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GHOST STORY
Lizbeth
I couldn’t go with Frasier when he left this evening. He didn’t want me. So I was stuck here feeling angry and wondering what I could do to change his mind, to change Oliver’s mind, to changeanyone’smind.
And then that woman appeared, and Lucy took action.
I spent so much time wanting people to hate Lucy that I never stopped to realize that no one actually loved her, not even our father. That wasn’t love, though I thought it was at the time. And the control I wielded in order to survive, the conditions I put on everyone, were never hers, either. She was never in control—of herself, of others, of anything. Even so, look what she just did. If she had waited like me for someone to love her back before giving love herself, Oliver might have gotten hurt tonight.
I think I hate her a little less. I’m not sure what I’m feeling right now.
There was a moment when I saw what was happening that made everything that was left of me feel like it was going in a thousand different directions at once, breaking me apart and putting me backtogether in ways I never was before. I didn’t know what to do. I felt hopelessly pulled to Oliver, but unable to help him. All of us ghosts here felt pulled to the people we loved. The force of us broke all those glass balls trying to trap us once we got too near. I was scared for Oliver. It frightened me with its intensity. What if something happened to him? If I had felt something this intense while I was alive, it surely would have killed me.
Camille says it wouldn’t have killed me. It would have given me holes. And the holes are where the love comes through.
Now you know, she says.
She’s beckoning me. She wants me and that other ghost here to leave with her. That other one says she won’t go yet, but I will.
I’ll go for Oliver. I’ll do this for him.
He’ll never know I’m doing it for him, but that’s okay.
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
Becausehe’sokay.
Something is lifting me, and I’m soaring.
I see things so clearly now.
How wrong I’d gotten it.
It is love, even if you’re not loved back.
Itis.
GHOST STORY
Camille
So it’s time for me to go now.
I’m happy about it, so don’t you be sad.
Because going doesn’t mean all gone.
We’ll meet again one day.
GHOST STORY
Paloma
It is strange to me to speak now. I was not sure I would remember how.
My name is Paloma Fernandez Hennessey. You may call me Pigeon. Zoey does.
My thoughts lately have been of a song my grandfather used to sing to me. It was an old, old song his own grandfather sang to him and that I, in turn, sang to baby Zoey, though she does not remember this. It was about a woman who died giving birth to a son. She loved her child so much her soul went to live in the body of a bird to watch over him while he grew. She would warn the boy when there was danger and lead him to food in the forest. Then one day the bird was killed by a hunter, and the mother had no choice but to leave her son for good. The last lines of the song were:
