“My grandmother always saw ghosts,” Emiko was explaining. “My grandfather never did, but my grandmother was always seeing them. She saw her aunts. She saw this friend of hers from elementary school who had died super young. She used to talk to them.”
Jesse lifted that beautiful hand of hers off of Melissa’s, and sat back against the bench on her side of the booth. She folded her arms across her chest. Then: “Melissa, are you scared of ghosts?” Again, there was that elongation of a single syllable—in this case, you. A sheep, it seemed to Melissa, when stretched so far. A homonym. Baaaaaaaa. She tried to remember how to spell the word for a female sheep, but she couldn’t.
“Melissa?” Jesse asked when she didn’t answer right away.
She put her spoon into the dish and pondered the…undead. She really hadn’t been scared until Claudia had put the idea into her head the other day that her house might now be haunted. Certainly last night she had been relieved that she was allowed to share her parents’ bed with her mom, even though it was because a man and a prostitute had had sex in her own bedroom, and because now her mom didn’t want her own husband in bed with her. Dad had been—and here was a word he had taught her, trying to make light of the situation—exiled to the living room. She guessed she would have been scared if she had had to sleep alone in her own bedroom. And now the idea that Emiko—far and away the sanest of her friends—seemed to believe in ghosts, only gave more credence to Claudia’s suggestion that she and her mom and dad were now sharing the home with a couple of dead men. Moreover, they were dead men who did bad things when they were alive. Which meant they might not be especially playful ghosts. Not Casper. They might be the kind who killed you in the night. When it was dark. They might be the kind of ghosts who quite literally scared you to death.
“I am a little scared of them,” she answered finally.
“A little?”
“A little scared of ghosts.”
“I would be,” Claudia agreed.
“Claudia? Seriously? Come on,” Jesse said. “I just told you, there is no such thing as ghosts. Emiko, that doesn’t mean your grandmother was mistaken or crazy. It just means that she was from a…a different generation.”
Melissa had wanted to speak with her mom yesterday about Claudia’s idea that their house might now be haunted, but there had never been a chance. They had found the rubber and her parents had fought, and then her mom had retreated, sobbing, to the bedroom. It had been awful. And it hadn’t been the bloodstains or the ruined painting or the gross stains on the furniture that had caused her mom to break down. It had been the rubber.
Her dad had told her mom that he hadn’t had sex with the prostitute, and Melissa wanted to believe him. She couldn’t imagine her dad telling a lie like that. But it was getting harder and harder for her not to be angry with him: the house was a mess, people were doing gross things in her bedroom, and he had made her mom cry. That was the worst part. He had made her mom cry a lot. And now they might have to move, and her parents might even get a divorce. Those were the things that really upset her; those were the things that really frightened her; and those were the things, she realized, that now had her furious with her dad.
“You haven’t seen the bloodstains,” Melissa said to Jesse. She wished that Claudia hadn’t stirred her Cherry Garcia into goop. Or, maybe, that her friend had ordered a flavor that was less…red.
“There are bloodstains?” Jesse asked, and then answered the question herself. “Good Lord, of course there are. Holy crap. Of course there are. Is it bad?”
Melissa nodded. And then, unsure what she was going to say when she opened her mouth, she admitted, “It’s kind of a disaster. The house.” It made her ashamed to admit this, but she couldn’t stop herself. She just couldn’t. She liked Jesse so much, and there was something so hip and charismatic in her animal print leggings and black jacket and perfect red nails—something that made her so different from all the other moms. There was something about her that just made you want to talk to her and accept this great gift of friendship. Of comfort. Of…coolness.
Suddenly Melissa was sharing everything that she had been keeping inside her: Her fears that her family was going to have to move. The reality that her parents might get a divorce. The fact that she had almost picked up this wet, messy thing called a rubber that a man had put on his penis.
“It was in your room?” Jesse asked, her eyes widening.
“Uh-huh.”
“Wait, what?” Claudia was asking. “A rubber what? What was made of rubber? I don’t understand.”
But Emiko knew. Melissa could tell. The girl was looking into her empty sundae bowl as if the bottom of the dish was a smartphone with a video. She was embarrassed.
“But the worst part?” Melissa said as she wiped at her eyes.
“Go on,” Jesse said. “The worst part?”
“No, wait,” Claudia said, grabbing her mother’s elbow. “What was made of rubber? Tell me!”
“Later, Claudia, okay? I’ll explain to you what a rubber is later.”