Ghost Time

through, you know? And I don’t know what made me think of it, but I went out to get the hand mirror from the bathroom, tiptoed back to my room, and opened my curtains so I could see outside.Then I walked to the center of my room and turned my back to the full-length mirror while I held up the hand mirror, pointing the florescent reflection into the sky, like they do in Gotham with the Batman signal or whatever they call it. I stood there for at least a minute, waiting, but I don’t think the stars heard me, because if they did, nothing happened. So I went back to the bathroom to put the mirror back in the drawer and put a fresh Band-Aid on.
    That’s when I felt it again, standing there, on the bath mat. It started at the back of my head, like when you get a headache that starts in your neck, and then it curls around your neck, like the headache’s palming the back of your skull. So I opened the medicine cabinet, and I took out Raymond’s razor, and I tiptoed back to my room, locking the door.
    I stood there, staring at my rug, and I could feel it building. It’s hard to describe, because it’s like a headache, the pressure. Only it doesn’t hurt the same, it’s not that kind of pain; it’s just the pressure of compulsion. Like you start to feel something pulling you like a wave. So you try to turn away or step around it, but it’s inside of you. So you try to step around yourself, but you can’t, because the wave is in your blood. And after our nice night out, I wanted to tell my mom, talk to her about it, but I can’t because I’m not going back on drugs. I won’t do it. I was just standing there, holding the razor in my hands, the pressure building behind my eyes. I wanted to cut so badly, too. I knew exactly where I would cut, and in my mind’s eye, I was already taking off my clothes, readying myself. But there was so much pressure that when I reached to press my fingers against both my temples,I dropped the razor; you couldn’t hear a sound, but the motion triggered my computer, the screen lighting up. Immediately, I heard laughter—our laughter.
    Before I even turned to look over, I knew what it was. There was a video on my desktop, even though I wasn’t on YouTube. It wasn’t sex: it was the two of us, goofing around. It was this video we took of ourselves on my computer last winter, after we went to New York. We got into this huge fight, because I got jealous and saw red and lost my shit, but anyhow. It was a video of the week after we made up, when Cam was teasing me about how I deal with my anger—my anger issues, yes.
    I’m sitting on Cam’s lap, and our faces and torsos are pretty much the whole frame, and right away, Cam grabs my hand like it’s a paw, and he shakes my paw hand at the camera, saying, Hello, everybody! Hello, world! He’s in this falsetto, impersonating me, right, and he goes, Hi! I’m Thea Denny, and I’m so angry, grrr! I’m so angry at my boyfriend, just to prove how angry I am, I’m not going to speak to him! I’ll show my bad boyfriend how angry I am for doing whatever it was he did I’m not telling him about! he said, crossing his arms in front of me, squeezing both my wrists and then he said, I’m so angry I’m going to hit myself! Then he took my hands, flopping all over, and he started slapping me with my hands—lightly, just so silly, but he wouldn’t let go when I tried to pull away. Then he goes, Thea, quit hitting yourself! Thea, quit being so angry that you hit yourself! he said, slapping me twice, on both cheeks, until I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t even fight.
    Of course, the moment we come close to having a moment, what’s Cam do? He pokes me. In the butt. His erection, poking me in the butt! So I slapped him and was just like, Cam! And he goes, It wasn’t voluntary! And I said, So? And he goes, Thea, take it as a compliment, and I said, Cam, you can’t tell me it’s involuntary, and then tell me to take it as a compliment, and he goes, Why not? Involuntary compliments happen all the time, he said, squeezing my knee. And I said, In your pants! laughing. That was us. That was real. And now that’s all I have, and I stood there, smiling at us, tears in my eyes; my room glowing pink with the dawn.
    It’s so demented, because half the time, I worry who else has seen a video, and the other half, I worry that nobody has seen it. This time, I wasn’t sure which was better, because it wasn’t sex; it was a different kind of