The Ordinary Haunting

28. The Bad Flirting - Part 2

"Did your dad text you?" I asked as I batted water off my shoulder.

New forced my umbrella farther to my left, away from where it kept knocking into his own. "Yeah, how'd you know?"

"He texted me first."

"You gave him your number?"

"I gave Pleum my number. Apparently your dad asked for it right after we left."

A staff member shivering in a knee-length puffer jacket out the front of a slot machine parlor pressed tissues into New's free hand and swung a second packet lethargically in front of my umbrella handle. He looked utterly disinterested when I took it from him, already fixing a flat stare on the street behind us.

"That man sure likes you," New said.

I peeled open the tissues and pulled one out to collect some of the water pooling in my collar bone. "Who? That guy? I wonder how many ghosts he sees around here? Well, 'sees'. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out there's a whole community here or--"

"Pa. My dad, Te."

"Oh, right." I flashed him a square grin and squeezed my packet of tissues in his face so that one would protrude from the opening. "Yeah. You won't hold it against me, right?"

We stopped at a red light before a huge glass building that was coloured like a kaleidoscope from the various store signs and traffic signals nearby. The rain droplets diffused each of the colours into pulsing, moving shapes that looked like they were made out of cellophane. New took a tissue and glanced at himself briefly before back at me. "Depends--"

"Everything always 'depends' with you--"

"--what did he want?" His hand tapped the side of my bared forearm propping up my umbrella, where I'd been getting hit by light spray from the cars passing on the road beside us.

"Tutoring in the Seven Factors of Awakening."

"Any chance that's true?"

"I could wiggle them in while I'm taking photos of the orchard for his Facebook page."

"We're not driving all the way out there for you to take photos for his Facebook page. When did you even find the time to show him your photos?"

"I didn't. Fern found me on Instagram."

"You have an Instagram?"

"It's nothing. I haven't added much to it since joining ghost town."

By the time the pedestrian light finally turned green again, I'd counted twenty-eight orange blinks of a taxi's indicator in the window over New's shoulder. The thin tissue paper between his fingers and my skin had clumped and crumbled early into the count but, even though he'd drawn away, my brain had continued ticking silently along. Our umbrellas jostled with our hop down into the street. They were both a legitimate vermilion red; gifts from a sponsor partner we'd met that afternoon.

"Lower it a bit so you don't get splashed, dummy." New pushed mine away from overlapping his once again. "What do you take pictures of, anyway?"

"Buildings and scenery, mostly," I replied. I shook a wet lock of hair off my forehead. "You know that."

"Yeah, but...what buildings and scenery? Why those ones?"

"Mm, whatever catches my eye. Usually things with bright colours. Places the sun is heading."

We reached a contemporary-looking Starbucks glowing a warm yellow upon the night and turned at its corner into a narrow alley. Bar menus displayed in light boxes dotted both sides down the long path, and old street lights in the shape of Victorian garden lanterns had conspicuously failed to come on, leaving the vendors' store signs to fight amongst themselves for passing patrons' attention.