Some things stay better left unsaid. Unread. Or unnoticed. Some others need reassurance, they need to be said, or seen.
What this is, none of them really know.
Sitting together on the bed, or better, one sitting with a phone and a browser tab open, and the second just gently drifting by, they are silent for a moment.
"I dunno."
"Me neither." But that is a lie. It slips out easily out of Maven's mouth.
Morbid curiosity makes his fingers hit the buttons again, and then, a few lists and quotes pop up.
Sorting by it, the name of a school in the lower brackets that is a high school catches his eye and he clicks on it.
"This is your obituary," Maven informs him.
The picture is from a picture day, given the dreary background and the forced smile. The eyes aren't quite as black as ghostly Thomas' now, but still dark, the curly brown hair is mostly the same, albeit more groomed and flat on the picture day image. The biggest difference is the skin. Or whatever is left now that there is nothing corporeal to it.
"This is really freaky, Maven," Thomas laughs. He flings himself back and sprawls over the sheet and pillow a moment, without touching it. "Let's see what they wrote."
Freaky is not exactly the word Maven would have used, but there is a distinct lack of a word for this situation, so he decides to accept it for now.
Thomas Eşca Guerrero, died unexpectedly -
"I always hated that fucking name," Thomas mutters behind him, floating cross-legged over the pillow. "And yeah it was pretty unexpected. At least they got that right."
Maven tries to shush him, eyes flying over his screen. The date is as recent as expected.
on March 18 2016 at the age of seventeen.
"That was three years ago."
Thomas shrugs.
The obituary continues to mourn that Thomas never graduated from the school, that he was survived by both his parents, but no siblings.
A bright young man with a future ahead. It talks about some small things he loved. Hobbies include music and being on the runner team. It talks a little about his experience in school and some smaller notes about how lovely Thomas was as a student and friend.
The writing sticks between them like spilled frosting. The words are stilted.
So polite, so meaningless.
"That is all?" Thomas asks.
"That is all," Maven confirms. "At least for the obituary."
"That sucks."
There is nothing to add there. So Maven doesn't. He just watches the strange translucent curve of Thomas' neck as he fights with something internally, his ashen skin when it is warm on even the bad school image.
Thomas blows out a raspberry and leaps up. Before Maven can say anything, he has disappeared with the sliding of a closet door slamming shut.
Maven rummages through some other searches and finds a social media account.
"RIP TOMMY YOU WILL BE MISSED" and other blunt and clearly greedy posts he has tagged in clog the feed for a few days. Then everyone is moving on.
Tiny snippets, videos, and photos, open for everyone, are still up.
He knows he should probably stop there. He puts his headphones on and doesn't.
YOU ARE READING
Boo-Ya
FanfictionImagine you are sleep-deprived and there was a ghost boy following around all of a sudden that could also clearly just be a hallucination. And after a while, you decided he even was cute. In which Maven gets haunted. Kind of. (A nonsensical...
