Phantom [h.s]

Thirty Four

I watch Harry leave. He jumps down from the window ledge without a look back at me.

My shock shifts slowly to confusion as I recount the events that just took place. Harry's odd calm manner, the way he just left without a word. Granted, I did tell him to leave, but he's right, looking at the big picture. This can't end well for either of us if I continue to help him and get closer to the truth.

All emotions leave me except for one: anger. Blind, hot, fury that begins in my chest and spreads to my fingers and toes, my body temperature rising as I continue to think about what Harry said.

"You don't understand. I don't want you to help me anymore."

What is he afraid of? If he knew it wouldn't end well, why did he ask me to help him in the first place?

My temper is close to exploding as I revisit every moment with Harry, everything he said. He can't just expect me to let all of this go, can he? Just because he thinks it's become "too much"?

I look around my room for something to hit or throw or destroy. I fling all the pillows off my bed and kick them, but it's not enough. I go into my closet and find the box of Harry's old t-shirts and throw them out of the box into the center of my room, scattering them everywhere, colored fabric flying in all directions. My eye catches on the black Arctic Monkeys shirt and I kick at it, sending it flying at my bedroom door. I pick it up and throw it again, fury paired with adrenaline coursing through me. Hot, angry tears cloud my vision as I bend down and take a shirt into my hands, trying to calm myself down.

I try my hardest to put myself in Harry's place to try to understand what he's thinking, but I just can't. Things were going so well, especially after last night I feel that I'm getting closer to the answers Harry needs to cross to the afterlife-so why did he break it off?

When put like that, it sounds like we were together or something. Of course we weren't. I was only helping him to find his killer, even if I did develop deeper feelings for him. Nothing between us can last-because, in the words of Robert Frost, nothing gold can stay.

I throw the shirt back on the ground as my mind still struggles to find any reason behind why Harry cut the ties that connected us. More anger begins to build as I think of how he spoke to his mother in the videos, and the way he barely cared about it, even as a ghost.

"I told you I was selfish and arrogant, I don't know why seeing it on a tape makes a difference."

"I never claimed to be an angel or anything when I was alive, so I don't see why you're so surprised to see it for yourself."

I think back to when my father said that people change, but they do not transform. I see now that he was right. Even if death changed Harry from the egocentric person he once was, little remnants of that will remain with him. He changed, but he did not transform.

And that makes me angry and sad and hopeless-feeling, and I convince myself the latter two are side effects of the angry part of it. The image of Harry shutting my window behind him replays in my mind's eye and my anger boils over.

I reach for something blindly off my bedside table to throw and find the little black box in my hand that showed up in my closet the first day we moved in, the one that was Harry's and that held the Polaroid photo of him. Before I can stop myself from letting my anger take over, I throw the box as hard as I can, shutting my eyes as I hear a shatter and a thud.

I know it before I open my eyes but I don't want to face it. When I finally look up I see the box on the ground, the lid thrown open and the photo of Harry strewn on top of one of the t-shirts on the floor. The mirror hung on my wall is shattered, pieces of glass everywhere from being hit with the box at full speed.