The nurse let me go outside.
Outside!
It’s not that there was anything wrong with hospitals. Hospitals had saved my life multiple times. But there was something wrong with me, and the hospital reminded me of it. So I seized my chance to leave the blank, white room and emerge into the sunshine.
I had to take the elevator. My legs were deemed too shaky for the stairs.
I also had to stay in the courtyard area and carry around a button that I could use to alert a nurse if I thought I was in trouble.
The nurse made me take a wheelchair. If I was lightheaded, he said, I had to sit. Then press my button.
Stupid button. God, I just wanted to go home.
I pushed the wheelchair in front of me, like I was the nurse and the chair held a ghost-patient. That didn’t bode well for my nursing abilities. Preferably, a nurse’s patients were alive and not in purgatory.
Buck would’ve laughed at that.
The sun felt really, really good. There’s a difference between what the sun feels like inside a building versus out, and my body had been missing that difference. The golden heat crept through the cotton of my T-shirt, warming my shoulders. Even my hair seemed to perk up.
I wheeled my ghost-patient to the shade of a massive oak and parked the chair on a flat space between the roots. I sat down next to the wheels; I had the sense someone would put me in one of these chairs before long, and I wanted to savor the feeling of not-being-in-a-wheelchair.
A nice breeze ruffled my hair. I wondered if ghosts had tactile senses, and if my ghost-patient liked the wind. Could ghosts appreciate heat and chill? Did they even have enough of a mind to remember that heat and chill were?
The bark of the oak ground against my skull as I leaned back. Did everyone become a ghost? Or only the people who didn’t want to move on? Or were dead people just dead?
Buck once said he was undead. I didn’t really understand then, and I still didn’t. He was alive, wasn’t he? He talked and ate and breathed and had a heartbeat. That meant he was alive. Or alive enough, at least. Alive enough to be not dead. Alive enough to be not undead, too. He was much more alive than dead.
I poked a dry oak leaf through the spokes of the back left wheel of the wheelchair and tried not to cry.
Crap.
Dang.
Heck-k-k-k-k.
Four, seven, eight—
I need to scream.
Where’s a screaming pillow when you need one? I didn’t want some hospital staff to think I was being eaten by a pack of coyotes.
I pulled the collar of my shirt over my mouth, pressed my hands to the fabric, and screamed.
For someone with trash lungs, I had a lot of air. The sound bounced through my skull and stabbed at my eardrums. The fabric muffled the noise and gave me the sense that I was underwater, the shout filling my head but not the space around me.
Tears pricked my eyes. The scream felt like every tight emotion rushing out and pouring onto the oak leaves. Leaving, leaving—
Letting go—
It was like
I got
big
but not my body it was
whatever I
was
whatever my ghost
would
be
and I was so big that
I could
knock over the wheelchair
could
shake the oak
could
rip up the grass
could
crack the ground
could
break the worl—
I snapped back to myself. Pain scampered along my bones, like someone had looped hundreds of rubber bands to my skin and muscle and tendon, stretched them, then let go. My breath shuddered in my lungs. My heart squeezed.
I picked myself up off the ground to my knees. Had I collapsed? Crap. It was looking like button-pressing weather.
The wheelchair had fallen over.
“Sorry, ghost-patient,” I said, righting the thing. “Didn’t mean to make you eat dirt.”
Something caught the corner of my eye. I turned to find the grass torn up in a sunburst, the epicenter located at the trunk of the oak. Fissures broke the bare ground.
What the heck…?
I tried to stand. The world spun, so I sat back down. Definitely button-pressing weather.
I fished around in my pocket and pulled out the pieces of the plastic device. The small circuit board was cracked neatly in two.
Broken? How? When?
Was that—
Did I—
When I—
Am I psychic?
Like, telekinetic?
Or maybe I was hallucinating?
What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was happening?
Where’s Buck?
Maybe he was back. If he was, he’d hear me if I shouted his name. But I was scared I’d blow something up if I shouted. And that snapping-back had hurt. A lot.
Where was my phone?
In my pocket.
Mercifully not broken.
Where are you? I texted Buck.
There were a few moments of silence. Then:
At the manor. Why?
I think I just exploded, I responded.
There was another silence. It was a lot longer this time.
Sorry, but did autocorrect just sabotage you?
No
So you exploded?
Yes
There was more silence.
Could you explain, please?
I screamed and I felt really big and when I opened my eyes everything was knocked over and the ground’s all torn up
And my button’s broken
Okay, he replied. I’m coming. Sit tight, okay?
You don’t have to if you’re busy I can call for a nurse
Sit. Tight.
Yeah, okay
I sat tight. Buck was there in seven minutes (he runs really fast).
“Are you dead?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m alive. Ghost-patient’s dead, though. I have terrible nursing skills.”
“I’m not going to ask,” he said. “But I’m now very curious.”
He sat down, pulling his backpack onto his lap. “So… you’re saying you did all this? To the ground?”
“Yeah. And I knocked over the chair. And—” I held out the broken button, “—I think I did this, too.”
He picked the plastic bits from my palm and studied them. “Dang, dude. How’d this happen? You just screamed?”
“Yeah. It felt like something was slipping out.”
“Why were you screaming, anyway?”
“Just general frustration. I’m feeling better now.”
He gave me a sharp look before going back to prodding the plastic shards in his hand. “Well. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Shoot. I was hoping you’d have an idea of what happened, being really old and supernatural to boot.”
“Yeah, no. Sorry. I’ve said you were tripping on something the doctors had given you, but…” He glanced around. “The ground says otherwise.”
“I can’t believe you value the ground’s word over mine.”
He handed the button back. “D’you think you could do it again?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Huh? Why not?”
I rubbed my left forearm. It hurt down in the bone. That wasn’t a good sign. “It’s painful.”
He leaned over. “You’re hurt?”
“I dunno. It just kinda shocked me a bit when the… whatever… stopped. Like something stretched out had snapped back into place.”
Buck frowned. “That sounds… worrying.”
I shrugged and sighed. “It’s fine. Probably. I just don’t want to try it again right now.” I put my hands on the dirt and prepared to stand. “I should probably go back to my room. Are you coming?”
“Yeah,” he said, standing. “Are your parents still here? I’ve talked to Lyre about the Salvage.”
“Awesome! What’d he— ah!”
“Willam?!”
I gripped my elbows. I’d put weight on my palms, and in response the bones in my arms had turned to fire. “Ow!” I grunted. “I guess it did more damage than I thought.”
Buck sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Help me into the wheelchair?”
He rolled his eyes, but slid one arm under my knees and the other around my back. I hissed a little when he picked me up and the bones in my legs and ribcage burned from the pressure. “Sorry!” Buck exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I whimpered, like a champ. “I’m not dead, I think. That’s okay enough, right?”
“No?” Buck maneuvered me into the chair, then stepped back to sling his backpack over his shoulders and stare at me. “It’s never boring with you, is it.”
“Sorry.” I waved a hand at him. “Push me. My arms hurt.”
He rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
“So where do I take you?” Buck asked, wheeling my chair over the grass.
“Over there,” I said, pointing to a set of double doors. “There’s some nurses inside. I’ll ask one of them to help me— whoa!”
“Sorry,” Buck said, steadying the chair after its trip over a small rock.
“So, what were you about to say about Lyre?” I asked. “You said you talked to him…”
“Right. I did. And he wants to help you.”
I turned around. My ribs protested, but I ignored them. “Really?”
“Actually, it was more like: ‘So you’ve finally spit it out to the boy’, but yeah.”
“So—” Hope was a fragile thing. I wasn’t sure I could put weight on it. “So, when…”
“Now, if you want.”
I could be better today.
I could be better today.
I could be better today.
“My dad’s still here,” I said. “My mom went to do some work stuff, but she’s coming back. If you take me upstairs—”
“How about,” he started, cutting me off, “we figure out why your arms are hurting first. So, you know, we can make sure you’re not going to die before we can even get to the manor. Then we can talk about the Salvage.”
I grumbled. “I guess that’s a good idea.”
“Mmhmm.”
The doors were automatic; they hissed open before us like we were kings. Buck wheeled me down the hall, and I directed him towards an open door. When I peered in, there was a nurse sorting through papers in a filing cabinet. I knocked tentatively at the metal doorframe. “Hello?”
He turned around, the shaved dark skin of his head gleaming in the sunlight from the window. He was the one who’d given me the button. “Willam! Is everything alright?”
“Umm… I think I injured myself. By accident, of course.”
He shut the cabinet and hurried over. “What happened? What hurts?”
“My bones. Kind of… everywhere.”
He gently pressed on my arm. I winced in pain. “What happened?”
I winced again, though not in pain this time. How could I possibly explain this? “I have superpowers? And they were… explosive?”
The nurse stared at me. His nametag read Everett Mason in a crisp, sans serif font. The ‘M’ was giving me a disappointed look. “Will…”
“Sorry, that sounded awful. Could I have an x-ray?”
Everett sighed. “Well, I can’t just send you in right this minute. Go back to your room, okay? I’ll alert the doctor and she can decide what to do.”
“Okay. Thank you. Um. Sorry,” I said, “I swear I’m not trying to be difficult.”
He smiled at me. I wondered how much he wanted to smack me into good-patient-ness. “Be more careful, alright?”
Buck wheeled me down the hall, giving Everett a wave over his shoulder. As soon as we were out of earshot, he leaned over with his chin near my ear. “You’re not trying to be difficult, huh?”
“I swear I’m not!”
He sighed. His breath gusted over my ear and stirred a few of my loose curls. “Try harder, Will."
Outside!
It’s not that there was anything wrong with hospitals. Hospitals had saved my life multiple times. But there was something wrong with me, and the hospital reminded me of it. So I seized my chance to leave the blank, white room and emerge into the sunshine.
I had to take the elevator. My legs were deemed too shaky for the stairs.
I also had to stay in the courtyard area and carry around a button that I could use to alert a nurse if I thought I was in trouble.
The nurse made me take a wheelchair. If I was lightheaded, he said, I had to sit. Then press my button.
Stupid button. God, I just wanted to go home.
I pushed the wheelchair in front of me, like I was the nurse and the chair held a ghost-patient. That didn’t bode well for my nursing abilities. Preferably, a nurse’s patients were alive and not in purgatory.
Buck would’ve laughed at that.
The sun felt really, really good. There’s a difference between what the sun feels like inside a building versus out, and my body had been missing that difference. The golden heat crept through the cotton of my T-shirt, warming my shoulders. Even my hair seemed to perk up.
I wheeled my ghost-patient to the shade of a massive oak and parked the chair on a flat space between the roots. I sat down next to the wheels; I had the sense someone would put me in one of these chairs before long, and I wanted to savor the feeling of not-being-in-a-wheelchair.
A nice breeze ruffled my hair. I wondered if ghosts had tactile senses, and if my ghost-patient liked the wind. Could ghosts appreciate heat and chill? Did they even have enough of a mind to remember that heat and chill were?
The bark of the oak ground against my skull as I leaned back. Did everyone become a ghost? Or only the people who didn’t want to move on? Or were dead people just dead?
Buck once said he was undead. I didn’t really understand then, and I still didn’t. He was alive, wasn’t he? He talked and ate and breathed and had a heartbeat. That meant he was alive. Or alive enough, at least. Alive enough to be not dead. Alive enough to be not undead, too. He was much more alive than dead.
I poked a dry oak leaf through the spokes of the back left wheel of the wheelchair and tried not to cry.
Crap.
Dang.
Heck-k-k-k-k.
Four, seven, eight—
I need to scream.
Where’s a screaming pillow when you need one? I didn’t want some hospital staff to think I was being eaten by a pack of coyotes.
I pulled the collar of my shirt over my mouth, pressed my hands to the fabric, and screamed.
For someone with trash lungs, I had a lot of air. The sound bounced through my skull and stabbed at my eardrums. The fabric muffled the noise and gave me the sense that I was underwater, the shout filling my head but not the space around me.
Tears pricked my eyes. The scream felt like every tight emotion rushing out and pouring onto the oak leaves. Leaving, leaving—
Letting go—
It was like
I got
big
but not my body it was
whatever I
was
whatever my ghost
would
be
and I was so big that
I could
knock over the wheelchair
could
shake the oak
could
rip up the grass
could
crack the ground
could
break the worl—
I snapped back to myself. Pain scampered along my bones, like someone had looped hundreds of rubber bands to my skin and muscle and tendon, stretched them, then let go. My breath shuddered in my lungs. My heart squeezed.
I picked myself up off the ground to my knees. Had I collapsed? Crap. It was looking like button-pressing weather.
The wheelchair had fallen over.
“Sorry, ghost-patient,” I said, righting the thing. “Didn’t mean to make you eat dirt.”
Something caught the corner of my eye. I turned to find the grass torn up in a sunburst, the epicenter located at the trunk of the oak. Fissures broke the bare ground.
What the heck…?
I tried to stand. The world spun, so I sat back down. Definitely button-pressing weather.
I fished around in my pocket and pulled out the pieces of the plastic device. The small circuit board was cracked neatly in two.
Broken? How? When?
Was that—
Did I—
When I—
Am I psychic?
Like, telekinetic?
Or maybe I was hallucinating?
What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was happening?
Where’s Buck?
Maybe he was back. If he was, he’d hear me if I shouted his name. But I was scared I’d blow something up if I shouted. And that snapping-back had hurt. A lot.
Where was my phone?
In my pocket.
Mercifully not broken.
Where are you? I texted Buck.
There were a few moments of silence. Then:
At the manor. Why?
I think I just exploded, I responded.
There was another silence. It was a lot longer this time.
Sorry, but did autocorrect just sabotage you?
No
So you exploded?
Yes
There was more silence.
Could you explain, please?
I screamed and I felt really big and when I opened my eyes everything was knocked over and the ground’s all torn up
And my button’s broken
Okay, he replied. I’m coming. Sit tight, okay?
You don’t have to if you’re busy I can call for a nurse
Sit. Tight.
Yeah, okay
I sat tight. Buck was there in seven minutes (he runs really fast).
“Are you dead?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m alive. Ghost-patient’s dead, though. I have terrible nursing skills.”
“I’m not going to ask,” he said. “But I’m now very curious.”
He sat down, pulling his backpack onto his lap. “So… you’re saying you did all this? To the ground?”
“Yeah. And I knocked over the chair. And—” I held out the broken button, “—I think I did this, too.”
He picked the plastic bits from my palm and studied them. “Dang, dude. How’d this happen? You just screamed?”
“Yeah. It felt like something was slipping out.”
“Why were you screaming, anyway?”
“Just general frustration. I’m feeling better now.”
He gave me a sharp look before going back to prodding the plastic shards in his hand. “Well. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Shoot. I was hoping you’d have an idea of what happened, being really old and supernatural to boot.”
“Yeah, no. Sorry. I’ve said you were tripping on something the doctors had given you, but…” He glanced around. “The ground says otherwise.”
“I can’t believe you value the ground’s word over mine.”
He handed the button back. “D’you think you could do it again?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Huh? Why not?”
I rubbed my left forearm. It hurt down in the bone. That wasn’t a good sign. “It’s painful.”
He leaned over. “You’re hurt?”
“I dunno. It just kinda shocked me a bit when the… whatever… stopped. Like something stretched out had snapped back into place.”
Buck frowned. “That sounds… worrying.”
I shrugged and sighed. “It’s fine. Probably. I just don’t want to try it again right now.” I put my hands on the dirt and prepared to stand. “I should probably go back to my room. Are you coming?”
“Yeah,” he said, standing. “Are your parents still here? I’ve talked to Lyre about the Salvage.”
“Awesome! What’d he— ah!”
“Willam?!”
I gripped my elbows. I’d put weight on my palms, and in response the bones in my arms had turned to fire. “Ow!” I grunted. “I guess it did more damage than I thought.”
Buck sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Help me into the wheelchair?”
He rolled his eyes, but slid one arm under my knees and the other around my back. I hissed a little when he picked me up and the bones in my legs and ribcage burned from the pressure. “Sorry!” Buck exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I whimpered, like a champ. “I’m not dead, I think. That’s okay enough, right?”
“No?” Buck maneuvered me into the chair, then stepped back to sling his backpack over his shoulders and stare at me. “It’s never boring with you, is it.”
“Sorry.” I waved a hand at him. “Push me. My arms hurt.”
He rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
“So where do I take you?” Buck asked, wheeling my chair over the grass.
“Over there,” I said, pointing to a set of double doors. “There’s some nurses inside. I’ll ask one of them to help me— whoa!”
“Sorry,” Buck said, steadying the chair after its trip over a small rock.
“So, what were you about to say about Lyre?” I asked. “You said you talked to him…”
“Right. I did. And he wants to help you.”
I turned around. My ribs protested, but I ignored them. “Really?”
“Actually, it was more like: ‘So you’ve finally spit it out to the boy’, but yeah.”
“So—” Hope was a fragile thing. I wasn’t sure I could put weight on it. “So, when…”
“Now, if you want.”
I could be better today.
I could be better today.
I could be better today.
“My dad’s still here,” I said. “My mom went to do some work stuff, but she’s coming back. If you take me upstairs—”
“How about,” he started, cutting me off, “we figure out why your arms are hurting first. So, you know, we can make sure you’re not going to die before we can even get to the manor. Then we can talk about the Salvage.”
I grumbled. “I guess that’s a good idea.”
“Mmhmm.”
The doors were automatic; they hissed open before us like we were kings. Buck wheeled me down the hall, and I directed him towards an open door. When I peered in, there was a nurse sorting through papers in a filing cabinet. I knocked tentatively at the metal doorframe. “Hello?”
He turned around, the shaved dark skin of his head gleaming in the sunlight from the window. He was the one who’d given me the button. “Willam! Is everything alright?”
“Umm… I think I injured myself. By accident, of course.”
He shut the cabinet and hurried over. “What happened? What hurts?”
“My bones. Kind of… everywhere.”
He gently pressed on my arm. I winced in pain. “What happened?”
I winced again, though not in pain this time. How could I possibly explain this? “I have superpowers? And they were… explosive?”
The nurse stared at me. His nametag read Everett Mason in a crisp, sans serif font. The ‘M’ was giving me a disappointed look. “Will…”
“Sorry, that sounded awful. Could I have an x-ray?”
Everett sighed. “Well, I can’t just send you in right this minute. Go back to your room, okay? I’ll alert the doctor and she can decide what to do.”
“Okay. Thank you. Um. Sorry,” I said, “I swear I’m not trying to be difficult.”
He smiled at me. I wondered how much he wanted to smack me into good-patient-ness. “Be more careful, alright?”
Buck wheeled me down the hall, giving Everett a wave over his shoulder. As soon as we were out of earshot, he leaned over with his chin near my ear. “You’re not trying to be difficult, huh?”
“I swear I’m not!”
He sighed. His breath gusted over my ear and stirred a few of my loose curls. “Try harder, Will."
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