Page 88 of Possibly Texas

Auggie seemed to blush, but without light, I wasn’t certain.

“You have to leave through the window,” Auggie said, glancing away for a moment. “You can’t go out through the front door.”

“Sure,” I nodded, “that makes sense.”

“It’ll jinx seeing the ghosts,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “If you leave through the front door, you bring the living energy with you. Because only living people exit through doors. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” I gave him an overly enthusiastic nod.

“Come on,” he said. “Don’t make me yank you through the window.”

I laughed and sat up on my knees.

“Should I tell Jack that—”

“He’s already in bed,” Auggie waved me off. “I’ve already been by his window.”

“Oh.”

Auggie jerked his head. “Come on.”

Before I could respond, Auggie had scooted to the side of the roof, swung his legs over, and disappeared over the edge. I gasped, wondering how he was making his way to the ground. I was on the third floor. He couldn’t have just dropped to the yard below; the fall would have broken his ankles in a best-case scenario.

Quickly, more to check on how Auggie was, I scurried out the window and slid to the edge of the roof. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that he was skittering down the old rose trellis under my window like a monkey. Auggie was a peculiar fellow. He favored tutus and pearl necklaces and fingernail polish at times, but he could climb and run and get dirty as well as anyone else.

Of course, it was stupid of me to equate or not equate one thing with the other.

One was his fashion sense; one was athletic ability. They were not mutually exclusive traits.

As soon as Auggie hopped from the trellis and landed safely in the yard below, he looked up at me with a wide grin as I hung over the side of the roof.

“Come on,” he stage-whispered up to me.

“Hold your horses,” I said, mostly to myself.

Carefully, and with less prowess than Auggie, I swung my legs over the edge of the roof and wiggled them around until they found purchase on the trellis. Inch by inch, I slipped off of the roof and lowered myself down to the trellis. Slowly at first, then quickly picking up speed once I realized the trellis was sturdy, I made my way down to Auggie. Moments later, I was leaping from the bottom of the trellis and landing next to Auggie in the yard.

He grinned at me.

“We’re officially in ghost world now,” he said.

“Yeah. That makes total sense, too.”

He nudged me. “Come on. We want to get to the graveyard and get a good spot before midnight.”

“Okay.”

“We don’t want to miss them, do we?”

“That would ruin this entire day, I suppose.”

Auggie started to step away, then turned back to me.

“You starting to believe yet?” he asked.

“No,” I said with a wide grin.

Auggie laughed lowly.