enjoy

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"Mrs. McKinnon?" I ask the startled woman standing in the doorway of the yellow house.

"Yes? And who might you be?"

I bite my lip. I never even planned on getting this far. "I'm Damian. I'm one of Timmy's um...friends."

She smiles. "Oh, of course." He's told me all about you. I kept asking when he was going to bring you by. Please, come in." She ushers me inside. "It's pouring outside and you're drenched. Come in, dry off."

"Thank you," I mumble, and take in the boxes around me. The smell of fresh baked cookies hangs in the air and my stomach growls.

"Someone's a little hungry?" Timmy's mom laughs. "Timmy's not home right now, but he should be back soon. He tends to come back around during lunch time."

I don't have the heart to tell her what her son is doing.

"Here."

I turn and accept the cookie being offered to me. It's warm in my palms, but that could just be my hands so desperately needing to defrost. "Thanks."

She motions to the sofa. "Go ahead, you can sit."

I sit.

"Timmy's been out a lot lately. I thought he was with you-- that's what he always says." She crosses her legs, and then uncrosses them, obviously uncomfortable. "Things have been a little chaotic around here. Look at me, I don't even know where my son is."

A pang of sympathy tears at me. The old Timmy, she wouldn't have to worry about where he is. She wouldn't have to worry about what he was doing.

"You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like and wait for him. I'm making pasta for lunch, if you'd like to join us."

My stomach growls again, quite a bit louder.

"Sorry." I clasp my hands around my abdomen and blush at the floor.

She pats my shoulder as she stands. "Don't you worry about it. I'll take that as a yes."

"Thank you."

I watch her exit the room and enter the next. Her dress is wrinkled and she drags her left foot along the ground, like lifting it just a centimeter would require too much effort. She looks as drained as her son, and I could see her falling asleep over the stove the way Timmy rests on his desk.

"Mrs. McKinnon?" I ask.

A head peaks around the doorway. "Please, call me Rachel."

"Um. Okay. Rachel?"

"Yes?"

I follow her into the kitchen. Around me, yellow walls and checkered curtains give the room a homey feeling, if the smell of food didn't already. A picture of my kitchen flashes across the space, peeling wallpaper and stacks of unpaid bills sprawled across the table. It's the coldest room in our house. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's always been that way.

"My nipples are so hard they could cut glass. Come warm me up," Justin complained.

I turned from the counter. "I thought you wanted pancakes."

"I won't be able to eat them if my fingers fall off. Come sit on my lap."

Abandoning my work, I straddled his lap and he took my hands in his. "Better?"

"Why are you always so warm, baby?" He leaned in and kissed my nose. His lips were cold against my skin.

I shrugged. "I'm not the one only wearing a t-shirt."

"You didn't offer me one of your sweatshirts to wear while mine dries."

"I like you better with less clothes anyway." I bit my lip and tugged at his jeans. "Wanna take those off for me?"

I force myself back to reality before I can get hard. All my memories of Justin lately tend to be sexual.

Is that the only thing I miss about him?

"Did you want to ask me something?" Timmy's mom questions from her cooking. She's not facing me and I take the opportunity to make sure I don't have anything going on in my pants.

Do not get hard around your friend's mom. Do not get hard.

"Um. Yeah. I wanted to ask if you know someone. A guy."

"What's his name?"

"Adam. Adam Lucas."

She stops so suddenly I almost dear I've said something terribly wrong.

"I do." Rachel leaves her spoon in the pot and sits down at the table, pulling out the chair across from her for me. "He was a boy I went to high school with."

Something in her eyes tells me there's something else. I can't help but want more information.

"Did something happen to him?"

She's twenty-five years in the past.

"He died," she tells me slowly. "A drug overdose. Meth.  And LSD.  But mainly just the meth.  All the teachers used it as a reason to drill into our minds how dangerous drugs were."

Now I'm intrigued. I've been talking to the ghost of a boy who died decades ago.

I can see dead people.

"It was such a shame. He was so smart. He understood the world in ways we couldn't even begin to fathom."

"Did you know him well?"

"We were lab partners. In tenth grade." She turns to look at me. "Why do you ask? Where did you get his name?"

I struggle to come up with a lie in a believable time. "Someone was talking about him. Said he wasn't from around here. I was going to ask Timmy, but he's not here."

Timmy's mom shakes her head. "The things kids talk about nowadays."

He's been dead twenty five years. Why can't I just have living friends?

"What did he look like?"

"Huh?"

"Adam. What did he look like?"

She smiles. "Tousled brown hair. Green eyes and dimples when he smiled. Kind of tired looking."

"Did he smoke?"

"Everyone did. You could get cigarettes everywhere when I was in high school. It's a bit harder now."

Not if you know where to go. "Thank you. For talking to me."

"It's just so strange. After all these years."

The smell of smoke and we're in 2010 again. And then the scream of the smoke detector and we both jump to our feet. Thick tomato sauce is bubbling over the side of the pot, collecting in pools on the stove and burning instantly.

"Shit, I completely forgot. Damian, will you take the towel on the fridge and wave it around under the doorway? That should shut it off."

I grab the cloth and wave it like an idiot, but the thing just won't shut off. It's taunting me.

You have no power over me. Try and shut me up.

"I get it, okay?" I whisper. "I have no power over you. I have no power over anything. I'm powerless. Could you just cut me some slack? I'm tired and hungry and I just miss Justin."

And just like that, it stops. I drop the towel in defeat. It took begging an inanimate object to get something to be on my side. Maybe that's why so many people pray.

"Do you need any help?" I offer quietly, after placing the towel back around it's handle. But she doesn't hear me. I know I haven't spoken loud enough for anyone to hear, just enough to get the words to fill the empty space between us.

She looks around with hope. Her little boy, maybe he'd finally come home. But he's not here. Instead she's got a child who's not her own-- the child nobody wants.

And I have no place here, in his home. He doesn't want me. I don't belong.

I stand, knocking over my chair as I go. I can't get out of there fast enough.

"Damian wait!" she tries to call, but I'm gone. I cannot be stopped. I have to be out in the cold and the rain. I have to feel it dripping down from the side of my face like the tears I've been holding in so long.

The front door slams behind me, but I'm not looking back. I have to be as far away from that yellow house and everyone in it, if it means running to the other side of the world. It's not my place. Enemy territory. I'm vulnerable.

As I fail to watch my surroundings, a stray rock catches the tip of my toe and sends me flying forward, and I fall face first into the mud. Tiny shards of gravel embed themselves in the side of my face and the palms of my hands and the exposed skin of my knees. There's no pain. Just release.

I pull myself so I'm sitting in the mud. Blood drips off the tips of my fingers and coat the surface of the ground, like an oil spill. The two don't mix, and I stir them together with a stick until the colours are swirled into a terrible shade of brown.

There's no other way to describe it than "bloody mud."

But it's release, as disgusting as that is. When I light my cigarette and take a drag, I'm smiling into the face of the rain. There's no place else I'd rather be. I'm safe, drenched, and calm.

And I can see ghosts.