To Feel Like a Person Again
A haunting tale of love, loss, and the hopeless desire to do it all over again.
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I wasn’t a ghost when Luce and I first started dating. That came a little while after. But honestly? The thought of losing him makes me want to die all over again.
Luce is holding my hand as we walk into the brick house on Onyeabor street. Too dark to really see the house besides those gaudy red bricks that scream fraternity. It’s one thing to go to a college party full of witches when you’re still in high school. It’s another thing to go knowing you’ll stop aging at 18 and will never, ever go to a college party for real. The whole ghost thing can be pretty annoying.
Luce wouldn’t know, since he’s still a living, breathing person. He looks at me with a dumb, nervous smile. He’s not the kind of witch that can read minds, but he can still read mine for some reason.
“It’s not a fraternity,” he says. Hilariously.
“Sorry, do you see that building? Who did you say invited you again? Besides Ferris Bueller.”
He cracks a weird smile. “Witches from the drama club. They’re pretty nice, actually.”
They better not be.
He rubs his neck and sighs. “We don’t have to go in, you know. We only have a few days left, and they’re important.”
Yeah, so important you want to spend them rubbing your future in my face? “It’s fine,” I say instead. I know he’s just trying to have fun without leaving me out of it.
We walk in, and our hands are touching slightly less. But I can maybe blame that on my body becoming more ethereal. After graduation, that’s it for me and my old friend, tangibility. I’ll be in full-on ghost mode. Luce won’t even be able to see me without lighting candles or getting friends together for a seance.
Everyone in the house is red in the face and excited to see Luce. A little confused to see me, clearly, because they can tell right away that I’m a ghost. A lot of them have probably never seen one outside of a textbook, I’d bet.
“Ey Luce! This the girlfriend?”
Yes, that is my name. The Girlfriend. My parents were born ten centuries ago, as it turns out.
“Oh wow, I didn’t know she’s a...uh...”
A ghost? They can just say it. We live in a town full of witches, it shouldn’t be that mind-blowing.
One girl pulls me aside, all smiles. “Mind if I borrow her, Luce?” He shrugs with a big grin as two soon-to-be-on-Dateline guys take him to the punch table. The music is so loud I can’t even hear what Luce says as I’m moving farther away.
“Luce never shuts up about you,” the girl says as she hands me a red solo cup decorated to look like a goblet. It’s full of some fruity seltzer, I think. “I’m Kirnen, by the way,” she says, patting my arm.
“Hollie.”
“Hollie! It’s so, so nice to finally meet you. I’ve never met a ghost before. Although, I have come pretty close.”
We chat a little longer. She wants to know all about how I died during my sophomore year of high school. What it was like becoming a ghost, what other ghosts are like at Starling Academy, blah blah blah. She’s obsessed. It must be so weird to know there’s a school in town where students who die turn into half-ghosts until they graduate.
Kirnen leans against the wall and sighs. The alcohol must be hitting her, if it hasn’t already. “You know. If I were a student at Starling, I don’t know what I’d do. Isn’t it tempting to just, I don’t know, become a ghost on purpose?”
Become a ghost on purpose. On purpose. “Probably not,” I decide to say. Ever the diplomat.
“If I’d gone to a school where I knew I couldn’t really die...I might’ve taken more risks.” She laughs. Like it’s funny.
I almost want to throw my drink in her face, but the urge passes. Besides, my cup is empty, and all I can really feel at the moment is pity. Not just for her, but for myself. Luckily, Luce saves the day and reappears.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asks as we break away from the crowd, alone. My ears are ringing from all the noise.
I shrug. “You?”
He leans over the balcony and stares ahead. We’re right outside one of the bedrooms and the moonlight is mixing with the street lamps to make him look...I don’t know, unreal. Or as unreal as me.
I sigh to fill the silence.
“Hey,” he finally says. Then he wraps his arms around me. The light is now reflecting off me and it’s like we’re glowing together.
“I can hear enough of the music from here to dance,” he says. “Want to?”
I want to say I do, but that might technically be a lie. Before I died, I wanted to be a dancer. The kind of witch who uses magic to move with impossibility in every step. I choose the uncomfortable option to say nothing, hoping that’s enough of an answer.
He whispers something, but I can’t make it out fully. I’m too...in the moment. I think he says he wants to protect me. Or that he always will. Which makes me want to laugh. Or cry.
Then he says something truly awful.
“What if I died tomorrow?”
I freeze. I can’t even look at him anymore and push him off, then send a fist into his arm. He probably can’t feel it at all. “I told you never to suggest that ever again!”
His face gets serious. The calm, serene smile that made me fall for him when we were 15? Gone. Replaced with the mature, reasonable, rational face he should get to have for the rest of his life. But for some ungodly reason he wants to just throw it all away. I do know the reason, though. It’s so stupid, and I hate it.
“Hollie—”
“I mean it,” I say, planting my feet firm. “You’re not staying at Starling with me. You’re not becoming a ghost. Not for me, not for any reason whatsoever, you absolute dumbass.”
He doesn’t respond, but I can read his mind, too. He wants to say that I can’t stop him from making his own decisions. But he’s wrong, I can.
“Luce, if you do something stupid, I won’t forgive you. I’ll ignore you for eternity, I mean it. You’ll be all alone in that school, wandering the halls wondering why you didn’t just listen to me and do the right thing and live out your stupid, dumb life. You still get one, you know!”
“Hollie, hold on.”
I leave. Forget this. I should’ve walked away so much sooner. If I hadn’t, he wouldn’t be acting like this. He’d have moved on by now. I knew this would happen. Everyone did. Especially his family.
“Hollie, please, wait!”
He tries to follow me, but I go through the walls. He can’t keep up. Luckily it’s so chaotic in the house, no one really notices what’s happening, so the embarrassment is manageable. I just want to get out of there. I just want to go home.
I spend the night at Starling with the other ghosts who live there. Forever 17, one of them joked once. It’s a typical Friday. Everyone is in the common room, which is in a separate building from the dorms. The only way for us to sleep is by candlelight, though no one’s been sleeping lately. Everyone who died the same year as me is grieving the end of our “trial period.”
Some are grieving by talking about it. Some are just being quiet. Others are dancing and letting it out through delirium, if you ask me. They say we’re lucky. So, so lucky we went to Starling, where you get a little extra time with your friends, even when the worst happens. Please. I would do anything to take it all back.
I bury my face into my arms. There’s no way I just thought something like that. Taking it all back would include the time I had with Luce. Sneaking into his dorm. Laying on his bed and singing off-key with him until we’d almost get caught by the prefects. I need to stop thinking about this, it’s not helping.
The weekend goes by and I spend it almost completely alone. Luce comes to look for me, but I easily avoid him. It’s the only way to send the message. I mean it. If he does the unthinkable, I’m not rewarding him or letting him think there could even be some kind of reward. A reason for him to do something unforgivable. I can’t. He has to move on. It’s like I’m cursing him just by existing.
Come Monday, I can’t help myself. I start to spy on him. I know I shouldn’t, but being a ghost has to have at least some perks, right? From the ceiling of his homeroom class, I see him writing in a notebook. His best friend, Albert, keeps trying to talk to him. He’s even poking Luce with a pencil. Finally, Luce looks up at Albert and puts on a fake smile. They joke around a little while I peek at the notebook. He hasn’t been writing anything. He’s been drawing two people dancing.
Luce wants to be an actor someday. He told me that a few days after I died. We had only been dating a week at that point, and he wasn’t sure how to tell his parents, since they’re never really around. They expected him to be an undercover witch in the business world, like most students at Starling who actually survive four years. To be an actor after all he had to go through, here? You’d have to really want it.
Over time, we worked on his confidence in the lead up to telling his parents. We also worked on his acting skills for a similar reason. We stayed up endless nights rehearsing lines from our favorite plays and movies. We rehearsed him telling his parents what he really wants to do with his life. So when he finally told them the truth, they...well, they still reacted poorly, but it could’ve been so much worse. Hell, maybe they would’ve turned him into a ghost. Fortunately, it never came to that.
After everything, he has to know he owes it to himself to go through with the thing he wants to do. He can’t just change it at the last minute to get back something he only wants because now he can’t have it. I wish he understood that better but, well, he’s stubborn as hell.
Graduation day came quicker than I expected, and that’s saying something. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I know I need to see Luce off. I’ve been rehearsing every moment of it, down to the syllable. I’m not a good actor, but maybe that’s OK. Maybe I truly believe what I’m about to tell him.
He and Albert are goofing around in the hallway, shooting sparks from their fingers and trying not to singe their gowns. They’re in line for the ceremony to begin, so there isn’t much time. But it isn’t long before Luce spots me at the end of the hallway. It’s taking everything I have to make myself visible enough at this distance. It’s gotten so much harder.
At first, Luce’s face is blank. But only for a second. He smiles. Big time. Damn, he almost looks like he’s about to cry. Maybe he thought I was a mirage at first.
He runs down the hallway and practically tackles me. “Hollie!” He squeezes me tight. For a second, it’s almost like two normal people touching, but then he fades through me a little. “I was so scared.”
I pull away to look him in the face. “Scared of what?”
Now he is crying. “Scared I’d miss my last chance to see you.”
There it is. He made his decision. It’s the right decision. So it’s extremely messed up that I’m not happy about it like I should be.
“I had to see you off,” I finally say, holding back the tears.
“See me off?” He shakes his head. “No way, this is your graduation too.”
I scowl. “Uh, no. The whole point is that I can’t graduate. My family already said goodbye at my funeral, which was hard enough.”
He rolls his eyes. “Who says that means you can’t graduate after a funeral? I mean it’s Starling, come on, already.” He grabs me by the hand and again, it’s almost like my hands are real again.
At Starling, graduation is more like a giant seance than a “normal” graduation, like you see on TV. Lots of candles, chanting, and “respect for the dead.” It’s all a bit much. Per the rules, I should be up in the balcony with the other ghosts who bother to show up, but I’m the only one on the ground with the living. While I’m holding Luce’s hand, I don’t look like a ghost. I don’t even feel like one.
We’re standing in the doorway, about to go in. Luce looks at me straight on, his eyes the size of plates. “Hollie, before we go in, I’ve been wondering.” He looks ahead, now, at the graduation ceremony. “What is it you want? You know, as a graduation present.”
What a strange question. Luce’s favorite kind.
I don’t know.
I pause and refresh.
I don’t know.
I can’t even answer the question in my head. I grip his hand tightly. I can’t think. I just have to say something.
“I don’t know. Maybe to feel like a person again.”
His face relaxes into a calm smile. Like a rational adult would have. Then he turns to lead me away from the graduation.
“Hey, wait, where are we going?”
We’re moving down the hallway at full speed, smiling like idiots, and he doesn’t say anything.
The next thing I know, we’re outside in the parking lot. The parking lot. What is this witch boy up to? Starling is the most beautiful campus in the entire state. Buildings that were constructed centuries ago, a courtyard with multiple marble fountains, the works.
Why are we in a parking lot?!
Luce walks me over to a car. His car. He explains how he got the car as his graduation present and then opens the door. He puts the keys into the ignition without going fully in, then cranks the stereo up as a song starts to play.
“Hurry up and dance with me,” he says.
We’re alone. It’s sunset. And he’s asking me to dance in a parking lot. I can’t believe how easy it is to fall in love with the same person over and over again.
He puts one hand on my shoulder and the other on my waist. It’s irresistible. We start dancing, and I can almost feel myself floating. I’m glad my tears aren’t technically real, otherwise he’d be drenched.
The song crescendos and Luce glances down at me. Determined look on his face. Those plate-sized eyes reflecting my own weirdness back at me.
“Sorry I made you cry.”
Without missing a beat, I bury my face into his chest. “Are you joking?” I say, muffled. Before I glance back up at him.
“These are the best tears of my life.”
They say dying is when life ends, but I would push back on that a little. That moment in the parking lot? Again, a parking lot. That was the first time my heart truly stopped.
Based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, Jon Negroni is a Puerto Rican author of fantasy, fiction, and other musings.