The Illusion of Separation

I hadn't told Carter about how I'd seen Chris, even though he'd heard me say his name those few times. It would just be way too weird, admitting that I was seeing a dead person. I was pretty sure that somehow, he was real and I wasn't hallucinating him, but at the same time my mind wanted to doubt his existence as thoroughly as it could, like he'd just been wiped off the map. But I should have known he'd come back. Chris wasn't one to leave without a trace of him still left behind.

Right now, I was sitting at the table, eating the pancakes that Mrs. Ingle had made for me. She wasn't much in the mood to cook, and I wasn't much in the mood to eat, but we'd both gone against our moods and done it anyway. She needed to do something with her hands and I needed to eat something because I knew I wouldn't feel like it at my own house. If I hadn't seen Chris, of course, I probably wouldn't have wanted to eat anyway, but looking into those eyes again had reignited the earlier feeling that he wasn't gone, it was just all a cruel joke. Well, now it wasn't me thinking he was alive; I was just seeing his ghost, or whatever it was. But it still felt the same, except that I didn't have that twisting of disbelief and horror way in the bottom of my stomach.

Mrs. Ingle was not only cooking pancakes, she was working on muffins, too. And eggs. And toast. And fruit. It was like she was cooking up everything she had in her cabinets. Normally, I wouldn't mind, considering that that was about the size of meals I usually had, living in the south and all. Mom had told me that in the North it was pretty much grab a bagel and go. They didn't have time for breakfast buffets like we did down here. I'd been raised in a mix of cultures, though, and so half the time it was a huge breakfast and the other half it was cereal. Nowadays I only had the quick breakfast, though, since my father wasn't about to start cooking like a girl, as he called it, despite the fact that cooking could totally be manly, too. I even tried to show him that show Hell's Kitchen but he wouldn't stand for it.

Chris's mom had asked Carter if he wanted anything, but he'd just said, "No thank you, Miz Ingle. I don't think I would be able to eat right now even if I wanted to." After he said it, he looked at me with a face like he couldn't even believe he knew me. I guess he was pissed off that I was eating when Chris was, you know, dead and all. But he hadn't seen what I had. He didn't have that insanely warm flicker of hope that I had from seeing Chris.

I shot him a look right back. I'd tell him what I saw when there was some way I could prove it, and until then, I'd just act like nothing was bothering me. Maybe it made me seem insensitive. At the moment, the only person I was worrying about was Mrs. Ingle, because who knew if adults saw ghosts? The only books I'd ever read about ghosts had the teenagers being the only people to see them, so maybe Chris would be invisible to her and we'd look like the biggest bastards on the planet trying to convince her that her son was alive.

Hannah, that's so gross.

The voice came out of nowhere, just like it had last time. I had to contain my smile, because if I smiled during a time like this I'd seem like the most insensitive bitch in the world. There really wasn't any other way to contact Chris, though, so I was stuck staring at my pancakes like they'd get up and do a tap dance.

I can't believe you're eating that shit, Chris said. I mean...just gross.

Chris was a vegan, so he pretty much just ate fruits, vegetables, and bread. Anything with milk, eggs, cheese, or meat in it was off-limits for him, and he liked to tease me about it because I was the exact opposite. I'd eat anything, meat, eggs, cheese, milk, or not. I didn't really care about what happened to the animals in the slaughterhouses since they were just going to get killed anyway, whether I ate them or not. Chris kept trying to convert me, saying that if enough people were vegetarian or vegan, the farms would be forced to produce less meat to avoid overstocking for the food stores, and we'd have saved a bunch of animals. I never had become vegan or even vegetarian, though. It was too hard for me to give up meat, something I was used to having for dinner since my dad didn't cook, and it was easy to just pop in the toaster and cook for forty-five minutes.

I mean, look at all the milk that came from a poor little cow's body. It's dis-guuuuuust-ing, he sang, and in a very Christofer Drew-like way, it actually sounded good.

"It's not disgusting," I muttered. I would have said more and made a joke out of it, but Carter was already giving me an even weirder look than before. He disappeared out the screen door, leaving it slamming behind him. Normally he was a total gentleman and he wouldn't do something like that, even with his best friend's parents, but I guess he just hated the fact that I was acting like this was no big deal. I could tell that right now he was sitting on the porch swing, swinging it back and forth, just like he and Chris had used to do when they wrote songs together. "Perfect porch-sittin' weather," he'd tell Chris as I rolled my eyes, but smiled anyway because I loved when I could sit inside and listen to Carter's guitar and Chris's voice.

I was assuming he wasn't going to be porch-sittin' to write a song now, though. Or maybe he was. Carter was good at expressing emotions through song. So was Chris. Maybe that was why I hung around them so much, because I found it fascinating to reveal your emotions through orchestrated sound.

"He's not feeling too well right now," Mrs. Ingle tried to tell me, but I shook my head.

"No, it's okay. I'm acting weird about this. I get it. I don't know why, but...I just can't be sad right now." I sighed. "I think I'm too busy trying to understand this whole thing. It just seems surreal, you know?"

What seems surreal? Chris asked from across the table. He was flickering in and out of sight, his chin resting in his hands and his elbows on the table. You still haven't told me what's happened to me, Hannah. How come I'm all invisible and shit?

I wanted so badly to speak to him, but I couldn't with his mother right there. How was I supposed to tell him that he was dead? Apparently, he didn't know, so it just looked like I was being a bitch and ignoring him and not telling him why he had suddenly turned invisible to everyone he cared about except for me. He had to have noticed his bloody shirt by now, though. The front was practically soaked, although it was drying and probably not that evident anymore.

I waited until his mother's back was turned, then held up one finger in the signal for him to wait a second. "It's alright, Hannah," his mother said. "It's always hard when things like this happen. I'm...a little disbelieving myself." She let out a laugh that had absolutely none of her heart in it and only lasted a second. "He was right here just the other day, and now...well, I'm having a hard time convincing myself he's not going to just walk in through the door."

Chris hopped up from his place at the table and reached for the doorknob to walk out the screen door. Unfortunately, he wasn't exactly solid and his hand brushed right through it. But Chris must have thought this was all a cool dream or something, because he just walked right through the door instead of freaking out about it, took a look at Carter, and then walked back in through the door. Tada! he said. Hey, Mom, I'm home! Walked in right through the door, like you said.

But she didn't turn around and look at him, and Chris drooped. He came over to me and hugged me tight, something that I could feel despite the fact that his hands went through doorknobs like he wasn't even there.

"It's alright," I whispered. "I'll tell you what happened later."

Christofer had never been one to cry in public, but I could swear those were tears I felt on my neck.