Page 7 of Paper Ghosts

He was Terrence’s age. She was surprised. He seemed both older and infinitely younger, something she’d never associated with anyone but herself.

“Wills.” She turned to see Dorothy at the auditorium doors. “Band practice is over. Jani’s coming,” she said, which Wills knew was much more than general information. It was a warning. Jani’s unpredictable nature lately meant she could have a field day with this.

She immediately got up and inched by Jack to get out of the row, her bare knees brushing his jeans-clad legs.

“So long, Willamena,” he said wistfully as he watched her.

When she got to the doors, she paused. “Call me Wills.”

After that, Wills watched every one of Jack’s lessons. She didn’t even have to tell Dorothy where she was going. And by unspoken agreement, Dorothy always came to get her when band practice was over, before Jani could find out.

Wills had been friends with Jani longer, and her loyalty to her was fierce, but she felt on steadier ground with Dorothy. Dorothy kept her head down and didn’t want to be noticed, but she had beautiful red hair and an Irish complexion, so it was impossible not to notice her, especially since the rest of Dorothy’s family was dark-haired and tan-skinned. In middle school, Jani had welcomed Dorothy into their friend circle in a keep-your-enemies-closer way, after Jani’s longtime crush, Buck Pringle, had called Dorothy pretty. A blond, a brunette, and a redhead, like Neapolitan ice cream, the three of them had always been good together, rounding each other out. Wills had attention, Jani wanted attention, and Dorothy didn’t care.

Wills would stay seated in the back of the auditorium with her homework as a cover in case one of the boys saw her. And after the boys left, before coming to join her, Jack would play for her, his audience of one. It was the single most intimate musical experience of her life, and years later she would still think of it and feel the hum through her body. She could easily imagine him on TV, the camera tight on his face, his eyes closed. He was made for it. She once asked him what he was going to do when he left, and he’d replied with a grin, Take on the world. He was on his way to an extraordinary life, once he got out of Hen Town.

Which would be none too soon for him.

He came off as blasé about it, but he didn’t fit in, and the longer he stayed, the more the shine of him wore off. He couldn’t go anywhere alone because most people eyed him with suspicion. Someone even called the police when they saw him in Principal Penwell’s neighborhood, just walking around one evening. They called him a vagrant, which seemed to amuse him.

He spent all of his time now holed up at Principal Penwell’s house, only leaving for his lessons. He told her that their conversations in the auditorium were the best part of his being stranded. She had trouble believing it had anything to do with her personally; she could have been any girl as far as he was concerned. But it didn’t matter, because their conversations were the best part of his being stranded for her, too. She loved the way his shoulder brushed hers when he sat beside her. And how he threw his head back and laughed at her when she would say something that wasn’t intentionally funny, which no one here would ever dare do. Like when she told him that an hour was one minute longer here for a reason no one knew, so everyone who came to town had to adjust their wristwatches.

“So when your grandmother kicks the can, will you inherit everything? Or will your parents?” he asked her one day. He liked talking about Gram, fascinated by the hold she had on the town. “Or is she immortal on top of everything else?”

“You can joke, but I guarantee there are some here that actually believe that,” she said. “But, yes, she’s leaving everything to me. It would have gone to my dad, but he died in an accident at Camp Lejeune. He enlisted as soon as he could, just to get away from her. My mom then showed up here with me as a baby to demand money, apparently ignoring everything my dad had ever told her about Gram. She left with money, all right. But not with me. Gram’s terms were that I stay here with her.”

“She must love you.”

Love was a tricky conceit to Wills because, in her experience, it was all transactional. “I think she sees me as a kindred spirit.”

“Are you?”

“No,” Wills said, and she was surprised by how quickly, how vehemently, she answered. “I’m not like her, and I never will be. I’ll sell the downtown buildings, when they’re mine. Gram would hate that. She likes keeping things small, because it’s easier to control. But I don’t want to be a landlord. And the only way to keep the town alive is to bring new people in.”

He paused and looked down, picking at a fret callus on his finger.

“What?” she asked at his silence.

“You’re never going to leave?”

“Why would I? I’ll have everything if I stay. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think I’d hate a life where people didn’t know who I was.”

“Come on, do you really think this is the only place you can be seen?”

“You wouldn’t have glanced twice at me anywhere else.”

He gave her a strange look. “You would be extraordinary no matter where you were, Wills. You’re a walking expectation, holding everything in, trying not to burst with pent-up energy, with life. I guess I get it, though. You can only be a big fish if you’re in a small pond.”

She poked him in the side with her elbow, making him say oof. “I don’t think your life choices give you room to judge.”

“Fair enough,” he said, rubbing his side. “I had a grandmother who loved me, too, you know. We lived with her because the old man was out of work most of the time, and she kept me alive until I could get away from him. There was this crawl space off the kitchen she used tell me to hide in when he got drunk.”

Wills’s smile faded. She hadn’t expected this to turn so serious. So real. She reached over and put her hand on his.

He just shrugged. “She bought me my first guitar.”

“That one?” Wills indicated where he’d left the case at the end of the row.

“No. I stole that one out of a club a couple of years ago. That first one, man, I loved it so much. But one night when the old man was drunk and couldn’t find me, he smashed it to get me to come out of the crawl space. I’d just turned sixteen, so I was too old to be hiding anymore, anyway. We fought and he busted my lip, and I left. It was raining that night and my grandmother ran after me and gave me all the money she’d saved in a coffee can under the sink, and her umbrella.” He suddenly stood and walked over to the case. He opened it and took out the black, old-fashioned umbrella strapped to the interior lid. “It’s the only thing I have left of her.”