Keep the Ghost

28. My many faces

"So I'm just going to walk in and get a driver's license? Like Ryan White is a real person?" I ask Morgan, rubbing my palms on the leather seat of the car.

"Ryan White has all the qualifications of a real person," she tells me. "He has a birth certificate issued from a hospital nineteen years ago. He's had an email address for six years, a cell phone for five years, and a credit card for two. He enrolled in a high school—though you'll find he was tardy often. Okay, he never went to class. But he's got a real paper trail, and as far as the world of information is concerned, that makes him real. He just needs a face—yours."

"A face with stupid yellow hair," I add. I do not like looking in the mirror and seeing this person; it doesn't look like me. Sean Reilly would never dye his hair this color, or any color.

I suppose that's the point.

"Good luck," she calls as I open the car door, slide my crutches out and steady myself. I hobble across a freshly paved parking lot, smell of tar wet in my nose.

Strange, what makes a person. I'm dead, officially, with a closed file—and definitely feel real. Poor Ryan White here never lived a day of his life; he's only the shell of a human, waiting for a soul to animate him, and yet he's supposed to be alive.

There's no one to hold the door for me, and I struggle to stretch my crutches in ahead. When I'm inside, the wind slams the door into my back; I barely keep myself from falling over.

I'm basically a ballerina with these things.

After I check in, I find a chair in the corner and rest, eyes focused on the floor. Thoughts of Morgan flash through my mind; a hundred questions, desires. Then, that's probably what she wants. Or is it?

I've never met anyone like her. I still don't know if I've seen her, really, or if it's all been an act. Even when she burned the car, and smoked in front of me—her story didn't add up. I met Cole, and he was pissed. Outraged. It couldn't just be that she escaped him, not after all these years.

It's all manipulation, but it's enchanting to watch. Maybe that's all she is—mask after mask, infinitely reoccurring. Maybe that's still a special kind of person, though.

I rise when Ryan White's name is announced over the speaker. I step up to the desk of a dark-skinned woman with gold hoop earrings and a bored expression. I answer a few questions, then hand her the social security card, credit card, and forged form stating I passed Driver's Ed.

She directs me to a scotch-tape 'x' on the floor. I stand over it and look down the barrel of a camera. I don't smile, just stare. A bulb flashes, and my face appears on a monitor next to the woman.

"This all right?" she asks.

"Yes," I say, trying to hide my accent.

She prints out a temporary driver's license—the real one is being mailed to a post office box that Morgan and I rented with cash earlier today.

I take the form absentmindedly. I can't stop looking at myself in the computer monitor—the face staring back at me looks betrayed; the yellow hair is unorthodox, unwelcome.

No idea who I am anymore, and that's staring me right in the face.