Page 5 of Haunting Goats

I can’t walk away knowing the only things I know about this woman are that she lives with a Disney villain and sleeps with rats.

“Lyric, you know, like… music.”

She sheepishly looks away from me when she says her name. It’s as though, instead of being a prayer whispered from her lips—or mine, one could only hope—it were a sin spoken in secret.

I lean into her, my hands in my pockets as I bend ever so slightly. Hints of coconut and warm vanilla invade my senses. Her scent is intoxicating. I’m close enough to touch her, but I don’t.

The wind carries the whisper of my name to her perfectly petite ear, “I’m Atticus, but you can call me Attie.”

I linger for just a moment before I slowly back away and spin on my heel.

“Hey!” Lyr yells frantically over the bustling sounds of downtown.

I look back over my shoulder, barely glimpsing her befuddled expression and throwing my arm up in a backward wave.

“See you around, Strawberry Girl!”

Three long, excruciating days have passed and I can’t stop thinking about the girl from the library. I plan on seeing Lyr again. She’s the first exciting thing to happen to me in the afterlife. When I died a year ago, I wasn’t sure what my future held or that I even had one. I know now that I’m not leaving the In-Between any time in the near future.

I don’t sleep. I know that ghosts can sleep if they want to, but they don’t actually need to in order to function. Because of that, I don’t have a bed, much less a home. I’ve never really had a home, only ever a house. Growing up, I was jostled around a lot. My mom was a drug addict-turned-drug dealer who pawned me off on everyone and anyone who would take me.

It wasn’t surprising when I ended up in foster care and continued to be bounced around, house-to-house. Each family came with its own skeleton-loaded closets, and I was just another trinket to publicly bedazzle their family into being perceived as godly and wholesome. Behind closed doors, I was another trophy to add to their collection of pedophilic obscenities.

Home was never a thing for me, even now.

I think back to a year ago. Riding my sports bike, the two of us racing the wind on a spiraling back road, when I hit a patch of black ice. It was fall. Mornings produced air so cold that the chill crept under a person’s skin and burrowed its way into their bones. The grass would be blanketed in frost, the roads speckled with patches of icy potholes, and puddles, and the sun begging for the spotlight.

When I felt the buzz in my pocket, I should’ve ignored it. But I didn’t. Thank you, Ellie, for being the reason I lived… and died that day. It’s not fair to blame her, but I do. I blame her for the way she had me so tangled up in her. Like a Christmas tree wrapped in flashy, bright lights, I only emanated anything because of her.

Ellie was my world. We met at my favorite coffee shop downtown. I was a regular there, starting every morning with a hot, black coffee. I never missed an opportunity to do my civic duty to “save the people” by making sure I was well caffeinated before 9 A.M. Ellie was a newbie behind the popular counter. She was a flirty, vibrant little thing with all the confidence in the world.

After I pulled my head out of my ass, expecting her to initiate a conversation, I finally went for it. I placed my order, and we flirted back and forth while she somehow managed to highlight every curve with every movement she made.

She was fearless and bold and so fucking sexy. She brought out my wild side while I harnessed hers. We were two peas in a pod, she and I.

I had planned on proposing to her. On the day of the accident, we had been together for exactly three years. No more, no less. Fear was the only thing keeping the white gold, size nine, princess cut in my wallet—where it had been for a couple of months. Fear that she’d reject me, that she’d eventually leave me, and that she was just with me to pass the time and play with my money warped into nightmares and unjustified anger.

But that day, I was using my fear as fuel to gun it to my girl. The buzzing in my pocket distracted me, and I was eager to see my cell lit up with her name across the screen. That one second spent reaching into my pocket flashed my life before my eyes as my tires hit black ice and I flew…

I blink hard as I shake away the memory.

CHAPTER 4

LYRIC

“HOLY FORKING SHIRT BALLS, Lyr. Who in the Hades and Persephone was that?”

Dee shouts as we make our way into the building and begin ascending the stairs to our apartment.

“Honestly, Dee, I have no frickin’ idea. He said his name is Atticus and that I can call him Attie. That’s all I know.”

I dramatically shrug my shoulders to emphasize that I really have no further information to give.

“Bitch, please explain to me how you…” She throws up air quotes like gang signs, “...don’t know?” she spits.

“I don’t know. He was being a dick and refused to get off my library desk, and the next thing I knew, he was walking me home.”

Doing a one-eighty, I flail my arms out at her as my voice grows loud outside our apartment door. I pant while fumbling for the keys. Eventually, I fling the door open and stomp off to my room. Dee follows close behind.