Page 57 of Haunted

“I thought, when I saw you as an adult, I wouldn’t feel like this. Like I’m still trying to impress you and be your hero.”

He looks genuinely startled. “Impress me? Why?”

“Because you’re handsome and talented and kind. I stopped being amazing a long time ago, but you just got better.”

“Lance,” he says. It sounds like a warning.

“I’ve never forgiven myself for what I did to you back then.” He’s still holding the door. “You’d lost everybody and I decided I’d be everybody. Your family, your best friend, your boyfriend, the whole lot, all at once. I thought if I just filled up every inch of the space they left, you’d grow into me. Like a tree around a fencepost.” I have to stop. “That’s not love. I know what that is now. I didn’t know it at seventeen, and I’d have argued with anybody who told me.”

“People did tell you,” he says quietly.

“Two of them. My mother and Miss Martha.” I look at him. “I thought they didn’t understand.”

He puts out his hands. “It’s a long time ago. Why does it matter now?”

“Because I never got over you, Jonny Bishop. You’re just this splinter in my heart that nobody can pull out.” I look away. “I didn’t even know it was there until I saw your face.”

He looks stricken, but I can’t hold it in any longer. “I know you don’t have feelings for me. I’m not pressuring you, even if it sounds like I am. But I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

Jonny stares at the table, then lifts his gaze to me. For a moment, he looks like he’ll say something, and then he stops himself. He stands and offers me his hand. “Thank you, Lance. For what it’s worth, you didn’t need to apologize to me. It was just the worst timing. For both of us.”

I accept the handshake. There’s something final about it, like putting the corpse of us into a grave and closing the lid.

He goes to the door and turns back. “I’ll get you back the clothes.”

I lean against the wall, ready to throw the bolt when he’s gone. “No need. I’ve got more where that came from.”

“Well, then,” he says, and reaches past me for the door handle. The sleeve of my sweatshirt slides back off his wrist.

And there it is. That flash of green again, except this time there’s nothing over it, and I suddenly realize what I’m looking at.

I blink at it. He turns the knob.

“What’s on your wrist?” I demand.

He frowns at me. “Nothing,” he says, but I see the way he tucks that green bracelet away.

“Show it to me.” I reach out my hand.

“It’s a trinket I picked up in Vietnam.”

“Give me your wrist,” I repeat.

“It’s not what you think.”

“It’s exactly what I think. Please give me your wrist.”

He looks at the door and takes a shallow breath. “If I show you, I’m afraid you’ll see something I didn’t want you to.”

“What if I already know what it is?” I ask.

He’s silent. The knob is turned. He can open it at any moment.

But he doesn’t resist when I turn his body gently to face the light, and then closes his fingers over his wrist. “Please don’t, Lance. Please don’t look.”

“I have to. You know I have to.” I move his fingers away from the bracelet. Tension radiates off his body. I push the sleeve up slowly. His breath hitches softly.

“Oh, Jonny,” I say. Because I’m right. That green thing isn’t just a bracelet. It was once a toothbrush. A Kermit the Frog toothbrush that’s been reshaped into bracelet form. The bristles are long gone, but the head is still the same. Kermit stares up at me, and suddenly I’m seventeen years old, sitting on my bed, handing this stupid, perfect gift to a boy who had nothing.