“Just tell me what’s going on, Dex. Or should I ask Perry,” she said, turning her head to me. I knew her expression despite it being hidden by those glasses.
“OK,” Dex said, licking his lips nervously. “OK, but hear me out. Don’t say anything till I’m done.”
She exhaled and crossed her skinny arms against her, wearing only a thin jacket, but nodded.
I watched a bead of sweat appear on Dex’s brow. I knew how hard this was for him. I wondered how much of his story he was going to share.
“The other night, when Perry saw…someone…in the apartment. That wasn’t in her head.”
Jenn opened her mouth to say something but Dex shushed her.
“I told you. Just listen. I know you won’t believe any of this, but if I don’t tell you, then I’d blame myself if anything happened to you.”
She frowned but kept quiet and he continued. “Perry sees ghosts. You know this. I see them too. You also know this. What you don’t know is that I saw this same person last night. That’s what triggered the panic attack. Which wasn’t a panic attack by the way, it was just me…not being able to handle seeing her again.”
“Who again?” Jenn asked suspiciously.
“Abby.”
Jenn shrugged. “I don’t know who that is.”
He took in a deep breath and closed his dark eyes. I wanted to hold his hand for support but I knew how inappropriate that would be. Instead, I propped up my bike against the brick wall, tired from holding it.
“Abby was my ex-girlfriend. She’s…dead. She died in a drunk-driving accident back in college.”
Jenn put her hand to her mouth. I don’t know if it was out of shock or because she felt sick. Could have been both.
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed softly. Dex nodded.
“It was…rough. And that’s putting it mildly as fuck. It was a long time ago and it really screwed me up. I had tried hard to forget about it, and for the most part it worked, until I saw her in the alley. It was Abby. It was the same girl that Perry saw in the living room and-”
“Oh my God,” Jenn exclaimed again. “You think you’re actually being haunted by your ex-girlfriend?”
I did not like the patronizing tinge to her voice. I exchanged a worried glance with Dex. He didn’t like it either. His face fell.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “But you have to believe me.”
She shook her head, seeming to be at a loss for words. She looked around her at the people occasionally walking past, at the monorail line, at the bare trees that waved slightly in the breeze.
Finally she pointed at me and said, “I’d understand if she was the one saying these things. She’s a bit off her rocker, but you, Dex…”
My mouth fell open. I was the one off my rocker, not Dex? Dex, who had been in a mental institute? I was so close to saying something but I bit my lip. Hard.
“Jenn. Please. This is what is going on, like it or not.”
“So you rushed into the apartment and pounded on the bathroom door like a fucking maniac, yelling all over the place, because you thought your dead ex-girlfriend was going to harm me? Are you serious?”
Dex’s head hung low. It looked like all the fight had gone out of him. That wasn’t like him at all. He stared at the ground, keeping his face away from Jenn.
Finally, I had to say something.
“It’s true, Jenn. I know you don’t believe us and that’s fine, but we had to tell you. Like he said, if anything were to happen to you…”
“You’d be the first one dancing on my grave!” she spat out. Fat Rabbit looked up sharply at the tone of her voice.
I sucked in my lips and looked away. An unbelievably stifling silence enveloped the three of us. Even the dog stopped panting and shook ever so slightly.
“What if I told you-” Dex began to say, raising his head to look at Jenn, but I put my hand out and squeezed his arm.
“You don’t have to say anything, Dex,” I told him, begging him with my eyes to keep his mouth shut. Jennifer wouldn’t understand in a million years.
“What could he possibly say to make any of this normal?” she asked incredulously. “You both sound like total fucking nut jobs. You can do whatever you want with your ghost-hunting show; I really, really don’t care. But please, don’t let it interfere with my life. You fucking dragged me out of the apartment for this?”
“Why are you so mad?” I asked her. It just came out.
Both of the looked surprised at my question.
“What? Because,” she stammered, stamping from one foot to the other. “I’m cold. And I want to go to bed. And I don’t want to have anything to do with your little ghost club here. This is like an episode of Goosebumps.”
And at that she took the leash from Dex’s hands and stormed back to the apartment.
We watched her go, her mad supermodel strut even when on the urge of vomiting.
“Should we let her go back?” I asked, even though she was halfway there.
“Whatever,” Dex said, turning around and leaning against the wall. He stared blankly at the ground in front of him. “We warned her. That’s all we can do. Something tells me Abby won’t be bothering with her anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“Because,” he said slowly. He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “You’re more of a threat than Jenn is. When it comes to seeing things. And otherwise.”
“Otherwise,” I repeated.
He nodded, popping a piece of Nicorette in his mouth.
I mulled that over for a second. “What happened when you went back inside?”
“Nothing. Abby wasn’t there. The apartment was one big cold spot, though, but Jenn’s been complaining about the lack of heat in that place.”
“You were going to tell her about the institute, weren’t you?”
He smiled to himself. “And then you stopped me, kiddo. Here I thought you were a beacon of honesty but you kept me from telling the truth.”
That stung a bit. I knew how far from the truth that actually was. I pushed it aside.
“It wasn’t the time. She could barely handle what you said about Abby.”
“You’re right,” he said with a sigh. He looked at the bike.
“Still want to give me a lesson?”
“What will you give me in return?” I asked.
He gave me a funny look. “What, so now I have to pay for a lesson? This was all your idea.”
“Tell me what your medication is for.”
He jumped a bit at that and almost sneered at me. “What are you harping on about now? I told you.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head and adjusting my bike handles between my hands. “You didn’t. So what are your pills for, Dex? It’s no big deal; I just would like to know.”
He chewed slowly and raised his face up to the sky. The sunlight hit his face and created a shadowy crevice between his furrowed brows. He raised his shoulders up slowly. “Nothing to worry about. Some are for sleeping, others are just for my mood. You know, to keep me on an even keel. That’s it.”
My heart pinched. I grimaced in response, a look he didn’t catch. “Are you sure? Maybe your medication has something to do with the fact that you see ghosts. Isn’t that how they treated you in the hospital?”
“I got better.”
“And yet you’re seeing Abby again.”
“Fine,” he said quietly. He straightened up and rubbed his hands against the side of his face, pulling at his eyes and then tugging at his hair. He let out a quick burst of air through his nose and spit out his gum. “I’m jonesing for a smoke so hard, you have no idea.”
I didn’t say anything, just observed him calmly, feeling like he was going somewhere with all of this.
“The truth is…” he said slowly, carefully, watching me with each word that left his mouth. I stared back at him, as emotionless as possible.
“I’m not bipolar. I mean, I guess I am…a bit moody. But I don’t think I’m bipolar. I just explain to my doctors what has been happening to me, my past, and they give me medication. Sometimes it’s bipolar stuff. Sometimes they give me meds for schizophrenics. Because it makes things go away. Do you understand?”
I nodded. It was what I thought. It was still shocking to hear him admit it.
“I tell doctors that I see dead people. Just like that kid from The Sixth Sense. Whatever happened to him, anyway? Whatever. Sorry. So I tell them that. And they prescribe me antipsychotics. Because they think I’m crazy. And I let them think I am, even though I know I’m not. And sometimes the medication doesn’t work. So I go to a new doctor and they give me something else. So far I’ve got a combination that seems to work…or at least it did.”
I looked down at my feet at that, paying extra attention to the cracks in the grainy, damp sidewalk. “That doesn’t seem fair, Dex.”
“It’s perfectly fair,” he said, surprised. “I don’t want to see them. That’s why you’re here. To see them for me.”
My head jerked up at him.
“Well, it’s true,” he explained, fumbling for words. “I mean, it was true. At the beginning. That’s why when I saw you in the lighthouse and you heard the things I heard and seemed to believe what was going on…I thought you could just see everything for me. You could take the brunt of everything and I could walk away, sanity intact.”
I glared at him, not able to take everything in at once. Angry heat rushed to my face. “You used me?”
“No!” he cried out and grabbed my hand. “Not at all. We saw everything together…”
“You weren’t…you weren’t attacked by Roddy, you weren’t strangled by kelp and held out of a window, almost killed, you weren’t almost raped by-”
“I know! I know, Perry, I know but that was just…what happened. You were there. It could have happened to me too, it was just as likely. It wasn’t about you instead of me. You…just don’t understand.”
“No, I obviously don’t,” I snarled and whipped my hand out of his.
“This is why I’ve been lying to you. I knew how pissed off you’d be if you found out. I was just trying to protect you.”
“Oh!” I said, throwing my hands up and waving them at the sky. “Look at Dex Foray being all big and noble again, as usual. My knight in shining fucking armor!”
“Perry please,” he said and grabbed at me again.
“Don’t touch me,” I whispered.
He did the opposite and brought me closer to him, his hand around the small of my back, raising my body into his. Though they barely registered in the moment, I could tell the passing people on the street were staring at us, worried.
“Perry,” he breathed hard, his brown, fathomless eyes looking deep into mine. “You don’t understand. It’s not just Abby. I have a past that I can’t run away from. Just as you do. I know you do. I can see it on your face, after a bad night’s sleep. You’re haunted in your dreams. I’m haunted in my everyday life. Now part of it has come back and I would do anything to keep her away. I’m not as strong as you are. I wish I was. I would do anything to have your strength, Perry.”
