From that day on, Joel and Sandra became inseparable—well, as inseparable as a living boy and a ghost girl could be. They met every afternoon at the mansion, talking about everything and nothing. Joel found himself telling her things he had never told anyone else—about his parents, the accident, the loneliness that gnawed at him every day. And Sandra shared the little bits she could remember of her past, though most of it was still a fog.
But there was one thing she was sure of: she had never felt so alive as she did when she was with Joel.
Joel, for his part, was falling hard. He knew it was crazy, falling for a ghost, but there was something about Sandra that made him feel understood in a way no one else ever had. She got his pain, his darkness, because she had her own. And even though she couldn't touch him, he felt her presence in every beat of his heart.
One night, as they sat together in the old garden, Joel turned to her, his headphones slung around his neck, the soft hum of an emo ballad playing in the background.
"You know, if things were different... if you were... I don't know... alive..." he trailed off, feeling stupid for even thinking it.
Sandra smiled, a sad, soft smile that made her look both beautiful and tragic. "I know," she whispered. "But we're here now, aren't we?"
Joel nodded, his heart heavy with the weight of all the things he could never say. "Yeah," he whispered back. "We're here."
And in that moment, it didn't matter that she was a ghost, or that he was just a boy trying to survive a world that had been cruel to him. All that mattered was that, somehow, they had found each other in the midst of all the darkness.
