“You mean bad.”
“In some ways, I guess, but definitely not all.”
Suddenly, an idea pops into my mind. “Wait, so if I took you into my living room now, do you think my dad could totally see you? His eyes are even more different.” The thought makes me nervous, but there’s also hope mixed in. Maybe seeing a ghost would jolt my dad out of his denial-based personality.
He shakes his head. “No, I think there’s more ingredients in this recipe.” He chuckles. “Clearly, the fact that you’re obsessed with me has something to do with it.”
He’s so freaking consistent.
“Well, if I was obsessed with you before, you cured me of that with your ‘what’s it feel like to be a murderer’ prank.” He’s not getting out of this that easy.
“Oh, so tricky Dick can stop right in front of you to test your skiing ability but I can’t stop in front of you to test your driving ability?”
“Wow, stalk much? And I didn’t like it when he did that, either, by the way.” I hug myself, rubbing my arms to warm them up.
“Yes, I could totally tell that when you had him stick his tongue in your ear as a punishment.”
“God, could we just get off of Richard already?”
“Gladly. Back to the driving. What’s your takeaway from that, by the way?” God, he goes from serious to snarky and back again in dizzying fashion.
“You mean, besides that you’re an asshole?”
“Do you think you’ll drive again?” he persists.
Oh. Fuck me. “No,” I say. “Never.”
“Well, that’s something, right? Now you know. I mean, if someone had given me a trial run on taking the boat out that night, who knows where I’d be now.” He pushes off with his feet and starts to swing, pumping his legs to get some height.
All the anger I have left drains out of me. He did it as a wake-up call. To protect me from me, from my own tendency to make disastrous decisions. “I was right,” I say, half to myself.
“About what?” he asks as he swoops past me.
“About why you’re here. That you were sent here to help me. That you’re like my guardian angel.”
At the wordangel, Mason jumps off the swing, and he’s so far from the ground my chest clenches in fear.Relax, Hattie, I remind myself.People who are dead can’t break their leg.
Sure enough, he jumps up from where he landed and casually brushes snow off his pants. “Is that what you’ve been thinking?” he asks.
There’s an energy in his voice that makes me think he’s about to tease me, but then I realize he’s genuinely curious.
“Yeah, I guess. Aren’t you?”
“Beats me. Lately I’ve been thinking I was here for another reason,” he says.
“Another reason like what?” I push. I don’t want any more cryptic, riddle-like responses from Mason. I want answers.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s a punishment and sometimes I think it’s a reward.”
“Those are two very different things.”
“What can I say? The afterlife is complicated.” Mason sits in the swing again and twists it around and around until it won’t get any tighter. Then he lets go, spinning, his head back.
The wordpunishmentmakes me think about hell again. I really hope he’s not condemned to flames and fire when he’s not with me. “Like, how are you punished? And why?”
He staggers off the swing now, dizzy, and collapses back in the snow. He is incapable of sitting still tonight. Is it because this conversation is torture for him? I try to be patient. I wait.
“Well,” he finally says, “you know how at church they always say that suicide is this terrible sin?”
