I haven't seen Jacks ever since the funeral, but I've been looking for him everywhere. I'm actually really worried because everybody's starting to go on search parties and putting up missing posters of him.
I started looking for Grandma's stuff for answers, but all I could manage to find was art supplies and romance books in her house.
I actually started to give up, but when I was coming back from school, I saw him walk down the street. I ran on a sprint, meeting him halfway. He looked up. "What happened to you, Jacks? Are you okay?"
Clothes from the party looking crumpled and worn off is if he's been run over. He looks paler. Is he fading out somehow? It looks like he's running out of ink.
His hand shakes, but he fists it as if forcing himself to stay still. "Ever since the party, things have been weird. I keep forgetting stuff and feel cold all the time. What's happening?"
I bite my bottom lip, it doesn't look very good if I tell him.
He shakes his head, his words becoming more firm. "I don't know why I'm even asking you. I just feel like I'm drawn to you for some reason. I know it sounds corny and strange, probably creepy, but I feel like …"
His words stop because he's apparently at a loss for them.
I don't say anything because I don't know what to say, I just stare at him. Come on, say something, yelling those words in my head.
He doesn't say anything, and we seem to be caught up in the same silence we always get stuck on. "Listen," I start breathing through my nose, trying to get this right. "I really don't know what happened to you, but I think it's something really bad because…"
My words get stuck in my throat again, like always, fuck.
My memory gets caught on the last time I touched him at the funeral when my hand touched his being, or whatever it's called, essence. I don't know, and then he seem to have seizure. Do ghosts even have seizures in the afterlife?
God, this is weird.
"Do you remember what happened when I touched your arm last time you saw me at the funeral—my grandma's funeral?"
He seemed to pinch the furrowing around between his eyebrows.
Continue not wanting to be caught up with my words again, I say, "Do you remember how you got there? How you heard that my grandma died?"
"I must have heard it from someone at school, I don't know." He swats off my claim with one hand.
I insist, "no one at the school knew. Only you did. Do you remember how you even got there?"
I don't even know what I'm asking at this point because I'm lost just like he is right now. He's trying to concentrate. The frown between his eyebrows deepens even more.
Tell him, tell him he's dead, the voice in my head echoes my doubts on this.
I don't know why I'm even trying to deny this, but part of me wants him to still be alive, to still be around. He was a piece of shit, and his ghost currently haunts me, but part of me wants him to still be alive. I didn't hate him even though he apparently slept with me, called me a whore, and then left.
Maybe you stayed here because of me because he wanted to say sorry. I dismissed the motion because that is stupid, my arrogance.
I feel like slapping a palm on my face, but I have to deal with the giant mess currently staring at me.
There was so much confusion and doubt on his beautiful face. "My family has a gift to see people who have died." I bear on not wanting to let him be focused on whatever is going on in his head because he's warring with something here.
"And I've been seeing a lot of them. Some of them don't really remember what happened to them or what they're doing here. You know who was the very first ghost that I saw, Jacks?"
He slightly nods as if he already knows the answer, because I'm sure he does.
My expression is so pained, realizing I'm going to tell him. Why me?
This is so fucked up. "It's you, Jacks. You're dead."
He shakes his head as if denying it, but he looks at the streetlights now blinking in and out, clearly affected by his inner turmoil. "What is happening to me?"
"This are your emotions, Jacks. Calm down. You're affecting the surroundings around you. The other side has an effect on objects in the living world," I quote my grandma's words to me when I was a kid when I asked her about the strange blackouts at her house. It was the norm in her house. We used to even make a game out of it.
Without without even thinking about it. I go over to touch his palm.
Instantly all the lights stop blinking out. He takes a sharp intake of breath as if lungs fill up with air. I look at his palm, feeling it firm under my grip, and I look into his eyes. He seems shocked and somehow more visible. "How can you touch me?"
"I don't know," I mutter. I tried to wrench out my hand, but he gripped onto it. He exhudes a sigh of relief, and some of the color is returning to his features. What the hell is going on?
This feels weird and uncomfortable. I back away a couple of steps as he steps even closer to me. "Don't leave. You always leave."
I frown up at him, annoyed that I got stuck with him. "I can't do this, Jack."
Refueled by whatever I done to him, he pulls away from me and starts tattering in thought. He clicks his fingers, doing that together, and grins wide. "Let's make a deal."
I quirk up an eyebrow in question. "What kind of deal?"
"The kind that benefits both of us." He inches even closer to me. His body, now visibly more firm, feels ominous right now. "Help me figure out what happened to me. If I'm really dead, help me find my…" He stops on the word, gritting it out of his teeth, "body."
I grimace, crinkling my nose in disgust. "Helping you find your dead corpse? No way."
Somehow now that I know he's now more of a presence, I feel confident, although I definitely shouldn't.
"No way. You're not going to get rid of me." He crosses his arms, waiting for my answer.
I look up at him and the dude that I had a huge crush on for years. I trying to cling on to the memory of what was essentially a pretty nice dude, sometimes at least. He deserved to be in peace. I sigh griefly and expel the words that seal my fate with this asshole. "Fine."