Ghost Perfume | ✔

Chapter 12: Stay Closer to Me (Part 2)

Gabriel and I ended up going to furniture stores after Alexander left. There was one opposite the coffee shop and Gabriel suggested we go in just to look. We navigated around ancient, dusty wooden chairs and tables and cabinets, stepping over faded gilt-framed watercolors and dark oil paintings of horses and country scenes. It was another world in that store, in the overpowering smell of wood and dust, where the many lights couldn't quite seem to cut through the gloom. I didn't find anything I liked. But then we got to a section in the back with dozens and dozens of rugs, and a large round one was very pretty and unusual with purple, blue, and cream-white flowers. We bought it even though it wasn't necessary. We put the rug in the car and Gabriel took me to another place a few blocks over, this one selling more modern things, and I found an office chair I liked. He insisted on a desk, and I liked a modest white one. He insisted on a couch, and I liked a small cream-colored one.

"Radiant one.''

A ghost approached.

Gabriel signed for the store to deliver what we'd bought, and then he drove us home so I could talk to the ghost.

* * *

Gabriel stayed over my second night at Alexander's. Michael came on Sunday morning and Gabriel left. Michael was quiet besides asking me how I felt and if Tommy had contacted me, and only a few hours passed before Lukas came and Michael left. We ordered takeout and Lukas fell asleep when we finished eating. I watched him snore on the new couch, his feet sticking over its side. It was clear to me by then that they weren't going to leave me alone in the house and they were working it out with their schedule, no matter how busy they were.

I wanted to point out that I wasn't six years old, but I was also afraid of appearing to push them away.

I sat at kitchen table, where I could still watch over him, and pulled out my death notebook and laptop.

I had many new projects.

The ghost that I'd sensed furthest away, my first morning here, had died forty miles away. So, I'd sensed him at forty miles or less. And I made a note of his speed, as well; if I'd sensed him at forty miles away at about nine in the morning, and given that he'd found me at three o'clock of the following day, then it had taken him a minimum of thirty hours to find me. It seemed slow, but then again, I knew they could move quite fast. Jane certainly flew at speeds faster than I could move.

I had marked Owen Leaky in the death notebook with his date of passing and other information, but I also opened Google Maps and marked with a star his place of death as he'd told it to me. This was the Location project. I wanted to keep track of where my ghosts came from, if their appearances were random or if I could find patterns and clusters of their presence. I had Mom's atlas beside me, but I thought it wouldn't be half as useful as Google Maps once the numbers began accumulating. And I didn't know if the atlas would be as accurate as Google Maps.

If anything, I thought as I traced the edge of my death notebook, I should move all the information that I gathered into a digital and online system. I could combine it all together. But I felt attached to the notebook in a way I couldn't quite explain, even more so than to Mom's atlas. The years of carrying it around, pulling it out many times a day, guarding it from Tommy and everyone, and adding name after name, filling page after page, had imbued the notebook with a magnetic weight to me. I always knew where it was. I liked looking over its long, long list. Dense with the names of the dead, it felt alive in my hand.

I wanted to keep my death notebook.

And, I defended myself, it wasn't inconvenient to carry around a notebook and a pen.