The ghost girl & the broken boy

No one ever tells you about death.

They might talk about dying, if the air is grim enough, or if they think it's waiting at your doorsteps. They'll tell you as a comfort: "You won't feel a thing, love. Like falling asleep." Of course, it will be for their own peace of mind, rather than yours.

No one ever tells you about death, because no one knows about it. And it scares them, the not knowing. Not everyone knows they're going to die.

The little ones, they're kept unaware until the bitter end. Who wants to tell a kid they won't live to blow out the fifth candle? But I wasn't little anymore, just a kid, and there was no point in lying to me about what was real and what was not. I was gone before I was seventeen.

And it did not feel like falling asleep. It felt like suffocating.

Like a block of concrete sitting on your chest, crushing your sternum and ribs and lungs. It felt like trying to swallow one more gulp of air but your body is not answering to you anymore and why, why wouldn't you, just do it, why won't you, you stupid, useless, broken-

Next thing you know, you won't need to breathe anymore. Or eat, or sleep, or follow all those rules made by someone to control someone to control someone. You won't have to pry doors open because no door is closed when you can pass right through them. You won't have to think about what to say or how to say it and who to say it to because no one is listening.

You're dead. You're free.

In the seven years since, I have not left the hospital. I could've done it whenever I wanted to and I could've gone wherever I wanted to, but I chose to stay. I spent the better part of my life in a hospital room, so wouldn't that be considered home?

I walked down every hallway, got into every empty room; found my favourite places and the ones I never wanted to go back to; learnt where most was happening and where nothingness crawled on. Listened to grandfathers recall lifetimes ago like it was yesterday, and teens fear for their tomorrows. Watched nurses and doctors forcing their limbs and lives to move on to the next, because if they stopped someone's life might stop, too.

Some stories had a happy ending, others not so much, but I was there for many welcomes and more goodbyes. They couldn't see me, but I was there. I was in death where I couldn't be in life.

Days and faces overlapped, every door looked like the last, and I could get through this one like I did the one before. Untouched and unaware.

"Can I help you?"

I blinked, faced the voice, and blinked again.

There was a boy. Thickly rimmed glasses perched too low on his nose, black curls coiled too close to his scalp, dark skin made darker by the shades of white embracing him.

There was a boy, and he was staring. At me? He wasn't.

He looked at the door and then back, that puzzled look stuck between his brows.

"Hello?"

He was. He was, he was, he was.

"You can see me?" My voice was like a breeze, the whisper of a lover not fitted for the ears of strangers.

He laughed, the sound between a chuckle and a choke. "You're standing in the middle of my room?" It wasn't really a question, just a truth in disguise.

I could give him one, too. "I'm not here?"

"Where are you then?"

"Six feet under."

The boy kept on staring, and I could read every word swimming behind his eyes. Not one made it past his lips. I thought they never would, but he proved me wrong: “Did I die?”

The answer must've been written on my face.

“You said you were six feet under.” I nodded, so he went on, “Yet I am looking at you, here, in my hospital room.” I held my breath, or pretended to. “Does that mean I’m there, too? Is this what ‘six feet under’ looks like?”

“If you want it to.”

Of that, I was most certain. When it happened, I didn't want to go, and so I didn't.

I was there when a man as old as dirt was minutes from leaving, just as I had been there when he'd arrived a few days prior. He kept talking about a Marisol who loved to swim in the same ocean that stole her away. When he passed, I was the only ghost in the room. He didn't even stop to say goodbye, his Marisol was waiting.

I didn't tell this tale to the boy. It wasn't his, after all.

“You didn't answer my first question” he pouted.

A gentle morning breeze sneaked into the room, disturbing the curtains concealing the half open window. It flattened the shirt to the plane of his chest and angle of his shoulders, bent the corners of stray sheets of paper sticking out from an overfilled notebook. My own long shirt was still, my hair laid flat against my back, and my shadow kept missing. The silence was only interrupted by the low-pitched beeping of the machine, inconspicuous in its corner despite its size, beating in rhythm with the boy's heart. Whatever answer he was eager for, he'd found it on his own.

“I'm Cameron,” the boy said, tentatively. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, the lenses making his black eyes look bigger.

“I was Niamh.”

He nodded. “And who are you now?”

His words gave me pause. Am I still me, or am I someone else? Will I forever be the girl I used to be? Or can I still be the person I might've become, if only I had lived long enough?

“I could still be her, I guess.”

“That sounds great,” Cameron said. “Hi, Niamh.”

I smiled. “Hi, Cameron.”

He pressed his palm on the mattress, twice, three times, uncrumpling the papery sheets of his bed. He cleared his throat, “You can sit, if you want.”

I debated pointing out the empty chairs flanking the bed, which he seemed to have willingly forgotten about, and instead trailed my gaze back to his face, where a blush was slowly creeping up his neck.

“Or not. That's fine.” His voice was higher, squeaky like a broken toy without enough air. He was so visibly affected he was endearing.

A boy could see me.

A boy–Cameron–was talking to me, and listened to what I said in reply.

Cameron got nervous around me, blushed. It made me feel like I was still just a girl. Living and breathing and dreaming.

A knock was the only warning before the door swung open, silent on its hinges. Two women walked in, holding flowers and hands. They couldn't have been more different: where one was light, the other was dark; where there were braids, the other had free locks; where jeans were hugging thighs, a skirt was falling off wide hips. They wore matching golden bands around their fingers and carved lines around their mouths. And their souls, too. Their souls were the same.

“Hi baby, how are we feeling today?”

“I- uh…” Cameron looked at me, deer eyed. “I'm okay, mum.”

So this was it. I don't know why I expected our last page to be different. Some moments last years, others a handful of minutes stolen from time. But that's what makes memories so precious, isn't it? The unyielding truth that everything must come to an end.

I turned to leave Cameron to his parents.

“Wait,” he called over his mother's voice, “Are you going to come back?”

The women both turned to face the bare wall at my back.

“Honey, we just got here.”

“No, mama, I'm talking to Niamh.”

“Cam, there is no one but us three.”

I’m here, I didn't say. Cameron already knew that.

Because Cameron the broken boy could see Niamh the ghost girl.

He had wanted me closer, and maybe I wanted to be closer.

Maybe.

Maybe.

“Maybe.”