The Illusion of Separation

Christofer disappeared the next morning.

He'd fallen asleep with me, his arms around me, just like I loved them. I remember breathing in his aroma deep and smiling as I drifted into peaceful unconsciousness, feeling like nothing could ever go wrong in the world again because he'd come back. Sure, he was a ghost, but he might as well be a human. We could still be together. But of course it didn't last, and when I woke up he had vanished.

At first I thought he'd just gone off somewhere. Outside, or downstairs, maybe. But when I started to get up to go check, his arms tugged at me. He was still holding me, I just couldn't see him. I cursed under my breath and asked, "Christofer?"

Hannah...

The word was more a breath than an actual word, and I could guess what had happened. He was still here, he just wasn't visible to me. Probably soon I'd lose my ability to hear or feel him, and he'd become a ghost again. Or more of a ghost than he'd already been. Carter was going to be so pissed. And we had absolutely no clue if he was ever going to come back or if this was just something temporary. I bit my lip to keep it from shaking and touched his arm. "Hey, don't worry about it. We'll get this fixed."

Chris was an eternal optimist. He believed that, no matter what, things were going to work out for the good of everyone involved, and even if they didn't, you could still find something good in the situation. So even though I couldn't see him or really hear him, I knew he wasn't too worried. He knew that it probably wouldn't last for long, and if it did, well then that meant he could go and sneak into the front rows of concerts and run across neighbors' yards without being seen and a variety of illegal things. If our positions were swapped, I'd probably be panicking and wanting it to just end already whether it meant making me visible or dying. I wouldn't handle it nearly as well as Christofer.

His phone vibrated on the bed next to him. After a few seconds with the phone not moving, even by an invisible hand, I decided he probably couldn't touch un-ghost things again and checked it for him. Some name I didn't recognize except for vaguely. Chris might have told me about this person sometime, but I'd never met him. I opened the text and read it to Chris, my eyes wide.

I could almost feel Chris's shock. He blurred into sight for a moment, flickering in between invisibility, reading the text for himself. His eyebrows knit together and suddenly he was clear as day. "That bastard," he said to himself.

"Maybe it's not as bad as it seems," I offered. When Christofer was angry, he could get really mean. Yeah, he was all into peace and love and the like, but it didn't mean he didn't have the ability to get angry, especially at something like this. "I mean, Sarah had to be like texting him about something. He wouldn't just start texting her, would he? And you don't even know what the text was about."

"I'm going to fucking kill that kid."

"Chris, don't." I gently took hold of his arm and tilted his chin up to look me in the eyes. He obviously didn't want to, but as we watched each other I could see his breathing slow down and his eyes lose a little of the fire they'd gotten when he'd seen the text.

"I still am going to kill him," he said. "We should go and talk to him."

"That makes no sense, Chris. You're dead."

He blinked a few times and then looked down at himself. He was pretty clear, maybe a little faded, but he seemed to realize what I was talking about. We couldn't show up telling him to lay off Sarah. He was supposed to be dead, and if we even went over there it wouldn't make much sense, because why would I get pissed off that this Stephen kid was texting Sarah? Sure, she and I were close just like all of Chris's siblings, but I would be acting as Chris and that would seem really, really weird. And, of course, I was a girl. Stephen wouldn't take me seriously.

"Jerzak the Jerk," Chris spat.

I sighed heavily. "Okay, listen. You want to talk to him, right?"

"Beat the shit out of him is more like it."

"Well, you can't do that. Or else he's going to know you're not really dead but not really alive, and then comes all the stuff like science experiments and shit. You're going to end up in some kind of funky research lab and they won't let us see each other, and you don't want that, do you?" He shook his head. "I didn't think so. So listen." I took a deep breath; this was going to be a huge risk. "You can take over my body. You know, like all the ghosts do in old cartoons and stuff. But make sure you don't mess up anything, okay? I'm serious. If you fuck my body up, you're in huge trouble. Come to think of it...maybe you should try it on someone else first, someone that won't be changed for the worse if you fuck them up."

So he did. We went out for a few minutes and Chris found some random person on the street and thought it would be a good idea to experiment. After finding that yes, it actually worked, he came back to me and we decided to go to Carter's house first, just in case this Stephen Jerzak guy was some kind of asshole and hit girls even though guys weren't supposed to do that.

After Carter heard the situation, he was halfway between my opinion and Chris's. He couldn't decide whether Stephen needed to be taught a lesson or whether he was just a kid texting Chris's little sister. I understood why Chris was so overprotective of her; he'd been through hell and back and he didn't want the same to happen to her especially since they were related, and once she got into highschool she'd probably be teased for being Chris-the-loser-who-doesn't-wear-shoes's sister, but of course there was also that big-brother streak of protectiveness that came with big brothers that actually cared about their little sisters and wanted to make sure they never got hurt. I was an only child. I wondered what it was like to have an older brother like Chris that kept me safe and watched out for me. It must be amazing. After all, there was always the possibility that Chris and I would break up, but Sarah would have Chris as her big brother forever.

"We should probably go over there and see what's going on," Carter told us. Stephen probably wouldn't be there, but if he was, we'd be ready. And we could always give him a talking-to on the phone. Knowing Chris, it would be a pretty long and strict talking-to.

Chris began flickering just a bit, but solidified right after. He took one look at my worried face and smiled. "Don't worry, Hannah, it's gonna be alright."

Like an idiot, I believed him.