She tells herself it’s a rain shower.
Fingers sinking into the mud, she crawls forward—it’s under her nails, it’s under her skin, under the clothes soaked with icy water. It’s a rain shower, and she’s slipped. Fallen into the dirt. This happens.
Something tugs at her throat. And before she can convince herself it’s anything else, the rain inside her spills back out. She blinks and the world before her continues to blur. Again: choking as if vomiting.
Her shoes, now full of water, have turned into weights. She drags them after her like they’re separate from her body. First reaching, tethering with her arms, then pulling the rest of herself along. She’s halfway out of the water. This will work.
That’s how she resurfaces from the storm. Like a worm, crawling onto the pavement—the imagery almost makes her laugh. And when more water forces its way from her mouth, she can pretend the hoarse noise she makes is something of a giggle.
At least the sun is out. For a moment, she sags to the pavement and stares at it. Something to dry her eyes. And then the clouds return, a deep black; she watches the sun’s lingering shadow, spots of gold against the sky.
She squints, and they’re still there. Blinks harder.
The question she’s supposed to voice sounds more like a gurgle, so she lets it sit inside her mouth: that’s an umbrella. Whose?
There’s still water in her ears. But she can make out the deadpan delivery of the voice, as if this happens every day: “Do you require assistance?”
What.
She opens her mouth. Coughs. Fine, that’s a good answer.
When the silence stretches on for what must be at least a full minute, the sky finally comes back into view. Mumbled: “Shall I call the hospital?”
That sends a jolt through her. “Don’t—” The word scrapes at her throat. “I’m fine.” Another cough, misplaced punctuation. “Give me… a minute.”
No response. She lifts herself onto her elbows and glances backward.
Yeah, she should have realized by that manner of speech. Something like shame sinks in her chest.
“…Alice.”
She glances away from her phone, a stare from beneath her lashes. “Chelsea.” She steps closer, offers a hand. Her heels sink into the muddy bank, yet she somehow holds her balance. And she fails to cringe when Chelsea grabs onto her glove—even as her eyes dart over the grime on her fingers. “Thank goodness I was here.”
Chelsea would rather be holding anyone else’s hand. Even in her mind’s eye she looks ridiculous; staring at the ruffles of Alice’s dress only makes her increasingly aware of the shirt clinging to her skin. Heavy with polluted water, cold enough to send a persistent chill across her back. In the midday heat, she shivers as if stranded in a snowstorm—yet Alice holds herself still, posture as practiced as always.
So Chelsea lifts herself up, pulls away as soon as her knees stop shaking. Her hands stay out in front of her, one briefly awkward moment where Alice doesn’t react—and they’re both waiting, the whole world is waiting for Chelsea to regain her balance. Watching the silt on her skin as if it’ll come alive.
She needs to wash this off.
She turns back quickly enough to almost set her stumbling again—not that this matters for more than a moment, because that’s when she sees it. Rising out of the river, a reflection without a mirror, projected against the sky:
Herself, knee-deep in the turbid water.
If only anyone else was here. Literally anyone.
But without much of a choice, she turns to Alice, lifts a shaking hand. “Are you seeing that?”
Naturally, Alice just nods.
So she ends up wrapped in a shawl in Alice’s room, hair dripping onto the carpet. It’s three years ago—she shakes her head, and the world falls out of focus once again.
The room is the same as always. On her desk: a set of tarot cards, still wrapped in plastic. On the dresser: empty perfume bottles, lined up in a row. And spilling all over the floor: books, likely from the toppled piles that had been along the walls.
She glances toward the shelf. It’s still full of CDs.
Three years later and Chelsea still knows this room better than her own. At home, she misplaces even her bag—but here, standing in the faux spotlight of the ceiling light, she can map out all of Alice’s things without even looking.
So she stares out the window. And there’s the phantom, standing in the overgrown lawn, staring right back.
A tap on her shoulder. Her heart jolts within her—she whirls around, a yelp escaping her throat, and of course it’s just Alice.
She hands her a hair dryer. With a sigh, shaking hands, Chelsea accepts. At the far end of the room, if she pushes a suitcase just to the left, is an outlet; she plugs it in and avoids Alice’s gaze. She doesn’t need to turn around to tell she’s looking her over, anyway.
“Shall we discuss the elephant in the room?” Alice pauses. “The Chelsea in the backyard?”
“Funny,” Chelsea mutters. She drowns out Alice’s next words with the whine of the dryer. The sudden heat on her scalp makes her shiver, but she sets about her job: clumsily untangling her hair with her fingers, trying to ignore how the added warmth only makes her colder.
A hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t startle this time. “Let me help.”
So they’re on the floor in Alice’s room, Alice’s hands in her hair. It’s a return to routine. Alice works on the knots until they loosen; Chelsea presses her lips together and doesn’t say a word. They don’t talk. The only thing missing is the music—has her taste in music, at least, changed?
She’s about to ask. But she opens her mouth, and what comes out instead is, “Did you predict this, too?”
Alice goes still. Still as the ghost in the backyard. The ghost that looks just past Chelsea, at someone she can’t see.
The silence stretches on. Alice doesn’t resume her work. Measured, careful: “Do you want to know why this happens?”
She turns around. Alice’s hands are folded in her lap, knuckles turning white. “It’s a simple reason, truly. The river tried to—” She draws in a breath. “You were on the brink between worlds, essentially. You stepped foot in both.”
Chelsea blinks. At this point, she should have expected something like that.
Alice’s eyes flit over her face; she must be waiting for a question. And Chelsea has plenty of good ideas.
“The river tried to… what?”
Maybe that was the worst of them, judging from how Alice unclasps her hands, puts them back together, deliberates over an answer.
“Think of it as an exchange,” she finally says. “The river tried to swallow you.” Her voice wavers here, an uncertainty Chelsea would challenge if it wouldn’t make their conversation even more awkward. “You escaped. It expected an exchange that did not happen.”
Sure, it’s simple. If Chelsea lets go of her last scrap of sanity.
Well, they’re already here. “Then can we make that thing go away?”
Alice raises an eyebrow at that thing. But she nods slowly, as if expecting Chelsea to back out before she can even say yes.
Which, to be fair, would have made sense three years ago. Now, Chelsea just lets herself smile.
Four years prior, Chelsea meets Alice like this:
In the parking lot, coat placed over her head rather than her shoulders. Her first month of high school has been one long storm, and it’s still raining; rivulets run down the edges of her coat, onto her hands.
She’s not the only one stuck in this weather without an umbrella. Just a few paces away stands Alice, curls flattened, the delicate material of her blouse thoroughly soaked.
Here’s what Chelsea knows about Alice—what she’s always known.
Whenever Alice talks, it’s weird. (Not that she’s ever heard the girl say a word.) She talks the same way she dresses: like a doll, or a vampire, or something. And she only speaks in prophecies.
The most popular story: approaching a boy in the hallway out of nowhere, announcing without preamble that he would die in a week if he wasn’t careful. And seven days later, a car accident, just as predicted.
Supposedly she had been investigated. Chelsea doesn’t really know—she doesn’t have enough time nor enough friends to keep up with all of the rumors—but she must not have been found guilty of anything if she could still attend school. Still, she had been suspended for a few days; they share the same literature class, so Chelsea is sure of this one. Every time she would glance back toward Alice’s seat, it would be empty, but she kept looking anyway.
From the way people talk about her, Alice is the kind of girl that appears out of thin air.
She’s been staring, she realizes. She was supposed to go home. Instead, she’s fiddling with the coat in her hands. Not that Alice has moved, either; she continues to watch the puddles on the concrete.
Every time Chelsea sees Alice, she’s alone.
It’s impulse that draws them together—a flash of a thought, the notion that they’re just the same. Stiffly, she takes a few steps toward the other girl, holds the coat over her head.
Alice’s head snaps toward her, but she blinks slowly, says nothing. So Chelsea speaks up, attempts a comforting smile: “Are you okay? You’re soaked.”
Alice takes a while to form a response; she watches Chelsea as if gazing beyond her, into something else. But when she refocuses, her words are gentle, soft: “Thank you for your concern.”
If this is the weird way she talks, Chelsea can’t say it’s worth all the fuss. Still, a response escapes her; she can’t just generate formal speech to match on the spot.
“No problem,” she manages. Something within her withers—she didn’t mean for this conversation to be so stilted. So she tries again, refusing to be distracted by how the rain sinks into her scalp. “We usually walk the same way, right? Don’t you want to use this?”
Alice glances up at Chelsea’s hands, holding the makeshift umbrella over her. “You shouldn’t trouble yourself. Now you are soaked.”
Whatever was withering away finally shrivels up—she’s completely embarrassed herself now.
But Alice laughs, a giggle carried away by the wind. She draws closer, places a hand on Chelsea’s elbow. “Better some shield from the rain than nothing. Shall we go?”
Chelsea holds back a sigh of relief, maneuvering the coat so half of it shelters them—sort of, at least. Holding it while walking only makes the situation even more awkward.
When Alice opens her mouth, Chelsea expects her to comment on this. Instead: “You never gave me your name. Mine is Alice.”
“Oh, I’m Chelsea.” A pause that turns into a stretch of silence. “We’re in the same English class.”
“I see.”
Alice considers this as if she had never realized. Which, to be fair, makes sense. Chelsea’s off in her own corner most of the time.
But the reason Alice offers surprises her: “I usually sleep in class. I apologize for not recognizing you.”
“You don’t—it’s okay.” Huh. Everything about her, from the way she talks to the way she dresses, would suit someone studious. “I’m usually not paying attention in class, either.”
“Isn’t it a bore?” Alice gives a sigh far too heavy for the subject matter. “Romeo and Juliet tire me. I’d rather be at home reading my own books.”
“I get it.” Here’s a chance to finally learn something about her—they’re too far into an actual conversation for Chelsea not to take it. “What books do you like?”
Surprisingly, Alice flushes at that. “I’ve returned to reading the same books I read when I was little.”
She doesn’t elaborate. Chelsea waits for a response, and there’s only the sound of rain. So she searches her mind for another option—but she doesn’t read much outside of school, and she doesn’t know a single other thing they have in common.
The rest of their walk passes in silence.
After walking a few more blocks, Alice finally lets go of her arm. “This is where I live.” She points at a house not too dissimilar from Chelsea’s own, the only difference being the ridiculously overgrown lawn. And Chelsea expects her to pull away, the halting conversation ending just as abruptly, but Alice turns to face her.
“Would you…” She tugs at the strap of her bag. “Would you like me to lend you a book?”
Well, that’s out of nowhere. But even if she can’t understand why, Chelsea finds herself nodding immediately.
Maybe it had been as much of an impulse on Alice’s part as on her own. But this is what starts everything: Alice leading her into the house, flicking on every light as she walks. Chelsea scrambling after her, hurriedly pulling off her wet boots and searching for a peg to hang her coat on.
This is what introduces her to the room—the room that’s always the same. Alice stands off to the side, as if showing off her wares rather than her own house, and gestures at the mess of options. “Take your pick.”
So, whisked into this situation and without much of a choice, she picks up a hefty paperback. A quick glance over the summary reveals it’s a mystery. She doesn’t recognize the title or the author; the mess might not suit her image of Alice, but the obscurity of her taste does.
She can’t remember this book now. Just that she smiles, cautious, holding it up as if it’s all part of her introduction—and that Alice smiles back, eyes softening in an expression she’s never seen before.
Four years ago, three years ago, now: this is the look that’s only directed at her.
The books become an excuse.
An excuse to move seats in class: she arrives early, setting the novel on Alice’s usual seat. For the rest of the hour, she glances toward the back of the room—and she’s here now, so Chelsea has to look away every time. It’s embarrassing. Heat rises to her face every time, but so does a smile. And Alice doesn’t complain when Chelsea fills the space next to her with her own things. Instead, she reaches over to write comments in the margins of Chelsea’s notebooks, struggling to fit her wide cursive in the slight spaces left.
And it’s an excuse to walk to Alice’s home on the weekends. There’s a request she’s memorized, something about finding the last one interesting. One that dissolves in her mouth when Alice greets her—not that it matters, because they end up sitting in the backyard, watching the worms crawl to the deck.
And it’s an excuse to find out more: Chelsea asks after books as if she can construct a biography from this one interest. Nods at Alice’s favorite authors, recording them on her phone. Because Alice only ever speaks at length when it’s about these. And she shares them with Chelsea like a gift.
It’s not an excuse anymore when Alice fails to show up at school for a week.
The rumors died down long ago. Not that Chelsea has seen anyone with Alice other than herself—their reflections staring out the window, at the swaths of gray across the sky. Still, she listens in on others’ conversations for the first time in months. And never anything useful, never anything she cares about, so she finds herself ringing at Alice’s door without any sort of prior notice.
Alice does greet her. But she’s shrunken into herself as if freezing, looking past Chelsea the same way she had when they first met.
She should have planned something to say. Instead, all that leaves her mouth is a weak “Alice?”
This brings her back to the waking world, sort of: she looks straight at Chelsea, a moment of lucidity, before grabbing her wrist and pulling her into the house. Leading her to the room, but stepping around the mess—she points out the window, and says, “My neighbor will die tomorrow.”
Chelsea follows the path of her outstretched arm. No one in the yard, no one in the window, nothing worth noting. “…What?”
Alice pulls on her hand. “Can you not see him?” And she waves her hand, for the first time moving as if agitated; this, more than the words, is what causes Chelsea’s heart to pick up its speed.
“No?” She takes a step forward, about to take a closer look. Then stops, glances backward. “Alice, what are you talking about?”
“His ghost.” Alice finally lets go, pressing a hand to the window. “He has been standing around the house for days.”
Maybe there’s an obvious answer, an Is this a joke? But Alice doesn’t pull tricks like this.
So she’s not humoring her when she asks, “That’s what you were talking about at the start of the school year?”
Alice nods, but keeps her eyes fixed on the floor. “I tried to help him.”
The silence hangs over them as if something tangible, with its own weight. Chelsea opens her mouth only to say nothing—she can sense the ghost, now, listening in on the conversation. A draft, the faintest movement of the curtains.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” she manages. The wrong words:
Alice’s head snaps up. Her hands clutch at her skirt. And she whispers as if talking to herself, even as her eyes fix right on Chelsea’s: “There must be.”
So Chelsea waits it out with her.
The daylight sinking into the room disappears, as if a stain washed away. She gets up to turn on the light, but Alice says no—that it’s pointless if she sees her own reflection rather than the ghost.
Chelsea can’t take this, watching nothing. She watches Alice’s face instead. Not that it’s much better; Alice rarely blinks, hardly moves, breathes as if afraid to be caught. And whatever she must be feeling, Chelsea gets it, because in front of her is a shell of who she knows.
She reaches out to interrupt when she notices Alice has started to shake, a tremor beginning in her fingers. But her voice snaps within her throat. A sign.
She tries again anyway, touching her fingers to Alice’s wrist. Her hands have tightened into fists now; when reminded of Chelsea’s presence, she flinches.
“Hey,” Chelsea says.
And this is all she gets out, because when Alice turns to her, her face has contorted into something unrecognizable. Chelsea feels it more than she sees it—it’s sinking into her bones, rot that reaches the marrow, her heart choking on the blood within her. She tries to speak, voice anything, but a screech tears into her head as if to pull her skull apart.
She can feel it:
She can feel it, cold air sinking into even the sutures, a signal that doesn’t wait before clawing its way to her brain. Pulling everything apart. The world swims before her, split down invisible seams, and the noise sinks into her chest, to her lungs, it must be in her lungs now—
She can’t breathe. And instead of Alice, she sees someone else. It’s not her. It’s not Alice. It’s not the ghost in the backyard, it’s not Alice, it’s not herself, it’s the smell of ozone and the buzz of fear and it’s an odor so pungent she can taste it. It’s not something she’s meant to see. But it burrows into her eyes anyway, finds a home there.
A warning. This is a warning.
She sees Alice at school the next day.
She hasn’t even sat down before Alice speaks, a whisper she has to lean in to hear.
“You’re not supposed to interact with the dead.”
Chelsea stands there with her bag in her hands, frozen in motion, because what does she even say to that? Clearly we both have? Or More like it interacted with us?
Alice keeps her eyes trained on her desk. So Chelsea says (instead of a Good morning, instead of a reasonable response, instead of pretending), “Look at me.”
It’s supposed to be more of a command. It comes out like a question, barely even a request. It must be because her heart—the memory of last night—turns into a weight within her, its own center of gravity, pulling the entire world into this reminder:
She had been Alice, she had been the ghost in the backyard, she had been the neighbor she didn’t know.
And for just a moment, she sees her memory as if back in Alice’s room: Alice’s face, in the darkness, barely even human anymore. Then she blinks. And the vision is gone—it’s all gone, a chill that bleeds into the room—it’s just Alice, staring at her with wide eyes.
More students file into the classroom. Chelsea looks away and takes her seat.
It doesn’t take long for something stained by death to fade.
Because they’ve known each other for hardly a year, and that’s the last time Chelsea steps foot in Alice’s room.
(Second to last. Here’s something she doesn’t think of: them seated among the books, engaging in a mockery of their routine—Alice doesn’t talk about the novel when she presses it into Chelsea’s hands. Instead, “What should I do, once I start seeing your ghost?”)
So they’re in the bookstore, surrounded by the scent of aged paper and the shadows of shelves. Alice’s tongue keeps darting out over her lips; they’re dry, cracked. A rare occurrence that’s turned into a pattern. Taking a closer look reveals the dots of dried blood on them.
Chelsea doesn’t have to ask what the cause of this is. The instinct to eat has left her completely. Some sort of punishment.
Alice hasn’t met her eyes once the entire day. It’s like their first meeting, where her focus was somewhere just past her—somewhere Chelsea couldn’t see if she tried.
Maybe it should be hurtful. That Alice has been looking at her, lately, like she’s already dead. That Chelsea isn’t even unfamiliar with this expression.
Right now, Alice kneels on the floor, peering at the shelf intently. They’ve gone from corner to corner of the store like this, with Alice on the hunt for something Chelsea has no clue about. The sound of a low sigh marks yet another unsuccessful try—Chelsea glances down to find Alice looking her way.
“You should show me something you like.”
She holds onto the paperback in her hands as if it’s an anchor rather than an item of interest. Chelsea eyes it, shifts to the shelf in front of them; there’s nothing worth looking at. No one else in this corner of the store, either.
So she crouches down beside Alice. Thinks of the CDs she would always play, more background noise than a conversation starter—the buzzing in her head, tinnitus maybe, something new. She hasn’t heard any of Alice’s albums in a while. But this echoing memory persists within her ears.
She fumbles with her headphones as she pulls them out of her bag. Alice draws closer, blinking; Chelsea finds something of a sheepish grin spreading across her face.
“I only really read your books,” she starts. Pauses. Something about that sounds mean when she says it. But Alice doesn’t respond, doesn’t look away for once, so she continues: “Ever since that night, I’ve been hearing things.”
Alice stiffens. Her hands tighten around the book in her lap, and the cover begins to crease.
They haven’t talked about this. Even if every conversation revolved around it—this shadow looming over the two of them. Bringing it up in a public place must be some sort of sacrilege. Chelsea has to force her next words out, around the seizing of her lungs, the sudden awareness of her heartbeat.
“I can drown it out with this.”
She holds the headphones out—finally, a gift in return. Alice must understand, because she takes them without hesitation, pressing the speakers to her ears.
“Oh, it’s not playing anything,” Chelsea adds. Alice nods, but doesn’t take them off as she peaks over her shoulder.
“What are you choosing?”
“Shoegaze.”
Alice stares back blankly.
“Do you know about it?”
She shakes her head. “Is this a band?”
“No, a genre.” Chelsea resists the urge to shrink away—is this how Alice had felt? When sharing her favorite books that Chelsea knew nothing about? “It’s dreamy, but noisy.” She gestures around her ears, mimicking Alice’s posture, the way she holds her hands over them. “Like it completely fills your head.”
Alice hums. Waits.
So Chelsea presses play.
It’s like that night all over again, but this time she’s paying attention to the look on Alice’s face as she listens to something only she can hear. Her eyes fall shut—she must be absorbed.
Chelsea should be happy about this. But she can’t focus. Every noise in the shop is too loud. The creak of the floorboards as someone enters. The buzz of the fluorescent lights. The wind against the window. The cashier talking just steps away, a car starting outside—over all of this, the lingering scream that just won’t end.
Even if Chelsea is now sharing part of her life with Alice, it’s all the same—they sit so close, yet her attention splits between Alice and the crumbling world outside. And she can’t sense any of the things that Alice does.
The song stretches on as if for hours rather than minutes. Her ears start to ring, a newfound pressure within her skull. And Alice hands the headphones back, says something with that gentle smile of hers, but Chelsea can’t hear a thing.
(Here’s what drowning feels like: nothing new.
When Chelsea’s beneath the water—when it sinks into her eyes, her ears, her mouth—all she can think is that she’s seen this before.)
Alice waves a hand in front of her face, and it brings Chelsea back to the present.
She’s still wrapped in the shawl. Before leaving, Alice had thrown on a coat too thick for the weather. Chelsea’s thoughts lag behind, stuck in the river, so she just watches:
Alice takes off her coat with a surprising carelessness. She drops it to the ground, and it becomes indistinguishable from the earth, dyed black with the onset of night. Next, her shoes—she unbuckles these meticulously. There appear to be a few clasps; they glint with the light of Chelsea’s phone as she turns on her flashlight.
“What are you doing,” she manages.
“I’d rather not ruin my clothes,” Alice says—and her tone is something lofty, teasing, out of place. Chelsea’s hold tightens on her phone; she gives no response.
The ghost stands at the river bank. For once, it faces neither of them. It stares out at the ripples, the moonlight dissolving into the water.
“Should I…”
“You stay there.” Alice sets her shoes aside.
“Aren’t you—”
“Chelsea.”
And she finally turns.
It’s just them—at least, Alice looks at her like it’s just them. The ghost ignores everything, even as Alice steps closer, takes Chelsea’s hands in hers.
“You’re afraid.” Like some sort of diagnosis.
“Of course I am.” Alice’s hands are freezing. “You haven’t told me what you’re trying to do.”
Alice leans closer. Chelsea can’t see her face; she chooses to imagine her smiling. She can hear it in her voice, anyways: “Is it necessary that I tell you?”
“Well, yeah.” Something in her chest burns, flames traveling up her throat, stinging at the backs of her eyes. But before it can make its way out of her mouth, Alice pulls away.
“There is one thing you must do: watch.”
As if this doesn’t concern her—she turns away and leaves Chelsea grabbing at air.
Fine. She’ll watch. But she follows, just a step behind until Alice approaches the ghost.
Her hand wraps around its elbow. And this stops Chelsea right in her tracks—ghosts aren’t supposed to be something one can reach out and touch.
But, like it’s natural, Alice just nods at the thing. It finally turns, an acknowledgement.
She takes a step forward. Dips her toes in the water—Chelsea watches as her whole body shakes from the sudden chill. Another step forward. The water trembles as if afraid, its surface quivering with a new series of ripples.
When the ghost enters the river, nothing happens.
Nothing happens, even as they continue. Alice is knee-deep now. Her dress is soaked. And the ghost is still there.
Chelsea finds herself pacing.
First along the length of the bank—then each step brings her closer. And she’s not really thinking when she takes off her sneakers, not really thinking as she tightens the shawl around her shoulders—the water isn’t all that cold when she wades in, it’s not much of anything, it’s not what matters. Because Alice is a few paces ahead with the apparition and it makes something within Chelsea turn to ash.
“Alice,” she calls out. The night must have swallowed her voice; neither the girl nor the ghost acknowledges her. “Alice.”
Like everything that has guided her relationship with Alice, it must be impulse that moves her to do this:
Reach out, snag onto the ghost’s arm. It works. She can feel it like it’s living, like it’s her; the thing’s heartbeat echoes within her chest. And it tears a gasp out of her—this moment of contact with the world Alice must have been talking about—but it doesn’t matter. She takes it by the shoulders, as if about to shove it to the ground—
The night upends itself. The sky turns liquid, splashes around her. And the ghost struggles. It chokes. Digs its nails into her skin. She doesn’t care. She holds it beneath the water, even as it thrashes, even as Alice says something she can’t make out. There’s just the rush of her pulse in her ears, in her hands—she tightens her hold on the being, and waits until the water falls still.
(Here’s what drowning feels like:
Standing waist-deep in the river. Turning to find Alice, lips parted in wordless horror. Both of them, still as death in the night, staring at her empty hands.)
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 