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A branch snaps. Nick pays it no heed.
Some other part of him is running through these woods with Stan, nine years old and stick thin, when a branch snaps. Stan, all of eight, permanently snot-nosed and teary eyed, just about loses it. “That’s it, Nicky,” he’s saying, “that’s just it. That’s what gets us. I know it, Nicky, I just know it. That’s how it happens. Oh, man, oh—”
It’s a hare. More scared of them than they are of it. Whoever said that never met Stan.
“Oh, Nicky, Nicky,” says Stan, choking up, “that’s how it happens.” And Nick is starting to believe it.
The branch snaps. Nick—the real Nick—keeps walking. He doesn’t have Stan’s child’s fear, or his old wives’ sense, but he knows where he’s going.
Weddings are happy things. Bright things. All life and all beginning. Even better—there’s dancing.
The cheap town hall speakers crackle and hiss more than they sing, projecting the sound of the bandleader missing a beat or two, but dancing in Clairton is still dancing. Some other year, drenched in the memory-tint of sunlight, Nick’s father teaches him the steps. They circle in on themselves, complicated at the outset but more and more intuitive with every new revolution—here, you twist left; there, you bend a knee; this right here is where your foot hits the floor just in time and all your body needs to do is follow.
Nick’s mind stills and his blood moves. Time falls away before the routine of the music; every step exactly when it needs to be.
Weddings are good luck, besides. Not much point getting married if you don’t think you can last a winter or two.
Mike’s off in some corner, getting drunk. Some part of Nick wants to find him and drag him out, sway safely off-beat with him. But in front of him is Linda, and she smiles picture-perfect, and besides, the next song’s started up already and Nick is late.
Mike has two left feet—though they might as well be hammers when you’re actually across from him. There is no risk then, of getting swept away. He’s in some alley, hidden. The setting sun bends around the narrow walls just to catch itself on his hair. Nick is teaching him to dance, like he said he would.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” says Nick, fresh bruises forming rapidly on his abused toes. “You’re getting better.”
Mike pulls that face he pulls when he pretends he’s above sulking. “No, I’m not.”
Nick grins. “No, you’re not. But at least you’ll know for sure a girl likes you if she agrees to dance with you.”
Linda catches the bouquet. She turns towards Nick. It smells sick and pitch-sharp between them.
Mike will never dance with any girls. He can barely stand even Nick knowing about this particular deficiency. Maybe it makes Nick selfish then, to treasure it so much, but there’s nothing else for it. Some things Nick can never have, but then some things he can—like Mike stumbling his way through a box step where no one else can see him.
When they find Nick—when the state trooper turns his flashlight towards the backseat of the car—they don’t expect to find him alive. No one tells him that, of course, but he knows. He’s too young to grasp just how strange it is, the unlikelihood measured in the mechanics of small bodies and car construction, but he understands the simple truth that when something kills two adults, it tends to be enough to kill a child too.
Besides, when the bright light meets his face, when the blue eyes find him, Nick sees the state trooper swallow his scream, can practically hear the hollow thud it makes in his stomach. Not a ghost, he must be thinking, not a ghost at all, just the kid.
God, poor kid.
Nick’s certain of his path, in a way almost entirely unlike himself. The sun is rising and the woods are beautiful with pink and yellow dawn and Nick somehow can’t find it in himself to care. There is running water, that he can hear but cannot see, somewhere to the left of him. A clattering sort of noise, pushing forward.
The way is uphill, but Nick doesn’t feel that yet. For now, every step is just a step.
Nick doesn’t dream of the car, but he dreams of a lake. It’s black and it’s still, like someone’s set a perfectly large piece of polished glass into the mountainside. It doesn’t reflect anything—or maybe there’s nothing for it to reflect. Time and again Nick wakes with the thought next time to look away, take in his surroundings, but he never does get around to it. The dream is as big as the lake, and no more.
It’s high noon in the dream. Nick doesn’t need to see that to feel it. The rays of the sun hit him straight from above. There is a heat to them, but it doesn’t penetrate past the skin.
There is something solid in the way the water doesn’t move. Almost like you could step onto it and it would hold your weight, let you walk—but Nick isn’t quite that foolish.
“Ain’t, right, living like this, Nicky.” Stan catches Nick’s look and hurriedly continues: “I mean, nothing wrong with not living right, Nicky, not by me, you know that. Nothing wrong by me, no, but—well, you ought to know it ain’t right. You ought to take care, Nicky, is all.”
“Right,” says Nick. He looks down at the cabbage he was considering, but find himself decidedly less interested than he had been a minute ago. “And how do I—take care?”
Stan waves him off, like he isn’t the one that started spouting ominous statements in the fresh produce aisle. “Oh, you know, Nicky, the usual. Don’t draw no attention and don’t make no stupid wishes. You know.”
Nick does. “Keep on keeping quiet. Same old.”
“You got it.” Stan seems almost entirely uninterested in the conversation. Whatever premonition he’d felt must have come and gone already. Nick tries not to be annoyed by this.
“Oh, and Nick,” says Stan, brow furrowed, “stay away from mirrors.” His voice lilts up like a question.
Nick almost laughs “No problem there,” he says.
Mike and Nick are out hunting. Or rather, Mike is out hunting and Nick is trailing behind.
There is a lot of forest and mountain by Clairton—they encircle it like a maw. This place is nowhere near the place Nick’s parents died. Nick has spent far too much of his life outdoors not to be able to tell the difference. So really, this is nothing like that at all.
Nick’s not much good at hunting. He’s too busy looking up, following the bark-patterns of tree trunks towards the sky. There’s something mesmerizing about it, every craggy line pushing up and up and up. Seems like sometimes, maybe when the light is dim, when shadows grow long and strange, you should be able to climb them, or walk them like a road.
When Nick’s not watching the trees he’s watching Mike, who is plenty mesmerizing too. Here he is now with a deer in his sights. He is still and quiet as stone, his every breath measured. He would look dead, Nick thinks, if it weren’t for his face. For his eyes, trained on his target with such precision, and for his mouth, pulling prematurely into a smile. This, in Nick’s estimation, is Mike’s most honest face, and therefore Nick’s favorite; the way Mike looks right before he wins.
Before that, before they find any prey, they sit by a small lake. This is not the lake Nick dreams about. Mike’s face is reflected in the water, bearded and red-cheeked. Nick’s isn’t. Apparently, his parents’ car rolled over three times before it came to a stop. There’s far worse Nick might have lost.
“Twinkie?” offers Mike as he sits down on a log.
Nick stops staring at his reflection. “No, thanks.”
Mike frowns. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Nick considers this and finds he isn’t sure. He goes to sit with Mike. “Not hungry enough to brave an Axel Special.” Nick indicates the jar of mustard Mike has produced alongside.
Mike dips his Twinkie into the mustard. “Suit yourself.” He takes a bite of the abomination and grins at Nick’s disgusted expression. After a minute, Mike adds, “I’ve brought sandwiches, too.”
Nick’s not surprised. “Now those I’ll try. I think they might actually qualify as food.”
When Mike turns back from his bag, he throws a sandwich at Nick’s head, but Nick had been expecting that too. He catches it easily. As he lifts it up to eat, Nick can see Mike’s cut the crusts off.
The other week, on the other side of town, Stan is saying: “Love, I guess.” He’s clearly embarrassed by the word, mouth cringing, eyes fixed stubbornly to a stop sign. “What else, y’know? Gotta be love—isn’t it always? True love, and all that.”
Snow drifts down easily. The first of the season, it melts almost as soon as it hits Nick’s skin and it barely stings at all. “Well, sure,” says Nick. “Sure, yeah. Love.”
“I don’t know, man,” says Stan, running a hand through his hair. “Ain’t you got Linda? Or—you know.”
“No, yeah,” says Nick. “Yeah, no, I’ve got—yeah. But you don’t know anything else, anyway?”
Stan finally looks at Nick, something awful in his eyes, but he turns away just as fast. “Nicky, I don’t know nothing.” He rubs his arm. “But this is—it’s the one thing I can imagine it might work.”
Linda is sitting on Mike and Nick’s prehistoric couch, poking listlessly at a piece of the equally aged cake Nick has managed to dig up out of their cupboard. It’s a Sunday afternoon, which means the market she works at is closed. If there is no church event to help out with and no birthday party to attend, she ends up at Nick’s. Nick likes seeing Linda.
Linda tries some of the cake. She has to keep chewing for a worrying amount of time, but she smiles around it. Nick can’t tell if it’s genuine, but the gesture makes him feel better about its quality, anyway. Nick likes Linda, in general.
“You ever remember old Billy?” asks Nick.
“Oh man,” says Linda, “Billy. Haven’t thought about him in years. But sure, I remember him. Once, me and Axel kicked a soccer ball into his yard and when we rang his doorbell to get it back, it turned out it had landed right on his head. He was angry as anything, and he swore up and down he would place a curse on us. Waved his hands around all mystic.” Linda waves towards Nick in a vaguely threatening way, presumably imitating Billy. “Can you believe that? And we never did get our ball back.”
It’s easy enough to imagine, Billy getting himself all worked up, turning red, the mustache all the kids had marveled at bristling. That thing had seemed to them then to have a mind of its own, like a character’s in a cartoon. Billy had had something of a knack for entertaining children, but he’d had no patience for them when they weren’t playing audience for him. Nick’s pretty sure the mustache had been gone, by the end there.
Linda, evidently following a similar train of thought, asked, “Do you know what did him in in the end? Cancer, no?”
“I don’t think so—I don’t think they ever figured it out at all.” Nick remembers his aunt gossiping about it. Apparently, no doctor had been able to find a thing. Apparently, no drug had taken. Apparently, the doctors had wanted to cut him open, after, to find out, but a daughter had appeared from New York City and refused—this, for his aunt, had been the real coup; the child no one knew old Billy had had.
In Nick’s periphery, the regular motion of Linda eating has stopped. “I suppose they can’t know every time.”
Right. That’s no good. This is not what Nick had meant to talk about. “I—sorry. I was thinking of this story he used to tell.”
Linda tilts her head in a continue gesture.
Nick’s not sure where to start. “He’d say that—you know how you’re not really supposed to go out hunting alone?”
Linda nods. “Mike’s explained it.” Then, wryly, “A few times.”
Nick can imagine. Mike loves to lecture about safety measures almost as much as he loves to ignore them. “Right. Because of—you don’t want to be alone if you’re lost or hurt or anything, which is true everywhere. But Billy used to say it was truer here than most places, because of all the ghosts up in the mountains.”
Linda snorts. Off Nick’s look, she says, “That sounds like Billy, alright.”
Nick makes himself smile back. Billy had been pretty ridiculous, at the best of times. “It does, doesn’t it? He thought—his theory was that souls were lighter than bodies, so they’d float up and that’s why they all ended up here.”
“I remember now,” says Linda, laughing properly at this. “He thought the moon landing was a grave mistake.”
“Well, he did have some reason to.” Nick leans in, trying to put on a conspiratorial air the way Billy would have. “He swore he met a ghost himself, back in—”
“Oh!” says Linda and she snaps her fingers. “Is this that story with that girl in the sundress, with her throat slit?”
“She wasn’t bleeding no more,” Billy is saying, leaning forward, slate gray eyes wide open. “Sure, she was covered in blood, but it was old blood. That was the first sign.”
“Yeah, the one who—”
But Linda doesn’t need the reminder anymore. “The one who didn’t know she was dead, and she’s asking him for directions, trying to get home. That is a good story.”
“Scared the shit out of me, that’s for sure,” Nick says and Linda nods in agreement.
They sit in silence for a second. Linda’s cake is gone.
Nick attempts to sound conversational. “You think that could really happen? That someone could die and just not know it, just keep on going on.”
“What? Keep on looking for a bus to New York?” Linda shakes her head. “Hardly. I’ve never put that much stock in ghost stories.”
“No.” Nick is looking at his hands, laid flat on his knees. “No, me neither.”
Nick doesn’t have the dream every night, but he has it most.
When Nick was young, the lake would scare him. He thought that it was some kind of passage, that the flat surface contained hidden depths. That his parents, or the state trooper, or Mike Vronsky would step out of it, dripping darkness, and grab him with cold hands. They’d drag Nick back down with them and there’d be no fighting it. The lake was so big, and Nick so small and it must have felt cheated, what with Nick making it all the way home.
These days, Nick knows better. Lakes are full of water and fish and algae, mostly, and even that is real lakes only. This one is even less, a picture projected on a thin sheet. If Nick did go under, he’d see nothing at all.
The dream is familiar now, routine. It’s the days that Nick wakes without having seen it he feels unease and a pointed sort of loneliness.
When he’s nine, Nick tells Stan about a gnawing sense that he never did make it out of his parents’ car. He picks Stan because Stan has a sense for these things, or at least a tendency to jump at shadows, and more importantly because no one will believe Stan if he does try to tell them about it. Stan, predictably, bursts out in tears and is completely useless for the rest of recess.
The next day, though, Stan has pulled himself together and come up with a plan. “The way I see it, Nicky,” he’s saying, hands on his hips, nose stuck up in the air, “you need to go back. If you are a ghost and you see the place you croaked, you’d totally remember all about it. I saw it in a movie once.”
Nick stops poking at his mound of dirt and considers this. “Go back?” It’s not a bad idea, but—“It’s so far away. And I don’t think I’m supposed to go into the woods alone.”
Stan sniffs and throws his head even further back. “Don’t be silly. You wouldn’t be alone. I’m coming with you.”
Nick stares. “You? Won’t you be scared?”
Stan won’t talk to him for the rest of that recess, either, but on Saturday he shows up on Nick’s doorstep with a backpack full of supplies—juice boxes and cookies he’s pilfered from his mom’s kitchen cabinets.
Neither of them actually knows where to go, so they mostly end up running around in the parts of the forest nearest to Clairton. It’s a pleasant enough day. Nick will remember it as haunting someday, as prophetic, the first rehearsal of his grand tragedy. It isn’t. Today is an early summer day right out of a picture book, breeze and all. Nick beats Stan in a tree-climbing contest, Stan pretends he didn’t freak out over a hare and they eat enough cookies to make themselves feel sick.
Stan eats so much he manages to fall asleep between the roots of a great, big tree. Nick sees this for the opportunity it is, but can’t think of anything more clever than sprinkling some grass in Stan’s hair. Mike would probably be able to think of something funnier.
When Stan wakes up, he doesn’t notice the grass at all. At first Nick takes this as a disappointment, but every time he looks over and sees the bits of green in Stan’s hair, he has to bite back a laugh. His efforts weren’t a complete failure, at least.
“So,” says Stan when they’re sneaking back into town, “did you remember anything?”
“No, nothing,” says Nick, “but I still don’t feel sure.”
Stan leans towards Nick, staring at him and furrowing his brow. After a second, he brightens and backs off. “That’s okay.” He says. “I don’t mind having a ghost for a friend. You’re nice enough and you’ve been a weirdo for way longer than you’ve been dead.”
This is not what Nick wanted to hear at all, but something about it is heartening all the same.
Stan continues down the road without a shred of doubt, towards what will doubtless be unending days of being grounded.
Mike’s doing the dishes. He is always the one that ends up doing them. He likes to threaten to completely stop one day and just let the dirty dishes pile up. This tends to backfire on him spectacularly. Nick has a much higher tolerance for mess than Mike does.
Nick hasn’t told Mike about the proposal yet. He’s going to have to, because Mike is going to be his best man, but some part of him thinks they can get away with never letting on at all. Maybe Mike doesn’t need to know, maybe Nick could just elope on some weekend, pretend it was a family visit and keep on living here. Maybe nothing needs to change at all. That would probably defeat the purpose of getting married.
Nick is going to have to tell Mike, but not today. Today he is watching Mike do his and Nick’s dishes, grumbling all the while but doing them anyway, because the house they live in has to be clean. Maybe tonight Nick will make spaghetti, which is just about the only thing he knows how to make well. Mike will pretend not to be touched by this, because it really is quite normal, in the same way Nick is pretending not to be moved by the dishes getting done.
Mike’s sleeves are rolled up. Their kitchen smells of detergent. Nick will bring up the wedding tomorrow.
“You love me, don’t you?” says Nick. Then, realizing he forgot, “I love you. We’re getting married.”
Linda is sitting in their trailer again, knitting today. She hasn’t said yet, but Nick’s pretty sure it’s going to be for him.
“I do,” says Linda, easy—and it is easy, isn’t it? “We are.”
Nick knows this. He’s not sure that he feels it but he knows it. Linda can be like that—inscrutable, but certain too.
Linda hasn’t looked up from her work. “What’s that got to do with anything?” she asks.
Nick wrings his hands together. “It’s supposed to save me. Or—bring me back, I guess. Love, that is.” He doesn’t like being honest, but he’s pretty sure it’s what he’s supposed to do.
“Back from wh—oh.” Now Linda stops knitting. “Is this about ghosts again?”
Nick tries to explain. He doesn’t know why; he’s never really wanted to, before. “It’s—sometimes I think—with my parents—I mean, you know about—”
“I know.” Linda lays the half-finished sock down gently, so gently. “I know, Nick.”
Linda’s standing in front of him now, but Nick can barely see her. “But it’s alright. Since you love me.” He corrects himself again, “Since we’re in love.”
Linda doesn’t move a muscle, but Nick supposes he must know her pretty well after all, because he swears he sees her face crumple all the same. Then something invisible about her posture straightens, like a bow drawn taught, and she takes Nick’s hands in hers. Linda’s hands are small and warm, but not as soft as you’d think. Nick finds this comforting.
“You’re not a ghost, Nick,” she says with that pitch-perfect confidence that she has. “You did come back. Back to us.” Her voice and hands are steady. Her eyes, boring into Nick’s, are sure. Not a trace of doubt remains. As long as Nick doesn’t look away, it’s easy enough to believe.
Nick’s passed the half-way point some time ago now. The day’s started properly, the sun in full swing. Nick’s separated from whatever creek it is he heard before. It’s just him now, and the trees and everything else.
At some point it started snowing. A new layer covers the old snow, which has melted and refrozen half a dozen times by now. It’d be so easy to slip, but for the fact Nick knows exactly where to place his feet.
The walking’s in his body now, in the burning stretch at his thighs, in the pinpoint pains at the soles of his feet. It reminds him, somehow, of teaching Mike to dance. It’s worth the pain. It’ll be worth it.
The night before, the temperature drops like a stone. It happens a few times a year, but Nick is never ready for it. It keeps him up. He’s put on two pairs of socks and three sweaters and bundled himself up in a blanket for good measure.
Mike finds him curled up on the couch like that near three a.m. He sits down next to him, silent.
With the clock creeping towards four, Nick asks, “You ever think about getting married?”
Mike shrugs. “Sure.” He doesn’t elaborate. Nick knows Mike would tell him if he asked, the same way he knows Mike has held back on purpose.
The minutes stretch forward. It’s as if the cold has crept into time itself and sunk its freezing fingers in, slowing and slowing it to a stop.
Nick pulls his blanket closer around himself. “I proposed to Linda.”
Mike barely reacts to this. “I heard.” He’s in the spot where Linda had sat earlier, knitting.
This is Nick’s chance to tell the only person that matters. The one that can, in fact, save him. He does realize. “You won’t be lonely?”
“Don’t see why,” says Mike. “Unless you were planning on going any further than the church and back.”
Nick’s heart just about stops. “No, I guess I wasn’t,” he lies. It’s not that he doesn’t see the opportunity—it’s not that he doesn’t want it.
Mike looks at Nick and it’s really not all that different from the way Linda does it. “Then, no,” says Mike, “I think I’ll manage.”
Nick is out of things to say and Mike’s not prone to speaking when he’s tired. They pass most of the night in silence, but it’s good. Nick can tell already that this is a memory he’ll treasure. They sit close together, and there’s warmth in the cold—this is all Nick really knows how to want.
“I took one of your sweaters, you know,” says Nick, when five o’clock comes around. “It’s cold tonight.”
Mike just barely smiles. “I know.”
The lake doesn’t move, though it’s hardly black either; frozen solid and covered in fresh snow, it melts right into its own banks, as if it were just another clearing. Nick knows better.
Nick can’t say, truly, if this is where his parents died. He hadn’t been old enough to remember something like that. It had been ice, though, or at least it might have been. A lot of people had said that, but then none of those people had been there.
That doesn’t matter—today isn’t a question of coordinates or landmarks. In the ways that are worth caring about—in the ways that count—this is exactly where Nick’s parents crashed their car and left him behind.
It won’t hold his weight, the ice, no matter how thick it is. The ice is just water and the water’s got a debt to settle.
Nick knows what he is. He knows where he’s going.
Nick had stopped in front of the lake when he saw it, instinctively, but he doesn’t have time for that today—he’s spent more than enough time looking at it—a lifetime. Nick keeps walking.