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Track 01: Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
The air was pungent with middle-aged musk as Trevor sauntered into the ballroom. Sasappis was sniffing a crystal punch bowl with fervor while Thor and Flower were in a corner dancing to a song by The Police. Trevor imagined Flower would be upset to learn the name of the artist. He still remembered her most recent rant about how Paw Patrol contributed to the glorification of police in American culture. God, he had been here way too long.
Trevor knew the song choice was courtesy of the DJ, who was perched with his equipment on the ballroom’s stage, enjoying a prime view of the evening’s event. According to the pink and turquoise banner slung across the stage curtains, it was PROM 1985 at Woodstone.
In reality, Woodstone’s ballroom was hosting a local high school class reunion, namely the 40 year reunion for Kingston’s Class of 1985. As Trevor passed a bulletin board with blown-up yearbook photos and senior superlatives, he could understand why the event committee, a group of very well-coiffed and emotionally unavailable MILFs, had chosen Prom as the theme for the reunion. It had been the pinnacle of his high school career too.
Trevor noticed Pete and Alberta on the stage, peering over the shoulder of the DJ, a balding guy wearing a letterman jacket. It was impressive that it still fit. Not many middle-aged people kept it that tight. Of course, Trevor would have. If he weren’t permanently in his 30s and perpetually a little sore from leg day.
Trevor regarded the crinkled banner again. Was 1985 really 40 years ago? Trevor hadn’t graduated high school until the following year, but god, was this how old he would look now, if he hadn’t died?
How old was he…would he be…anyway? Trevor had tried not to think about it. It had been a few days before his birthday, the night of Pinkus’s promotion. He had a reservation for bottle service at The Surf Lodge. He had put down a deposit and everything. Mostly, Trevor remembered being in limbo, on the threshold of being not-quite either age. But 31 had turned out to be forever.
He sometimes would try and stretch his age by a few years. Almost 32 had sounded less final than 31, when that wasn’t meant to be for all that much longer. Rounding up made it more palatable. 31 according to Hetty was “tragically young” to have died, but 35 in Thor’s estimation was old enough to get him thrown off a cliff for his infirmity. At least everyone would have known what had happened to him, then.
As Trevor surveyed the room he recognized a lot of the decorations from the Ghost Prom. He had refrained from mentioning that earlier, for fear of catapulting Flower into a less than lucid lecture about recycling being groovy for the Earth. Trevor had always been of the belief that newer and shinier was better - especially if it was the more expensive option. But Sam and Jay didn’t even have Party City money right now.
With the restaurant being closed, and in need of repairs due to the Chris-the-hot-stripper-from-Isaac’s-Bachelor-Party-shaped hole in the roof, Trevor and Hetty had responded to the increasingly dire - and dull - state of affairs at Woodstone with an official Power Friends Scheme to nudge Sam in the direction of actually hosting revenue-generating events in the ballroom. In addition to the recommended increase of small corporate retreat packages and Bachelor/Bachelorette weekends the ghosts had encouraged Sam to advertise for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs (Trevor’s suggestion), Quinceñaras (Flower’s idea in a moment of lucidity), and as a space for choir rehearsals (that Alberta loved to critique and accompany in equal measure).
Trevor had helped too, namely by typing up he and Hetty’s strategies as an addendum to the B&B’s business plan. Sam and Jay surely had one, somewhere. Trevor had also offered to front them a loan from his finance salary to help renovate the ballroom. Sam and Jay could even hire Jeremy to redo the lighting. It would be nice to see him again.
Either way, the ballroom needed major repairs to make the space presentable for hosting events more prestigious than a two-night run of an amateur production of Anything Goes.
Trevor would never expect Sam and Jay to pay any “loan” from him back. The money wasn’t a problem. He could always make more. He had a baller job and great instincts when it came to shorting stocks. But when Sam and Jay had refused the offer, he and Hetty weren’t above planning a scheme-within-a-scheme to help save Mom and Dad from themselves and their terrible business acumen.
Trevor paused at a cocktail table to appreciate two women who were dressed in Romy and Michele-esque business suits.
“Why isn’t it at the gym?” one of them asked, wrinkling her nose.
“They had to fumigate it - something about a rat infestation?”
He had rolled his eyes when Hetty had crowed that once again her sausage factory lesson had proven to be flawless business advice. But she had been right. Trevor had hired some furloughed Mahesh workers (Cobra asked alarmingly few questions) on Taskrabbit to release a dozen rodents into the school. Sam and Jay had gotten a lot of last-minute ballroom bookings in the days after that.
“And now those children will have access to ample protein.” Hetty added, surveying Romy and Michele disapprovingly. “Such garbage they eat these days.”
Trevor jumped. He hadn’t known she was there. But he recovered quickly enough to retort: “Please, you would kill someone for a single Cheeto.”
Hetty paused, considering, her head slightly tilted. Her face was still, lips slightly parted in an elegant o. “Maybe for a Hot Cheeto. I never did get to try those.”
Track 02: Always Something There To Remind Me
The restaurant staff were flitting around them, alternately plating canapés and awkwardly circulating as cater-waiters.
It had been Hetty’s idea to hire them for gigs like this, while the restaurant was closed. “You may as well pay them something in the meantime.” She had instructed Sam, in what almost amounted to a bout of generosity for her. “You’re hemorrhaging money anyway. And it is so hard to get good help these days.”
Hetty’s dress matched the decorations. Her eyes reflected turquoise light. Trevor tried not to get lost, looking into them, for too long.
“Did you attend your…Prom?” Hetty asked pleasantly, as they watched Amanda bend and sway around the patrons, a tray balanced precariously on her trembling hand.
“Yes, duh.” Trevor puffed up. “I was Prom King two years in a row. It was unprecedented.”
“By that logic, I assume there was a corresponding Prom Queen?” Hetty winced, a reproachful expression flitting across her face, as Amanda almost dropped the vol au vents.
“Yes, Junior Year it was Rachel McGuire.” Trevor supplied.
“She was Irish?” Hetty wrinkled her nose, a reflex she hadn’t remembered to smooth out yet when it came to her ancestry.
“Well she did have red hair.” Trevor pretended to recall Rachel’s face, as he regarded Hetty. “Maybe you were cousins.”
Hetty swatted at him, a dry remark emerging from her sly smile. “My, you have a type.”
Yes, you.
“Well, there weren’t many Lumberjacks at my high school. Rachel was the next best thing.”
It wasn’t true, but Hetty laughed so he was glad that he had said it.
But then, to Trevor’s surprise, she smiled ruefully and added, “she was probably vastly more attractive and a better marriage prospect than my actual cousins.”
Trevor looked into Hetty’s determined eyes, a calm ocean of reflected light. “Yes, she was something.”
Track 03: Kids in America
Trevor wondered if Abby had gone to her prom. She seemed more than cool enough to have been popular, but maybe prom was too passé for Generation Z. There were so many things he would never know about his daughter, moments he had missed that were lost to time.
He wanted to know her. He wanted to buy her everything he should have gotten her for so many birthdays and Hanukkahs. Maybe a car.
There were so many questions Trevor should have asked Sam to ask Abby, while he had the chance. Did she date boys? Girls? Both? He figured any kid of his would get whatever lady-loving gene T-Money was carrying. If Laurie’s genes didn’t cancel his out, in that department.
Before last week, he had not thought about Laurie in years. She had been a footnote in his dating history. A coda at best. Yet, all this time, she had been the mother of his child. She had deserved a full chapter, at least.
The first thing out of Trevor’s mouth, when Pinkus had disclosed the truth to Sam and Jay, had been from Seinfeld. He hadn’t known what else to say. It didn’t even matter. No one else got the reference because he had been cursed to an afterlife with people who misguidedly preferred Friends.
Did Laurie like Seinfeld? There were so many things he didn’t remember, or more likely he had never known, about her.
They had gone to Le Cirque for their second date. Trevor recalled how he had made her laugh, and she had thrown her head back, her dark hair and cheekbones sleek in the dim light. She really did look so like Yasmine Bleeth, but prettier in a three dimensional way.
Trevor hoped that Pinkus had told her every day how pretty she was.
Track 04: Uptown Girl
Hetty knew about the titles of Prom King and Queen, from Trevor’s insistence that she watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer and She’s All That. In retrospect, they were set at the same high school in totally alternate realities. While he was sure Hetty would not be wild on the concept of royalty being elected by commoners, she did love hierarchical traditions.
“And am I to understand that anyone is eligible to vote on who represents them as Prom King and Queen?” They were looking at a picture of the Prom Court from 1985. There were so many unfortunate perms.
“Pretty much. It is sort of like the ghost representative election, what with the campaigning. Except people give away cupcakes and buttons, things like that.”
Those perms were nothing like Hetty’s curls. He wished he had unpinned them more. When he had the chance.
“Buying votes with cupcakes? That seems like a winning strategy.” Hetty declared, peering at the enlarged photograph before straightening her posture, reflexively. “In my day men bought votes in saloons, so at least alcohol has been disentangled from democracy.”
“Yes, good thing we got the corruption out of politics.” Trevor quipped.
“My sister was always going on and on about votes for women this, equality that. Suffragist? More like insufferable, I would say.”
Hetty paused. Her voice was lower, tremulous and thoughtful, when she continued. “I see now that she was right. That there is merit in women voting on occasions such as these.”
There was a clatter behind them. Gabe had collided with Amanda. They were always orbiting one another.
Hetty turned and Trevor followed suit. Trevor put his hand on the small of her back, for just a moment, as they wove around the Livings who were swarming to help.
Ironically, Hetty would probably describe their walking away as promenading.
“Don’t you dare tell Margaret that I said that if her ghost ever shows up here.” Hetty warned him, as they stood at the edge of the room, careful not to fall through the wall. “She would be far too smug about it. I somewhat respect her message now, but did she have to deliver it in such an unattractive manner? Would it have killed her to remove her mustache first?”
“Well, perhaps it would have.” Hetty mused. “Her upper lip was always hairy and she outlived me by several decades.”
Trevor laughed. He wasn’t thinking about the fact that he and Hetty would never truly grow older. Not at all.
Track 05: Careless Whisper
It had only been a week since Abby and Pinkus had left. Trevor had joined Hetty for her daily ponder at the upstairs window. He had been doing a lot of unscheduled pondering lately. It was nice to have company.
“Would you have married her?” Hetty had asked, quietly, delicately, as an offering to their companionable silence.
It was almost as if she knew what Trevor was thinking. All this time, Laurie had been pregnant when he had died. And he might never have known.
“Of course.” Trevor said, too quickly. His brow had furrowed, carving wrinkles that would never deepen. “It would have been the right thing to do.”
Hetty had nodded soberly at that, her mouth a tight line. The corners of her eyes were forlorn with recognition. She knew what it was like, Trevor supposed, to enter a marriage out of circumstance.
But Trevor was certain, deep down, that he hadn’t been ready. He wouldn’t have run, he’s sure of that. He would always have been Abby’s father. But...
He and Laurie barely knew each other. They had never even spent a full night together. He didn’t know how her breath smelled first thing in the morning, or what her toothbrush would look like nestled in the chrome holder next to his, or even whether she cared enough about TV to know how to program a VCR.
He might have stayed with her, for the sake of Abby, just like his mother had done. Maybe they would have had another kid together, so Abby wouldn’t have been lonely. Only children always were. Maybe it would have all worked out, if Trevor tried hard enough. He could have loved her, one day. Maybe it wouldn’t have felt like his young, fun life had gotten cut short.
Trevor hoped that Laurie knew that he hadn’t left her on purpose. She must have been so scared.
At least she hadn’t been alone for long.
He never could have made her as happy as Pinkus had. And for two decades he had raised Abby as his own. How must Pinkus have felt, to know that Laurie had never told him that he wasn’t the father? That Laurie had loved him so much, that in the end she felt she owed him the truth. That he loved Trevor so much too, that he felt Abby should know his name.
Trevor wanted it so badly, to be Abby’s father, in whatever capacity a ghost could be.
But she was already gone. And she might never come back.
Track 06: Total Eclipse Of The Heart
Trevor had cried and cried and cried that weekend, at least on the first day. His parents were here, he had thought. And they were so old. Shrunken and wrinkled yet hardened; and here he was exactly the same.
They were divorced. And it was his fault. His death had caused it. It was all his fault. There was so much to tell Sam to do to fix it. The Parent Trap plan had to work. It might be his only chance. His parents were out getting photos of him printed and there was red snapper for Jay to cook and calla lilies to put in vases for the memorial, his memorial, tomorrow.
Only the plan didn’t work. It never could have. His parents had said that the divorce wasn’t his fault. They had been trying to provide comfort, maybe even wisdom, through their hazy hope that some form of their lost son, above or below or beyond the Earth, was listening. They could never know that he had been standing right there. Esther and Lenny had never entertained believing in ghosts.
Shouldn’t he have felt relief? The divorce wasn’t his fault. His own parents had said that. Yet, what Trevor had clutched at from their words was not solace. Instead, he held onto a prickly and unspoken truth that he would forever carry in his constricting chest. They had stayed together because of him. Somehow, that was even worse.
And now they were gone, and he had panicked and knocked over that stupid butterfly vase, and he felt weird talking to Hetty knowing that she had literally watched his parents have sex, so he was sitting alone in the kitchen counting the seeds on some strawberries. Numbers, he could do. If he just kept counting up and up, and never stopped, maybe he would remember how to breathe again…even though he didn’t need to anymore.
“I don’t think we have pepperoni Sass, is broccoli-cheddar okay? Oh! Hi Trevor, I’m making a hot pocket for Sasappis to smell.” Sam bustled into the kitchen, looking frazzled. It had been a long weekend for them both.
“I can see both of you, you don’t need to narrate.” Trevor had lost count of the seeds now. He would have to start over.
“Oh right.” Sam put the hot pocket in the microwave. Trevor winced as the door shut and Sam keyed in the time with a beep beep beep beep.
“You okay bud?” Sass asked, as he and Sam awkwardly hovered in the vicinity of the microwave.
Hot pockets only needed two minutes in the microwave. Trevor could do two minutes of small talk.
“My parents are gone. And I thought they had a perfect marriage but turns out they are divorced and they lied to me for years. Oh, and Tara Reid came to my memorial and turned it into a Taco Bell commercial. So yeah, I’m peachy with a side of keen.”
Trevor never had been very good at small talk. That’s why nail polish colors were such an effective conversation starter.
Sam and Sasappis were looking at him now, the dim whirring of the microwave forgotten.
“Trevor, you couldn’t have known.” Sam sat across from him. “They probably didn’t want to upset you. My parents fought all the time. And then one day my dad was just…gone. Divorce is so hard, on everyone. But we know now that it wasn't because of us. Divorce isn’t about the kids. Your mom said that today.”
Trevor wished he could think of something to say in response. His throat felt so tight. Like the time he had eaten shrimp on a dare, and found out he was allergic.
Sam didn’t do well with long silences either. She glanced at the microwave, before looking at Trevor and trying again. “Have you ever thought that your mom loved you so much that she stayed married to your dad, even after he cheated, so that your life wouldn’t be any harder?”
What was wrong with him: that it didn’t feel like love? It just made Trevor feel like everything was his fault: that somehow his very existence had stopped his mom from finding someone who could have made her happy.
But Sam looked so sincere. She was trying to help him. She was always trying to help him. So, he smiled at her and said: “Thanks Sam. That helps a lot.”
The microwave dinged. Sam retrieved the hot pocket and set it out for Sasappis.
“Aren’t you mad?” Sasappis had asked, in between sniffs, now that they were alone. “Your parents lied to you for years.”
“They were just trying to protect me.”
“Or, they were trying to avoid having a difficult conversation.”
Trevor liked Sass's bluntness. When it wasn't directed his way. He knew there were things his parents weren’t telling him. Of course he did.
If it hadn’t been for that couple fishing his skull out of the lake, he never would have known. What his dad had done. That his parents had concealed it from him. That his life was built on a lie.
But he was beginning to remember; to recognize that you can never fully hide a truth like that. A crack so huge that it can’t truly be patched by tape or glue or gold. The truth seeped through in little moments, vapors of tension in the air they breathed which Trevor did his best to dispel and brush aside.
They were happy. Trevor had made sure they were all happy. But he remembered now, and mourned that he would never forget again, how he had changed the subject during so many tense dinner conversations, how he had listened to his mom snipe about his dad with a sympathetic ear, how he’d brought home glowing report cards and beautiful girlfriends and expensive gifts and charming anecdotes, anything to distract them all, to give them a topic to focus on that wasn’t the unspoken coldwire of tension that strung his family together.
If Trevor hadn’t died, would they have ever gotten divorced? Would their grandchild have become the next in a long line of excuses for why they had to stay together? Would Esther and Lenny have spent the rest of their long lives resenting one another, trapped in a marriage they had outgrown, all because of him?
Track 07: Lovergirl
“Samantha really ought to have budgeted for more extravagant decorations. We surely could have done better than this.” Hetty remarked, looking at a centerpiece with mild dismay.
“You would have done a better job than whatever Student Council President planned their prom in 1985, that’s for sure.”
“Is that also an elected position?” Hetty asked. Her eyes glistened with a distant hunger.
“Yes.” Trevor replied. “Total popularity contest. But they have a lot of power.”
“And they organize Prom?” Hetty repeated. “That can’t be so challenging, compared to smuggling giraffes into Ulster County.”
“Were all Gilded Age parties just a zoo?” Trevor asked, struggling to imagine it.
“Hardly. Our animals roamed free. Cages are for livestock and convicts.”
Trevor snorted, before he thought the better of telling Hetty about the cages at Scores.
“So let’s say I were to be Student Council President,” Hetty mused. She had always enjoyed a hypothetical. “How does one go about organizing such an event?”
“Well, I guess you pick the theme first.”
“I have successfully planned debuts and costume parties, not high school proms.” Hetty said dryly. “You are going to have to provide a more specific suggestion than that.”
Trevor struggled to remember some examples. All he could think about, for some reason, was the prom in Back To The Future. “You’ve got your classic themes, like Enchantment Under The Sea.”
“That’s too close to your Splash fantasy for my taste.”
“Rude.” And suddenly, Trevor’s mind flooded. “I’ve got the perfect theme…Starlight in Paris”
Hetty looked satisfied, content even, before her expression turned unreadable. “Was that the theme for you and Queen Rachel McGuire?”
“No, I came up with that one just for us.” Trevor smiled. It should be more difficult to smile and lie at the same time.
Rachel, his redheaded Queen, had been a Senior. Trevor had lost his virginity to her, in an otherwise unremarkable hotel room he had paid for with money from his summer job at the video store.
He felt so exposed that first time. Sweaty and awkward and a little bloated from the garlic in the Olive Garden food. He thought it would be like the movies, losing your virginity. He learned quickly that sex, like so many things in life, was a skill that you had to practice and perfect and perform before you could sustain any real enjoyment from it.
Looking back, he hadn’t been ready.
But back then, he still knew how to smile through anything.
Track 08: I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues
Pinkus had been too kind to him, really. He had other stories he could have told.
One day, as part of his hazing at Lehman, Pinkus was sent to Philly to get the whole crew cheesesteaks for lunch. It was almost impossible. He had to run to make those trains and be back on time. Trevor had only succeeded because he’d gone to Penn. He knew the city. In retrospect, Trevor was ashamed of himself. He could have given Pinkus the name of a place, or called ahead to put in an order for him. But he didn’t. He had said nothing.
Pinkus lived with his parents on Long Island. Trevor remembered that he took the train every morning. He must have barely slept, with the commute and the long nights associates were expected to work. Why did Trevor never offer him a place to crash?
He should have been a better friend. The whole summer and fall working together and the pants story was the only good one Pinkus had to tell about him.
Track 09: Everybody Wants To Rule The World
“Would I have to wear a dress exactly like Stephanie’s? It is far too short to be decent.” Hetty burst into his reverie once again.
Trevor tried not to shudder. Stephanie would probably wake up again soon.
“No, it can be whatever you want.” He replied. “I feel like 80s style was like puffy sleeves, big bows, things like that.”
“I have always loved a big bow.” Hetty considered.
Imagining Hetty in a different outfit, no matter how out of style it would be now, was venturing into dangerous territory.
“Well, to be on theme, I would obviously be wearing something shimmering and regal.” Hetty declared. “Maybe with some navy blue French silk - for the night sky. Ooh, or gold. I had a gold hat once.”
The gold plastic crown had been tighter than Trevor was expecting. He didn’t remember much of his Senior Prom at all, but he remembered that. The flimsy plastic felt unbending and confining somehow. Both his crowns were probably still in a box in his parents’ house…or just Esther’s house, now.
Trevor didn’t know how to explain to Hetty that winning hadn’t felt optional, that second time. He knew it was unprecedented, but it simply wasn’t enough to be the best. He’d worked so hard to get on the ballot again - but who would elect the same guy twice? His hands had bled from making buttons, pricking his fingers over and over again. None of the cuts had been deep enough to scar, but there had been a lot of them.
He remembered standing on stage with the rest of the court, sweat pooling on his upper lip and his shoes pinching his toes, trying to maintain the serene face he had learned from his mother watching Miss America on TV. When he was announced as King and there was applause and he crested on a wave of sinking relief as cheers hollered in the room he felt…nothing. And as he slow danced with his Queen (he thinks her name was Heather but he can’t remember for sure) he could sense a shadow skulking towards him beneath the fluorescent lights and the plastic prismatic reflections from the streamers, the dread that soon this would all be gone and he would have to start all over again.
“I’d be in a tux that matches your dress.” Trevor added, filling Hetty’s expectant pause. “As your date…”
“How presumptuous! I believe that etiquette dictates that you should have asked me first.”
Trevor dropped to one knee, dramatically: “Hetty Woodstone, will you go to this imaginary prom with me?”
“For God's sake, yes.” Hetty rolled her eyes but looked pleased. “Now stand up, before you injure your knees, or your pride.”
“You never worried about that when I was on my knees underneath your - “
“Trevor Lefkowitz!”
There was no dignified way to get up, and his knee did hurt from the wooden floor Hetty had probably destroyed a rainforest to purchase. But the creeping scarlet indignation of Hetty’s expression made everything worth it.
“Don’t worry, we’d be doing a different kind of eating before prom.” Trevor grinned.
Hetty swatted at him, but her curiosity won out over the desire to ignore his ridiculous innuendo.
“Prom does not include a formal dinner service?” She inquired.
“Some did, but ours was always an eat-before situation. You and me? We would be sure to go to the most popular restaurant, with lots of prospective voters - I mean our classmates - to make sure that they were ready to vote for us that night.”
“That’s an excellent plan.” Hetty surmised. “I am sure this establishment would be much more dignified than a saloon.”
“We went to The Olive Garden, which was a very exclusive reservation because it was a new chain back then. The endless breadsticks were pretty good.” He wished now that he had actually tried them.
They were at the edge of the dance floor now. A few couples were embracing. But no one Trevor recognized.
“I had a debutante ball - a coming out party really.” Hetty said, her words soft like music. “But I must confess this prom that we have planned sounds much more appealing, in retrospect.”
“And were you the debutante ball Queen?” Trevor could not think what else there was to know.
“The one and only. I am shocked you even had to ask.” Hetty admonished.
Trevor smiled, but he didn’t show his teeth. “We would have been a kickass King and Queen together.”
“It is a shame our reign is entirely fictional.” Hetty sounded almost wistful.
“Hey,” Trevor turned towards her, the dance floor fading into the backdrop. “Let’s not forget we’ve got all our Power Friends Schemes going on here.”
“Yes,” Hetty said with a wicked grin and a gleam in her eyes, “we will rule the house! A smaller kingdom than a high school student body, but no less strategically challenging.”
Sometimes, before, when Trevor kissed her, or when he had buried his face between the creamy chasm of her thighs, cotton and silk brushing his cheeks, her fingers woven through his hair, tugging as she shuddered out quick little gasps, Trevor forgot that his heart was not really beating, that his lungs were not truly inhaling the rosy dawn-damp smell of her. Sometimes, he forgot they were dead, because touching her was the closest to being alive that he had ever felt.
He had thought that when they stopped, when they had gone from lovers to nothing, that the feeling would disappear too. Instead he would look at her, puzzled, his skin humming restlessly, his heart almost quickening, an unnecessary breath caught in his chest. And he had nowhere to go.
Right now, his feelings, too, had nowhere to go.
Track 10: Crazy For You
“Oh,” Trevor said, a wistful sheen in his eyes. “This could have been our song.”
“Well, you can hardly expect me to ask you to dance.” Hetty remarked, pointedly. It took Trevor a moment to catch her meaning.
“Would you do me the honor?” He hoped that sounded old-timey enough for her.
Hetty took his hand. “I would be delighted.”
After some negotiation - Trevor could do a ballroom hold but that was not prom-accurate - they found themselves swaying in a secluded spot on the floor. Hetty’s arms were slung around his neck, her sleeves brushing against his skin.
He would have gotten Hetty a corsage too. An orchid, or a gardenia, or a honeysuckle one. A whole bouquet for her wrist, if that’s what she wanted.
Trevor's hands had found her waist, gently gripping the curve of it. Like he had when they had first...
Hetty’s voice floated on the music, cresting over them with a swell. “Is kissing a traditional component of the king and queen’s role on prom night?”
“Yes,” Trevor rasped, a wave threatening to crash within him. He was having a hard time distinguishing between reality and the movies. “But Hetty, I’m not sure -”
“It’s just,” Hetty bit her lip, adorably. “You have mentioned kissing your bros before…is kissing as power friends any different than that?”
He couldn’t tell what was more persuasive, her remembering and using his homoerotic stories as evidence, or the fact that despite the logic not quite following he wanted to kiss her, desperately.
They were slow dancing, to Madonna, after winning Prom King and Queen in an election entirely of their own invention. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Hetty right now?
“I guess not.” Trevor removed a hand from her waist and held it out towards her. “But just kissing. Not sex. Okay?”
“Yes, yes. Sex ruins friendships.” Hetty rattled off, briskly shaking his hand in agreement. They saved fist bumps for celebrations. “I heard you said that to Sasappis.”
Trevor froze. If she knew that, what about the rest of the conversation?
Trevor had been ranting about Alberta and Isaac’s concern that they would get back together, in a planned speech to lay the groundwork for the roommate reshuffle scheme. But what had been unscripted, once he really got going, had been the exasperated complaint: "Why is everyone acting like I’m still in love with Hetty?"
Trevor had realized too late what he had said. What it had revealed. What he had refused to admit to himself. The “still” a sharp blade, a dagger dangling above them, threatening to drop and pierce what was left of his dignity.
He had blanched, pausing for a moment too long before resuming his practiced remarks. At first he was pretty sure everyone had been oblivious, too wrapped up in their own worlds. But Sass had noticed, later regarding him with an expression wavering between disbelief and pity.
“Sex does ruin friendships.” Trevor lowered his voice. Hetty probably had to strain her ears to hear his next sentence. “And I don’t want to lose you again.”
Trevor dropped her hand and took a shaky step back. “Hetty, we can’t…”
He steeled himself as he saw a flash of icy hurt in Hetty’s eyes.
Trevor felt the urge to bolt, even as he was paralyzed, transfixed by Hetty carefully choosing her words. She pursed her lips, her tongue a viper ready to strike. “I suppose power friends aren’t as high status as a bro, when it comes to kissing.”
He didn’t want to run. Not this time. “It would be different, okay?”
“How on earth would it be diff-?” Hetty cut herself off, her eyes narrowing in what looked like recognition. “Trevor. I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He said flippantly, reflexively. “You were never going to kiss me in front of all these people.”
“Well I would have,” Hetty’s nostrils flared. “If not for this childish reaction.”
“I’m being childish? We’ve spent the whole night trying to recreate a teenage fantasy and this is childish? Well I’m sorry for not being able to give you a perfect prom night movie kiss before the end credits start to roll.”
Trevor stormed off, weaving around middle-aged men and tables and all the junk in Hetty’s beautiful ballroom. Madonna’s voice was fading and maybe he should just walk through someone again and again until he could cry out from a pain greater than this.
Track 11: Stand Back
He recognized this hurt. It wasn’t phantom pangs from his death, or the empty ache in the cavern that had formed in his chest when he had thought that he had meant nothing to her. He was used to the dull, ever-present soreness of those. But he had felt this before. When he was alive. When he still had a body that could grow and change and stretch towards the sun.
After Jeremy had visited Woodstone, Trevor remembered a trip they had taken to the city when they were kids. Back when Manhattan had been a foreign land, long before he yearned to make it his home.
Lenny had brought him and Jeremy to the narrow street, with looming buildings and an unidentifiable acrid smell. It was where he had grown up. His grandfather had run Lefkowitz Lighting out of a small storefront at the base of an old tenement block. Trevor dimly recalled it was somewhere on the Lower East Side.
“We all lived in one of the apartments right above the store.” Lenny pointed at the window, and Trevor and Jeremy gaped, amazed. “My pop was always working. He stayed in business all through the Depression. He did lights for all the vaudeville theaters.”
Trevor felt Jeremy jolt beside him, his little brother’s body alert and hopeful, so he asked, “Daddy can we go see some of those too?”
And they had walked and walked and Trevor felt a whole world opening up before him.
His mother had joined them later, in a shiny diner with red leather booths and strawberry milkshakes that tasted like summertime.
“Can we go to where Mama grew up next?” Trevor asked, as he eagerly reached for a french fry.
He didn’t understand why his parents had gone so quiet.
What had he done wrong?
“Not here” his mother said, with a gritty tone that Trevor had never heard before.
He should have known immediately that it meant he should never ask again.
“Is it far away, like Queens? Brooklyn?” Somewhere far away, where he wouldn’t be performing the The Dreidel Song alone at school.
“Farther.” Esther gritted out. “I hope it is not there anymore.”
And they never spoke of it again.
Every day, after that, Trevor was afraid of hearing that low growl in her throat again, that one day he would look up and see her clenching her jaw, her usual smile nowhere to be found. It was scary to see her like that, and even scarier to imagine it happening again. He loved his mother. He didn’t want to ever hurt or disappoint her. That day, he resolved he would do anything to make sure she was proud of him, to keep her smiling.
That look in his mother’s eyes. Even when he had forgotten it, he had always carried it with him. That was how he felt right now. He never did have the words for it.
Track 12: Hard To Say I’m Sorry
When Hetty found him, Trevor was concentrating on trying to move the ladle submerged in the punch bowl.
“President Cleveland once drank from that punch bowl. And now here it is, being used for a Class Reunion.” Hetty pronounced those last two words with her usual crisp distaste.
He was so tired. Dejectedly, Trevor started counting the ice cubes floating among the lemons in the unnaturally peach-pink liquid.
“Different how?” Hetty practically whispered, the aroma of citrus and alcohol and wilting carnations swirling in the air around her words.
“Because with my bros it was just…” Trevor gestured vaguely, before resting a hand against his brow. “It was for fun. It didn’t mean anything.”
“And I’m not fun?”
Trevor gave her a withering look. “If I was looking for someone to spike the presidential punch bowl with I would give you a call.”
“As if I would ever use that punch bowl to serve alcohol.” Hetty scoffed.
Trevor smiled at her fondly. He had known that example would outrage her. God, he loved her.
“But I’m sure you have a presidential cocaine spoon around here somewhere.” Trevor teased.
“A singular spoon? We had a set of Sheffield silver. We weren’t passing around a singular spoon like orphans.”
“You mean like the orphans who built this ballroom?” Trevor laughed. And Hetty looked at him, exasperated.
“Who else could we have hired? We needed their tiny hands to gild the ceilings.”
He couldn’t be in love with her. He couldn’t have been, this entire time, because that would mean she had broken his heart.
T-Money was supposed to be the heartbreaker. And yet, here Trevor stood, heartbroken.
“Who says it would have to mean anything?” Hetty asked. She wasn’t talking about the spoons or the orphans now.
A few months after their breakup, when he felt so hollow and rejected and confused, he would have jumped on a rewind button offer like the one Hetty had just suggested. Back to where they started. Kisses and sex and cherished pillow talk conversations that were all “just hooking up”.
It was the best (and only) sex of his afterlife and it was fun and it was with Hetty. But now, with what he felt, what he knew they could have been, a rewind and reset wouldn’t be enough this time. No matter how clear it was that she wanted him, it couldn’t be the same.
“It would mean something to me.” Trevor managed to say. “No matter what we promised each other.”
She was watching him. The silence was strangely encouraging. Had she ever looked at him that way before? It felt like an embrace, even without them touching. He was enveloped in her.
“Hetty, I can’t hook up with you again and know it means nothing to you, when to me it’s…different.”
“Different! Why on earth won’t you tell me what you are referring to when you use that word?”
Trevor wished that he knew. Except that he did. In a dream world, or if his afterlife were a rom-com written by Nora Ephron, he would reply: “It is different because…I forget, okay? When I’m with you I sometimes…forget that we’re supposed to be dead. That I don’t know if I’m still a person. If any of us are. Because when I’m with you I feel more alive than I ever did when I had everything I was supposed to want. And it is freaking terrifying Hetty. You terrify me sometimes, and not just in a hot way. I thought I could do fun. But I can’t. Not with you. I love you too much to have you without being in your heart.”
He was trying to do that more. Saying what he felt instead of what he thought the other person wanted to hear. It was a hard habit to break.
“Hetty, I’m sorry.” He was trying so hard. When would the trying stop? “I can’t explain…”
“I see.” Hetty looked equally venomous and dejected. “You don’t want me anymore.”
“That’s what you took from that?” Trevor huffed. “Hetty, I always want you.”
Hetty looked momentarily stunned.
“As a friend?” She ventured.
“As a power friend.”
He hoped she would understand him. That those words were enough for now.
With a wry smile, Hetty offered him her fist. Trevor bumped it. He swore he felt his heart thump once in his chest.
“I want it to mean something…something different to you too.” Trevor whispered, his knuckles tingling. “The next time you kiss me.”
“Oh, so there will be a next time?” Her eyes were sparkling.
“If you’re lucky.” And Trevor winked at her.
Track 13: Can’t Fight This Feeling
Hetty and Trevor were circulating separately now, eavesdropping, and smelling, and soaking up the nostalgia sparking all around them. But Trevor knew she was near. He could feel her everywhere. In the house that she built. In the home that was theirs.
Eternity was terrifying. It felt so slow, so endless, but also like time was rushing by them, an ocean threatening to sweep them away from a solid shore. But tides push and pull, and no matter how far the waters retreat, they always come back in. The ocean can’t resist gravity.
Trevor felt that pull, a steady hum as they orbited one another. There was no rush, no schedule, no script for what their relationship should be. Death had freed them somehow, given them time to rip up the rulebook and make mistakes and learn until, one day, they knew how to be the versions of themselves they had shielded for so long. They had gravity on their side, guiding them back to each other.
Trevor had maybe seen too many movies. For so long, he had this quiet fantasy of what love could be - that prom night end of the movie magic - and he thought that was real. But now, he knew better.
Trevor wanted something real with Hetty. Not something built on a lie, or convenience, or unspoken and unrequited feelings. But something based on them, all the parts of them. And he didn’t know if he was ready, if they were ready, but he felt ready to try, if that’s what she wanted too.
It was chilly, as Trevor stepped outside. An owl hooted in the distance. The lawn behind the B&B stretched out in the darkness, the grass a blue haze in the moonlight.
Trevor had never gone camping as an adult. He had hated the quiet. And the bugs. And the sleeping on the ground in tents. Camp Ramah had been enough nature to last a lifetime.
But now, he stretched out on the grass. The blades were soft individually, but together they prickled against his bare skin. The sky was clear and vast. He didn’t know the names of any of the stars. He had never gotten around to taking that astronomy elective at Penn.
He knew he was looking at the moon. There was a halo gleaming around it. It was so bright. Had it always been that bright? He’d never paid much attention to it before. But it had always been there.
As Trevor lay there, grounded and alone, he thought about Abby. She was always with him now. He hoped that she would feel it too. He was so bereft, and maybe that ache would never fade from his ghostly soul, but there was something warm there too. The comfort it gave him to know that she was out there, and that wherever she was on Earth, no matter how close by or far away, she was seeing the same moon as him.
She was out there right now, in the great big world beyond Woodstone, a miracle he and Laurie and Pinkus had made. Maybe they were all just energy from long-dead stars, and who knew what ghosts were made from, and soon his parents would be gone and there would be no one left who remembered him, but maybe his life had all been worth it. All the glories and the striving, the mistakes and regrets too, now coalesced into a single truth: Abby was alive because he, Trevor Lefkowitz, had once existed.
And he wasn't finished. Living. Feeling alive. Why had he ever thought that being dead had any bearing on his ability to do those things? The rules were just different, is all. He still had a lot to learn. He had always studied better with a partner. Surely a power friend would be even better.