Ghostwriter
By hey_shrugsshoulders
- 586 reads
The leaves were already beginning to turn as Penelope entered the neighborhood of Alex’s mom’s house, down the once familiar road that up until now, she only drove by and wondered about. Word eventually got around that she was home again which is why at the moment, out of old habit, she was stopping just short of Alex’s house and turning off her head lights as the street lights were turning on. She wondered if Alex’s mom knew she were there. Penelope was rising from the dead, surely. She looked down at what she was wearing and second-guessed herself. Although the white blouse with the eyelets around the neck comforted her for being a relic of a past life that she still held on to, she wondered if he’d think that she looked good. What would she know of the going-ons of fashion though? She had been stuck in the same small building in Utah for two years. It was a program for troubled teens where if she had resigned to her fate it probably would have only been one. Penelope learned how to play the game, yet it took her long enough to shed her outright resistance. She thought of her time spent in Utah, and how by program definition, what she was doing right now would surely be considered “relapse.”
Alex’s shadow appeared lumbering down the streets. As he took his seat he told her to make a u-turn from where they were, narrowly avoiding the front of his house. On the sidewalk could be seen fun-sized kids power-walking the streets while destroying their mothers’ good linen, the stragglers left over from last night’s Halloween with bed sheets cascading down their heads and pillowcases clutched in their hands. Penelope’s excitement at once again being in this boy’s presence was made apparent as she drove down the street and simultaneously fiddled around quickly with the buttons on her radio. She didn’t recognize anything, so she put on her iPod. Old music, old comforts. Everything about this felt right to her.
“Whoa,” said Alex in a state of shock, “this song’s bringing me back.”
“Yeah, I love this song. I didn’t get to listen to music at all in the program, except for these ridiculous Disney sing-a-long videos that seemed at first kinda disturbing in their message and then after a while I kinda started to like them, believe it or not. I know, like, literally, all the words to ‘Make a Man Out of You’ from Mulan.”
Alex laughed in disbelief as Penelope felt stupid for her “program this, program that” talk. In her defense, her incessant chatter about the program was mostly just incessant chatter about her past two years. It was a constant attempt at an explanation as to why she is the way she is. Her time in Utah only served to alienate her entirely from her peers. For her, it was easier to laugh at it then to see the look of bewilderment register on their faces when told that during these past two years while they’ve been ditching school, learning to drive and looking for new drugs to top the last one they did—Penelope was listening to Deepok Chopra motivational tapes while she ate tuna casserole from a plastic tray, wrote exhaustive moral inventories, and tried to force a higher power from a coffee mug. The difference was evident between Penelope and Alex, she wore a crease in her brow from the constant self-reflection she had already done, and he barely remembered what he had to eat that morning.
They pulled into the park overlooking the bluffs and listened to music. Penelope attempted to relate to this person that she at one time would have allowed to fill her up with a baby and live a life of love and squalor with. They watched a bon fire occurring down the way from the car, where flames of great vertical extent cast light on the shadows of quick-moving people surrounding the outside of the pit. Alex watched the flames and obscure people trance-like, then turned to look at her. They cast an orange glow on his face, which along with his arms, were fuller than they were the evening she left and told him she’d see him later. Penelope partly hoped that like one of the countless breakup and makeups they had, that they would just begin where they left off.
She felt the overwhelming need to explain herself again.
“You know, they came for me while I was sleeping,” she paused, and then continued, “with hand cuffs, and told me ‘you can do this the easy way or the hard way.’”
Alex listened attentively.
“My mom told me you kept trying to contact me, so my therapist said I could write you, but that I had to break up with you.”
Alex oofed a sound like Penelope couldn’t even begin to comprehend sadness.
“You know, I visited your mom and wrote letters for you all the time but you probably never got them. That letter you finally sent me messed me up pretty bad.”
Penelope felt a pang of anger and guilt when she saw him finish speaking and look out past the window, the type of reflecting that seemed to Penelope against his nature. She was angry at the therapist that forced her to write it, and guilty about when it was finished for the self-righteousness of it all.
“I didn’t mean anything in that letter, it was all part of the game I had to play in order to come home. You know, I had to rewrite that thing three times because my therapist and family said it was too “nice.”
“Yeah?” said Alex, unmoved.
“They wanted me to tell you to fuck off, and I kinda wanted to, too. You said you’d wait for me if anything like that ever happened, but you’ve been with, like, five other chicks in the whole two years.
Penelope’s sister had mentioned it in a letter to her that it didn’t take him long, but the words meant nothing to him as his eyes narrowed in anger, remembering his own letter.
“I got so excited when I saw the envelope with my name in your handwriting on it.” Said Alex, smiling and turning red from the embarrassment, and then red from anger. His face contorted briefly, as if he were at odds with where his mind was taking him.
Penelope often wondered when she was gone what others made of her dematerializing into the night. There at dusk, gone by day, vanished sometime during the witching hour. For the first time she thought about what it must have been like to receive a letter from a ghost. To be summoned from the grave by a necromantic note. She understood the possibility that it may have been just as bad for him as it was for her. She missed him in that moment, and was excited that her words even had an effect on him. She thought maybe things could work out. Alex slowly depressurized as if he had been holding his breath in for a long time.
“I don’t believe that you were forced to write it...” said Alex like a question he was hoping her answer would diffuse.
“Do you think we’d be together right now if that letter were true? If I really thought you were a loser and I wanted you to stay away from me and I could do better without you? They made me write it, or else I’d probably be still trying to come home.” Said Penelope defensively, going over the points to show how ridiculous they sounded, and continued, “At the time I was angry at your lack of loyalty.”
The almost word-for-word recount of the letter made him wince, then shut down. There was no coming back from it.
“I’m sorry, you don’t know how bad it was.”
It made no difference, getting together only compounded the pain.
As Penelope was driving away from his house she wondered what her expectations were all about. For some reason she thought the night wouldn’t end with him needing to go home so soon. He had work, and the mention of the word cut through what little magic there was. She mourned for the loss of her relationship.
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Comments
Hi there. Feelings
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You have some really good
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