“Whoa, tiger, you’re dead.”
The vase stopped rattling almost instantly.
He folded his arms across his chest tightly, and harrumphed. “Minor inconvenience.”
His anger took me so off guard, so far out of my range of emotions about what happened to me, I dunno—I just lost it. I began to laugh. And cry. But mostly laugh as I slid off the chair and onto the ground beside him. It was one of those spiraling sorts of laughs, because I didn’t realize how I was supposed to feel about this story until just now—
“Am I that funny to you?” he lamented tragically.
“No—yes,” I added, but my voice was tinged with nothing but adoration. For a guy I barely knew. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted someone to get angry for me? I thought I was going crazy, that maybe I wasn’t allowed to get angry because I told Lee they were just stories. I thought maybe . . .” And I hesitated, because had I said too much? I usually didn’t talk about these things—with anyone, not even Rose. They were my problems, and not anyone else’s. But he leaned in a little closer, as if gently asking me to go on, and I felt safe admitting, “I thought it was what I deserved. I thought that’s what I got for . . .”
“For having the audacity to trust someone you loved unconditionally?” he asked, and the anger was gone from his voice. It was softer now, warm like amber.
I quickly turned my head away from him. Looked toward the foyer, and the colorful moonlight that slipped through the stained glass window.
“It isn’t your fault he’s a dick, Florence,” he said. “You deserve so much better than that fuckhead.”
“Strong language, sir.”
“Do you disagree?”
I turned my head back toward him, the specter sitting so still in the parlor room where I had buried my hopes and dreams beneath the floorboards. “No,” I replied simply, and then I smiled. “You know, you being angry on my behalf is kinda sweet. I wish I’d met you sooner when you were alive.”
He returned the sad smile. “Me, too.”
24
Such a Scream
KEYS JINGLED IN the front door as Mom unlocked it and stepped in. I only took my eyes off Ben for a second as I scrambled to my feet, but when I turned back, he was gone. Disappeared again, though I didn’t know where he went. Mom jumped when she saw me standing in the parlor, and put a hand over her heart.
“Don’t scare me like that. I thought you were your father,” she said.
“Expecting him?”
“Would I be crazy if I said yes?” she ventured with a secretive smile.
I shook my head. “Not at all.”
“Good! I’d hate for my own daughter to think I was crazy,” she said with a laugh, and held out a takeout box from Olive Garden. “Well, since you’re still here, take your Alfredo.”
She handed me my food after I pulled on my coat. “Thanks. I haven’t been here for that long, have I? You guys just left.”
She shrugged. “It was weird without Xavier. We couldn’t stay.”
“Everything is weird without him.”
“Yes, though not sad. Your father wouldn’t want us to be sad.” Then she fixed my scarf and wrapped it once more around my neck. “If you’re on your way out, would you do me a favor and escort your old mother home?” she asked nobly, crooking her arm so that I could take it, and I did.
She was taller than I was, and thin like Alice. They both had dark hair, and when Alice was going through her rebel phase, she would steal dark lacy dresses from Mom’s closet and wear them to school like a real-life Lydia Deetz, though by then I was already in college and well away from Mairmont.