Arianne
gave Ben a sidelong glance as they walked on the grass embankment running
parallel to the road. Weeds tugged at his baggy jeans. The setting sun dyed
his foul ball t-shirt orange. He’d picked up a stick and some pebbles and
played “pitch and hit.” The bill of his Braves baseball cap smiled upside down
over his boy-next-door face. Every properly timed whack plucked at
Arianne’s nerves. The whole day she’d imagined how her conversation with Ben
would go. One scenario ended with her running away in tears. Another involved
Ben never speaking to her again. And in the last one, her personal favorite, an
asteroid would end the world before she could confess everything.
“Did
you change your hair?” he asked after his third imaginary homerun.
Arianne
jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Boy,
you’re nervous.”
“Mom
decided to trim some off the tips.” Arianne twirled a length of the red
strands, attempting to act natural and failing when she didn’t notice a
protruding root and stumbled over it. She righted herself and said, “Split ends
and all that.”
“It
looks nice.” Doubt invaded Ben’s grin. He loved to smile. Even when he didn’t
feel like it, he smiled. Sometimes, as exampled by this moment, other emotions
would creep in and the result looked less than natural. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
Arianne laughed away her uncertainty, and failed in that too, managing to come
off more awkward than before. She returned to the topic of her hair. “In this
heat, I want to chop it all off. My hair, I mean.”
“Don’t!”
Ben paused and checked himself. “I mean, you’ll regret it. Remember the time
you decided you wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe and your hair turned orange
instead of blond?”
She
shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”
“What
are best friends for if not to warn you away from potentially devastating
actions? Remember, you’d have to live with whatever you do to yourself, no one
else.”
She
considered what Ben said. Maybe telling him isn’t such a good idea.
“So,”
he continued, tearing her away from her hesitation, “what are you going to tell
me?”
Arianne
scratched an itch on her arm that wasn’t there. “Who said I wanted to talk
about anything?”
This
time, Ben let go of his grin entirely and regarded her with full on skepticism.
“I’m insulted. We’ve known each other since kindergarten and you still think I
don’t know when you want to tell me something?” He grimaced. “Normally, we’d
take the bus, but when you want to talk, you always suggest we walk the three
miles home.” Just as Ben emphasized the distance, the school bus carrying
their rambunctious classmates passed them, adding to his point. “Not that I
mind the exercise.”
“Am
I really that transparent?” Arianne shuffled her sneakers and adjusted the
strap of the bag on her shoulder.
“I
just know you better than anyone else.”
She
smiled a small, shy smile. “You’re right. I have to tell you something.” She
collected her thoughts like scattered clothes on her bedroom floor then said,
“There’s no easy way to tell you this…”
All
signs of life drained from Ben’s face. Eyes wild, he grabbed her shoulders.
“Is it Carrie? Did something happen to her?”
At
the mention of her sister, she held on to his wrists like she was about to fall
off a cliff. “What? No! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you have to chill.
No more coffee for you, mister.” She extricated herself from Ben’s death grip.
“This has nothing to do with her.”
He
took off his cap and ran his fingers through his sandy hair before jamming it
back on. “Don’t scare me like that.” He huffed and strode away. “And I don’t
drink coffee!”
Arianne
pulled on her earlobe before scrambling to catch up. “You’re the one who jumped
to conclusions. And if anything happened to Carrie, you’d be the first to
know.” She came up to him until her steps matched his. “I’m trying to tell you
that I see dead people. Well…technically, I see their souls.”
Ben
kept marching on.
“Hey,
did you hear me?”
“Happy
April Fool’s to you, too,” said Ben.
“It’s
September, you ninny.”
“Well,
it sure sounds like April to me.”
Arianne
grabbed his sleeve. Ben searched her face, and her gaze fell. An afternoon
breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees lining both sides of the road. The
sunset stabbed shadow knives all around them.
“As
in M. Night Shyamalan ‘I see dead people’?”
Reluctantly,
Arianne nodded. “It sounds crazy — ”
“You
bet your ass it sounds crazy.” Ben paused. He heaved a long and weighty sigh.
“Look at me when you’re revealing freaky things about yourself.”
She
lifted her gaze. “I’m sorry I haven’t — ”
“Since
when?” he interrupted.
It
felt like melted ice dotted her brow. “What?”
“Since
when can you ‘see dead people’?”
“A
couple of years back.”
“A
couple of years.” He took off his cap, ran his hand through his hair
again, then replaced it on his head — his helmet against all things freaky.
“Jesus, Ari. I thought we promised to tell each other everything.”
“Okay,
not the reaction I was looking for.” Disbelief exploded in her head. “You mean
to tell me you’re pissed because I took so long to tell you?”
“We’re
best friends. That has to count for something. Isn’t listening to each
other’s secrets what best friends are supposed to do?”
“So,
you’re saying you believe me?”4
“Why would you lie about something like that?”
He engulfed her with his body, strong arms securely around her waist, his Dial
scent coating her lungs. “Ari, you should have told me sooner. I’m sure you
were scared the moment you saw the first ghost.”
She
giggled. “On the contrary, it wasn’t scary at all. I was visiting Pops at the
nursing home when I saw the woman. I pointed her out and Pops told me there was
no one there. I did some research — ”
“Of
course you did.” Ben broke the hug. “So, what are you? Psychic or something?”
“I
wouldn’t say that.” Arianne dug her nails into the strap of her bag. “I don’t
see the future or anything. My research says I’m more like a Medium, although I
can’t speak to the dead. Or I haven’t tried. I don’t think I will, FYI. And I
see them only for a second or two. They disappear pretty fast.”
“You’ve
put a lot of thought into this.”
“Wouldn’t
you?” She rubbed her forehead. “I mean, it doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s like
having extra people walking around, you know? Well… they’re naked — ”
“Whoa!”
Ben surrendered. “Too much information.”
“But
it’s true!” she insisted.
“I’ll
take your word for it,” he said. Then he crossed his arms. “Why tell me now?
Why wait so many years?”
Arianne
challenged the tangerine sun to a staring contest until the fading light made
her close her eyes. A yellow orb still floated at the center of the darkness.
She breathed in the post-summer air and said, “Seeing dead people, you know? I
guess I’m just tired of keeping it all to myself.”
Ben
wrapped his hand around hers. “Come on, I want to get home some time before
dinner starts.”
Arianne
thought she must have had an aneurism between the time she’d told Ben her
secret and when he’d accepted it as nothing special, because it seemed so
surreal that all the scenarios she’d played out hadn’t happened. Especially her
favorite one.
“Thanks,” she said as
Ben tugged her toward home.
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