The strangest, most frustrating thing happens then. The most terrifying, too, since I’ve been so sure that if I could only talk to him, if I could only confront him and get him to explain, everything would be fine. But what happens is this: I believe him.
I cansee—from the earnestness in his eyes, the solemnness of his expression—that he’s telling the truth.
It feels like a giant whack to my chest, and I have to sit down on the bench beside him to maintain any semblance of composure. Remind myself to take even breaths, stay calm.
I whirl around to face him. “How do you know my name, then, if you don’t remember anything? You just called me Addison! How did you know that?”
“Your brother called you that. That night on your driveway.”
“No, he…”
Wait. He did.
“My friends call me Addie,” I spit.
He pauses a second and then lets it roll slowly off his lips, as if he’s trying to see if it sounds like me. Also, there’s a bit of a challenge to it, as he’s holding my gaze.“Addie.”
It sounds like a secret, the way he says it.
I lose my train of thought on the way to telling him that he’s not my friend.
“So what are you? A ghost? Is that it—are you dead? Or are you some figment of my imagination?”
He laughs then. The full sound sends a wave of warmth up my arms. But it’s a short laugh and there’s something a little bit sad about it.
And almost immediately he’s back to frowning again.
We sit beside each other silently for a few moments. Watching people walking, cars driving by at the edge of the park. “What’s wrong?” I ask finally. Grudgingly. It shouldn’t matter to me that he looks so unhappy.
“I remember being at your school this morning, and I remember being at the movie theater the other day. Your house and, of course, the bus. But I don’t remember anything in between all those things,” he says, staring down at his hands in his lap.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means I don’t know how I got off the bus, or if I did.” He runs his hand through the front of his hair, the only part sticking out, his voice thick with distress. “It means I’m onlyaroundwhen you are.”
I stare at him silently, watching the cloud his breath makes in the air, and I feel an unexpected twinge for him.
“Maybe it’s just a weird type of amnesia,” I offer halfheartedly. It’s the best I can do through my own disappointment and fury at…whatever this is. Just then a woman walks up and places her handbag on the space on the bench next to me, then bends down to tie her shoelace. She put her handbag on the space on the benchwhere the boy is sitting,and only the two of us can see that this purple bag is on his lap, and the whole scene is so ridiculous, so insane, that I have absolutely no choice but to burst out laughing, which prompts Bus Boy to also burst out laughing. The woman jerks up at my laughter and looks at me like I’m crazy—correct—and then she grabs her bag from the seat and hurries away like I might attack her or make off with her bag or something.
“I’m not sure she even finished tying her shoe,” I say, which elicits another peal of laughter from Bus Boy.
Sobering up, I put my hand close to where her bag was—on his lap—and there’s ahumanthere. Flesh. Encased in a pair of jeans. I just put my hand on this stranger’s lap.
I snatch it back quickly, feeling my ears heat up, and he coughs.
“So I guess you’re not entirely human,” I say, even though I can feel his body warmth, see his breath, touch him.
He doesn’t answer that. What he says instead is, “When you leave, I’ll disappear again. If you forgot about me, I’d probably be gone for good.”
He says it like he’s joking, but I can’t tell whether it’s the slight chill in the air that makes him shiver or a little bit of fear. Even if heisn’treal, it must feel real to be him.
I wonder if he’s right, though. He doesn’t always appear when I want him to, but most of the times Ihaveseen him, apart from the first night on the bus, it’s been because I was thinking about him. If I could just decide to never think of him again, would he be gone? Could it be that simple? But even if I can get rid of him, how do I know he won’t show up again someday, unprompted?
“Could you at leasttryto guess at what your name is? Maybe you’re someone’s ghost and, you know, we could figure out what’s happening if we had the details?”
“Maybe I’m a Matthew,” he says.
I face him and try to gauge whether the name fits him.
