Ghost Perfume | ✔

Chapter 1: Hear Me (Part 2)

The light outside weakened and fell on the bus ride home, as if frost were crawling over the sun itself. Snow had fallen again during the day. I watched Andrew stick his finger into the portal's surface. I watched him sit on the driver's lap and poke around at the dashboard of the bus. I watched my boots sink into the fresh cover as I walked up the street.

Alexander, the new neighbor in the house across from ours, was clearing his driveway.

He gave me a manly jerk of his head. I nodded back.

I paused with relief at my own driveway; there was a wide, dry trail to the front porch, sprinkled generously with salt. Tommy must have finally cleared it.

Although his car was, again, not in the driveway. I wondered for the millionth time where he went. It was almost definitely not college.

When I came into the house, the air was dim and cool and stale.

Andrew stuck to my side like a burr, like he was making sure I didn't forget about him.

I went straight to the kitchen and pulled out a bagel and cream cheese. I ate it in four bites, hardly chewing before swallowing. There were takeout containers on the top shelf in the fridge, but their contents were inedible. I put the containers back on the shelf, so Tommy would see for himself and not blame me for finishing the food.

A few apples languished in a bottom drawer. I sliced one quickly and reached for the peanut butter.

It had grown dead dark outside. When was he coming?

My phone buzzed.

Tommy: Shift tonight?

Rose: Yes, 8

The phone buzzed again a minute later.

Tommy: Get there and back on your own, ok?

I clenched my fingers. I wanted to say it was dark and freezing. I wanted to say he had a car and I didn't. I wanted to say there was a hole in my boot.

I didn't say anything, because that ok? hadn't been a real question.

What was he doing? Was he working? I knew he provided at least some of our money, but I didn't know how much.

Andrew moved restlessly beside me.

Right.

He needed me. How selfish was I?

This was reality. The rest was all fluff.

I dumped my backpack on the floor of the living room and sat on the couch, curling up. I tugged the musty blanket on the back of the couch to lie over my knees.

A ghost's red string could knot and fray and fail to form the key to the death portal for so many reasons. But the universal problem in some form or another was that they failed to accept an aspect of their own death; maybe they didn't quite accept that they were dead in the first place, or they were angry or hysterical about the consequences of it.

They were too emotionally tied to the living world.

It wasn't unfinished business per se that kept the dead shackled to the living; who wouldn't have unfinished business? It was the belief that their unfinished business kept them grounded in the first place.

I persuaded them to accept the thought of stepping through, and not merely in words, as Andrew had tried to do.

Their acceptance untangled the thread on its own, and then it only remained to me to fix the damaged sections.