Misguided Ghosts

Chapter Twenty-Three

Twenty-Three – Ed

I wanted to kill Caleb. Rage boiled through my body like never before. I told myself that these weren’t my emotions, that they were Caleb’s and I needed to calm down and focus on Tay. He could have hurt her. Lured her into a dark corner of the school, looking all sad and regretful, and then had his way with her. I needed to hit something. Or someone. Specifically Caleb. I cursed Tay for being so trusting, and then instantly regretted it. It wasn’t her fault. Caleb appealed to the best qualities in people. For my past incarnation, he appealed to my loyalty: my desire to see Emilie again. He must have appealed to the trust that resided in Tay, twisting it to let him into her life.

Springing off the sofa, causing Rodent to cower underneath the coffee table due to my sudden movement, I stretched. There was one thing I could do to dispel the rage.

“Rodent,” I announced. “I’m going for a run.”

I jogged through the streets, trying not to pass out. It had been ages since I’d gone for a run, and it was only now that I realised how unfit I was. A stitch tore at my chest and every breath stung. I wheezed as I ran, wondering why I hadn’t thought to bring a bottle of water with me. The back of my shirt was sticking to me and my legs burned. How could Tay swim length after length and not get tired?  My thoughts ran haphazardly through my head. I thought the whole point of this going out for a run thing was to get rid of my anger and my thoughts. So far, only the anger had gone.

Giving up, I walked home.

Rodent was waiting for me when I got back. “Sorry, baby, shower time,”

I emerged from the shower, smelling a damn sight better than I did before I got in the cubicle, feeling empty once again. Had something happened? Had they made up?

All I could think about was Tay. Images of her, sitting in the shower as the scalding hot water slammed down against her flashed through my mind, as if they had been pasted over my eyes. She had been so vulnerable, so breakable, and I had let her go back to school and straight back to him. So much for protecting her.

As I had nothing better to do until I went to work, I decided to wash my car. It was the perfect kind of day for it: a crisp breeze, coupled with a bright autumnal sunshine that seemed to penetrate every single aspect of the outside world, highlighting and emboldening every shape that it touched. I rolled down the windows as I worked, the keys in the ignition so I could listen to the radio. A thumping guitar piece with easy harmonies and soaring melodies and nostalgic lyrics that I would forever associate with reflecting on who I was, what I had and what I had become.

I had been Edward Michael Tanner. I was friends with Emile Claremont, Liam Pryce, Hayley Lawrence and Evie Bailey, the five of us becoming inseperable, despite the fact that Hayley and Evie couldn’t go one day without arguing with Liam about something. We had patrolled the woods, laughing and taking photos and catching the moments, storing in film so that they would forever be preserved for us, the smiles of my friends brighter than the summer sun. We would wander the streets, quite often sitting in an empty car park after hours, bathed in the evening light, talking about whatever would come to mind. They were my sisters, and my brother, in all but blood. They members of my family.

Edward Tanner developed leukaemia. The hospital became my home, the doctors and nurses that looked after me becoming some sort of an extended family. My days were spent lying in bed, pondering what it would be like when I died. What my parents would do. Whether my room would stay the same, or become some other room that was used for something else? Who would even remember me in the years to come? How would my friends cope without me? What would Emilie do, without me to look after her? I didn’t fear death, or remission, but what I did fear was being forgotten. I had so much left to live for, and I had done nothing remarkable with my life. But from the moment I was diagnosed, I was nothing but terminal. I’d lived too long without getting my symptoms checked out, and the cancer was too advanced. The doctors could do all they could, but there was no hope. Eventually, I had made the decision to die. I was tired. Tired of being poked and prodded and the endless treatments, the experiments that might buy me more time. I remembered my father not crying, but walking out of my room. Then, from the corridor, I had heard a wail.

I died on February 24th.

Then, Caleb had appeared to me, offering me the chance to go back, as someone else, but to carry on living. I would have another chance not to be forgotten, to watch over my friends and make sure they were safe. They wouldn’t know me, but I would still have all of my previous memories and would be able to watch from a distance, taking comfort in the fact that they were coping. I would be in a new body, but I would not only have Edward Tanner’s memories, but I would have my new body’s memories, so it would be like waking up from a long dream. Of course, I accepted.

I woke up as Edward Matthew Milligan, a fifteen year old boy who’d been in a coma after falling down a flight of stone steps at school, of all places. I had been comatose for two weeks. After another few weeks in the hospital on bed rest, I returned to school, finished my GCSEs, spent the summer rediscovering myself, had my sixteenth birthday and went back to school to do my A-Levels. In the March of my final year, I met Taylor Woodson at a party. We kissed and I fell for her instantly, my old friends fading to the back of my mind. At the age of seventeen, I left school and moved out of my parents’ house shortly after my eighteenth birthday. But then everything had gone wrong: Tay was injured in a car accident and ended up in a coma, just as I had. I had turned to drink and now that I had her back, I’d lost my soul to keep her with me.

 Leaving the wind and the sun, I went back inside, the song and my memories of both of my lives ringing through my head.

I collapsed on the sofa, wondering if I could really be bothered to get up and make myself some lunch, but the impatient rumbling of my stomach won out against my laziness, so I made myself possibly the best toasted cheese sandwich ever. I scoffed as I dug in. And my parents had thought I wouldn’t be able to survive on my own, because I couldn’t cook. But there were two things that I could do, and they were read, and follow instructions, which meant I could read a cookbook, which meant I could follow the sainted Delia Smith’s instructions and make my own dinner.

At half two, I dragged my body off the sofa and got changed, finding my clothes for work, which consisted of the black skinny jeans that I was wearing, and my shirt for today was the black and green checked shirt that Tay adored. I raked my hands through my hair, teasing out the final knots before flattening it. I wormed my feet into my green Vans and headed down to my car.

I arrived at work at ten to three, ten minutes before my shift. In that time, I made myself an instant coffee, which would undoubtedly taste like crap and decided to eat some biscuits from the staff tin. My idea, by the way.

Three o’clock rolled around and I took my place behind the till. Customers drifted in and out, some buying and some browsing. In the quiet times, I ordered the shelves; making notes on which books we were running low on and restocking the shelves when I could. Being the only one on shop floor was tricky. Even when the shop was empty, I had to prop the door to the stockroom open with a large stack of atlases.

At four, a boy dashed inside, brown hair sticking up in all directions and breathless, as if he’d run to the shop. “Hi…” He panted. “I’m… Liam. Maya’s… Little brother.”

I looked at him, taking in every feature of him. He and Maya had the same green eyes, but while Liam’s hair stuck out in all directions, Maya’s fell to her shoulders in a single flat brown plane. His hair didn’t appear gelled in any way at all, held up by its very own gravitational field. His cheekbones appeared to have been hand-crafted, because there was no way that anyone’s cheekbones could be that defined. They looked like they could cut something. As he smiled at me, a weak wave of recognition washed through me as this boy’s face swam forward from the murky depths of the jumble of Ed Tanner’s memories. I had watched this face change from that of a chubby five year old, to the thin face of his twelve year old self and slowly change as teenagedom hit him.

Clearly, puberty had done a good job on my one of my eldest friends, Liam Pryce.   

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So there we go. Chapter 23. I know it does get rambly, but it's crucial, I promise! So did anyone realise who Liam was before I pointed him out to be Ed Tanner's friend? And who remembers him from the beginning of the story? 

xoxo Cat