I know I just finished a multi-part story, and here I go again splitting this one. It felt right, though – there’s two distinct locations for this story and this seemed like a natural place to split it. And I’ve got a big weekend coming up, so it’s nice to have the second half already mapped out in my brain. In any event, get a coat – it’s going to get cold…
“Yeah, I’m a San Francisco girl,” Melissa smiled. God, that smile!
“I didn’t think anyone was actually, you know, from San Francisco. It seems like everyone moved here. You must feel like an endangered species.”
“That’s me,” she laughed and flipped her blonde hair, “a rare bird!” We both laughed. “How about you? I know now you’re not of the same endangered species as me,” she waggled her eyebrows and I swear something melted inside me. “Where did you grow up?”
“I grew up in Michigan,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Like Detroit?”
“You get points for naming a city in Michigan,” I laughed. “No, I lived in a tiny town in the Upper Peninsula. Have you heard of Marquette?”
“Just their basketball team.”
“College basketball fan,” I gave an approving look. “Another point in your favor.”
“Thank you, thank you,” she said nodding.
“But Marquette University is actually in Wisconsin. Milwaukee. Marquette, Michigan is a town on Lake Superior and was like a thriving metropolis for the tiny town I lived in.”
“That sounds adorable!”
“If by ‘adorable’ you mean cold as hell in the winter, you’re spot on,” I laughed. “My dad owned the gas station and garage in town.”
“Wow, small town boy!” she said as the waiter brought our drinks and we were both quiet for a moment as she tried her Sauvignon Blanc and I tasted my Old Fashioned. “I’ll remember not to make any comments about being cold in our California ‘winters’” she actually made air quotes with her fingers when she said “winters.” “What brought you out to California?”
I thought about how to summarize so much. This first date was going great and I felt genuine chemistry. But it was our first date, so I went for the abbreviated version. “My dad died when I was in high school,” I said. “My mom had left when I was a little kid, so I didn’t have anything tying me to the upper peninsula… I got a cross country scholarship offer for Berkeley and, well…” My blood ran cold as I saw my glass frost over. I needed to change the subject. “That was, fifteen years ago… how long until this transplant gets native status?”
She raised an eyebrow and said, “You know, the red-tailed fox has been in the state since the 1880s and they’re still considered invasive…”
The frost on my glass had gotten so thick that I had to take my hand off it. It didn’t look like Melissa had noticed, though. “So, you’re saying I have no chance.”
She tipped her head and smiled a gorgeously wicked smile. “Well, like Vulpes vulpes, here you are preying on a native species…”
The frost was spreading and I could see ice crystals radiating out from my glass. Not now, I thought. Shit. “You know a lot about the red-tailed fox,” I said.
“I’m a wildlife manager for the East Bay Regional Park District and we’re studying whether we want– Oh my god, what is that?” she said as she noticed the frost spreading towards her side of the table and instinctively recoiled.
Before I could say something —and I had no idea what I was going to say to explain it — the rocks glass, thick with frost cracked with a loud pop, its liquid contents spilling across the table.
Melissa leapt up to avoid the spilled alcohol. Then she screamed.
I looked in the direction she was looking and saw Him sitting next to me in the booth. He looked the same as always –ten years old, mop of black hair, freckles standing out starkly on the unnaturally-pale skin, eyes black. Not dark – fully black, empty eyes stared at Melissa who grabbed for her purse as she scrambled back through the restaurant towards the door. I didn’t move. Every eye in the diner was on me and the booth but by that point the boy had vanished, as had the frost leaving behind just a spilled drink and me, alone. Again.
—–
“Oh shit, Richie. It happened again, didn’t it?”
“’Hi Richie, how are you?’ ‘Thanks for asking, Jules. Not great, actually…’” I said into the phone as I walked up 23rd Street towards the house I shared. “Jesus, am I that predictable?”
“Hi Richie, how are you?” she recited her line. “No, that doesn’t work. Look, it’s not that you’re predictable, but for fuck’s sake, it’s 9:30 on a Friday night. You’re either calling me from jail or because your ghost ruined another date.”
“There’s no other reason?”
“It could have been the coroner calling because I’m listed as the emergency contact.”
“You’re a morbid bitch, Jules.”
“That’s why you love me!”
“What am I going to do, Jules? He keeps showing up! I swear it’s getting worse!” I fumbled with my keys in the front door of the three-story Victorian.
“You’re going to have to face him or…”
“Face him? How?” I asked stepping inside and locking the door behind me.
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to come back to Ishpeming.”
I waved at my housemate, Lyra, doing yoga in the front room as I walked to my room. She waved and then turned inclined her head curiously. “Yeah, because I want to go back to Ishpeming in the dead of winter…” I fumbled with the lock on the door to my room.
She sighed, “I’ve got a spare room for you, Richie. You know that.”
“Thanks, Jules. You’re a good friend.”
“Was she cute?”
I closed the door and flopped onto my bed, “Ugh, so cute!”
“Shit.”
“Shit,” I repeated. “It’s after midnight there. I’m keeping you up. I’ll call you later. Thank you,” I said sincerely.
“You’ve always had my back, Richie; I’ve always got yours.”
“You’re a good friend,” I said with a smile on my face.
“Don’t you forget it!” she said, laughed, and hung up.
A knock came at my door. I opened it and saw Lyra standing there with a funny look on her face. “Hey Lyra,” I said. “Everything okay?”
“Who’s the kid that followed you in?”
My blood ran cold. “Oh geez, you saw him?” I looked around wildly for Him. “Where is He?”
Lyra stared at me for a long moment then her eyes widened in recognition. “He’s you!” she said.
“He… yeah… I mean… was me, I guess….” I kept peering around her tiny frame trying to get a glimpse of Him.
“He’s behind you. Sitting on your bed.” Then she screwed up her face. “I mean, I guess you’re behind you on your bed? This is getting complicated…”
I spun but didn’t see anything on my bed. “I don’t see anything.”
“Oh sorry,” she said, then leaned really close to my face and said seriously with wide eyes, “I see dead people.” Then giggled.
Jesus Christ, why do I surround myself with these people?!
Her giggle subsided and she walked past me into my room and sat in my desk chair staring at my bed, presumably at my ghost. “Why are you haunting yourself?” Then she held up a finger, “No, how are you haunting yourself? That’s a better place to start.”
I moved to the bed and sat down right where she had indicated my ghost was sitting.
“He’s right– ooh,” she winced.
“Good,” I said. “I hope I smothered the bastard for ruining my date.”
“Ooh, with Melissa?”
“Yeah,” I said sadly.
“So, how?”
I let out a sigh and started at the beginning. “I died when I was ten,” I said. “Me and Joey Turturro were skating on a lake just outside town. It was the middle of March and we had an early thaw. We weren’t supposed to be out there, but we…” I scoffed, “I don’t even remember why we thought it was so important to skate that day.” I looked up and met Lyra’s eyes, “Kid logic, right? Everything is so important in the moment…” I thought back to that unseasonably warm day on the ice. I remembered the cracking. The careful moving back towards thicker ice. “The ice cracked beneath me. I fell in. Joey went for help, but… small town, you know? They pulled my body out and I was…” I made a flat gesture with my hand, “cold. Dead. I was dead, clinically. Life Flighted to St. Cloud. Something about the frigid temperature preserved my body… I’ve read stuff about it since but it doesn’t make much sense to me. But they… brought me back.”
“And your ghost?”
“He didn’t show up for a few years, and then it was just fleeting glimpses – I’d see him standing on a frozen pond looking at me as I drove past, or I’d see him in the reflection of a window…”
“It’s gotten worse?”
I nodded.
“You’re going to have to face him.”
I laughed, “You sound like my friend Julie.”
“Work friend?” Lyra asked.
“From Michigan. We grew up together. She might as well have been my sister.” I put my hands behind me and leaned back in the bed only to sink my hands into a layer of frost on the bedspread. I jumped up at the shock of cold.
Lyra, for her part, didn’t so much as flinch. “Yeah, Julie is right. You’re going to have to face your ghost.”
