Page 22 of All Her Ghosts

Wiggling his shoulders, Bas shifts into TLC. “And I wanna give you mine.”

“That’s not howthatgoes either.” I laugh.

Bas shrugs, flopping back.

“Guess you’ll have to teach me, then. Let’s start with the alphabet.” Contacts up and typing laboriously, he spells out, “J-E-N-N-Y.”

A spark in my fingers, tingling up my whole arm, I lean over, type in my number. After a moment of intense concentration, he texts me a picture of a wall-mounted singing fish. Ignoring the stream of missed messages and angry texts, I set it as his user picture. And after hesitating a handful of seconds, I save him under BIG MOUTH, the unspoken final word—Bass—our secret.

I can’t resist stealing a selfie, though. Just one perfect picture of the two of us, temple to temple and grinning with leaves in our hair. And if I was anyone else, I could save it as my background picture. I could show it to the world without caring. But if I was anyone else, I wouldn’t be here, hoarding a perfect stolen moment with a boy I met under a library table.

I make a secret folder in my phone to hide it, tuck it away in a password-protected partition where my mom won’t find it. Somehow, it makes the day seem smaller. Ordinary. Tawdry. Something to be embarrassed of.

Another text flashes across my notifications. I turn off the screen.

I don’t know what my face looks like just then, but Bas must sense something. He flops over belly first into the leaf pile and surfaces like a whale, heaving giant armfuls of forest bracken everywhere. I catch a mouthful of mulch, spitting and swearing, but it can’t chase the taste of blue raspberry, or the way my heart swells when he emerges from the pile with eyes glittering just for me.

Clawing up a wad of rotting leaves, I throw it in his stupid, perfect face. Bas falls back, clutching his heart, rhapsodizing about his wounds and impending death. Laughing, I try to get him back on his feet but it’s apparently too late for him. He dies elaborately, dragging us both down twice before I can struggle him to standing. The moment lingers. Time hesitates like a fingernail snagging cheap tights, a single thread pulling taut before the snap—

Bas thumbs a streak of mud off my chin. His eyes so soft and dark in the setting sunlight, he slots the earbud back into my ear, tying us together again with the solemnity of a ritual.

I can’t help remembering the way he looked at me, offering Grandpa candies for Grandpa ghosts. Like he recognized me as someone, something… else. Something bigger and stranger than a girl at a library table.

Like he was waiting for me to recognizehim.

Quietly, he says, “Let me walk you home.”

My chest aches. I can barely swallow through the knot in my throat.His unrelenting kindness, his unquestioning understanding—reality crashes in all at once.

I’m going to lose him. Wanting anything is a weakness, and like an idiot, I’ve opened up my heart to taking punches. Tomorrow, in a month, in three, either he’ll be gone or I will be.

The sour electricity on my tongue evaporates, replaced with rot and ash. I turn away. I break the moment because I can’t stand to keep it and be the one to lose it later. Forcing a half-hearted smirk, I shrug.

“A last kind act before my inevitable execution?”

“Beheading in the public square,” Bas agrees and gently, so heartbreakingly gently, thumbs the streak of lipstick at my throat.

I should scrounge the makeup wipes out of my bag, scour the evidence of today off my skin. I should throw out these half-eaten chips, abandon our sour-straw swords, but I—Idon’t want to. I know better—know it will only lead to worse pain later—but you know what? For once, I’d rather risk a little. This day was too perfect not to seize it by the throat and hold on to it with my teeth, even if it kills me.

Reaching out, I tangle my fingers in his.

“You can walk me to the cul-de-sac sign, but probably not any farther than that,” I tell him. “My executor’s gonna be ax happy. I don’t want her turning it on you.”

Bas smiles, something in it solemn. He says, “I can take her,” and it sounds like a promise.

“Maybe,” I agree. “But I don’t want you to.”

Something in his smile changes. His grip slackens, shoulders pulling back. “What, embarrassed?”

“No!” I grip him tighter without meaning to, and God help me, henotices. His eyes flicker to our joined hands and my face practically combusts. Glancing away, skin burning up the back of my neck and into my hairline, I clear my throat. Maybe let’s try that again without looking like I wanna eat the guy alive, jeez. “No. It’s just… my mom has this way of ruining everything. Like, it’s compulsive. She’ll just pick, pick,pickat everything until it looks like something it’s not.”

We emerge from the woods, spilling out onto a side street, its gas streetlamps just now sighing awake.

“So what is it then?” Bas asks. The firelight flickers in his black eyes, its warped reflection scattering into a sea of stars.

I have to remember how to breathe before I answer him.

“You’re just the first good thing that’s happened to me in years.”