Misguided Ghosts

Chapter Thirty-Three

Thirty-Three – Ed

“What?!” Liam was looking at me as though I’d just announced that I was actually called Shirley and frequently wore a neon green thong.

“You heard me,” I said plainly. “You’re a smart guy. I’m not going to treat you like an idiot.”

“She was my best friend, okay?” He said in a low voice, heavy with restrained tears. “And now she’s dead. That’s it. And I don’t have to share her with you,”

“But there’s more, isn’t there?” I pressed. “There’s more to it than that,”

He studied me, his eyes narrowed, mysterious, inscrutable. “How do you know about all of this? How do you even know about Emilie, and who she is?” When I didn’t reply, he turned away, heading for the stockroom.

“Because I’m like her!” I cried, the words leaping forth from my mouth before I could even ponder whether or not I should tell him my secret.

He stopped in his tracks, the muscles in his back obviously tensing. “What did you just say?”

I took a deep breath, mu eyes meeting his, the green fire in them suddenly returning, rekindled with a new hope. “Because I’m like her, Liam. I heard you asking for my help. I heard what you said. I am like her.”

“Ed?” He whispered, a single tear falling down his cheek. But he wasn’t speaking to the quiet eighteen year old that was stood in front of him, but the cheeky fifteen year old who would always be by his side. “Is that you? Please, please tell me it’s you?”

I nodded. “Does the jumper still smell of her?”

A smile twitched his lips. “I still spray her perfume on it. I buy it when I run out.”

Crossing the distance between us, I pulled him into a hug.

“How did you hear me?”

“I don’t know,”

He slapped me on the back and pulled away, dabbing at his eyes. We had always been the jokers of the pack, making crude references, penis jokes, ‘your mum’ comments and generally grossing out the girls as often as possible, and yet there we were, two years later, hugging each other and crying.

“You’re blonde,”

“You’re attractive,”

“I’m not dead,”

“Hey, neither am I,”

“What exactly happened?”

I bit my lip. “Ed Tanner died. You remember that curly-haired guy from your dreams? He’s called himself Caleb and has wormed his way into my life once again. I have an idea of what other names he goes by, but let’s just leave him as Caleb. I made a promise to Tay when she was still in a coma. I promised I’d rescue her. When you’re like me, any promise you make is automatically binding, so you’re held to your word because when it’s the second time round, you know just how much an unfulfilled promise can hurt. You break it, you die and there’s no more reincarnation for you. Caleb somehow intervened. He brought her back, reincarnating Emilie as her the moment she died.

“A couple of days later, Caleb appeared in my flat.  He was saying all this stuff, but there was this one thing he did. He offered me a choice. I either gave him my soul, or he’d take Tay away, as his.”

“You gave it away, didn’t you?”

The shop bell dinged and we scattered, doing our best to look busy, I occupied myself with grabbing the duster from the stockroom and dusting along the top of the shelves – something I really should have done about two hours ago. Liam retrieved books from the stockroom and carried them to their appropriate shelves, whistling Third Eye Blind’s Jumper as he did so. Every time he walked past me, our eyes met and a cheeky smile was exchanged between us. His eyes flashed with the unspoken promise of our old friendship coming to life again, the corners of his lips turning up in a smile that meant endless tomfooleries, all of which would either result in trouble or triumph. I felt less like who I was and more like I had been, buzzing with excitement at what would happen next, because we didn’t believe in fate, or destiny. We wrote our own stories and that was what made our lives so beautiful. We were oblivious.