopped.
He floated back into the living room and didn’t say anything all afternoon.
*
That night, while I struggled to sleep, I saw a shimmer through the wall and entered my room.
“Hey,” I said sleepily. “That’s actually kind of cool-looking.”
Joel perched on my bed. “You know why I’m here, right?” he said. “Like, as a ghost.”
“Some Harry Potter shit, right? You’re too attached to the earth, or something?”
Joel tried to tickle my foot, but obviously it didn’t work. I thought I might’ve felt something, though, but maybe that was just my imagination.
“Yeah, too attached to something,” he said. “Or someone.” He looked at me again.
I was quiet. Then:
“I miss you too,” I said. “And when the doctors told me that they could wake me up, but not you, I–”
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. The feeling was back in my stomach, like I was dropping, and I wanted to throw up. I didn’t though; I shoved it down, like always.
“But I’m really glad you’re here now,” I said. “Like, really glad. Even if you are some supernatural being, or something.”
“A ghost.” Joel looked amused.
“Right,” I said, and attempted to kick him in the face. My foot went through and he laughed.
“Wilson,” he said, when I put my foot down. “You don’t–like, you don’t mind, do you? This actually isn’t bothering you? Because–”
“‘Cause if it is, what? I don’t think you’ll leave,” I said, and sat up in bed. Who needed sleep, anyways? (Joel, that was the answer.) “It’s based on your feelings, man. But if it helps, yeah, no, I don’t mind.”
“Good, ’cause I think I’ll be haunting you for the rest of eternity,” he said, and I threw a pillow right through him.
“You’re a dick,” I said, and he laughed.
*
Eternity wouldn’t be too terrible though. “What if I died, though?” I asked the next morning, during breakfast.
It would’ve been a non sequitr, since neither of us had been talking, but I doubted that he forgot our conversation just several hours ago, considering he hadn’t been the one asleep between then and now.
Joel shrugged. “Think I might die with you then.”
“Do you want me to die now?” I said.
Joel stood up from his chair so the table cut through his body. I briefly wondered if his calves hurt from fake sitting for so long when I remembered that he probably couldn’t even feel it.
“I don’t mean that I will,” I added hurriedly. “I mean. Do you want me to die?”
“Of course not!” Joel looked horrified at the aspect, which comforted me a little. “Why—”
“I mean, you’d leave, I’d leave.” I shrugged and got another piece of toast. “We’d be in the same place. Together and happy and shit.”
“We can be like that now,” Joel said.
*
I think Joel was trying to give me time to adjust to his presence. Which was thoughtful and all but I was mostly, okay. I think.
“You’re coming with me to work today?” I said, two weeks after I’d come back.
Joel hadn’t stopped trailing after me and had floated right through when I closed my apartment door. He shrugged.
“Well we should see if other people can see me,” he said. “You’re the only person who’s seen me so far.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “But didn’t you, erm, pass people or—something like—?”
“Nah, just appeared here.” He shrugged his ghostly shoulders. He was wearing a hoodie and a pair of jeans like usual. That was all he ever wore when he was still a human. “Haven’t left, either. You should probably turn the tv off, actually,” he added, nodding to my door.
“Right,” I said, and went back in and did that. I walked back outside where Joel was and locked the door.
“You’re just letting me come with you?” said Joel, looking surprised. “You were less pushy that summer when I wanted to come to Congo with you for your business trip.”
“And thank god you didn’t, you would’ve just gone to gay bars and try to get me to come with you.” I rolled my eyes. “But I can’t really do anything about anything you do now, can I?” I pointedly put my hand through his shoulder.
Joel looked down at it. “True,” he said.
*
There were nervous jitters in my chest because of Joel. We walked down the hall, but no one came outside. We went into the elevator, but it didn’t stop at any of the floors. The lobby was completely empty.
I was sure that the world was conspiring against me. Or for me, whatever.
At least, until we went outside and I headed to my car in the parking garage. There was a kid and his mom there, and the kid looked at me and then did a double-take, and then, tugging at his mom’s sleeve, shouted, “Mommy, do you see that?”
He pointed at Joel.
His mom looked, and then she did a double-take too.
“Oh shit,” said Joel. “I guess other people can see me.”
“There’s nothing in the ghost rules that say they can’t. You’re not my personal ghost,” I hissed. I probably looked ridiculous, talking to a clearly visible silhouette, wearing my nice trousers and white button-up, and holding my suitcase.
“Well no one ever told me the ghost rules,” Joel hissed back, which really was pointless because now the kid and his mom were staring at us like we were absolute freaks. “I just died and then white and then your apartment and—well, yeah.”
“Um, sir,” called the mom. “Who—Who are you talking to?”
I gave her a nervous laugh and Joel sort of waved. I tried to hit his hand down but—well, obviously, it didn’t work.
“Nobody,” I replied quickly. “No one, I’m just—talking to myself—”
“Are you really trying to cover me up?” said Joel. “They can see me—”
“Get in the goddamn car.”
*
I solved the issue by convincing the mother that I was just talking to myself and that Joel had only been a weird ray of sunlight. Joel hid in the shadows of my car, then; I kept trying to give him dirty glares while I talked to her, until after twenty minutes she was convinced.
The kid still thought that he’d seen a ghost, but predictably his mother didn’t really care.
“You are not going out in public again,” I said, once they’d left the parking garage. I was speaking quietly in case anyone heard me again.
“Oh, but,” said Joel. “Look at me, Wil!”
I stared into my car windows. I couldn’t see anything very well.
“What?”
“Exactly!” said Joel excitedly. “Look, I think it’s like—a ghost power, or something, I can make myself invisible if I just think about it!”
“Jesus,” I said, falling forward against my car door.
*
“Touching,” his voice whispered into my ear as I slipped into my cubicle. “You’ve added more pictures of me.”
“Well,” I murmured out of the side of my mouth—this really did feel like Harry Potter things, like with the Invisibility Cloak and all. “That was right after your funeral, and people gave me, and it wasn’t like I didn’t—”
“You okay in there, Knight?” My boss popped his head in.
“I’m fine, I just,” I said, and glanced over my shoulder to make sure that Joel still wasn’t there. Well, he was really still—right.
“I know it’s not easy getting over a lost loved one,” said my boss sympathetically. He’d been saying the same thing for the past month. I shifted on my feet. “But you can let out all that sadness into your work, right?”
My boss was also a freak. “Right,” I said, and he nodded and went back out.
“Thank god you never introduced him to me,” said Joel. I would’ve jumped out of my seat if I wasn’t glaring at the spot where my boss had been.
“You hate Hallmark, anyway,” I pointed out, before getting to work.
*
Joel was annoying and talked the whole time, despite being invisible, so it was like having a disembodied voice whispering sidelong commentary the whole day. Or like listening to music with headphones, except with the headphones part, and without the music.
When we got home, I watched with narrowed eyes as he rematerialized. “Happy with tormenting me all day?” I asked.
“Very,” said Joel. He floated over to the couch. “Put Friends on again. I love hating Ross.”
I did as he asked. He was sitting, so I sat next to him. We watched a few episodes together.
“Maybe you have some earthly business left to do,” I said, during a commercial break. “Maybe you’re supposed to like, haunt until your soul is appeased.”
Joel hummed thoughtfully. “That sounds ideal,” he said. “What do you think my business is?”
I shrugged. “Business with me? Since you’re haunting me and all.”
“I guess,” said Joel. He turned back to the television.
I watched him, for a second.
“What do you think happened to Darren?” I asked.
It had always been hard to glean emotions from Joel’s face. It was even harder when his face now wavered somewhere between corporeal and opaque. I wasn’t sure if he knew about it.
“What do you think?” he said.
*
I made dinner for myself. I ate and showered and read and said goodnight to Joel. I went to sleep.
It was the weekend. I could’ve gone out to a club but I didn’t. Despite my bandages and injuries I didn’t actually look that bad. I was pretty sure girls would call it sexy. Girls like that kind of thing.
The idea of sex made my stomach turn. In the morning I jerked off and let the jizz cool on my stomach.
I took another shower.
Joel was leaned back on the couch, neck tipped over the top edge, vulnerable and exposed. His eyes were closed.
They opened when I walked into the room.
“Hey,” he greeted. “Whatcha gonna make for breakfast?”
“Oatmeal,” I answered.
He snorted. He didn’t follow me, but his voice was loud enough for me to hear in the kitchen. “Man, I’m glad I don’t have to suffer through that anymore.”
I cooked my oatmeal. When he was alive, Joel would mourn the fact that I was not a Cereal Person (as coined by him) and said that oatmeal was an inferior brand of soggy cereal. I would roll my eyes and flick a raisin at him.
I came back out with my bowl of oatmeal and sat next to him on the couch. “Were there any good horror commercials?” I asked. I used to stay up, too, because I liked that a lot of channels saved their scariest commercials for horror movies at night. My body was too tired for that now.
“The only horror movie in this world,” Joel said dramatically, “is life itself.”
I laughed and threw a raisin at him. It went through him.
*
Selena sent me her condolences about what happened to Joel and Darren. And myself.
“Thanks,” I said into the phone, though there wasn’t much to thank her about.
“You still talk to Selena?” Joel sounded incredulous. He was reading one of my books. I flipped the pages for him every so often.
I rolled my eyes at him as Selena said, “You knew them for a long time, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“That must really suck,” she said.
“It does.”
“Wow,” Joel commented from the side. “No wonder you guys broke up.”
“Well,” said Selena. “I hope you, um, feel better soon.”
“I feel fine,” I said.
She laughed, a little. “Bye Wilson,” she said, before I heard the telltale sound of a dial tone.
I closed my phone and sighed.
Joel didn’t look up, but he said, “You knew Darren longer.” He was still reading the book—or he wasn’t reading at all. I could believe that.
“I know,” I said, annoyed.
He looked up this time. “Why didn’t you correct her?” he asked.
I shrugged. There wasn’t much difference if you knew a guy since college compared to if you knew a guy since high school, in the grander scheme of things. Darren played lacrosse with me, moved in with me after four years, and now he was dead.
Joel grumbled, “She always told me my hair didn’t make any sense,” and I laughed.
*
One day I got into my car and had a panic attack. I called in sick and lay in bed. Joel stayed in the living room when we went back upstairs.
The next day I started to take the bus.
“I know I don’t have a libido anymore,” said Joel, from where he was sitting next to me even though a kid was sitting where he was, too, and shivering inside his body, “but damn that guy is fine.”
He was staring at some man sitting across from us. I glanced at him inconspicuously, and rolled my eyes.
“Hey,” I said, tapping on the girl sitting in Joel. She jumped. “Are you cold?”
She looked up at me and nodded.
“Last time I checked, you hated kids,” said Joel.
“There’s a seat over there next to the heater,” I told her.
The girl mumbled a thank you to me before running off.
“Oh, I see,” said Joel. “But you won’t try to pick up the hot guy for me?”
I rolled my eyes again.
*
The bus made things easier, and harder. I got less anxious about coming into work late and more anxious about missing the bus. If I missed one ride I’d just wait for a half an hour for the next one. I would come into work a half an hour late. I put up more photos in my office, though, so no one bothered me about it.
“Hey,” Joel said, suddenly. It was the weekend, again, and I was doing some work at my dining table. He was trying to turn a page of my old porn even though he didn’t swing that way. The magazine pages made little ripples, but I couldn’t feel the air from where I was typing.
“Remember the look on your face when you first saw me?” he said, and then cracked up.
I stared at him. “I don’t really know what my face looked like in that moment.” I could remember how I felt, though. Shocked. Displaced. Dissociative.
“It was hilarious,” Joel said, wheezing. “I mean, okay, you had tubes all over your body and you looked awful as shit, but your eyes got so big I was afraid they were gonna need to do some more surgery on you.”
“That would’ve been a waste of money,” I said.
I checked my email. “Hey,” I said. “Your sister emailed me saying she has some of my stuff from your apartment to mail to me.”
Joel picked himself up from his chair and walked over to me. He didn’t make any noise. “I didn’t have any of your stuff at my apartment.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you stole my shit and had a box of it,” I said.
“Probable,” said Joel. “I definitely had your Call of Duty.”
“What? I’d been looking for that for years—”
“And Mario Kart,” he added thoughtfully.
“You didn’t tell me you took that! I thought I lost it!”
“Well you didn’t.”
“I’ve been Mario Kart depraved because of you—” I wrung my hands, uselessly. “I wish I could kill you,” I said, seriously.
“Too bad you can’t,” Joel said cheerfully.
*
I got cornflakes, for Joel’s sake. Earl visited me the next week to make sure I didn’t, like, kill myself. I didn’t. He looked at the cornflakes suspiciously when he came into the kitchen, though.
“You hate cereal,” he told me.
I shrugged. I knew that. “Joel doesn’t,” I said.
Earl stared at me, and then shook his head. “When’s your next therapist appointment?” he asked, pouring himself a bowl. The box had been unopened before he’d eaten it.
I stared at him. “Therapist appointment?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Earl. “Mom’s worried, said you won’t answer her emails or calls or anything—”
“I wasn’t aware she knew how to operate technology.”
“Wilson.” Earl fixed me with a look.
“I’m not seeing a therapist,” I told him.
He was surprised. He stirred his cornflakes. “You’re not?”
“I don’t need one,” I said. “I’m fine.”
Earl pointed to his cereal. “I don’t think you are.”
I shrugged and stole a cornflake. I nearly gagged on it. It was gross. In my ear, Joel laughed.
“When’s the last time you got laid?” Earl asked, because one time he’d fucked a girl and got mad when she thought of me during it and moaned out my name. I never wanted to know, but he told me out of revenge. He told me he hated having a twin brother. I echoed the sentiment.
“A while ago,” I answered.
“In the past few months?” he asked.
“My back hurts,” I said. It didn’t. It was an excuse.
“If your back hurts you should be in physical therapy still,” he said to me. “You should be in therapy, period. I can’t even tell what part of the five stages of grief you’re in.”
“There are five stages?” I said, disbelieving. “It’s grief, I’m pretty sure that’s just a stage on its own.”
“You should see a therapist,” he told me.
*
When he was gone, I turned to Joel and rolled my eyes. “Can you believe him?” I said. “Therapy.”
“Marine biology.” Joel was picking at his unaffected nails. “Are we naming things I used to want to study?”
“You wanted to study therapy?”
“I was twelve, my best friend’s rabbit died,” Joel explained. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea.”
“Therapy,” I repeated.
*
Work was fine. I was in the copyediting department because that was the sort of thing I was good at. Joel mostly lurked in my cubicle and tried to spin my chair while I was sitting in it. Once I didn’t notice until my foot was beginning to run into the trashcan.
Today I didn’t notice until the stapler was right next to my elbow.
“You’re getting better at this ghost thing,” I whispered.
“Right?” said Joel’s disembodied voice. “Want me to spill Laura’s coffee?”
“Please.”
A couple of minutes later I heard a shriek from the cubicle next to me. I chuckled. Laura kept sending me get well soon cards meant for like, the flu and mono and shit. It was annoying.
I looked up the five stages of grief. They made sense, if I cared, but I didn’t. Grief was grief. I glanced at a photo of me and Joel on the wall. Then I looked at the stand-up photo of me and Darren. It was the day after graduation and we’d gone fishing.
Something hit my elbow.
My tape dispenser had mysteriously moved from next to my pencil holder to beside my arm. “You must be really bored,” I whispered as I put it back.
“Laura started stripping in the women’s room,” Joel muttered. “It wasn’t exciting.”
“If I was a ghost I’d sneak into the ladies’ room all the time,” I said.
Laura passed me then. She gave me a funny look, but when I met her eye, it eclipsed into something more pitiful.
I snorted and switched screens on my computer.
“Being a gay ghost is boring,” Joel mourned in my ear.
*
“Who do you miss more?” Joel asked. “Me or Darren?”
It was the middle of the night. He’d floated into my room, because the door was still closed and he wouldn’t have been able to open it and walk through the doorway anyway. I was half-asleep and getting ready to be completely asleep.
“What kind of question is that?” I mumbled, rubbing my face.
Joel just looked at me.
“Darren, duh,” I said.
Joel floated back out without another word.
*
A box labeled WILSON’S appeared on my front door shortly afterward. I could recognize it as Joel’s handwriting; he was probably the only guy in the world whose natural impulse was to write in cursive in all seriousness. Well, used to be. There wasn’t any guy in the world who would do that now.
Joel blanched when I brought the box into the living room. That was quite a feat, considering he was already pretty pale before.
“Where’d you get that?” he demanded.
I shrugged. “Must be the box your sister emailed me about,” I said.
Joel glanced at it, and then at me.
“You should definitely not open it,” he said.
“Uh. Why?”
“I don’t want you to,” said Joel. “Shouldn’t that be a thing you should do, you know, honor the wishes of the dead?”
“Kind of fucked up that you’re guilting me like that.”
Joel said, “Please,” and I didn’t know why. But Joel was, you know, Joel. The last time I’d seen him feel this strongly was when Game of Thrones was on at the same time as Firefly and he told me to not waste my time with HBO and watch Firefly instead. It was a pretty good choice.
Television shows weren’t really indicative of Joel’s decisions, but I did want to honor the wishes of the dead. Darren never liked cereal much.
“Alright,” I said, and put the box away.
*
Laura never asked me out, but Priscilla from marketing did. Priscilla was tall and pretty. Joel said that her heels looked like they could stab someone’s eye out, but I found that attractive, so I said yes.
“You should stay home while I’m out,” I said, looking in the mirror. I adjusted my tie.
“Can’t.” Joel was sprawled horizontal on my bed.
I glanced at him through the mirror. “Why not?”
“Haunting, remember?”
I turned around. I was wearing the green button up that had gotten my first date with Selena.
“I thought you were just, you know, haunting the earth.”
“I am,” said Joel. “But since you’re my fixture of haunt—” he made a vague gesture.
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t really get an instruction manual when I died.”
I sighed and looked into the mirror again. “Maybe I should call this off,” I said.
“Don’t,” said Joel. “And wear that shirt.”
*
“You both have horrible taste in appetizers,” said Joel, when Priscilla and I agreed on the spinach dip.
“Why would you want to work for a company that’s basically capitalizing on your emotions?” said Joel, when Priscilla and I discussed why we wanted to work for Hallmark in the first place. “That’s consumerism at its finest.”
“Straight people are gross,” said Joel, when I kissed Priscilla on the cheek goodnight.
“I’m glad you decided not to sleep with her,” said Joel as I closed the door and began to unbutton my jacket. “Her cheekbones were terrifying.”
“I think you’re just scared of her,” I said.
“Yeah, because she has shoes that could be a weapon and has a face that could be a weapon. She’s like a walking gun.”
“She’s not a walking gun,” I said. I laughed, anyway.
“I said like. It’s a simile.”
“Thank you, English major.” I stripped out of my clothes and rifled through my sleep clothes. The first time Joel had crashed in my apartment when he was still alive, I’d started wearing t-shirts and sweatpants to sleep instead of just an undershirt and boxers. It was a habit I’d gotten used to.
Joel was watching me, but probably because my boxers had raccoons on them.
“Are you gonna go out with her again?” he asked.
“Probably not.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t feel like we clicked,” I said.
Joel snickered. “Did you seriously try to apply your emotions to picking up a chick?”
It hadn’t felt like I did. Or that I had any, all night. It was hard to describe. The thought of sex was tiring.
I shrugged. “Sure,” I said.
*
I had annoying dreams. They ranged from remembering when Joel was talking to me while I felt like I was on my deathbed, telling me how terrible I looked and what he thought of the Spanish soap operas that played on the hospital television. Surprisingly he came to enjoy them.
The other dreams were about on-coming trucks, and feeling useless from the backseat, and watching airbags blow up and then nothing and nothing dripping with blood.
I usually let them happen, because I watched horror movies, so I’d seen worse. This one night I woke up in a cold sweat and shot up in bed.
Joel wasn’t there, and then he was.
“What are you—” I started.
“You shouted,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. That was embarrassing. “Sorry. Nightmare.”
Joel nodded. “Are you okay?” he asked.
I breathed and pinched myself and felt dumb. Joel had clung to a pillow once while we watched The Shining. I’d commented on the acting.
“I can stay here for the night,” Joel offered.
I lay back down in bed and let the blankets settle over me. I couldn’t hear anything, but something cold settled next to me. I turned around to see Joel resting against the headboard, sitting upright.
“Thanks,” I said.
“If you get nightmares about me being in your bed, let me know,” he joked.
I didn’t get any nightmares.
*
“Am I ever going to be allowed to open your box?” I asked. “Though I guess technically it’s mine, since it has my name on it.”
Joel looked uncomfortable. I wasn’t aware that that was a word I’d ever actually use to describe him.
“Maybe?” he said, like he was guessing.
“What do you mean, maybe? It’s a yes or no question. I said ever.”
“Maybe.” Joel sounded more definite this time.
I threw a couch pillow at him. He shimmered a little as it went through his body.
“That’s not an answer,” I said.
“I mean,” said Joel. “I don’t want to tell you no because that just means you’ll open it right away.”
“Yep,” I said.
“And if I said yes—well, then you’ll open it right away then, too.”
“Yep,” I said again.
Joel shrugged. “The honest answer? No.”
“Alright then,” I said cheerfully, and then went to the hallway to grab it from the closet.
Joel shifted from foot to foot as I brought it into the living room. “I shouldn’t have put your name on it,” he said to me.
“Why?” I asked, opening the flaps.
He didn’t answer. I didn’t need him to.
Inside was like a treasure trove of cards. I recognized most of them; I’d signed most of them, scribbled tiny little messages about best roommate ever, dude and drawn curly-haired nerds watching TV. Before the cards, when we were still broke freshman kids, it was just printer paper and makeshift cards and really terrible poetry. Poetry was kind of a loose term. They rhymed, though.
“Oh,” I said, staring at the box’s contents.
Joel didn’t say anything.
“Right,” I said. “Well I guess this makes sense.”
“I’m gonna go,” said Joel.
He disappeared.
*
I didn’t see him for days. I brushed my teeth and flossed (because if I was going to be paranoid about my safety I might as well be paranoid for my teeth too) and showered and went to bed. I woke up and brushed my teeth again and dressed and ate breakfast.
Where did ghosts go? I’d assumed until now that Joel had hung around because he had to, not because he wanted to. Though it did kind of fit in with the, you know, having literally every message I wrote to him for birthdays and Hanukkahs and New Years and the time he got his appendix taken out and the other time he was so ill that he didn’t show up in my apartment for two whole weeks. I’d actually thought he was dead then.
It must’ve been a week since I opened the box. I ran my thumb along a picture frame of Joel and Darren, from my desk—it was when I’d introduced them for the first time and Joel had joked about me replacing him as a roommate, even though he and Darren had more fun on the rollercoasters together than I did that day. They’d gotten along well.
My boss appeared in the doorway. “Wilson,” he said, and his voice was weirdly snappish. “Get out.”
Bewildered, I spun to him. The photo was still in my hands. “What?”
“You’re emo and you’re not putting it into your work,” my boss said. “I’m giving you the day off. Probably the whole month.”
“What?” I said, again.
“I’m not a psychiatrist,” said my boss, “but you are obviously depressed.”
I stared at him.
“You’re not a psychiatrist,” I said.
“Obviously depressed,” he said.
“I don’t need to—”
“It’s either that or you’re fired,” he told me.
People were watching. I stared at him for a pregnant second, and then said, “Fine.” I gathered up my briefcase and my jacket and shouldered my way past him.
“Am I firing you or not?” he called.
I didn’t answer.
*
When I got home I slammed the door shut. I was breathing heavily. As soon as it registered that I was home and alone, my eyes blurred. I thought I was angry.
My chest seized up. I held onto it and breathed again.
“Wilson?”
Joel was there. Joel hadn’t been there for days. Here.
“Where were you?” I managed out, somehow.
Joel was bent down and looking me in the eye. “What?” he said.
“Where—” wheeze “—were you?”
“Wilson, are you—you’re having a panic attack.”
“Thanks for the update,” I said. My chest hurt. My limbs were numb. I couldn’t feel my fingers. My mouth tasted like the inside of someone’s shoe.
“Wilson,” Joel said calmly. “Breathe.”
I glared at him. “What does it look like I’m doing?” I said.
Somehow, I made my way to the living room couch and lay on my back. I was tall enough to cover the whole length, so Joel sat through my knees. He was cold and liquid, but it helped shock my system. My breathing eased up.
“What happened?” Joel asked.
My voice felt strained from talking whilst lying on my back. “My boss said I was depressed,” I said.
“Oh,” said Joel.
“You were gone,” I said.
I hadn’t responded to any of Joel’s sister’s invitations to help her sort through Joel’s things in his apartment, way back when. He hadn’t had a will so it was just a matter of next of kin responsibility. I hadn’t gotten any invitations to help sort through Darren’s stuff either, but that was because we were still in the hospital when his family had come by our apartment and taken his stuff away.
I was allergic to dust.
“Are you depressed?” Joel asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m just having a fucking panic attack, that’s all.”
“Wilson—”
“Why didn’t you want me to open the box?” I asked.
Joel stared at me, for a long time.
“Like, cool, you have a gay crush on me,” I said. It was easier talking about this than about myself. “Well I guess I wouldn’t have guessed, though.”
Joel was still watching me. He bit his lip. It was weird how he could look like he was there, but everything about his overall pigment was off. Off-white, but he wasn’t white. Off-Joel.
“I thought that that was why I was here,” he said. “Because I never told you about it. I didn’t want to leave.”
“Oh.”
My chest felt tight again, but for a different reason. It hurt more at the center. It wasn’t dissociative.
“I really miss Darren,” I said. My cheeks were wet, all of a sudden.
Joel laughed. He laughed when all three of us watched the Friends finale and cried. “Me too,” he said.
I sat up. He hadn’t moved from my legs, and when I lifted my hand up to hover it where his shoulder was, my palm felt wet and cool. When I removed it it was dry. I placed it near him again.
“You don’t want to go?” I said.
He shrugged. “Obviously not.”
“You know, having you around is going to make it really hard for me to bring chicks home.”
Joel gave me a sad sort of smile.
“Lucky me.”
He was facing me. I had thought about what it was like to kiss a dude. That’s the sort of thing that happens when your old college roommate’s gay. I hadn’t thought about what it was like to kiss a ghost, though.
I leaned in and aimed. A second before my lips got swallowed by the cool air, I closed my eyes.
“You’re,” said Joel’s voice, eerily close to me. “You’re kissing me.”
“I am trying,” I said.
I opened my eyes again. I’d pushed a little too far so that most of the front of my head was in Joel’s. I didn’t really expect to see the ghostly insides of his brain, but I was glad that I didn’t see anything except for my living room window, past him.
I pulled away.
“That must’ve looked weird,” said Joel.
“It felt weird.”
“Why did you do that?”
I shrugged. “Semantics,” I said. “Plus, I wanted to see if that’s what you were here for.”
Joel furrowed his eyebrows. “A shitty kiss?”
“Wow,” I said, but I laughed. “No. Reciprocation.”
“Oh,” said Joel. He looked pleased. “It’s probably just the haunting, then. To haunt you.”
“I should get M. Night Shamalayan as my therapist,” I said thoughtfully.
“I hated that movie,” said Joel. “I hate M. Night Shamalayan.”
“Look,” I said. “Avatar was a fucking disaster—”
He snorted. “That’s putting it lightly.”
“But Sixth Sense was genius, okay.”
“You’re getting a therapist?” he asked.
I looked at him. The knot in my chest was still there, still new. I didn’t feel sad, though. Or happy, even though Joel was here with me, had been, for so long. Since college, since after the accident. I picked at my cuticles. I didn’t feel anything.
“Probably,” I said.
Joel nodded. “That’s good. Your idea of genius movies is questionable.”
“I take it back,” I said. “I’m taking back my reciprocation. And my head kiss. I’m pretty sure I kissed your ghost esophagus.”
Joel tipped forward. “Too late,” he said.
He kissed me better, but probably because he knew where he ended and started and where I did, too. His ghost tongue was a little bit damper than the parts of his body that were supposed to be dry. This was not what I had in mind for kissing a guy.
“At this rate you’re basically asking me to pray to the Catholic gods,” I said against his mouth.
“You wouldn’t,” said Joel.
“I wouldn’t,” I agreed.
He grinned. His knuckles were damp across my own.