End

“Let me go,” I whispered. “Tori, please. This is something I have to do.”

“Where? To see your lover-boy? Your murderer?” Hurt flashed quickly across Tori's features, then faded only to be replaced by a stony expression. “Fine.”

It had taken me weeks, but she was finally letting me go.

We took her mother’s car. Tristan lived across town, near my family’s house in this big castle-like place built with reddish stone.

“I—I’ll be waiting,” Tori said when we’d walked around the house. There, standing three floors beneath Tristan’s window, she avoided my eyes in favor of the hard-packed dirt beneath her feet. “Right here.”

I forced a smile; I was barely listening. The window above our heads glinted gold in the setting sun, taunting me. I floated up until I was level with the window sill and peered in. The room was the same as I remembered it. Sheet music and bedclothes layered the floor, and drawers hung open, spilling t-shirts.

I slipped through the glass and hung there in the corner, watching him. He stood in the doorway of his room, staring blankly ahead. His face was white, his pale gold hair was lank, and there were shadows under his eyes. He was a walking corpse.

I remembered the joking, brainless idiot he used to be and felt like crying.

God, the day he asked me out. He was just another dude on the fringe of our group, but belonging wholly to another, only coming to hang with us while when his other group wasn’t there, which occurred only once in a while. When he asked me out, half of me couldn’t believe it because it seemed as though no one cared about me at all. At that point, I would have been content to have someone hate me. That, at least, would be acknowledging my existence in some way. But then, he came along. Someone actually saw me. He saw me as not just another body, but as someone to share some sort of emotion with, whether that be positive or negative. He cared, at least a little, and that meant the world to me.

There in the doorway, Tristan seemed to come back to himself. He blinked and stepped forward, only to collapse on the edge of his bed, staring at the floor. “Oh, God. Help me,” he whimpered. He bent over and a sound burst from him like the sound of a wounded animal.

I blinked, nonplussed. What?

His shoulders shook, and I realized that he was crying. No, not just crying, sobbing violently with wrenching gasps. “I’m sorry!” I heard him say in his deep voice, roughened with tears. “Carrie, I’m so sorry.”

Me! He was crying over me! I couldn’t believe that a little thing like my death could have such a profound effect on him. It wasn’t like I was the love of his life, or anything. He hadn’t loved me. We were going out because we could, that’s all. We found a sort of comfort in one another, the confidence that the other was sane and normal and completely anti-drama, the confidence that the other would always be waiting.

It killed me to see him hurting over me. What an odd emotion to feel: hurting because of hurt. I’d only felt that a couple of times in my life, and those only ever with just one other person. “I know you are…” I whispered back.

His breath caught, and the room was suddenly silent. He’d heard me.

He continued on in a frantic whisper, “It was a stupid thing to do. The road was wet, I knew that. It was dark, I knew that. The bend was hard to see around, I knew that. Why did I do it anyway? I’m a teenager, not a professional stuntman. What was I thinking?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, drily. He never thought. Ever. It was one of the things that amused me so much when I was alive.

He went on talking low and fast, staring straight ahead, missing the spot where I floated only by a few feet. “You squealed when I told you what I was going to do. Spinning out like that, going in circles, you thought I was an idiot. You told me not to, but you laughed, too. So I went ahead and did it. Then, you saw that other car coming at us. Those headlights lit up your face. You were beautiful…” He took a breath. “You never liked my driving; it scared you, even though you always smiled. But I liked making you squeal. It was…cute. I liked…having power over you. I didn’t want to hurt you, ever, but the thought that I could control you was exciting. You know that I would have done anything to keep you safe and happy. You know that, right?”

I remembered the teasing light that brightened his gaze whenever he was trying to scare me. I remembered the gentle concern in his eyes whenever I mentioned something that bothered me. “…Yes.”

He let out a breath. It was a relieved sound. Pulling himself back further onto the bed, he wrapped his arms around his shins and rested his chin on his knees. “Carrie. I cared for you a lot. I almost loved you. Almost. I think in a few more months, I would have.” Another choking sob cut his words off. “But, please, forgive me. Let me go. I don’t want to cry anymore.”

“I’m not keeping you,” I told him, confused. I wasn’t haunting him. “You’re keeping yourself. Forgive yourself, silly. I already have.”

He went silent, still, unbelieving.

I moved closer to him, bending down next to his ear. His familiar, sweet smell sent my nonexistent heart pounding. “I forgive you. But do you forgive yourself?”

He started to shake his head.

“Wrong answer.”

He stopped, then slowly began to nod. “I’ll try.”

“You do that, and you’ll be happy.”

He put his hand out, cautiously, reaching for me.

Did he really believe that I was here? Did he think he was hallucinating? Did it even matter to him whether this conversation was real or not?

I willed myself solid. Not visible, and not all of me, just the bit he was reaching for: my hairline. With Tori, I was solid and visible all the time, but to become a shape and solid for anyone else took willpower and concentration, two gifts I’d been born without.

His eyes grew wide when he realized he was touching something he couldn’t see. Quickly, his fingers ran over the side of my face and slipped through my hair. “Carrie?”

“I’m here.”

And then, just like that, I was ready to leave. I remembered spending months agonizing over this boy, wanting, wishing. Spending the hours when Tori was asleep crying for him. But less than five minutes after laying eyes on him, I wanted to leave. I had no desire to return. I was ready to move on.
“Goodbye,” I whispered, jumping into the air.

He threw his head back, instinct telling him where I was when his eyes couldn’t. His cherry mouth was open into a wide, surprised O; his blonde hair was tousled and damp from crying; his ocean-eyes sparkled with old tears.

I would never see him again.