Quiet Desperation

Brendon's POV

The past few days have been the most... I'm going to use the word interesting. The past few days have been the most interesting days of my life. First of all, Spencer saw Ryan. So I figured that maybe I wasn't crazy, that everyone could see him, and he was just making up the whole ghost thing.

But that never did explain why he could find out so much about me, and get into my apartment without anyone letting him in... Though, I suppose I wanted to be sane so badly that nothing could contradict this in my mind.

Of course, after Ryan left, Spencer had to ruin it all for me. Just as I was picking up the pieces of my mind, and putting Ryan back into the category of "should-be-in-a-straight-jacket," Spencer just had to join me on the whole "insanity" deal.

He stumbled into my room, looking very pale, with wide eyes and hair messed up from running his fingers through it. It was a nervous habit of his.

He managed to get through the doorway, shaking like crazy, and then pointed to me. No words escaped either of our mouths for at least a minute or two, but silence tends to draw everything out, making the seconds seem like years.

Finally, he managed to speak. "You... you're not crazy, are you?" He sounded out of breath, like he'd just run a marathon or something. I couldn't formulate words as a response, I just shook my head. I wasn't crazy. At least, I didn't think I was...

You see, my impression of the situation was that Spencer walked in, saw a guy sitting next to me that fit the description of Ryan I'd given him exactly, freaked out and walked away. However, the crucial point I was missing was the word "disappear." Is your friend supposed to disappear like that. That's what he said to me.

Of course, in the moment, I thought maybe I'd heard him wrong, maybe he was speaking nonsense because he was surprised. I thought I could laugh it off with Ryan, and then recalculate all my thoughts after he left.

But that one word... I should've listened to it. I thought what happened was weird... well it just got a thousand times weirder. Ryan disappeared.

Not like... leaving the apartment kind of disappeared, but to Spencer, he actually just vanished into thin air. How is it that he can be so visible to me, but fade in and out of vision to people like Spencer? And didn't he mention that no one had seen him in years? I didn't think anything like this was really possible.

"H-he was there... but th-then h-he wasn't." Spencer babbled on while I thought, trying to make sense of my friend's disappearance. While I have to admit that it was weird, that's not what I was freaking out about. What I was freaking out about was the fact that now, the only shard of sanity left with us was Ryan's claim that he's a ghost.

If there's nothing else to accept... we have to accept that.

I think from the second I met Ryan, I was nodding my head and believing him, at least in a way. But now... now was the time when I had to accept that I believe him, I have to not only listen to what he says about himself, but I have to let it sink into my head as factual.

That was the hardest part... pieces of information that, if I told anyone other than my friends, would actually have me locked up in a looney bin. Things that I've been taught not to believe ever since my parents told me that fairy tales aren't real, I have to start really and truly believing them again.

"This is really happening, isn't it?" Spencer asked, seeming to have calmed down quite a bit. I smiled a little, letting a confused, humorless laugh escape my mouth before nodding.

"Yeah, dude. It is." he let out a huge sigh, like he'd been holding his breath, waiting for the right time to let it out again. He made his way over to the bed, sitting down next to me and running a hand through his hair, messing it up even more.

"That's a lot to take in, Bren." he didn't know the half of it. He knew the general story, but he didn't know all the weird, gory details that I did. Somehow, all of society managed to be proven wrong by a couple of fairly young guys in a shitty apartment in Vegas, talking about their friend. Who just happens to be dead.

"It is, it is." There was no denying that understanding this was a little difficult. But somehow, it seemed like everything would be worth it. Everything would even out in the end, and we would laugh together about how scared we were.

"Jon isn't gonna believe this." Spencer said, a smile working it's way onto his face. Our eyes met, and matching grins broke out on each of our lips.

"No man, no chance in hell. But he's gonna have to."

I think life just got a little less confusing, and hell of a lot more interesting.