To The Forest - Part Four
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
I turn to face the front of the flower shop, then nearly drop the stack of terracotta pots clasped in my arms.
“Oh - Kasey!” I gasp, struggling to catch my breath. “What the fuck! Can’t you say something when you materialize, so people don’t drop all their pots on the floor?”
“I could,” she giggles, taking in the flustered expression on my face as I turn to set the stack of pots down on the counter. “But it’s funnier this way.”
“Oh, I’m so glad I could provide some entertainment!” I whip around to stab a threatening finger at her. “You know what? After we get the ghost battery done, I’m gonna talk to Aiden about some kind of ghost bell we can put on you, because I’ve had just about-”
I break off abruptly, staring at Kasey with wide, startled eyes.
It just dawned on me that she’s back, finally back. Her smiling face, her inky hair, her silvery jacket, and flowing crimson pants - they’re all back to their usual, transparent, glowing clarity.
My racing heart slows down in relief. I throw open my arms wide for a ghost-hug, which Kasey darts over to accept.
“I’m so happy to see you!” I blurt out, wishing I could actually tighten my arms around her. “It’s scary every time you and Will fade away like that!”
“You knew we were still there!” she protests, snuggling a little deeper into my embrace. “And it’s not like it hurts us. You could kind of think of it as our version of - sleep.”
“I just wish it didn’t take days for you to wake back up.” I ease back so I can look at her again, reassuring myself one more time that she’s intact. “It makes me nervous when I have to go that long without seeing you. And why doesn’t it always take that long? It’s only sometimes.”
Kasey hesitates, thinking of how to explain. “You remember your first cell phone?”
I arch an eyebrow, not sure what that could possibly have to do with anything.
“The huge clunky one that was bright orange, for some reason? That my dad had already been using for years before he handed it down to me?”
“Yes! Remember how it kinda worked fine, except that if it got anywhere below ten percent battery, it would die, and then it would take forever to charge? But only if it died that way. If you plugged it in before then, it would charge normally.”
“Oh, no need to remind me,” I groan, blushing with residual embarrassment at the thought of that extremely uncool phone I was obliged to carry around with me for way too long. “I never hurt myself diving for a charger as often as I did when I had that phone. And my dork-ass had to carry around my inhaler, too! Good thing only one of those two things made it to high school with me, because the inhaler alone - how did Aiden ever find me attractive, come to think of it?”
“Babe, are you joking? You’re so fine, and you were in high school, too. It’s shocking that you don’t seem to realize that.” Kasey pauses, then adds, as an afterthought - “Oh, and there’s also your personality, too!”
“Wow,” I laugh indignantly, wavering between a pleased blush and an exasperated frown. “Back to full charge also means back to full sass, huh?”
“What I’m saying is,” she laughs, snuggling up to me again, “Me and Will are like that phone. I don’t think we’re supposed to go below ten percent. Then we have to do a whole recuperative charge-up. Like you had to do after Aiden drained all of your energy at the Bratton Collection.”
“Then we’ll make sure not to pull too hard on your reserves again.” I draw back to smile down at her, happy to be able to look into her eyes again. “Is Will back, too?”
“Mhm. He should be at City Hall by now. He went to go tell Aiden.” Kasey bites her lip, then blurts out, in a giddy rush - “Holy shit, Jamie! Charlie! Leyla! Rose, even! We did it, we solved the fucking case!”
“I know!” I crack a giant, beaming grin at her. “Can you believe-?”
I stop mid-sentence, abruptly remembering where I am and what I’m doing.
I glance at the display windows of the flower shop, preemptively blushing, but mercifully there’s no one standing outside to see me talking to an empty shop.
I hurry behind the counter and gather some loose flowers to myself, angling my back towards the windows. Kasey hops up to sit on the counter beside me, so we can talk without being caught.
I keep on working, but the next - I don’t even know how long, really - is devoted to Kasey and me talking at breakneck speed about the case. I make an on-the-spot decision to wait until later to ask her about the ideas Aiden and I have for the future of the Ghost Office. We should have that conversation when we’re all together, and we have a lot to discuss already.
Evidently Kasey has been storing up her thoughts on everything that Aiden and I told her after we got back from Port Sitka, when she couldn’t answer. I have to stop myself from laughing as she lets it out all at once.
“It would be the feds!” she shouts, at a volume that makes me burst out laughing. “Of course they destroyed the Tree, the oafs!”
She and Will are over the moon that we solved the case, and just as delighted as Aiden and I am about finding Rose, Leyla, and Charlie unharmed.
Kasey is particularly curious about the little spirit we sensed at the farmhouse ruins. She stops talking and listens closely as I tell her about how Aiden changed his mind about imagining it. I pass on all the information we got from Spencer on it, then finish with -
“We asked Rose, Leyla, and Aunt Sarah if they had any guesses. None of them have ever heard of anything like it.”
Kasey falls silent for a long moment, then glances up at me when I pin on, “Look, if you’re trying to figure it out-”
“No, actually.” She watches as I sort through the flowers strewn across the counter, choosing ones to set aside in a box. “That’s Spencer’s historical area of specialty, not mine. He knows his shit. If he doesn’t have a guess, neither will I.”
I stop what I’m doing to look up at her. “Then what do we do next?”
“You’re gonna hate me, but I think Aiden is right. You two have to camp.”
“Fuck,” I groan.
But I only half mean it. Camping with Aiden again really doesn’t sound so bad, if I’m being honest.
“Will and I talked about our plan for the camping part of this,” Kasey goes on, ignoring my interruption. “We think that if we do things in smaller degrees, we might be able to avoid draining all our energy again. If I come with you guys on the first day, and take like - half of Will’s energy, so I don’t drain him completely. Then I leave before it runs out, let’s say before sunset. In theory, I could come back the next day, if you summon me. Or Will can take a turn, if I can persuade him he’ll be okay leaving Ketterbridge without me. We’ll see.”
“Sounds like a plan. Best plan we’ve got, anyways.” I push a hand through my hair, fretting a little. “Last time we had spectral traces to follow. I don’t think we ever would have found the church otherwise. This time we kind of just - know what path to take into the forest.”
“That’s something,” Kasey points out hopefully. “A place to start.”
“Yeah, but old-growth, it’s really, um…”
I trail off, struggling to put into clear terms just how deep and vast and full of mysteries an old-growth forest is. On top of that, the Guardian Trees have a way of hiding themselves away. No one’s stumbled across Aiden’s Tree, despite the fact that we were able to walk there from the place where the Fling Thing is held. And that’s an upright Tree, not a fallen one whose roots we’re trying to find.
“There’s a reason no one’s found Rose’s Tree before,” I tell Kasey. “It’s really hard to navigate an old-growth forest with nothing to guide you.”
Kasey flashes me a bright smile. “That’s why we’ve got you on the team, plant boy. You’ll guide us.”
“Oh, okay! Sure, I’ll just do that!” I let out a weak laugh, rubbing my temples, then curse beneath my breath when I realize I’ve stained my fingertips green again. “Look, our only real lead is the spirit from the farmhouse ruins. Which isn’t really a lead at all, because we have no idea what it was, and we scared it off.”
Kasey’s dark eyes grow thoughtful as she considers that.
“There may not be spectral traces this time, but I’m not sure you’ll have no traces to follow,” she murmurs, after a long moment. “Rose did some serious magic within the forest. The green lights in the sky were bright enough to be seen in town. The demon illusion was so powerful that Leyla was able to ride it. And Rose released all of her magic in the grove of her Tree, to set off the tapestry… Are we sure those things leave no traces, after they’re gone?”
My eyes widen with alarm. “I sure fucking hope the demon hasn’t, at least!”
“Point is,” Kasey answers, wholly unconcerned, “It’ll be fine. Bet you guys will be rolling in magical traces to follow.”
“If you had said that on purpose to jinx it, you couldn’t have done any better!” I try to press my hand over her mouth, then remember that won’t work and let out a groan of frustration. “I’m gonna kill you!”
“Good luck,” Kasey laughs, lounging backwards until she’s hanging upside down off of the counter. “I should warn you, I see a few problems with that plan.“
“Yeah, yeah. You get away with too much, being a ghost.” I lean over the counter to fix her with an indignant scowl. “I’ll tell Will to do it for me, just so you know.”
“And you think he would? That’s cute.”
“Hey, wait - speaking of, um - this.” I hesitate, then just say it. “It’s around the time of your death anniversary, Kase-face. Did you want to do something?”
Kasey arches her dark eyebrows, then sits upright again, half-laughing.
“Do something?” She spreads her hands at me in confusion, but she’s smiling. “What did you have in mind? The New Orleans funeral I always wanted?”
“No.” I wince at her apologetically, kneading my palm with my thumb. “I’m sorry again that I couldn’t pull one of those together for you. I know you think it’s the best kind of funeral. Problem was, I had literally no idea how to go about doing that.”
“Babe, I didn’t actually expect you to organize a second line for my funeral,” Kasey giggles, swatting a hand at me affectionately. “But what could we actually do for my death anniversary?”
“I was thinking of a spooky movie marathon, in honor of this ghostly occasion? Just like we used to do at our sneakovers.”
Kasey breaks into a giant grin. “Oh, yes! We can make it an annual tradition.”
I return her smile, but my fingers slow down in their work, adding flowers to the box much more slowly. Kasey notices, and after a moment her dark eyes flick back to my face.
“Hey.” She gently prods my finger, as much as she can. “No need to get sad about it, Jamie. I’m right here with you, remember?”
I let out a slow breath, then pull a smile back onto my face. “Yeah. I know.”
~~~~
Regardless, I go directly to the cemetery after I close up the shop. I hike up the softly-sloped, grassy hill, then very slowly come to a stop before one of the graves.
A gentle summer rain is falling, and her headstone is darkened from the droplets.
I stand there alone, just looking at it, for a long time. Then I kneel down, set my bag aside, and tuck a strand of my hair back from my eyes.
“Hey,” I say softly, pressing my palm to the stone. “It’s me.”
The rain flutters softly down around me, whispering over the whole town. The distant sounds of cars and people in movement are all softened by it. The drizzly breeze stirs the grass growing on her grave.
I look around carefully, rising up a little on my knees to be sure, but there’s no one else nearby. I pull out my phone, turn up the volume, then hit play on a song. Just a Closer Walk with Thee, by George Lewis & His New Orleans Stompers.
Slow, husky, gentle music begins to roll out from my phone as I slip it into my pocket and pull on my gardening gloves.
I let it play quietly into the rainy dusk as I pull up all the little weeds growing on Kasey’s grave. When that’s done, I clear away what’s left of the flowers I brought last time. Then I open up the box I brought, the one full of fresh, loose flowers.
I sort through them for a few silent seconds, then set to work. With the raindrops drifting down and the music slowly drifting up, I weave an arrangement of Kasey’s favorite flowers around her headstone. Working without a plan, and from scratch, but very slowly and carefully.
When it’s finished, I sit back on my heels and pull off my gardening gloves. I dry my hands on the rag I brought from the shop, then use it to polish up the front of Kasey’s grave. Might seem pointless with it drizzling, but it’s all shiny for a brief, fleeting moment.
I add the bouquet that Milo sent, placing it gently alongside my flowers. Then I sit back on my ankles again, running my eyes over my work.
Kasey’s grave is wild with flowers, glittering softly in the rain.
I set my stuff aside, pause the music, then rummage around in my bag until I find the book I’m looking for. I carefully sit down and lean back against Kasey’s headstone, making sure not to upset the flowers I just arranged.
“None of these old out-of-print history books you love so much have audiobook versions,” I say to the drizzling air, feeling the coolness of the stone through my flannel. “So, um. Guess I’ve gotta do this part myself. I picked a random one from your stacks. Let’s hope it’s a good one.”
I open the book to the first page, but it naturally falls open to a page somewhere in the middle, closer to the end than the beginning. There’s a bookmark tucked in there, a ticket stub from a show Kasey must have gone to in New York.
“Oh. Looks like it must be a good book, if you had already read this far.” I take out the bookmark, then hunch my shoulders over the book, protecting it from the rain. “I’d go back a page to remind you where you were, but with your memory I’m pretty sure I don’t have to do that. So - let’s just dive in.”
I clear my throat, then begin reading out loud from the old, worn history book. Keeping my voice just above the quiet rainfall, pausing every now and then to struggle over pronouncing the names of gods and kings from ancient cultures I’ve never even heard of.
I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting there doing that before one of my awful mispronunciations draws a very soft, affectionate laugh.
I look up sharply to find Kasey just above me, sitting on her headstone. Her knees are pulled up to her chest, her cheek resting against them, her eyes resting on my startled face.
I’m about to ask her how she knew I was here, but before I even open my mouth I remember with a jolt the time when Aiden came here to visit her grave on his own. She sensed him there, somehow. She must have sensed me.
It’s possible - probable, even - that she’s been here this whole time, watching me from afar, having once again made a completely silent arrival.
She wordlessly slips down from her headstone and sits beside me on the wet grass. Directly on her flowers, but it’s not like she can crush them. I can faintly see them through her, vague swirls of blossoming color revealing themselves through her own opalescent glow.
I look away quickly, struggling for an explanation that could account for what I’m doing. But she just silently rests her head on my shoulder, as best she can without falling right through me.
We sit like that for some time, watching the night deepen around us.
“Keane,” someone murmurs.
The soft voice makes me look up in surprise, then blink in surprise again when I see who’s standing before me.
“Oh-” I give myself a shake, then hastily get to my feet, dragging the sleeve of my flannel over my rain-wet face. “Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Ralph says quietly, slowly.
His sage green eyes are looking right into mine. His blonde hair is all darkened from the rain, like he’s been out in it for a long time. He must have been somewhere deeper in the cemetery, or else sitting in the shadows where I couldn’t see him. Tycho is frisking around in the grass behind him, and she’s all wet, too.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, pushing my own wet hair out of my face.
Ralph’s eyes flit to Kasey’s grave, then back to me.
“Same type of thing you are, I think,” he answers, after a silent moment.
I look hard at him, then understand all at once.
“Oh,” I say softly, with a rush of sympathy in my heart. “Of course, your - yeah.”
Ralph drops his gaze to the gardening gloves stuffed in the back pocket of my jeans, then points to Kasey’s grave. “You missed one.”
I turn to follow his eyeline, and shake my head when I see what he’s looking at.
“That’s not actually a weed.” I catch Tycho before she can get too close to the tender green shoot sprouting in the grass, just to the right of Kasey’s headstone. “That’s going to be a tree, one day.”
Ralph twists his leather wristbands between his fingertips, his green eyes lingering on the new, fragile little shoot growing up from the grave.
He gives a very light toss of his head in the direction of the gate at the bottom of the hill. “I was just heading out.”
“Yeah, I-” I bend down to pick up my bag and the box, quickly stuffing everything back into them. “I am, too.”
Kasey is kneeling in front of her grave, slowly running her eyes over the new flowers. I decide to leave her be.
Ralph and I set off together down the hill, not speaking to each other or looking at each other.
Normally I would fill this long of a silence, especially because I know Ralph better than to think he’s going to make the slightest effort to do so. But I’m afraid of what my voice will come out like right now, so I don’t.
After a moment, though, I realize that Ralph is walking closer to me than he normally does. With his shoulder almost to mine.
It’s a strange kind of relief, his quiet presence nearby. I have a vague sense of some kind of implicit understanding from him. Like he doesn’t need me to explain anything about what I was doing, or how I’m behaving.
His car isn’t parked too much further up the street from mine. He goes past my little blue car without saying anything, directly to his own. I drop the box and my bag onto the hood of my car, wondering vaguely if he’s about to leave just like that. But the next thing I know, a thermos has been pushed into my hands. Insulated and warm, giving off fragrant steam that promises good, strong coffee.
I take a long sip, then let out a slow, grateful breath.
“You alright?” Ralph murmurs gruffly, lighting a cigarette.
“Yeah, I’m - it’s just - sometimes - I-”
Ralph nods before I can finish, making a very slight gesture with his cigarette to tell me he already understands. I fall quiet again, fidgeting with the lid of the coffee thermos.
“They don’t want us to be sad,” Ralph says suddenly, quietly, in the rough voice he gets when he’s trying to say something important. “When we think of them.”
I have a powerful, split-second impulse to give Ralph a hug, but think better of it just in time.
“I know,” I say instead. My eyes linger on the hand he just absently ran over his ribs, where the angel wings are almost visible through his threadbare shirt. “But-”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, just as quietly. “I know.”
I drop my head, then lift it in surprise when Ralph adds - “Doesn’t stop us from ending up all sad and wet and pathetic sometimes, huh?”
I let out a startled laugh, then shake my head, running a hand over my eyes.
We stand there in silence for a second or two. Ralph breathes out a long column of smoke, keeping his eyes on the slow-burning cherry of his cigarette, and I take another long sip of coffee. The silver masses of rain clouds shift gently over our heads, scattering summer raindrops down on us.
“You got someone to go to, after this?” Ralph asks, offering me the cigarette.
“Yeah. Aiden should be home from work by now.” The thought of him warms me through better than the coffee, the thought alone. I take a steadying drag from the cig, then hand it back. “What about you?”
Ralph breaks into a tiny, unexpected smile. “Gonna go see my - niece, I guess?”
I blink in surprise, then find myself suppressing a laugh. Noah and Ralph do call themselves brothers, so technically that’s right, but it hadn’t hit me before now that Nikita is the niece of a notorious crime boss.
“Noah wants to hang?”
“He’s gonna be there, yeah, but - Mel invited me.” Ralph’s sage green eyes betray his total confusion about the situation. “Dunno what the fuck’s been going on lately. Had a weird thing happen earlier with Destinee, too.”
“What? When did you see Des?”
“Earlier today, when I bought the flowers for…”
Ralph tosses his head at the graveyard.
“Oh,” I murmur softly, caught by surprise. “Well - what weird thing happened with Destinee?”
Ralph uneasily runs a hand over his jaw, his eyes bewildered. “She smiled at me. Said hi, and wanted to chat for a minute. But not about anything specific, really.”
“Um… okay.” I bite back another laugh, but only barely. “Is that weird, though? Sounds like she was just happy to see you.”
Ralph draws his head back, arching a blonde eyebrow as if to say he very much doubts that.
“Since you’re actually nice to be around, now,” I elaborate patiently. “Unlike, you know. Before.”
Ralph blinks at me with no expression for a second, absorbing that. Then he shoots me a brief scowl and sticks his cigarette in his mouth so he can push his wet hair out of his eyes. Apparently that’s all the answer I’m going to get.
“Well, have fun with Nik. I mean, I already know you will.”
It’s actually sweet how much Ralph and Nik have taken to each other. She tends to giggle happily and reach out for him whenever he walks into the room, lately.
I nudge his ribs with my elbow, flashing him a grin. “Who knew you were so good with babies, man?”
“Not me,” Ralph says, breathing out a laugh and a gentle stream of smoke. “May take you by surprise, but not a lot of people go handing me their babies.”
“Then maybe you should have babies of your own someday, Warlord.”
Ralph surprises me by breaking into a shadowy smile, shrugging his shoulders in a why-not kind of way.
“An empire needs an heir, doesn’t it?” he asks, leaning back against my car.
My eyebrows fly up, and I let out a disbelieving laugh.
“Oh, okay! So you’re gonna be like a football pressure dad, but about - crime?”
“I’m joking, dude.” Ralph is laughing with his eyes, but he goes on very seriously, “Kid can do whatever they want. I’ll just make sure they’re prepared, in case they do want to take it over. And that they know how to throw a good punch, in case work comes home.”
I laugh and shove his shoulder, then hesitate. “Wait - seriously, though. Would they be in danger, just for being the Warlord’s kid?”
Ralph may be joking about all of this, but I do wonder. His line of work is one that tends to attract trouble. Even when you’re not the kingpin himself, which Ralph is.
Ralph answers by breaking into a slow, calm smile. I shudder and draw back in alarm, pressing a hand over my heart, then recover and indignantly swat his arm.
“Ralph! Don’t use your scary face on me! That shit makes my heart stop!”
He lets out a soft snicker, lifting the cigarette to his mouth. “Just making my point.”
“Which is?”
“People know the price they’re going to pay, if they hurt me and mine,” he says simply. “Not a lot of people want to buy a ticket for that ride.”
I fall silent, realizing the truth of that. Who would dare go after the Warlord’s kid?
“Believe me, if I was worried about that shit, I wouldn’t even go anywhere near Nikita,” he pins on.
I suppose Ralph does have a long-established reputation for keeping his people safe and out of trouble. He’s proven his prowess on that front time and again. That’s almost like - his whole thing.
“Besides, I’m training up this little monster.” He nods down at Tycho, who’s snuffling around in the grass by his combat boots. “I’d say sic ‘em is an easy enough command for a kid to remember, right?”
“Aw,” I laugh, bending to scratch Tycho’s silvery, crooked ear. “Are you gonna be a big guard dog for a little someone, someday?”
Ralph laughs quietly as Tycho sits down and looks up at him with adoring eyes, her tail thumping the grass. “If she can ever conquer the stairs.”
“I know you’re joking, but it would be cute to see you with a little one,” I tell Ralph, without thinking about it.
He kind of smiles, then looks past me at the rain-wet cemetery, his green eyes far away. I follow his gaze to it, wondering.
It strikes me like a lightning bolt. This is one of Ralph’s master-level deceptions. He’s lying by telling me the truth, right to my face, as if it was a joke.
I have the sense that Ralph has given this way more thought than he’s letting on. Actually, it sounds like he’s already thought through some of the possible obstacles that could get in the way of him becoming a dad, and he’s taking steps to deal with them, even training Tycho accordingly…
The heir for his empire thing, that was the only part that was really a joke. There must be other, real reasons why Ralph wants a kid, because - I feel like he wants it way, way more than he’s letting on.
But in classic Ralph form, he’s chosen to keep all of that to himself.
I drop my eyes to the sidewalk before Ralph can look into them. He’s going to know I figured out the truth, and I don’t want to push him on it, even by accident. He’s already said way more than I expected about any of this. Normally if I asked about something this personal he’d tell me to be quiet and mind my own business, not give me an answer, and then the answers to several follow-up questions.
Oh, my god. Unless he was doing that to take my mind off of things and distract me, so I’d stop being sad.
I look up at him suspiciously, half in disbelief. His expression gives nothing away, but somehow I’m instantly, unshakably sure that’s what he was doing.
I find myself ambushed by a startling rush of immense affection.
“You want to come over tonight?” I ask Ralph, looking up at him hopefully. “After you see Nikita? We’re having a ghost movie marathon. Complete with actual ghosts.”
“Sorry, can’t.” Ralph straightens up and swings his car keys around his fingers into his hand, his voice going back to its usual relaxed carelessness. “Gotta lead a raid.”
“Wh-?” I let out a sputter of startled laughter. “Are you fucking serious? Jesus Christ, Warlord! Who goes right from visiting a baby to leading a raid?”
He’s already turning away to set off for his own car, swiping the raindrops off of his face and onto his sleeve.
“I want that back when you’re done with it,” he says over his shoulder, gesturing to the coffee thermos. “Or I’ll be pissed off, and as we’ve established, you don’t want that.”
He pauses, the rainy light reflecting in the green of his eyes as he looks down at me. He hesitates for a moment, then swiftly reaches out to brace my shoulder. He looks very briefly into my eyes, then turns away again.
“Ralph,” I say impulsively. And then, when he looks at me over his shoulder - “The next time you need flowers for this, let me know. I’ll make something special, okay?”
Ralph pauses, staring at me in surprise. He blinks a few times, then turns away, his expression carefully neutral.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” he calls, without turning back.
I watch him go with fond eyes, then slowly get into my own car.
I sit motionless in the driver’s seat for a minute, looking down at the coffee thermos as it warms my cold hands. The ache in my chest, briefly pushed away in the distraction Ralph provided, comes sneaking back to where it was before. My eyes go back to the cemetery, gazing at it through the rain-spotted window. I take in a deep breath, with some difficulty.
Then I startle and sit back as Kasey materializes in the passenger’s seat next to me, smiling hard.
She does her best approximation of looping her arms around my neck for a hug. “I love you! Thank you for my flowers.”
“Oh - sure.” I let out a helpless laugh, struggling to pull myself together. “You’re welcome. I love you too, obviously.”
She pulls back to look at me inquiringly, her dark hair swinging around her face, then cuddles her head into the nook of my neck. “Why are you all…? You know I’m right here.”
“I know, Kase-face. I’m just - just remembering the old you, too.”
Kasey sits back and stares at me, her eyes warm with love.
“I appreciate that, Jamie. I really do.” She holds her hand out. I do the best I can to place my palm against hers, and she peers earnestly into my eyes. “But my past self would rather see you happy when you remember her. I would know, wouldn’t I?”
I bite my lip hard, wishing with all my heart that I could give her a hug.
“Also, my past self isn’t gone,” she adds, in a tone to gently imply that I’m being dumb. “She’s me. Because, you know. I’m me. Otherwise I wouldn’t have remembered your dork-ass cell phone.”
“I know, I know,” I laugh weakly, slowly starting to feel better.
“I heard everything you read to me from that history book, and I’ve already formed strong opinions about all of it. Which I’d like to discuss with you. At length.”
“Naturally.”
“Besides, I’ve got no regrets.” Kasey kicks back in the passenger’s seat, grinning widely at me. “I never would have gotten a sexy lumberjack boyfriend right out of history if I wasn’t in my ghost form. Or have been able to go cliff-diving with no consequences.”
I run a shaky hand over my eyes as I laugh again. “Those are the two big perks, huh?”
I’m looking for something to do with my hands. As long as I have something to do, I won’t start crying. I hurriedly plug my phone into my car’s aux cable, then give a little start as the previously slow, quiet music picks up tempo, transforming into a chaotic, upbeat, ragtime melody.
“Jamie, this day is a celebration, a celebration of my life!” Kasey points at my car speakers, as if they’re the hard proof. “The music agrees with me! No more sadness, alright? It fucking hurts to see you sad. You’re too adorable, it - it shouldn’t be allowed for you to be sad. In fact, it’s not.”
“You can’t just decide that I’m done being sad!” I protest.
“Oh, can’t I? Watch this!” Kasey tries to crank the volume knob on the radio all the way up, then blinks down at her fingers, remembering. “Shit!”
I can’t help it, so I dissolve into laughter, sinking down in my seat. Kasey bursts into giggles, too, an embarrassed blush glowing translucent in her cheeks.
“Okay, okay!” I groan-laugh, sitting up again.
I give my head a helpless shake, roll down all of the windows in my car, and crank the music up to top volume before I pull away from the curb. The wild ragtime beat spills out of my windows as we sail down the road, and Kasey punches her fists up in the air in victory, grinning so happily that I can’t help but do the same.
“Perfection,” she laughs. “Happy anniversary to me.”
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