Phantom Shadows

The first time I saw Marcus touch my girlfriend, it was because of a ghost.

Not a real ghost. Not one of the screaming, ectoplasmic horrors that I used to spend every night punching back into the ground. A ghost of a memory. A stupid, fragile thing that lived in the space between us on the couch, in the way she'd stopped reaching for my hand, in the way her laugh had started sounding like it was meant for someone else.

We were in my basement. The same basement where I'd hidden a portal to another dimension when I was fourteen, where I'd bled and sweated and died a hundred small deaths. At twenty-two, the place felt less like a secret lair and more like a museum of my own exhaustion. The ghost portal hummed behind a tarp, dormant. I hadn't gone ghost in six months. The last time I'd tried, my body had seized up like an engine flooded with the wrong fuel. Something had broken inside me, or maybe just worn out. Either way, the powers were gone, and so was the person I'd been when I had them.

Sam sat on the old pull-out couch, scrolling through her phone with her thumb moving faster than any human thumb should. She was wearing my hoodie, the one with the NASA logo peeling off the front, and her hair was pulled back in that messy way she knew I liked. But she wasn't looking at me. She kept glancing at the stairs.

"He's just a friend," she said, before I even asked. "You're being weird."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it."

She wasn't wrong. I was thinking a lot of things. Marcus had transferred to our school junior year, a tall, easy-smiling guy from Detroit who played bass in a jazz band and could fix any car engine with a screwdriver and a prayer. He was the kind of person who made everything look effortless. I'd introduced him to Sam at a party. I'd thought they'd get along. They did. They got along so well that within three months, she was spending more time at his apartment than ours, and I was the one making excuses to my parents about why she wasn't home.

The basement door creaked open. Marcus stepped down, ducking his head under the low beam. He was wearing a faded denim jacket and a white t-shirt that stretched across his chest. He smelled like motor oil and cinnamon gum. He smiled at me first, then at Sam, and something in the room shifted. Not a ghost. Something worse. Something human.

"Yo, Danny," he said. "You ready for this?"

"Ready for what?"

He laughed. "The movie. Sam said you wanted to watch that new horror thing. The one about the haunted asylum."

I hadn't said that. I'd said I wanted to stay in and maybe order pizza. But Sam was already standing, already pulling her hoodie tighter around her waist, already moving toward the stairs like she'd been waiting for an excuse.

"Right," I said. "The movie."

We drove to Marcus's place in his car, a beat-up Camry that smelled like weed and fast food. Sam sat in the front. I sat in the back. The radio played something low and thrumming, and Marcus kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the gear shift, his knuckles brushing against Sam's knee every time he shifted. She didn't move away. She didn't even seem to notice. I watched the streetlights slide across her face and tried to remember the last time she'd looked at me like that, like I was the only person in the car.

Marcus's apartment was on the third floor of a building that had once been a textile factory. The walls were exposed brick, the windows were huge, and the furniture was a mix of thrift store finds and things his mom had shipped from home. A bass guitar leaned against the couch. A half-finished painting sat on an easel in the corner. It was the kind of place that made my parents' house feel like a tomb.

He grabbed three beers from the fridge and handed one to Sam, then one to me. I didn't drink. I hadn't drunk since the accident, since the night my powers had flickered out mid-flight and I'd fallen thirty feet into a dumpster. But I took the bottle anyway, held it cold against my palm, and watched Sam pop the cap off hers with her teeth.

The movie started. Some shit about a ghost hunter who gets possessed by the thing he's hunting. Sam laughed at the bad special effects. Marcus laughed with her. I sat on the floor, my back against the couch, and felt the distance between us stretch like a rubber band about to snap.

Halfway through the movie, Sam got up to use the bathroom. Marcus leaned over the back of the couch, his face close to mine.

"You good, man?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"You seem tense."

"I'm fine."

He nodded, but he didn't look convinced. He took a long pull from his beer, then set it down on the coffee table. "You know, she talks about you all the time. Like, all the time. Sam's crazy about you."

"Right."

"I'm serious. She worries about you. Says you've been different lately."

Different. That was one word for it. I'd been different since the day I'd realized I couldn't phase through walls anymore, since the day I'd looked in the mirror and seen a normal guy staring back. A normal guy with a normal girlfriend and a normal life. Except the normal life felt like a costume I couldn't take off.

"I'm just tired," I said.

Marcus nodded again. He had that look people get when they're trying to be patient with you, the look that says they've already decided you're not worth the effort but they're too polite to say it. He turned back to the screen. The ghost hunter was screaming now, his eyes glowing green, his body twisting in ways that looked familiar. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.

When Sam came back, she didn't sit on the couch. She sat on the floor next to Marcus. Her shoulder pressed against his. Her hand found his knee. It was a small thing, a nothing thing, the kind of touch you don't even think about. But I thought about it. I thought about it so hard that my chest started to ache.

The movie ended. Sam stretched, her shirt riding up, and Marcus watched. He didn't hide it. He didn't pretend not to look. He just looked, and she let him, and I sat there like a ghost in my own life.

"I should get home," I said.

Sam blinked. "Now?"

"Yeah. I'm tired."

She frowned, but she didn't argue. She stood up, grabbed her bag, and kissed Marcus on the cheek. Not the lips. Just the cheek. But it was enough. It was more than enough.

In the car, she didn't speak. She stared out the window, her arms crossed, her jaw tight. I wanted to ask her what was happening. I wanted to tell her that I knew, that I'd known for months, that I wasn't blind. But I didn't. I just drove.

When we got to my house, she didn't get out. She sat in the passenger seat, her hand on the door handle, and looked at me like she was waiting for something.

"I'm going to stay at Marcus's tonight," she said.

"Why?"

"He's got that art project due tomorrow. I told him I'd help."

"At midnight?"

She didn't answer. She just opened the door and stepped out. I watched her walk down the street, her silhouette shrinking under the streetlights, and I felt something inside me crack. Not break. Crack. Like a windshield after a small stone. Still holding together, but ruined.

I went inside. My parents were asleep. The house was quiet. I walked down to the basement, pulled the tarp off the ghost portal, and stared at the swirling green energy that had once been my second home. It was dark now. Dead. Just like me.

I pressed my palm against the cold metal. Nothing happened. No spark. No glow. No ghost.

Just Danny. Just a boy. Just a fool.

And somewhere across town, in an apartment that smelled like motor oil and cinnamon gum, my girlfriend was probably already in his bed.