A Ghost of Him

His eyes were open, glazed and staring, as if his last breath had fogged up his corneas on the way out. I stood there, dumbly, hand on the car door, just looking in at him, like if I looked long enough he might blink back to life. Something dark seeped from his hairline like smoke, curling down his face, blackening the seatbelt that strained at his neck. Moonlight bled into the car, bruising his features purple and blue. The night breeze brushed across us like the graze of wingtips.

Michelle’s ragged sobs pierced through the hum of wind. She was crouched low on the side of the highway, huddled over by Brandon, who’d slung an arm around her shoulders. Kai paced a few yards beyond with his phone to his ear, biting out answers. Aja had already sped past. My eyes slid away, only to return to the boy buckled into the backseat of my car.

I couldn’t stop thinking, who is this? who is this? He looked like me at a glance, square jaw and round nose, two teenagers of roughly the same complexion. Alcohol writhed at the back of my throat, like a small flame trying to escape. My left arm throbbed, but I couldn’t be bothered to assess the damage. He’d been sitting right behind me.

When the first ambulance arrived, I was leaning over the guardrail, retching. Every drink I’d had that night passed back through my lips. I didn’t think I’d ever stop throwing up.

#

Justin Ishida. I hadn’t known his name at the time, hadn’t even known he was in the car. Now, when I look back, I think I hear him say, “Hey, I’m Justin,” shouted above the music and I say hi back, but I know that’s not what really happened because I remember thinking, who is this? who is this?

We were nearly the same age, my birthday only three days before his.

#

The cemetery was too quiet. I’d been there since before dawn, when the sky was still too dark to be called morning. I just stared at the stone, not knowing what to say, like the more I stared the less I’d have to feel. The silence ate at me. It broke off chunks of my mind.

It hadn’t even occurred to me, but I should’ve expected a dead boy’s mother to visit her son’s grave. She appeared with the first rays of the sun, floating through the cemetery like a fine mist. She wore a puffy pearl blouse and long navy skirt, something between casual and formal. Her hair was tied back in a messy bun, salt-and-pepper strands tugging at her temples. Hands, delicate as twigs, held a bundle of loose flowers. She must’ve picked them herself. I could tell because they were the kind my mom poisoned in our yard. Tiny yellow and pink blossoms on short leafy stems, shining like suns in her arms.

I knew she was his mother, somehow. Maybe because of her gaze, how it crashed through me. She knew exactly who I was. I wondered if she’d ever seen me when picking her son up from school, if she’d ever scanned the faces for Justin and noticed another boy of similar height and looks. I thought maybe she’d hit me—thought maybe I’d like that—but she didn’t. Mrs. Ishida just leaned down, placed the weedy flowers at the base of his grave atop older, wilted offerings, then stood next to me and stared too.

The white tulip I’d brought withered in their glow.

#

In my mind, his face is smiling. It’s not the watery smile of his mother, but the reckless grin of a kid doing something he knows is wrong. He’s got a toothy smile, like in the memorial picture on the chainlink fence outside Kaimukī High. I used to think about that smile as I picked up trash on the side of the road in a beige jumpsuit, almost as often as I thought of Aja’s smirk, her lips wet with sugary alcohol. I thought of how she would’ve leaned in, covering my mouth with hers. How the heat from her breath would crack my lips and char my throat. How I hadn’t seen her since she’d driven past us That Night, yelling at her friends not to look.

#

Ten months after That Night was his birthday, three days after mine. He died months ago but that day he turned eighteen. As for me, I didn’t feel older. It felt like I’d stayed in the same spot since That Night, not moving forward, not one inch. Like the man I was meant to grow into had turned away in disgust, leaving a scared little boy behind.

Justin turned eighteen and I got his cake. His mother baked it for me.

It was all wrong, because I was the one crying, and she was hugging me when she should’ve been strangling me. I’d needed her hate, needed it like it could douse the fire in my chest.

It was all her fault, really. She shouldn’t have let me into her home, shouldn’t have fed me, shouldn’t have hugged me so tightly I didn’t want to leave, shouldn’t have welcomed me back again and again, and she shouldn’t have baked me a cake on her son’s birthday.

#

I remember the morning before That Night like a dream, like it didn’t quite happen. Waking up late, barely enough time to throw a slice of bread in the toaster before taking a quick shower, rushing out the front door with hair still wet and the toast burnt in my hand. I didn’t eat anything else all day, too busy graduating and thinking about the future. Just that crispy toast, black around the edges. As I stressed over colleges in California and the plane ticket I could almost afford—I just needed to work a few more weeks at Papa John’s—the taste of ashes wouldn’t leave my mouth.

I still taste it, after twelve long years. I still wake some nights, choking on smoke that isn’t there.

#

The first time I went to her house, it felt like the walkway dragged on for miles. In my hands sat a bouquet of yellow daffodils. I hadn’t known what to get her. What do you give a grieving mother? My own mom didn’t know I was there and wouldn’t have cared if I told her. Three months ago, I might’ve asked for her advice, but ever since That Night, she would just look past me, tuning me out like I was an overplayed song on the radio.

Every step I took to Mrs. Ishida’s front door reverberated in my skull like the gong of a bell. Each breath like thunder. My heartbeat pounded inside my temples, my forearms, my left eyebrow; they twitched under the pressure. I forced my feet forward even as the curtains of her living room rippled and my heart hid in my throat. I counted each crack in the concrete, each stain marring its surface. Patches of yellowed grass framed the path, shoots of weeds peppered throughout. I recognized some of the tiny buds. They swayed with the breeze, tranquil, and I had the oddest sensation of stepping into another world.

I hadn’t even reached the worn-out mat that read ‘Welcome Home!’ in faded blue lettering when the door drew back and Mrs. Ishida stood before me. The air stilled around her. I remember opening my mouth, words jumbling on my tongue, the gasp of a sob tearing from my throat—and her gentle arms wrapping around me as I wept.

#

I’d slept on her couch the night before his birthday, so I awoke that morning nostrils stinging with cinnamon. It always smelt of cinnamon in her living room—I never knew why. I thought she must have one of those scented air fresheners, but when I snooped around earlier, I’d found nothing. There was something magical about it—my living room back home just smelt stale, no matter how much my mom tried to clean up.

Cushioning my head was a big white pillow. She must’ve put it there as I slept.

Once I relieved myself in the guest bathroom, I wandered around her home, but she wasn’t there. Her car was gone. I’d never been alone in her house before, and I felt obligated to return to my designated couch.

When I realized what day it was, I froze in her cinnamon living room. I’d missed my own birthday; no one had reminded me and it certainly wasn’t on my radar. My mom had barely spoken to me in the last ten months, not since she found out I was the driver. One birthday wouldn’t change her mind. But that morning, perhaps just from being in Mrs. Ishida’s house, the significance of it sunk deep into my bones. Maybe I should’ve left, but I didn’t. It felt safer there, in a stranger’s living room, than in my own home.

Silence lapped at my knees.

#

Mrs. Ishida didn’t have the rough edges my mother had. There was a softness to her, a fluidity. Her inky hair slipped over narrow shoulders in uneven rivulets, always tucked behind the right ear, surprisingly girlish for her age. Gray streaked the roots. Her presence was soothing, like floating face-up in a river. She pulled me into her current, deeper, deeper, until I was utterly submerged in her life. I wanted to understand her.

One day, when I was helping clean out her garage, she sat us down on her couch and rested a photo album in my lap. The title read simply: Justin. My fingers trembled too hard to grasp the cover, but hers were steady as she guided mine, unexpectedly firm for all her seeming frailty. Together, we watched Justin grow from infancy all the way to graduation.

Mrs. Ishida said nothing the whole time except once, when we reached the photo of an eight-year-old Justin laughing in dripping boardshorts, bending his knees in preparation to jump into a community pool, and she whispered that this was her favorite. I stared at it for too long, picking out every detail, trying to get inside. This younger Justin had dark hair long enough to be tied back into a ponytail. Some strands had come loose and plastered themselves to his neck. I studied the tension in his limbs, the angles of joints, his posture leaning forward in perpetual imbalance. I drank in his cheeks stretched mid-laugh until I could feel his muscles in my face, his anticipation in my limbs. Until I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on my wet skin.

Her hand on mine brought me back to the dusky room. She was watching me, an expression of such kindness on her face that I had to look away.

But the picture of Justin, joyful at the pool, had grown distant. I could no longer feel his skin in mine.

Mrs. Ishida didn’t let go of my hand, even as we went on turning the pages that contained her son. Her grip tightened, flowing through my veins until it felt like she was gripping my heart.

#

Sometimes I imagine his voice so loud in my head it’s all I can do not to scream. He fills my mind, pushes everything else out, sloshing back and forth between my ears. It’s so loud I get breathless, like he’s using my lungs to yell. Even twelve years on, I’m still there, still leaning over the guardrail, still a killer at seventeen. Smoke billows from my gaping mouth.

#

On the day Justin turned eighteen, Mrs. Ishida got back late, maybe nine in the evening, and went straight to the kitchen. I didn’t ask where she’d been all day—it was her son’s birthday after all. I just sat, frozen, in her cinnamon room.

I was so afraid, you know? So damn afraid. Like she’d find out where I’d been. What I’d heard. I thought I’d go crazy waiting.

All day I’d been in that room, smelling nothing but cinnamon until I couldn’t smell anything, not even cinnamon. The sun had nearly set. I couldn’t take it anymore. Abandoning my makeshift bed, I circulated through the house until I reached its heart. I stood in front of his door, taking in each poster, every scratch, every memory pulsing through the wood. The doorknob felt slick under my hand; it twisted almost without my help, as if someone was turning it from the other side. The hinges rasped as its jaws inched open.

By the time I fled back to the cinnamon room, ears ringing and a metal cross burning a hole in my pocket, all I could hear was a small voice in my head saying:

“Hey, I’m Justin.”

“Hey, I’m Justin.”

“Hey, I’m Justin.”

And I imagined his face, smiling, because we’d all been smiling. Because it was fun, wasn’t it? A bunch of teenagers partying with friends, drinking like there was no tomorrow—and there wasn’t, for him.

“Hey, I’m Justin.”

“Hey, I’m Justin.”

“Hey, I’m Justin.”

And wasn’t it just wild when we decided to race on the Pali highway and it was me versus Aja and she said if I won she’d let me kiss her and I was gonna win, God, I was winning. My best friends were in the car too—I thought they’d invited him. They didn’t seem to know him either, but that didn’t matter because we were drunk and I was busy imagining how Aja’s lips would taste. Like Camel Blue cigarettes and homemade Mai Tais.

And I think he said, “Hey, I’m Justin,” but he didn’t, I know he didn’t, because it’s not his voice I hear, it’s mine. I remember asking who is this? who is this? because everyone else was okay other than a few sprains—even the car wasn’t hurt that bad—but he was bleeding from his temple where it slammed into the window and I don’t know if he died instantly or if I was still screaming who is this? who is this? when he died.

#

Eight months after That Night, I ran into Michelle at Longs. I was picking up some aspirin for Mrs. Ishida and when I turned down the aisle, Michelle was there, clutching two bottles of NyQuil and a bag of Cheetos. Her fingers were set at a low tremble. To her credit, she didn’t turn tail and flee the moment she saw me. Unlike the rest of our friends, who avoided me as if I’d infect them with manslaughter, with shame.

She stuttered over my name in her haste to make small talk, but I had no sympathy left. This girl had been my closest friend since childhood. We grew up together, neighbors, waging war against the evil twins down the street who stole my mom’s plumerias. We’d collect kukui nuts to see who could throw highest or farthest, or who could land one in Mr. Shimizu’s bird bath. People mistook us for brother and sister. Yet she hadn’t bothered to contact me once since That Night.

She was halfway through a compliment on my shirt when I interrupted to say his name. Just his name. And that was all it took to crumble her. Michelle blinked a few times, her eyes squinty like she was trying not to cry. Her lips quivered, and I knew she was about to confess something. She’d worn the same expression on her tenth birthday when she told her mom she’d already eaten the cake.

She said Justin had asked her out, earlier that day. He’d been working up to it till graduation. And she’d said no. But later that night, she’d kissed him on the cheek and told him to come in the car with us.

My whole world tilted. Michelle peeked up at me like she wanted absolution, but no jury stared her down, no gavel condemned her. Only one thing mattered. The question burned against my teeth on its way out, the one I’d been too afraid to pose to his own mother: I asked what his voice sounded like. Because I’d never heard him speak, even though his words haunted the corners of my mind.

She didn’t answer. Her mouth twisted, brows drawing together in confusion. She shook her head like she pitied me, mumbling some excuse about her dad waiting. I let her turn and walk away.

I tried to see what Justin saw, why he’d liked her. The sway of her hips. Her slim brown arms.

But she wasn’t Aja.

#

It’s a game. Every time I see his face or hear his voice, I take a drink. Except I can’t keep it down. My stomach is weaker than my mind. The instant liquid hits my throat, something wrenches within me, and I find myself on my knees, trembling with the force of an earthquake. My lips quiver as bile and Tito’s soak into them. I don’t know why I keep bringing the bottle back to my desperate mouth, slick with acid, just to throw it all up again. As if with every dribble, I’m ridding myself of Justin’s voice, Justin’s face, Justin’s life.

I kneel on the sidewalk before Mrs. Ishida’s house, even though it isn’t her house anymore—she hasn’t lived here in over ten years. My tongue sits thick and heavy against my gums. The streetlamps burn like candles above me, barely lighting the crumpled man below.

She once told me her greatest fear was forgetting what her son looked like—and I can’t help but burst out laughing at the memory, because I see his face every time I blink, and I wonder if there’s anything we both wouldn’t give to have each other’s curses.

#

On Justin’s eighteenth birthday, his mother made me a cake while I waited in her living room. She set it down in front of me and lit the candles. They looked like streetlamps. One breath could put them all out.

Mrs. Ishida wore a white floral dress. Each blossom outshone the waxy flames. Her eyes looked weighted, like she’d been crying, but her lips creased into a tender smile. She told me to make a wish, and I know what I should’ve wished for, but the first thing that came to mind was the kiss Aja never gave me, even though I was winning.

It was a chocolate haupia cake, coconut shavings clinging to its surface. I knew, like I knew where she’d been, like I’d known who she was when we first met, that this was his favorite. I saw it as clearly as I saw his blood dripping into the backseat of my car.

She said to make a wish and her voice faltered before she said my name, as if another name pressed at her lips and she had to pause to swallow it down. It made my own throat tighten with words I’d never said. Apologies, excuses, pleas for forgiveness filled my mouth. I clamped my teeth down on them and kept quiet, just like I had in court. Just like I had when she spoke on my behalf so that I was only sentenced to community service for half a year.

She asked me to make a wish, dark eyes glittering in candlelight, and I thought about how she told me that after Justin died, her ex-husband stopped sending money, and she wouldn’t be able to afford the house much longer. So I’d given her everything, all the money I’d saved up for a plane ticket out of there, every cent I’d made at Papa John’s which had finally hired me back. It was nothing, but it was everything I had. She wouldn’t take it at first, so I begged. I wanted to give her life back, even if it killed me.

But as she leaned over the candles, urging me to make the right wish, her smile looked like so much hope and her gaze unfocused and I knew she was trying to see Justin. Her hand fell on my shoulder like a dead leaf. She looked at me like she was a mother again, and maybe that’s why I ran, why I yelled at her that I wasn’t her son, I could never be her son.

#

The first time Mrs. Ishida showed me Justin’s room, she sat on his bed hugging his pillow. I stood in the middle of that room like it held one boy too many, not wanting to touch anything, feeling like I should sneak away without her noticing and go home to my own mom. But the gleam of something shiny caught my eye and I turned to see a silver crucifix hanging from a nail beside the window. Rust coated both nail and cross, and the chain was jammed into several kinks. The symbol felt foreign to me, having grown up in a household with no religion, and it pushed at me to avert my eyes. Instead, I asked Mrs. Ishida if she believed in God.

She kept her gaze on the big white pillow as if it held the answers she sought. Dust motes congregated in the air around her, glowing in the afternoon rays like tiny pale feathers. They floated on her breaths. I was about to give up and leave when she spoke, each word filling my lungs with ocean.

“I believe a piece of God exists within us all. And when one of us dies, that piece of Him dies too.”

#

Now and then, when the sunlight is just sinking into the horizon or I catch a whiff of cinnamon or even if I’m just alone for too long, I think of a room, and a voice that’s beginning to haunt me more than Justin’s ever did. A pulsing door with an old poster of DJ Khaled taped to it, edges curling and a crease down the middle. I remember, on the day Justin was supposed to turn eighteen, the wrong boy pushed open his door and went inside.

His desk was cluttered with textbooks, papers, a few Deadpool comics. An unopened letter rested on his laptop, as if he’d been saving it for later. Or perhaps his mother had put it there. I picked it up to see who it was from, and my stomach dropped. I set down the thick envelope from UCLA.

The rest of the room was just as messy, clothes hanging out of drawers—it looked like someone still lived there. The only thing Mrs. Ishida must’ve straightened out was his bed. The covers pulled taut across the mattress, light blue and fresh. But where the pillow should’ve been, there was only air.

The chime of a phone startled me so bad I banged my heel on the bedframe. The noise came from one of the comicbooks. Lifting it aside, I found an old Nokia flip-phone, plugged into a cord that snaked behind the desk. The caller ID read: Mom.

After five rings, it went to voicemail. I waited for the telltale beep before opening the phone. There were forty-three unread messages. Selecting the latest one, I unplugged the cell and brought it to my ear, my gaze settling on the opposite wall. It was popcorn white, textured with hairline cracks and chips. Out of the corner of my eye, that metal cross winked in the light.

At first, she said nothing. Her breath glided through the phone until my cheek felt like a thin layer of water rippling in a breeze. I closed my eyes and pretended she stood next to me. Her voice, when it emerged, came out as a whisper, so broken I could hear her age in it. It was a question, desperate, like she’d asked it a thousand times and still hoped for a different answer. I wondered if the other messages were the same, just her wavering voice asking: “Justin?”

My legs backed up until they hit the bed, and I sank into the mattress. Her voice washed over me as I laid my head on sky-blue sheets: “Justin?”

The next silence was heavy enough to coat me in a film of sweat. Something changed in her breathing, relaxed, like she’d found what she’d been looking for. This time it wasn’t a question. And it wasn’t his name.

#

On nights I wake up because I can’t breathe, I take the crucifix I stole from his room out of my bedside drawer. It’s too dull to shine in the light anymore. I don’t pray; I don’t know how. I just stare at the metal until I see nothing else, at the places the cross overlaps, at the rust creeping in, at the tiny chips and dents. It swallows my vision, and I don’t have to think about Justin or the pain he put in my chest, blossoming like tulips. I can forget the birthdays he took from me, and the ones I took from him. I can forget Michelle and Aja and all the girls we never had the chance to love. I can forget my name being whispered over a phone instead of his. And I can forget his mother, that I left her with nothing: no money, no home, and no son—not even a ghost of him.