Ghosts

The most beautiful girl in the world is dead, and I am not sure whether I should be afraid of ghosts.

I remember the day it was revealed to me that I would soon be a big brother. My parents sat on either side of me on the couch, as I stilled in stunned silence, waiting for a distinct emotion to surface. I could not be entirely happy, yet I could not be entirely upset, either. It was simply a change, and seven-year-old Arthur did not know how to deal with changes.

My mother told me I would have to help watch over my little brother. Well, I don’t think she said “brother”, but I just assumed. And as the days went on, I grew more and more excited. I could hardly wait for the sound of my brother’s shrill laughter to echo mine. I pictured a cinematic montage of our irreplaceable and perfectly unique bond coming together as we grew to love the fact that we were forced to share a home and a family.

To my dismay, my baby brother was never given to me. Instead, there was a baby wrapped in a painfully pink blanket resting in my mother’s arms. I felt cheated, lied to, and betrayed. What traitor had allowed this to happen?

I sat in my room and sulked while my mother tried to coax me into loving my sister. Force never works with these types of things, though, and I let bowls of ice cream melt on the kitchen table as I fueled myself solely on the prideful adrenaline of disagreeing with and, consequently, disappointing my parents.

When I finally emerged from my matchbox car oasis, I was hyper aware of every ounce of attention given to my sister, Cressida. My eyebrows nearly became permanently furrowed as I vowed not to tolerate the unfair treatment.

Though admittedly unfit for a film, Cressida and I certainly experienced some sort of gradual bond. It seems I’d subconsciously tucked away my mother’s idea of protection, somewhere deep in my mind or heart–too deep for it to cross my mind, but rooted firmly enough in my core for me to carry it out with a passion I had never exerted for anything else.

When Cressida was seven, and I was fifteen, our parents took us to a beach somewhere that was lacking both preferable temperatures and any sort of commercialism, meaning it was practically isolated during spring break. Though my parents and I were content in staring periodically out the windows to satiate any desire to experience the beach, Cressida was far less simple-minded. After a few hours of begging and enough boredom, I succumbed to her request, and I trudged along behind her as she skipped blissfully to the shoreline.

I stood behind her, my eyes constantly scanning her surroundings for any sign of danger.  I have always been calculated, and calculated mindsets don’t usually mesh well with those of people like Cressida: the bold risk–takers who couldn’t care less about possible consequences or what anyone else thinks. She was never made for anything safe or easy, you could tell from the beginning.

As the wind began to pick up, I submitted a cordial request that she begin her farewell address to the shore. After receiving only a sly giggle in return, I realized there was no need to request things from someone who would not give me anything I did not demand of her–at least when it came to leaving like this.

I informed Cressida that our departure would be momentary, and though I thought at the time she didn’t hear me, I realize now that would’ve been nearly impossible. Cressida continued to stare out at the open ocean, and the wind became increasingly stronger with every second that passed. I waited only a moment more before approaching my sister, who, in hearing my footsteps, spun around giddily, letting out one of her contagious laughs as she backed up, growing nearer to the water.

“Stop it, Cressida,” I demanded. “Let’s go. The sand is going to blow all around us and it won’t be any fun. The sky is getting dark. It’s not safe. Let’s go home.”

“‘Home’?” questioned Cressida. Of course, she knew what I meant. Her attempts to change the subject were almost always futile with me.

“We can come back later.”

She crossed her arms defiantly. “No.”

I started a bout of useless protesting, but was interrupted by a gust of wind, which blew Cressida’s hat behind her, into the waves. It was an ugly little thing, I always thought. A tattered baseball cap with too many colors of tie-dye for one article of anything, especially a child’s size hat. I’d tell her that later, recounting the story for her, but in the moment, my reflexes took over.

Her instinct was to go after the hat, naturally, since she loved it with an intensity I would never understand, but I would never let her do that. I picked her up and stuck her back in the sand, safely, where she belonged, and dove in for the hat. I had an embarrassingly low amount of experience in bodies of water, most of all the ocean, and didn’t understand the force with which waves can pummel into a swimmer on an exceptionally windy day.

I was dragged across the ocean floor, unsure which way was up or down or back or forward. In complete disarray, I was unable to find my way, and I had nearly forgotten about the hat until I felt my arm brush across a familiar fabric texture. Still squeezing my eyes shut, I clutched the hat with my remaining strength. Propelling myself ever so slightly toward it tilted me in my entirety until my feet were once again on the ground, leaving me upright just as a perfectly placed wave nudged me up out of the water and in the direction of the shore, until I could do the rest myself. My nose, eyes, and mouth stung with the sharpest salt I’d ever felt, and I came up choking on lungfuls of water and gritty, bitter sand that clung to me everywhere. That was the first time I’d seen Cressida truly speechless.

“What just happened?” she asked, a little tremble in her voice. My heart sank the smallest bit then, wondering if I had failed at my job: keeping Cressida from being scared or being in danger.

“I just…got your hat,” I explained sheepishly, unable to get the sentence out without launching into a hysterical coughing fit.

Her eyes widened at seeing the hat as I pulled it out of the water, letting it hover for a moment as it returned a seemingly endless store of water back into the ocean it came from.

“You got it?” she repeated in disbelief.

Despite my hurried, shallow breaths, I attempted to appear calm in my response. “Of course.” I shook the hat a bit more and the excess water out before tossing it to her. “You can clip that to the clothesline on the balcony of the hotel room later when we get back.”

“Okay,” she agreed, somewhat skeptically, following me as I trudged painfully back in the direction we’d come from. It wasn’t long before she began firing questions at me. “When did you learn to swim?”

“When I was a baby.”

“Not true. You didn’t know how to swim last summer at the pool. You said swimming was for babies.”

“Exactly. So when I was a baby, I swam.”

“Tell me the truth, Arthur!”

“Okay, fine, I didn’t learn. I just guessed.”

“I think you did it wrong.”

“Hey, why do you say that? I got the hat, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think you’re supposed to look like a sand monster.” Cressida imitated a Frankenstein-like strut, proclaiming herself to be “Arthur the sand monster”.

“Whatever, Cress,” I sighed, finally letting out a laugh. It felt good, like maybe I hadn’t needed to be so wound up earlier. She had a good influence on me.

Just when I thought I’d calmed down, though, my stomach flipped.

“My glasses!” I shrieked, stopping in my tracks. “My glasses fell off in the water!” I ran my hands over my face, my pockets, and anywhere else I thought they could be stuck without my noticing.

“Are you sure?” Cressida asked calmly, continuing to walk.

“Yes! I mean, can’t you see if they’re on my face?”

“They’re not, but I would’ve thought you’d notice by now.”

“Mom and Dad will kill me. We have to go back.”

“No, you’ll get them,” she assured me, dragging my hand along with her.

I pulled my arm back, refusing to walk further. “I’m serious. My glasses are going to be harder to replace than your hat.”

“Not true. I made this hat.”

“Okay, well, that’s not the point.”

“You’ll get them,” she insisted again, more forcefully this time, and kept walking.

“How?”

“He’ll bring them to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The ghost. The one that helped you because you couldn’t swim.”

I rolled my eyes. “You sound insane. None of this is real, except for my glasses being lost.”

With Cressida’s continued stubbornness, I decided I had no choice but to take her back to the hotel and hope my parents didn’t notice my missing glasses. If they did, I would have to act surprised and retrace my steps, eventually making a just-obvious-enough display of my regret and sadness to convince my parents that I was completely blameless and entirely deserving of a new pair, free of punishment.

However, I was questioned within seconds of my entrance into our hotel room.

“Where are your glasses, Arthur?” demanded my mother. I cursed myself for so foolishly suggesting that anything could possibly get past her.

“They’re on the balcony,” Cressida casually called from the bathroom. In crafting my plan, I had forgotten Cressida’s promise of the return of my glasses. I remained silent as my mother checked the balcony, my mind racing with how I was going to recover from this.

To my surprise, though, my mother returned from the balcony with my glasses in her hand. “Here they are,” she said. “Thank you. And Arthur, please be more careful with these. I thought you had them on when you went out, but I guess not. Just keep track of them. You know they’re expensive. And they feel all wet and sandy just from being out there for however long. Why don’t you go clean them? Oh, you’re dripping on the floor. Clean yourself up once your sister’s done, won’t you?”

“Sure,” I said shortly, in disbelief as I took the glasses into my hands. I could hardly comprehend her words as she scolded me for going into the water when I knew I couldn’t swim. 

Throughout the years, Cressida casually mentioned ghosts only a few more times, and it unsettled me more and more. Towards the end, though, the ghosts seemed to be enjoying some sort of absence. I never heard of them, and I certainly never asked.

She was in a hospital bed, fluorescent lights highlighting where her hair used to be. Our parents were out buying her some books, and I was delivering her some bracelets from girls at school. She looked drained, but she could still smile.

“Arthur?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“How does it feel to be in water?”

“Um…wet, I guess,” I answered with a confused laugh. She rolled her eyes, and tried to push my arm playfully, but stopped with a pained expression. I tried to stop myself from frowning, because it hurt so much to see her like this.

“No, I mean because you can’t swim,” she clarified, searching my eyes for something deeper than I believed I could offer.

“Honestly, it’s terrifying,” I said. “Like I know I don’t have the same abilities as everyone else, and I could drown at any moment if something went awry.”

She nodded, thinking, before she said, “That’s how I feel now. I could die at any second.”

I started to cry–the first time in all of the treatments that I’d cried in front of her. I never wanted her to see me cry, but how could I not? She’d said it so casually. To her, her inevitable death was a fact. I didn’t want her to go. I cared far too much.

She closed her eyes, and she looked so peaceful. Then she smiled, wide, with her teeth showing.

I squeezed her hand and, gently, asked her what had happened.

“The ghosts,” she said, her voice nothing more than a weak whisper, which didn’t seem to concern her.

“What?”

“They said they’re going to keep you company for me, and tell me how you’re doing.”

I bit my lip.

“One more thing,” she added, her eyes still closed but her tone now more serious. “They’re going to come get me, soon. It will be different, but it will be okay.”

I felt some more hot tears run down my face, but I didn’t say anything back. I just let her fall asleep.

And that’s the last thing she ever said to me.