Dead Friends Borrow Bodies

The first time Sam came back, he used my neighbor's dog.

I didn't know that's what was happening at the time. I just heard scratching at my door around two in the morning, which wasn't unusual, because Mrs. Alvarado's terrier got out at least twice a week and always seemed to think my apartment was the promised land. I opened the door ready to shoo him back down the stairs. The dog was sitting there. Looking at me.

Not the way a dog looks at you. Not that eager, stupid, treat-motivated stare. This was different. Steady. Almost bored.

"Go home," I said, and pointed down the hall.

The dog didn't move. It tilted its head, slowly, the way Sam used to when I said something he thought was dumb. That specific angle. That exact pause before the judgment.

I closed the door. I stood in my kitchen for a long time with my back against the counter, listening to the dog not bark, not scratch, not do any of the things a dog would do. Then I heard it trot away. Click click click of nails on linoleum, fading toward the stairwell.

I didn't sleep. I sat on the couch with the TV on mute and told myself I was being crazy. Grief does things to your brain. Everyone says that. My aunt Rosa said it at the funeral. Sam's mom said it at the reception, right before she asked me to help her carry the sandwich platters to the car, like I was still the kid who came over every day after school and ate all her leftovers.

Three days later, my phone rang at 6:47 in the morning. Ana's name on the screen.

Ana. My Ana. Well, not my Ana. Ana who I'd been in love with since junior year of high school, who sat next to me in AP English and drew little flowers in the margins of her notes, who I'd never told because Sam told me not to.

"Don't be an idiot," he'd said, sophomore year of college, both of us drunk on cheap beer on the roof of our dorm. "She's way out of your league. You'll ruin the friendship."

He was right. He was always right about stuff like that. Which is why I answered the phone that morning with my heart doing something stupid in my chest, and heard Ana's voice say, "Hey, it's me."

Except it wasn't her.

I knew before she finished the sentence. Something in the cadence. The way she said "hey" like it had two syllables. The pause after "me," like whoever was talking was waiting for me to catch on.

"Sam."

Silence on the line. Then a laugh. Ana's laugh, but deeper. Wrong. Like a song played in the wrong key.

"Took you long enough," he said.

I sat down on the floor. Just sat right down on the cold tile of my kitchen because my legs stopped working. The phone was pressed so hard against my ear it hurt.

"You're dead," I said.

"Yeah."

"I went to your funeral."

"I know. You wore that ugly gray suit. The one from your cousin's wedding."

"You could see me?"

"Kinda. It's complicated." A pause. "Can I come over? This body's exhausting. Ana's got, like, a thousand errands today and I don't know how to drive stick."

That was the thing about Sam. He could tell you he was a ghost possessing the body of the girl you loved and make it sound like he needed a ride to the airport.

I should have said no. I should have hung up and called a priest or a therapist or Ana's mom. But I didn't. Because my best friend was dead, and now he wasn't, and that was the only thing that mattered.

"Where are you?"

"Outside your building. In her car. It's a Prius. I hate it."

I buzzed her up. Him up. Whatever.

The knock came two minutes later. I opened the door and there she was. Ana. Five foot four, dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, wearing a yellow sundress I'd seen her wear a dozen times, the one with the little buttons down the front. She looked exactly like herself.

Except her posture was wrong. She stood with her weight on one leg, hip cocked, arms crossed. Sam's posture. Sam's stance. He used to stand like that in doorways, like he was posing for an album cover.

"Stop staring," he said. "It's weird."

"You're in Ana's body."

"I'm aware."

"Does she know?"

He pushed past me into the apartment. Ana's sandals slapped against my floor, and he walked straight to my fridge, opened it, grabbed the orange juice, and drank from the carton. Ana would never. Ana had a thing about germs. She'd told me once that sharing drinks was basically a biohazard situation.

Sam drank half the carton, wiped his mouth with the back of Ana's hand, and burped.

"Okay," he said. "So. Long story."

I closed the door. My hands were shaking. I shoved them in my pockets.

"Start talking."

He sat on my couch, pulled Ana's knees up to her chest, wrapped Ana's arms around them. The pose was so familiar it made my throat close. Sam always sat like that. Like he was trying to make himself smaller than he was.

"I didn't go anywhere," he said. "When I died. I just kind of... floated. For a while. Couldn't touch anything, couldn't talk to anyone. It was like being underwater. Then I figured out I could push into people. Not everyone. Just some people. The ones who are already kind of... open, I guess."

"And Ana's open?"

He looked at me. Ana's brown eyes, but Sam's expression behind them. That flat, unreadable look he got when he was about to say something he knew I wouldn't like.

"She's been dreaming about you."

"What?"

"Every night for the past two weeks. Since I died. She dreams about you and she wakes up crying and she doesn't know why." He shrugged Ana's shoulders. "I think she might be a little in love with you, man. Which is crazy because you're, like, objectively the worst."

I couldn't breathe. The apartment felt too small. The walls were closing in and Ana was sitting on my couch saying things I'd wanted to hear for six years, except it wasn't her saying them. It was Sam. Dead Sam. Dead Sam wearing her body like a coat.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I need you to do something for me." He let go of Ana's knees and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and it was such a Sam move that I almost forgot whose face he was wearing. "I can't stay in her forever. It's not fair to her. She's already confused, she keeps losing time, she thinks she's going crazy. I need to find someone else. Someone permanent."

"Permanent?"

"A body that's already empty. Someone in a coma, maybe. Or someone who's basically gone already. I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet." He looked at me, and for a second his eyes weren't Ana's eyes. They were Sam's. Tired and scared and sixteen years old, back when we were kids and he told me his dad hit him and made me promise not to tell anyone. "But I need your help. You're the only one who knows."

I should have said no. I should have called someone. But Sam was my best friend, and he was dead, and now he was asking me for something, and I've never been able to tell him no.

Not once. Not ever.

"What do you need me to do?"

He smiled. Ana's lips, Ana's teeth, Ana's dimple in her left cheek. But the smile was all Sam. Crooked and sharp and a little bit cruel, the way he smiled right before he talked me into something terrible.

"First," he said, "I need you to help me figure out how to get out of this body without killing her. And second..." He paused. The smile faded. "I need you to promise you won't hate me when you find out why I really came back."

The radiator hissed. A car alarm went off somewhere down the street. Ana's phone buzzed in her pocket and neither of us moved.

"Why did you really come back?"

Sam looked at me with Ana's eyes and said nothing.