No Room for Ghosts

The graveyard, if there was one, eluded us. Neither of us minded, though. The hunt seemed to have become much less important for Leanna, if it was ever more than an excuse to burn calories.

We had almost come full circle in our wanderings when-

‘Oh no!’ cried Leanna. There, in the dirt, I saw, the caterpillar she had saved lay curled. It was stiff and unmoving, clearly dead. ‘The spider must have bitten it already.’ She sniffed a bit more, and covered its corpse half-heartedly with leaves. Then, we moved on.

As we left the spot, however, I could have sworn I saw something white and luminescent creeping along a leaf. Too exhausted to investigate further, I put it down to the weird light and my imagination, which had become strangely overactive after our exchange on the hillside.

It was as though a floodgate had been holding back every hopeful, invented scenario in which Leanna and I became closer, even inseparable. Now that I had something more to go by than our unlikely acquaintance as the victim and accidental hero of a shooting, those gates had opened. My mind overflowed with possibilities.

It was hard to believe that it had only been a week, one week since Leanna had been targeted by the gunman, and I had stepped unthinkingly between them. Six days, therefore, since she had rung me up in the middle of the night, explaining her insomnia, and asking me to keep her company.

We had exchanged phone numbers before I was questioned by the police. Leanna had been eager to vouch for what had happened, if there was any question that I had acted other than in her defence. I guessed then that she was just grateful. After all, if I hadn’t advanced on her assailant, ignoring threats and bullets, and knocked the weapon from his hands, she might not be alive. As it was, she had suffered a broken arm when he had pushed her over a railing, but she was remarkably tough for someone so diminutive, and seemed to shrug off her injury like a minor bruise.

‘It’s nothing,’ she insisted. ‘I break things all the time.’ It was something about how malnourished she was. Her bones were brittle. I couldn’t recall.

Likewise, even when I really focused, I couldn’t remember what the gunman had looked like. That bothered me.

‘Are you alright?’ Presently, Leanna was leaning in on me with a worried, or maybe suspicious, expression. ‘You’re screwing your face up funny. What are you thinking about?’

‘Nothing much,’ I lied.

She seemed to get my meaning without needing to be told.

‘Oh,’ she said, and gripped my hand in the one of hers that was free of plaster, asking no further questions.

Eventually, we reached the beach, and it was inevitable that we would part. There was already a glow around the headland, where the sun would rise in maybe an hour. Seeing this, Leanna yawned.

For a moment, we stood unwillingly on the threshold between the sand and the concrete path that would lead me back around the quay, over the bridge and into the city, where my crumbling apartment waited. Neither of us wanted to leave, and yet, there was nothing left to say.

Boldly, I took it upon myself to solve the tension. ‘Listen,’ I demanded, and then followed it up less confidently, ‘Let’s meet again. Only, let’s do it in the daytime, this time.’

There was never any doubt about her answer. I took the credit for it, but a part of me knew that it wasn’t really my suggestion. It was simply something that both of us were thinking, and that needed to be put out in the open.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, without a moment’s hesitation. She squeezed my hand tighter. ‘I’d like that. What are you doing tomorrow?’