Ghost Time

life, my dad sounded like Nanna, his mother. I came so close to walking in and telling him to his face, What’s normal, exactly? Besides, it’s not about whether her heart was as real as mine, it’s about my heart— my feelings were real. I loved her. My love made her real.
    How could I explain it any more plainly to the man? She was my favorite doll, you understand? She was my best girl , and I threw her away. Just to prove I could. To prove there was nothing my dad could do to me that was worse than what I could do to myself. I told Cam everything about her, everything I could remember; I confessed all my sins. People talk about pouring their heart out, and I did. I’m just not sure if I opened my mouth that whole time. But, really, does it matter if I said it in words or a drawing of Lola Crayola, standing in a truck-stop parking lot in the middle of nowhere, no place for a pretty little doll with a girl’s bloody heart?

MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011
    (FOUR WEEKS LATER)
    6:47 AM
    In my dream I open my eyes, and I’m standing in a green field, in front of a small white house, and Cam’s car is parked in the grass, and he’s calling my name. At first, it sounds like he’s inside, calling me, so I run inside the house. There’s graffiti all over the walls, endless rows of 1s and 0s—just like the pages of our notebook that Cam used to fill with 1s and 0s, and it all seemed so random and garbled and insane, but he’d say he was just tagging reality. All the walls, the entire house is tagged, and it’s exactly the same as what he wrote in Hubble, only bigger, much bigger. I know his writing—I even know his writing when it comes out of a spray can—I can see his left hand from a mile away. He’s here , I thought. Cam’s here! It has to be him. Cam! Cam, where are you? I check every room, but he isn’t there. I can feel him everywhere, but he isn’t there, and I keep wandering around, knowing I just have to keep looking, and then he calls my name again.
    Now it sounds like he’s outside, and I start laughing, running to find him. I run back to the front yard, I run all around the house, but he’s not there. It’s dark by then, and in the distance, I see this car approaching, and I can’t make it out, but it looks like an SUV, coming straight for me. I think maybe it’s Cam, but then, as it pulls up the drive, I can’t see who’s behind the wheel, because the lights are so bright, I have to shield my eyes, and I try to cover my face, but I can’t block out the light….
    Bright—too bright—there’s light, shining in my eyes. It’s annoying, too, like I fell asleep with the light off, but then I turned over, opening my eyes, and it was pitch dark. I had no idea what time it was, but I was awake. So I stumbled to the bathroom, and sat down to pee, and I opened my eyes a crack, and there it was again, the light, this green light, shining in the bathroom mirror. But I couldn’t see where it was coming from, so I stood up, and then I almost started screaming, because the light wasn’t behind me, it was on me . There was this thing, this, this—it was like a tattoo—that’s exactly what it was. It was a tattoo, on my shoulder blade. And it was glowing .
    I tried scrubbing, and it wouldn’t come off, whatever it was. So I just sat in bed, staring at it in the hand mirror, and then, when it started getting bright, it started to fade. The fluorescent light went out, and you couldn’t even see it. I’ve been so tired, I’ve been so stressed out, I thought… I thought maybe I dreamt that, too. I didn’t say anything to my mom, of course, but when I got to school, I called Knox, right away, and he goes, What is it, Thea? I go, I have to see you, and he goes, When? And I go, Now. He goes, I’m still at home, and I said, Knox, it’s an emergency,and he said all right. I go, I’ll be there soon as I can, and I ran all the way over, couldn’t even breathe, when I rang their doorbell.
    He opened the door, and I walked in, catching my breath. I looked in the living room, but she wasn’t there. I said, Where’s Melody? He said, She’s got physical therapy this morning, and I was really disappointed to hear that. I wanted to see her, I said, and he said, I’ll tell her you stopped by. So what’s this all about, Thea? I said, I have to show you something—you’ve got to see it with your own eyes, and he goes, What is it, Thea? Tell me what’s going on, and I go, Do you have a basement? Somewhere