In honor of Between Cracks in the Concrete officially shipping out, I’ve selected one last short story from the collection to feature. Since it’s May, I figured I would pick one that I wrote with my graduation looming on the horizon like impending doom. Oh, and there’s a ghost!
“Could you quit running into me?”
I glanced over my shoulder, as if I would actually catch his eye. Stupid. I shook my head and went to the drawer for a spoon. If I wasn’t paying attention, I could bump into the stove and accidentally turn on a burner. Knowing him, he would probably say I pushed him into the stove on purpose.
“It’s hard to keep track of what you can’t see, okay?” I said, trying to avoid a compulsive apology.
I carried my bowl of cereal to the table, where two out of three place settings were cluttered with medical supplies, five vinyls, and a record player. I slid into the spot at the end, mindful of the lamp at my elbow and the sagging bookshelf behind me. My apartment feels smaller than it used to, but the overflowing laundry hampers and towers of dirty dishes probably have something to do with that.
“You can feel the wind, can’t you?” he asked, a pile of junk mail drifting to the floor like a run-off of snow. “Don’t you know when a fart comes out of your butt?”
My spoon stopped halfway to my mouth.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s a good thing you don’t put milk in your cereal.” A cabinet door opened by the sink—the one where I kept my drinking glasses. “It would get soggy, slow as you are.”
“My cereal would get soggy anyway,” I said, rolling my eyes and going back to my corn flakes. “It’s physically impossible for me to eat fast.”
“It’s physically impossible for me to do anything.”
“As a physical being, no, you can’t do anything—but you do have an effect on physical things in this world.”
“You just proved my point.”
“And your point is?”
I didn’t have to try too hard to imagine the annoyance on his face. Not that I could see it, or read his body language, but I could sense it just as clearly in his silence. My crunching cereal was too loud.
I felt guilty that he had to spell it out for me. Sometimes it felt like I never learned anything, despite my best efforts. But there I was, feeling sorry for myself again.
“If you paid attention to my effect on physical things,” he said slowly, “you wouldn’t run into me all the time.”
Right. That probably should have been obvious. The apology came out anyway, compulsive as always.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m exhausted, I slept terribly—”
“You don’t have to convince me that you feel awful. I’m your ghost, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
I dropped my spoon into the bowl—clink-clatter—and rubbed my face. A blustery exhale billowed out of me. At least it was the weekend, but I had already wasted more than half the day chasing sleep I knew I wouldn’t find.
The urgent demand to get something done was as palpable as his frustration at me not paying attention to him. A cup tumbled into the sink, the plastic giving a half-hollow thwack against stainless steel.
“Look,” he said. “I’m just trying to make this easier for both of us.”
Says you, I thought, unable to keep a scowl off my face. His tone was surprisingly calm, collected. He was supposed to be the restless one, but here I was whining like a brat.
“There’s nothing easy about this,” I said with a groan.
“Of course there isn’t,” he said, moving the cup from the sink to the counter. “You think getting stepped on, slammed between doors, and shoved into walls is the way I wanted to spend my afterlife?”
The fridge door lingered open. I would have said something about it, if it wouldn’t have meant sounding exactly like my father. Instead I shut my mouth and sighed. My father is the reason I have a ghost in the first place.
Sometimes the wrong word triggers mood swings, and I don’t want to have to clean up the kitchen today. I already have plenty of laundry to do, since I’ve been putting it off for at least two and a half weeks.
“I wish there was a better life for you,” I said, getting up to grab the milk and shut the door to the fridge.
“There is—and you’re living it.” He opened the fridge again. “Almost makes me want to stick around, see what you’ll make of me.”
I narrowed my eyes—not that it would help me see him any better. It would be too easy to bend, trying to please something that wasn’t real. I’d wasted so much of myself, waiting for someone to be proud of me. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. A half-finished bottle of tea came out of the fridge, and the door closed.
“Whatever I’ll be will be enough,” I said, screwing the cap on the milk after I poured myself a glass.
Just in case he decided to blame me for bumping him into the jug, there wouldn’t be a spill to cry over. At least he’d had the decency to get a plastic up instead of tilting one of the glasses off the shelf. I had yet to break any of my dishes since moving out on my own, and I didn’t want him ruining my streak.
“You’re forgetting something.”
The bottle of tea hovered by the counter a foot above the counter.
“What?” I grumbled, leaning against the stove and crossing my arms.
“You already are.”
“I am what?”
“I’ll let you figure it out.”
The tea swirled in circles, but he hadn’t had any of it. He returned it to the fridge, the door swinging closed with a soft thump. I went back to my cereal. He went quiet for a while, or maybe I just couldn’t hear him over the sound of my crunching.
I looked at the weather for the week: the rain would hold off until Tuesday or Wednesday, yet they were dismissing the flood watch Sunday morning. I shrugged, unconcerned for the moment with how the National Weather Service determined their storm warnings.
I finished eating and left my dishes on the table. There was only so much countertop space on which to stack and nudge things before something met the floor. Looking around my living room made me tired. Before I could get up and go back to bed, he interrupted my thoughts.
“Alright, what’s the to-do thing for today, since you can never get more than one task crossed off your list?”
He’d stretched himself out on the couch, legs crossed, fingers laced together behind his head. The very picture of industry.
“You know, the least you could do since I disturbed you from hibernating is help out.”
“No, the least I can do is stay out of your way,” he corrected. “Are you done cleaning out your closet yet?”
He couldn’t help snickering as he said it. I shook my head. He was impossible, but he wasn’t terrible. When you’re eighteen, it’s easy to sell your soul.
My formal introduction to Lent came from university, where the Baptist church calendar ranked on the same level as the regional college football schedule. Whether it’s athletics or the altar, some things have a way of hooking your heart, reeling you in. I had a lot of problems with my university’s theology, but the idea of ritual practice and seasonal sacrifice had its appeal.
I’m not eighteen anymore, thank the Lord. I managed to survive undergrad, and even make it out with my degree in four years. This year, I’m not doing anything for Lent—unless applying for jobs and house-hunting counts as a spiritual practice.
I’ll finish my master’s degree in May. Other than that, I have no idea what I’m doing. I know I want to move out of my apartment though, so I’ve started to go through my stuff.
“I come from a long line of hoarders,” I said. “I’m trying not to accidentally hang on to things I don’t need.”
“So you’re intentionally stock-piling your shit?”
I rolled my eyes. If only I could go back to sleep, but my mind and body were rarely on the same page these days. If my body was exhausted, my brain would want to write a dissertation, and if my mental processes decided to take a vacation, my body would be ready to run a marathon. Either way, some part of me would be tired.
“I’m keeping some things on purpose,” I said. “But I have to decide on what to keep.”
“Boring.”
“You could always help.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you could be as mean as you wanted and I promise not to get mad about it.”
“You can’t promise feelings.”
“Whatever,” I sighed and trudged back into my room. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m the one who’s mean, remember?”
“So that means you’ll help?”
More old electric bills fluttered from the coffee table to the carpet. He followed me to my closet, a four-foot by three-foot jungle of clothes, bags, and shoes.
“Is this your discard pile?” he asked, the hem of a sundress in question folding over.
“No, that’s stuff that isn’t in season.”
“Fleece leggings and sundresses are the same season?”
“No, I’m not keeping those leggings.”
“You’re so disorganized.”
“Look, the stuff on the floor isn’t the issue right now,” I said. “I need to go through what’s hanging up and figure out what I’m going to give away.”
My suede heeled wedges toppled down, thumping the side of my head and my right shoulder.
“Ow! Dude what the hell?” I rubbed my shoulder even as I looked over it, trying to glare at him. “I said you could be mean, not that you could throw stuff at me.”
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
I sighed and bent over, shoving some of my boots back toward the wall and pushing the other clothes around until I had enough space to sort things into new piles.
“I’m starting with the dresses,” I said. “Some of these I almost never wear.”
“Keep all the black ones.”
“Well duh—but like, what about this grey one?”
“Does it fit?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly yes or mostly no?”
“It fits.”
“So why don’t you wear it?”
“Well for one, it doesn’t have sleeves, so I have to wear a cardigan with it. And it’s a little short, so it’s better to wear leggings with it.”
“So what you’re saying is that you don’t wear it because it takes too much work.”
“I can match leggings with it or I can match a cardigan, but not both.” I shook my head. “If I have to think this hard about getting dressed in the morning, it’s more trouble than what it’s worth.”
“I wouldn’t advise leaving the house naked.”
“That’s not—” Impossible, not terrible, I reminded myself as I blew out a sigh. “Simple decisions are sometimes extremely difficult. I’m just trying to make it a little easier for myself on the front end.”
“I love that you explain yourself to me, as if I didn’t already know.” A soft pfft as he flopped onto a bag of clothes I had already planned to get rid of but needed to sort through again. “I am you, remember?”
“You’re the version of me that didn’t plan on surviving high school.”
“Hey, I got you through undergrad, didn’t I?”
“Barely,” I muttered, shaking my head. “We’ve made it through grad school though—and we’re going to keep making it.”
V. H. King's Ink 