“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I spat out.
He laughed, and it sounded like the saddest chuckle I’d ever heard. I didn’t know laughs could be sad until I heard his.
“Shouldn’t you?” he countered.Touché.“I’m new to Clover High.”He goes to my school?“Tomorrow’s my first day. I wanted to get to know the dead in this place before I had to be introduced to the living.”
“That’s weird.”
“I’mweird.” He shrugged his shoulders as his hands sat in the front pocket of his hoodie. I could see his hands fiddling with something in it, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“OK, well, leave. Weirdo.”
“I am leaving. Bigger weirdo,” he replied.
For some reason his words didn’t upset me, because they seemed to be a little teasing. What was with this guy? Why didn’t he flinch when he saw me like everyone else did? Why did he seem immune to my hideous face? I kept staring at him, waiting for his disgust to be seen. It didn’t show up.
“I asked her if she was OK,” he confessed, nodding toward Mom’s tombstone. “And I told her how lucky she was to have a daughter who left her love letters every single day. Figured it made her less lonely.”
My lips parted, but no sound came out. There was an eerie, invisible blanket of comfort that seemed to wrap around my shoulders instead. As if he cared about the woman who cared so much for me.
I wondered about that question daily, too.
I wondered if she was OK.
That slight flicker of light hit his eyes once more as he kept walking away. “I don’t want you to think I’m some freak who was just talking to your mom,” he added. “Someone I love is here, too. Two rows down.”
A tinge of guilt hit me.
He’d lost someone, too?
“You know my favorite thing about talking to the dead, Karla?” Ash asked as he continued to walk backward, as if he wasn’t scared of running straight into another tombstone. Maybe he had eyes in the back of his head or something. I wouldn’t put it past him. He was that peculiar and out of place.
I wanted to know his answer, but I didn’t want him to know that I wanted to know. I tried my best to look uninterested as he continued speaking. “The dead don’t judge. They don’t ask questions, and they don’t scold me for my mistakes. They also don’t expect me to pretend I’m OK when I’m not. They don’t ask me why I’m still here, and they don’t look at me with pity. They just... listen.” His head lowered as he kept fidgeting with something in his pocket. His brows knit together as if he had fallen into deep thought. He seemed more invested in what was inside that pocket.
His voice was so low now, a whisper of sorts, as he continued, “Sometimes, it’s nice to be heard by things that don’t judge you. Sometimes, it’s nice to just have someone listen.”
Without looking up at me, he turned on the heel of his muddy black boot and walked away.
It took me a few minutes to feel comfortable enough to sit down at my mom’s tombstone. A tombstone that gave me exactly what Ash expressed: A way to speak to a person who wouldn’t judge me. A way to speak to a person who would simply listen.
I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Hi, Mom. It’s me, Karla.”
4Karla
It took a solid three weeks for my father to realize I hadn’t been attending school. It probably had something to do with me telling the front office that our family was on a two-month vacation. I forged Dad’s signature on the paperwork, got all my homework ahead of time, and I was set to go.
I knew the jig was up when I overheard Dad shouting at Ellie in his office about the incident. Ellie wasn’t fired right away, which annoyed me. What frustrated me more was that after weeks of sneaking away to visit Mom during the school day, I wouldn’t be able to anymore.
I felt a little guilty for Ellie getting in trouble, but that was her own doing, honestly. A person shouldn’t have been that trusting of an angsty teenager.
I posted myself in the bathroom next to Dad’s office to overhear him speaking—well, snapping—at Ellie. He was scolding her for being naive and trusting me. Ellie didn’t say much, but that was probably because she was already mentally beating herself up for allowing me to pull a fast one on her. After the conversation between the two of them ended, I stared at myself in the mirror. As I looked into my eyes, I searched for Mom. She would’ve been onto my little mischievous ways right away. I couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes even if I tried. It was like she could read my mind before I had my own thoughts.
Dad couldn’t. He used to be able to, but lately, he barely saw me. He could hardly see anything past his own grief. Maybethat was what grief did: made a person blind to the reality of situations right in front of their face. It made life feel like death day in and day out.
After I finished washing my face, I headed back to my room, where I planned to hide out for the rest of the evening. But the moment I walked into my bedroom, I found Ellie standing in front of my closet with its “Do Not Enter” signs all over it. My heart dropped. “What are you doing?!” I shouted.
Ellie whipped around to face me, and a wave of relief washed over her face. “Karla! Oh my gosh, I thought you ran off. Where were you?” She sounded way too alarmed for a nanny who’d probably be fired soon.
“The bathroom.” I narrowed my eyes as rage shot throughout my whole system. “Why are you about to go in there? Are you stupid? Can you not read?”
