Peter kept his face serious. “Relax, okay?”
At the end of the path loomed the other large building, not as wide as the church but taller if you didn’t take the steeple into account. Like the other original buildings, it was built of wooden planks, but it looked somehow sturdier than its counterparts. Still, the windows on the upper floors were empty holes, most of them covered with cloth. A wide front porch stretched on either side of its entrance, and a slanted awning offered shade and a place to rest; turned-over crates acted as chairs, as did a weight-lifting bench. No one had added on to this building, and from this distance it didn’t look too decrepit. Fetched from another era, it had probably once been a general store, the town’s unofficial beating heart. It most likely still was.
A man stepped out of the building. They weren’t so close that they could make him out, but Cal could tell it wasn’t August: this guy was white and burlier. Long brown hair stuck out from his large-brimmed straw hat. His beard reached his chest. If it weren’t for his jeans and green Polo shirt, he could’ve passed for Amish or a hippie.
“Is that Mikey?” Cal whispered to Frida.
She stopped walking. Her arms hung tense by her sides, and Cal saw that she was clenching and unclenching her hands into fists. But the fists, they were weak, not fierce. She began to shake.
“Hey,” Cal whispered.
She took fast steps toward the end of the path. She stopped again. She was craning her neck forward, as if to get her eyes closer to the sight before her. Cal looked back at the man, to try to see what she was seeing.
“No, no, no, no,” she began. Her voice squeaked out of her in little high-pitched bursts.
“What is it, babe?” Cal asked.
Peter was by their side. “Relax now,” he said to Frida. “It’s okay.”
Sailor was bouncing in place, his eyes wide and glistening.
“What’s going on?” Cal asked. He felt his whole body go cold. But why?
An inhuman sound emerged from Frida, full of sorrow and giddiness. It was as if she had moved beyond words. She staggered forward, and Cal tried to follow her, but his body wouldn’t move. He felt trapped; all he could do was watch. He didn’t understand. What was wrong?
“Is it?” Her voice came out as breath. “Is, is…”
The man at the porch was standing steady, just waiting for Frida to meet him. He wouldn’t meet her halfway. He opened his arms wide.
Cal’s heart beat in his eardrums. Mikey.
No, not Mikey. And not Mike E.
Mic. E, as in Micah, as in Micah Ellis.
Micah.
The world slipped sideways for a moment, Cal’s stomach lurching with it. He leaned over and vomited into the dirt.
“Easy now,” Peter said, and patted him on the back.
Suddenly there was a canteen of cold water at Cal’s mouth. But he could not swallow. He forced himself to stand. Frida was just a few feet away from the man who looked like Micah. She was weeping, hiccuping.
“You,” she was saying.
The man who looked like Micah held his face steady, as if trying not to betray whatever lay beneath his placid expression. Cal saw it in his eyes; they were darting over Frida’s face, taking in the ways she had changed and aged and the ways she had remained the same and would remain. The man stepped forward finally and took Frida into a bear hug. She collapsed into his arms, her legs giving out. He held her up.
“Yes!” Sailor cried, his arm pumping in victory.
Cal was shaking as Frida had been. He felt like vomiting again, but his stomach was empty. He held on to Peter’s canteen and willed himself forward.
“Micah?” he tried.
The man looked over Frida’s shoulder as he held her.
“Is that you, California?”
9
He smelled the same. She hadn’t hugged him for years; even when he was alive, they barely touched, but now she couldn’t let go. That smell: what was it? Pajamas worn until noon, and potato chips, and the leather band of their father’s favorite watch, and the baby detergent their mother never stopped using, and his old room, the window never open, the blighted avocado tree blocking views and voyeurs alike. Her brother, his smell.
She couldn’t stop embracing this ghost. A ghost in a ghost of a ghost town. Ha. It was a word problem, a riddle, a mirror inside a mirror inside—of course he loved that.
Micah. Her brother was alive.
His shirt was the color of a tennis ball, and she was imprinting its insignia of a man on horseback onto her cheek. She was pushing her face so hard into the ghost’s shirt it was like she wanted to graft the fabric onto her own skin. Not a ghost. Her brother. Micah. He had on such a stupid shirt, and a theatrical beard and a farmer’s hat, and he was breathing deeply, as slowly as a bridge rises to let ships pass. Was she the ship?
“Hi, Frida,” he said into the top of her head, so quietly that no one else heard. And when he pulled away to greet Cal, she almost fell.
*