Page 49 of Haunt Me

“I don’t know. An amount that doesn’t make you want to get me to play Heathcliff to your Cathy,” I reply and she smiles.

“I would never force you to play Heathcliff.”

“Oh, good.”

“Iwould play him. Have you seen how black my hair is?”

“It’s black all right,” I laugh.

“You’d be Cathy,” she says and I push her arm playfully. Touching her even slightly still gives me chills. No, not still. It’s getting worse. I can barely concentrate on breathing.

“Stop it.” My voice is gravelly.

“Just answer me,” she insists. “Do you think I’ll turn into a ghost once I die?”

“I literally have no idea. And I don’t intend to find out. I’ll keep you alive forever, just so that you will avoid Cathy’s fate,” I say. “Something, I may point out, that I will not avoid if you make me read her parts out loud again.”

But Eden is not laughing.

“Sometimes I think I may have already died and that I’m a ghost.” She is looking at the sky above the bare branches. “That’s why everything is so… It’s not real. It doesn’t feel real.”

“Hey. Hey!” I’m suddenly scared. A deep, icy-cold terror coils in my stomach, and it’s all I can do to breathe through it.I’m pulling her out of this right now, and we’re not ever going there again, I vow to myself. “Look at me. Look at me, Eden.” She does, but her eyes have this far-away look in them, as if she is not actually here. It scares me so much, I can barely get the words out. “You are alive, you are here. Listen to this.”

I take her hand in mine, pull off her glove, and I brush my fingers against hers to warm them. I place her palm on her own heart. It’s beating fast, like a scared woodland creature’s.

“This is real,” I tell her. “I’m real. I’m here, and so are you.”

“I don’t feel real,” she whispers, her eyes wide, unseeing. “What if I am a ghost already?”

“Then haunt me,” I whisper back.

Her gaze is still unfocused. I realize somehow that whatever is torturing her is so much bigger than I can handle; I don’t know what to say to her. But I know that I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving her alone in this darkness that is trying to swallow her alive. I am useless, but I am staying.

“Haunt me,” I repeat helplessly.

“Now who is playing Heathcliff?” she replies with a ghost of a smile playing at her colorless lips, and the relief that washes over me is so huge my knees buckle. She’s come back to me. That’s all that matters.

“Haunt me,” I say again, because that’s the only thing that seemed to work. “I give you permission to haunt me.”

…

I will say it again to her in six years.

‘I hope I haunt you.’

I will be on a stage in front of thousands of people, and she will be leaving me standing there alone in the rain. And I will turn to her and shout over the clamor of the crowd:‘I hope I haunt you.’

And she will reply: ‘I hope you do.’

Eden’s Old Phone

Eden: Update: I didn’t die after all.

F: Oh, not this again.

Eden: You make it sound as if I constantly worry I might die.

F: You do.

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