Andy

We got back to my house, and by that point, CC had caught up with Ashley and Andy enough to feel comfortable to go home and change and get ready for the festivities that night. We also didn’t want to risk my Mom seeing anything else she wasn’t meant to. I already feel dread thinking about going inside.

“That was one strange morning...” Andy sighed as we climbed the steps to my front porch, the rain still coming down strong, swamping my street in a few inches of water.

“Indeed it was.” I agreed, turning the handle and walking into the foyer, whispering to him “head on up and do your thing. I’m going to talk to my Mom.”

He nodded and disappeared, and I took a deep breath, first checking the kitchen and finding it empty. I went to her office next to the music room, and she was there, hand sewing some embroidery for a dress by the window. She looked up at me as I entered, and instead of a kind greeting, I got “Ash! You’re mucking up my carpets with your muddy clothes, go change.”

I frowned, and put my cold hands in my wet jacket pockets. “Fine.” I muttered, turning around immediately and walking out. “I come bearing news and the carpet is more important.”

I heard her sigh, not in defeat but in aggravation. I didn’t really care if I pissed her off, because to be honest, I’m tired of the parenting bullshit where your parents can be complete assholes to you for no good reason, but will paddle your ass if you so much as use ‘the wrong tone’.

I climbed the stairs and walked the halls to my room. Inside, I found Andy, sitting cross legged at the edge of my bed in a new change of clothes.

“It’s about time you got back.” He said with a playful smirk, looking up from the teen gossip magazine open in his lap. “You’ve been gone all morning.”

“Right, of course I have.” I joked, punching his shoulder lightly as I began trying to peel off the sticky leather jacket. Leather, water and skin are not good combinations. “it must have been nice to see CC again, huh?”

“I knew that was where you were.” He was shaking his head, frowning a bit. “I thought you wanted me to go with you?”

I look at him in confusion, “You were there.”

All joking was gone from his face, he shook his head, face void of humor, just confusion. “No, I was with Ashley all morning. I got back like...” He glanced over at my bedside clock, “a half hour ago and you were already gone.”

“Are you being serious?” I demanded, pausing from wringing out my hair for a moment to stare him down.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You were there with us, all morning in the woods, and now you’re telling me you weren’t?”

“No?” he said it like a question, closing the magazine and tossing it aside. “Are you saying someone was with you and CC the whole time?”

“Yeah... That wasn’t you?” raw fear sent a cold chill down my spine. He shook his head, “No. It wasn’t me... What happened? Where did you see ‘me’?”

“In my backyard,” I explain, “I was sitting in the lawn chair out there waiting for CC to show up and you snuck up on me, wailing ‘Ash! Darling! my love!’ and acting completely like yourself. Then CC showed up, you reunited, and we went for a walk in the woods.”

He furrowed his brow in deep concern, and leaned forward on his knees, tenting his fingers over his nose in thought. “What did you do in the woods?”

“We were hiking,” I shrug, “and we came across a mudslide... And we found a skeleton.”

His eyes grew wide in concern, fixated on my face. “What else?”

“Your doppelganger said he was a, I quote, ‘a Biersack basset hound’ that could sniff out more skeletons, and it led us deeper into the woods, talking animatedly about old times.”

His face was paler than usual, and he looked sick. “Where did it take you?” he almost growled, no longer looking at me directly, but just past me.

“To the Dead Zone... To this... Cemetery. That’s when ‘you’ started to say some questionable stuff, which was backed up by normal events, so it didn’t seem too out of the ordinary to me.”

“Like what?”

“You said that you ‘owed’ it to the spirits there to locate their bodies and lay them to rest. I asked you why, and you said you came there the night before we left for California and they taught you things about being a spirit, like, guided you or something.”

The gears in his head were turning while he pulled the pieces together.

“Well, that’s not a lie,” he admitted after a pause, “I did go back that night out of curiosity. But I didn’t get the answers I wanted, because no one there was sane. So I came back shortly.”

“Not before they made a clone of you, apparently.” I sighed, twisting my hair as a stress reaction. “Do you think one of them is pretending to be you?” I wonder, trying to figure out how that would work. “like a doppelganger, or a shapeshifter... Do things like that really exist?”

He shrugged, “I only know the very basic things about this lifestyle. I don’t think so... But I don’t know. But for now, until we figure this out, how about we all stay out of the woods, okay?”

It made me feel cold and prickly in fear, seeing the fear in his eyes. Rarely did anything scare him or shake him up. He is invincible, he can’t be harmed, yet I could see clearly in his eyes the blatant worry.

“Okay.” I agreed, “I have no interest in going back for a long time, anyways... It was just...” I shuttered, “I actually don’t want to relive the memory.”

I went to the mirror, and began to brush through the dripping mess of my tangled locks, mostly just as something to do to occupy my mind. “What should we tell CC? He thinks that was you.”

“I’ll play along, for now.” He says, stretching out his arms in front of him. “But if there starts to be more red flags, I’ll let him in on it. For now... I can’t see putting him through anymore unnecessary punishment. Seems it’s punishment enough just to be my friend.” He frowns, and then sighs. “Anyways, what are your plans for later?”

“I-” I paused, “We have plans to meet up with your old bandmates tonight to hang out.”

His eyes lit up, which was a nice contrast to the fearful, darkening blue swirling in his irises. “Really? Where at?”

“I have to contact CC on those details,” I sighed, “we’re terrible for making plans all at once. Hopefully my Dad will get back from town with a boat, otherwise I don’t know how far we’ll be getting.”

I caught his expression in the reflection of the mirror. He wore a devilish grin.

“What?”

“We could travel the high road.” he says, his grin growing as he thinks over the possibilities for whatever twisted plan is being concocted in his brain. “I can’t take fall damage, and neither can you. We could travel across the apartment buildings in the cover of night.”

“You’ve got this all planned out, haven’t you?” I laughed, finishing up.

“It’d be cool.” He defended, “jumping around like Batman on the rooftops? Hell yeah.”

“Oh...” I replied quietly, purposefully letting sorrow and annoyance slip into my voice. I caught his expression changed to worried and confused. “What?”

“You only want to hang out with me so you can be Batman...” I said dully, forcing out an exaggerated sigh, before breaking into animated action. “NA NA NA NA NA NA, BATMANNN.”

He purses his lips into a thin line to keep from smiling or laughing.

“Andy Wayne, defender of Pendant. May he look over us kindly.”

He opened his mouth to respond with a cocky remark, but a quick, worried knock sounded at my door, and I shushed him.

“Ash?” My mother called before I could answer. “is everything okay?... Are you talking to yourself?”

I shot him a glare, “Oh, it’s fine... I was on the phone, actually.”

“Oh... Sorry.”

I heard her walk away, and was filled with the guilt of lying to my concerned mother.

“Agh,” I huffed, flopping down on the bed face down. “When does all this shit end? The stress, the anxiety, all of it?... I have to go back to school on Monday.”

“At least spring break is in a few weeks.” Andy replied with a cheerful undertone. “Do you have any plans?”

I turned my head just enough to view him from my face down position. “No... I just look forward to the time away from everyone, usually.”

“And to think I’ve changed you so much.” He joked sarcastically, “you hated people before I ever came around.”

“I dislike most of them, yes.”

“You are very strange.” He replied, narrowing his eyes at me. “Aside from that, what else is there going on in the school world? Prom is coming up, isn’t it?”

I shrug. “I don’t keep track of too many dates.”

“I remember going to prom...” He trailed off with a fond smile that turned sadistic, “it was shit. We all went together because we had nothing else to do, so naturally, the kings and queens that ruled the school then made sure to make you feel outstandingly unwelcome... I should really pay Bonnie Bart and Neil Jackson a visit one of these days.”

“What did they do?”

I looked at his eyes, and saw the flash of hatred and cold memories before he blinked them away.

“What school bullies always do,” he says, sighing, pushing himself up into a proper cross legged sitting position. “found stupid reasons to pick on you, and make you feel like you were trash. They always found the stupidest reasons, things that you could easily brush off... But it always managed to get under my skin.” He ground his teeth together in frustration.

“Prom... Was one of the last days of my normal life.” he almost whispered, his eyes growing distant as he viewed the many memories of pain and misery he had endured. “I was coping okay, I guess, up until that point. But I think by that time, I was already spinning from a lone thread. Either that thread was going to snap, or someone was going to cut it for me. Either way, I was bound to fall into this hole of depression. Some people are just bound to end up this way no matter what they do. It’s it’s own entity, and from birth, it picks eligible candidates to infect.” frowning, he concluded his statement and relapsed into silence.

I wouldn’t pry and demand to know what they had done. I feel like that would only cut open unnecessary wounds, and what could I do to the people who had hurt him, anyways? Give them a nice talking to like some concerned adult? They probably were both married with kids already, seeing as how most teens are parents fresh out of highschool. There’s nothing I can do, and there’s no reason to go destroying the careful palace of calm that he’s constructed for himself after all these years.

“Your Mom probably wants to talk to you.” he says after a minute of so, wringing his fingers in his lap. “She doesn’t know what to do.” his eyes narrowed in deep thought as he tuned in on my Mother’s emotions.

“Another ghosty thing?” I guessed.

“Yep.”

“What am I feeling?”

He closed his eyes in deep concentration, then smiled a little bit. “You’re worried about a lot of stuff, but your most prominent emotion right now is adoration.”

I sigh in embarrassment, “Adoration?”

“You wuv me.” He summarized in a childish tone, opening his eyes to smile at me. I looked at him, and smiled back. “I won’t deny that now, I suppose.”

He rolls his eyes and laughs. The sound is welcome after the long painful silence. I pull myself into a sit, and lean against him, looking at my hands thoughtfully. “I’ve loved you since the day I first saw you if I’m going to be honest... You intrigued me enough to search for answers on who you were, even if they ended up not mattering. You’ve only become more special and important to me now, and I don’t ever want to lose you... Even if that may be inevitable.”

He watched me speak contently, before wrapping an arm around my shoulders in a tight half hug of reassurance. “It may be inevitable and unpredictable, but we have now. And we will make the most of it. I don’t know when I’ll go, or if I’ll ever go... But if it ever happens and we don’t get to say goodbye, I want you to know right now, that I loved you, too. And I would do anything to protect you.”

While a smile was pulling my lips, there were tears slowly building in my eyes. I look at him instead of hiding it, and his are sparkling, too. I laugh, even though the sound is distorted and broken from my emotions. “Why do we cry so much?”

“I’d say it’s just part of being human... But that’s not so true, is it?... I suppose it’s more so apart of existing.”

I hug him, and hold him close to me. “We need a secret passcode.” I tell him suddenly.

“Why?”

“So I can tell you from your clone... If there is one... I just speak the word, and you’ll respond with a phrase about the word to confirm if it’s you or it...”

He was quiet as he thought. “Okay,” he finally agreed. “What’s the word going to be?”

“How about something neutral that can seamlessly fit into a conversation?”

“Like ‘red lilac’?” He offered.

“Red lilac...” I echoed thoughtfully, “Why red?”

“Because red lilacs are very uncommon, they’re mostly purple and blue, so we’ll know for sure it’s the right codeword.”

I nod, “Okay, red lilac it is... Though, a codeword like ‘potato’ would be kinda awesome, too.”

We fell back into silence for bit, staring off into space, leaning against one another.

“I should probably go talk to my Mom...” I sighed, “but first, I need a dry change of clothes. That’s why she went after me the last time I was down there, after all.”

“Got it.”

Without me having to ask, or even drop hints, he got up and exited the room swiftly, which left me alone to my own devices. I changed quickly, into a dry pair of jeans and a white tank top. I had no more plans for running around in the rain for today.

After I’d collected myself enough, I went downstairs, but she was on the phone with someone. I wasn’t going to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t get out of ear shot before I heard by name.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with Ash... I don’t know if these are the normal teenage changes we should be expecting, or if it’s just something else.”

I’ve already heard this before. The worried speech to the neighbors, so that next time I see them, they look at me like I’m crazy. I cannot seem to find the perfect balance between being perfect, and being true to myself.

Before I could hear anymore of her worried preach, and more of the Ash’s Problems soap opera, I decided to occupy myself by spending some time in the music room.

I pushed open the glass door, and walked in. The room felt colder than the rest of the house, since it had the most windows, each one frosted over in a layer of fog, coated in blurry raindrops. I went straight for the piano, since it’s always been my favorite instrument.

Sitting down, I began to play mindlessly, just playing whatever came to mind. The ending of ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’ was just starting to fade into The Mortician’s Daughter when there was a light, hesitant knock on the music room door. I stopped playing and looked up at my Mom.

“Hi.” I greeted her quietly, unsure what else there was to say. She looked tired, and her following words only fueled that suspicion. “I’m so tired I’m losing it...” She sighed, walking towards me to plop down on the piano bench beside me with a vacant expression. “This morning when your friend came over, I could have sworn I saw him disappear for a moment.”

I had to decide rather or not I wanted to confirm or deny her insanity.

“Oh... When was that?”

“I think he had just arrived...” She replied thoughtfully, “and he leaned in to something, and was gone. I blinked, rubbed my eyes and everything, and he was still gone... This week has driven me insane.”

“You’re not insane.” I say with some neutral enthusiasm, calmly patting her shoulder. “You’re just tired - we all are. Maybe you should take a nap to get things together.”

She looked like she was considering it for a moment, before briskly shaking her head. “No... No, I actually need to get going. I’m supposed to meet with the ladies at Marcey’s house.”

I nod, “Okay... Who’s going to be there?”

“All the ladies in the neighborhood that can make it, and some from the church. We’re going to make some plans to get the water to drain off, since it could be weeks before we get power, it could be weeks before we even get a decent drain system, so we need to take matters into our own hands.”

Sighing, she looked at me intently, with a sparkle of worry in her eyes. “Asheen, honey, promise me you’ll always do what you can to make things better. Sometimes it’s not what a group can do, but what one individual can. You are one, but your strength can extend to many. Always remember that.”

I look at her, feeling a bit dumbfounded and unsure what to say. “Does this have to do with the flood?” I asked after few moments of confused hesitation.

“No, not completely. I know there’s fire in you, one that burns brighter than either mine or your Father’s combined. There’s something about you that will make a difference one day. I know that.”

“Why are you telling me this?...”

“Because this morning, you proposed an interesting debate, with the right reasons. No, I don’t condone what you said to your father, specifically, but you raised all the right questions for debate.”

“Am I going into politics?” I hedged, still lost in where her pep-talk was headed, and she sensed that, and sighed, thinking about a better why to propose it.

“Bottom line, always do and say what’s right, even if it hurts those you love. Having an opinionated mind and stepping in, even at the risk of an uprising, is better than a silent one sitting in the shadows while wrongdoing is all around them.”

“Okay... I get that... But one question, are you trying to say Dad was wrong?”

“He’s outspoken.” She corrected with a shrug, “I love him to pieces, but sometimes where he stands on things just...” She ground her teeth looking for the right word.

“Pisses you off?”

She looked at me like I’d just summoned the devil, then sighed and laughed tiredly. “Yeah, I guess so. I have my red flags about Christian, too, of course, but he’s been nothing but kind and supportive to you. I want to give him another chance but your father is firmly against it.”

“Why not have your own opinion on it?” I suggested, “it’s stupid to follow him like a puppy if you don’t agree with it... Sorry.”

“Because unlike you, I can’t summon the courage to do what needs done. Only you can change his mind.”

“I’m supposed to persuade Dad to let him into our home with open arms?” I asked incredulously, “he’s not in any mood to even have him around me, let alone buy him cake and an apology card. Dad isn’t the kind of person to apologize at the risk of bruising his ego.”

She looked like she was starting to get annoyed.

“Nevermind...” I sighed, “you want me to have an opinion and a voice, right up until I plan to use it. I’ll keep my opinions to myself from now on.”

I didn’t get up and leave, I just sat there staring at the ivory keys until she left me instead. I watched her go, and felt anger boiling inside me, slowly the pressure rose until I couldn’t stand it.

She’s a hypocrite, two faced, and weak. Too weak to make her own choices for herself, instead she follows my Father like he knows the way ahead, but he’s just as lost as the rest of us.

I’m tired of this crap.

Notes

Inspired by The Memory by Mayday Parade

Ghosty things are going down oooh

Question: Do you guys prefer longer chapters or the shorter ones? I tend to do a combination, but if there's one you'd rather have, I can make it work. :) As a reader myself, I prefer shorter chapters, but it's up to you guys!