The Illusion of Separation

"If I don't get some Waffle House in me soon, I am gonna waste away to nothin'."

That would be our lovely friend Christofer, who hadn't shut up for more than three minutes the entire way to wherever we were going. We'd only driven through Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, but the way he was going on it seemed like a whole lot longer. Right now we were approaching the border to Arizona and I turned around and said, "Chris, you know there are probably no Waffle Houses in Arizona, right? It's kind of a southern thing."

"Arizona's the south...I think."

It was a shame because he really did only think that. He didn't know for sure. Christofer had never been the greatest at geography and he wasn't entirely confident that Arizona was in the south. Most likely he thought it was over near North Dakota or something. I'd planned for a few weeks now, ever since I found out, to get him a GPS for his birthday, but seeing as how it was only October and his birthday was in February, I was going to have to endure a long few months with him having absolutely no idea where we were or where we were going.

"It is," I told him, "but it's not like you would know that if no one told you."

"Hey! I can do geography. I'm impeccable at it, actually."

"Oh, new word, huh? Where'd you learn that one? A Beatles song?"

He gave me a fisheye in the rearview mirror. "Don't dis the Beatles."

Not like I had been anyway, but we were just carrying on conversation for the heck of it now. Carter was trying not to laugh and so was I, to be honest. Christofer was definitely a light to have in the room, or car as the case may be, and I couldn't even begin to imagine how sad and desolate this car ride would be if it was only Carter and I who had taken it, and Christofer was permanently dead. I'd probably end up sinking into major depression. Can't say the same for Carter, but only because I don't know all of what's going on in his head.

"Where the hell are we going to, anyway?" Chris piped up when I didn't say anything back. "Carter, where ya takin' us? Are we going on an adventure?"

Carter snorted. "Something like that."

Christofer loved adventures. I can't tell you how many times he waited for me after school so that we could go explore the woods around my house, or the river down by his, or even just the backyard. He was very insightful and paid a lot of attention to detail, and he'd show me colonies of bugs and stuff under rocks. Of course, as a girl, I thought that was kind of nasty, but he was enamored with the way they all worked together without ever needing to speak to each other. He was captivated by the simple things in life even while he was looking for something else. Our adventures didn't consist of anything specific that we were looking for, really, it was more a "let's go and see what we can find" thing and we usually ended up finding some pretty cool things.

Traveling was also a huge interest of Christofer's and this whole trip was making him more excited than he could handle. Having no clue where we were headed just fueled the eagerness in him and he was practically bouncing off the seat because of it. He did still kind of want to know where we were going, though, so he could have a general idea, I suppose. I couldn't blame him. I just didn't ask Carter because I knew he wasn't going to tell me.

"It's a secret," Carter quipped easily.

"Awh, come on."

"Nope. Trust me, I got it all figured out."

Christofer crossed his arms and pouted. I turned around in my seat and watched him for a few seconds, just taking him in. He truly was adorable and I was so glad that he hadn't disappeared from my life forever. He was a sunshine ray and if that ray had been blacked out I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I'd tasted just a little bit of that before he had started speaking to me and I had discovered that he hadn't completed the whole death process.

"Hey, Chris."

He didn't answer - just looked out the window with the pout on his face.

"Christofer, I love you."

He tried to remain silent, but the corner of his mouth lifted up in a smile. "I love you, too, Hannah," he said quietly.

"You know how long it's been since I kissed you?"

"Too long?" he asked hopefully.

"Yep." Even though we were driving and I had this irrational fear of being arrested for something stupid, I undid my seatbelt and climbed over into the backseat to sit right next to Chris, nuzzling my face into his shoulder. "I missed you when you were, you know, actually dead. And not this weird ghost thing that only shows up sometimes."

"A lot more now," he said, uncrossing his arms and wrapping them around me in a hug.

"Yeah, but who knows how long that will last."

See what I mean? I am a glass-half-empty kind of girl even though I try as hard as I can not to be. I like to think it's realism, but it's not. I see all the bad in a situation before I can even think about seeing the good. I'm surprised Christofer, the eternal optimist, has stayed with me this long, actually.

Chris kissed me gently, softly, in a way that needed two adjectives to describe because I couldn't decide which one it was. "Jesus," he whispered, "you're just the same as I remember you being."

"Well, yeah...I haven't changed. You have. I mean, not your personality. Just the fact that you're dead now."

"It better not stay that way or I am gonna have some serious arguin' to do when I get up to heaven."

"Hey, hormonally-challenged teenagers in the backseat," Carter called back to us.

"Yeah?" we asked simultaneously.

He grinned at us from the front. "Welcome to Arizona."