Phantom [h.s]

Fourteen

widen and then intensify, anger building behind the soft green.

"No way," he says, his voice ice cold.

"Harry, Jenna told me they were the ones to close your murder case."

He shakes his head. "She's wrong, and you're not going to see my parents. What kind of plan is that?"

"What do you mean, she's wrong?"

"Jenna doesn't know anything; you shouldn't have talked to her." He crosses his arms over his chest like a child and looks away from me.

"What's wrong with you?" I ask, furrowing my brow. "I bring up your parents and you shut down."

He's acting so oddly. He bounces his leg up and down almost nervously and still doesn't meet my gaze.

"Aren't you missing class?" He asks me.

"I don't care about missing class," I say.

"You should."

"Don't even start with me, I get enough shit like that from my parents," I snap.

He narrows his eyes.

"You're not going to see my family, that's it," he says, his voice hauntingly calm.

"Why not?" I match his menacing tone.

He looks straight ahead, his jaw locking and unlocking. "Because they don't care about me anymore, alright?" His eyes flash to me. "They don't care."

"What are you talking about?"

I know if he could breathe, his breaths would be irregular and accelerating. But his chest doesn't rise and fall like we both wish it would.

"You know what," he says, snapping his gaze over to me. "Fine. Go see my parents. In fact, let's go right now. Right now."

I stare at him.

"Go on, get behind the wheel. Vancouver is a few hours' drive."

"Wait, you're serious?"

He nods. "You're helping me, so you should see this."

Chills run down my spine.

Minutes later I'm driving down the highway, Harry still in the back seat, leaning forward on the center console to talk to me. His mood has improved, but I see that he's still on edge.

"Did you have siblings?" I ask him.

He shakes his head. "I was kind of a miracle child," he tells me. "My mother thought she was infertile for a long time before I came along, but somehow she got pregnant with me. My parents tried for another baby a few years after I was born, but no luck."

"Did they ever try adopting?"

"They talked about it a few times when I was young but I hated the idea. I wanted to be their only focus; their only center of attention."

I nod, chewing on my thumbnail.

Harry stares at me. "I know what you're thinking," he says with the traces of a smile. "You think I was selfish."

"What? I wasn't thinking that."

"Come on. Even I think it." He leans back on the seat. "I was a spoiled, selfish little brat and that didn't change until the day I died."

"How morbid."

Harry laughs lightly. "However, I'm not as selfish as my murderer."

"How do you figure?"

"You've got to be pretty self centered to kill someone to make your own life easier."

"We don't know the motive of your killer, though."

"Still. Murder is selfish. In the end, it's all about getting rid of someone that made your life harder."

"I guess you're right."

"Though they didn't exactly get rid of me." He smirks.

I let out a laugh. "Not until you figure out who they are."

I feel his eyes on me and I see his smile fade out of the corner of my eye.

"What?" I ask, looking at him briefly.

"Nothing," he says, shaking his head. "Nothing."

I drive for another two hours and check the time. I would be getting out of school by now. God, my parents are going to flip shit when I come home late tonight, a school night, but I don't honestly care that much.

"How are we going to get across the Canadian border?" I ask. "I mean, you're-"

"You need your passport," he says, leaning forward and opening the glove compartment. He hands me my passport and sits back.

"How did you-"

"I had a feeling you would want to see my parents. I knew it was inevitable."

"What about you? You're kind of...dead, you know."

He smiles.

"Don't tell me you're going to turn invisible," I say. "Because that would be really cool."

He laughs. "No, Jane," he says. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"Can't you at least try?"

He shakes his head, still laughing. "I can't turn invisible, and I can't walk through walls. However, I don't need either of those to scare the shit out of little kids."

"No way, what have you done?"

"Nothing big, just rattled a few chains outside their windows and painted 'beware' in blood on their garage doors."

I break into laughs. "You didn't."

"Alright, I didn't, but come Halloween-"

"Oh, come on," I say. "You're too much of a friendly ghost."

"How dare you," he scoffs. "I can be very scary."

"Oh, yes. You are absolutely terrifying." I smile at my own sarcasm.

"You know what, I'm going to scare you. How about that?"

"You don't scare me."

"I will in the middle of the night when it's pitch black."

"Alright, you try that," I say, biting my lip to keep from laughing again.

"Just you wait," he says childishly. "Just you wait."

By the time the sun is beginning to dip towards the horizon, we are at the Canadian border.

I cross easily, with Harry getting out to cut through the woods that line the border. He told me he knows a shortcut, and that he's taken it before without being seen.

I pick him up on the other side of the border.

"How many times have you crossed that border, anyway?" I ask him once he slides back into the back seat.

"A dozen, maybe," he says.

"Why so many?"

He shrugs, his expression turning serious.

We finish the drive to Vancouver by the time it's dark outside, and Harry directs me to his parents' house.

I pull up in front of a stately manor that highly resembles the one I live in now. Although, it's bigger, and looks a lot newer.

"This is it."

I watch Harry carefully. His jaw is clenched and his eyes are cold, along with his pale skin that emanates that same odd frigidness.

"Should I just...knock on the door?"

He shakes his head. "Come on." He opens the door and I get out after him, following him around the side of the house. He wraps his ice cold fingers around my wrist and stops me by a large window that is halfway open. Voices are heard from inside.

I cautiously peek into the window.

A man and a woman are sitting at a large dining room table, dishes in front of them. The woman's hair is dark and pulled up into a twisted bun on her head, long gold earrings hanging from her earlobes. The man has dark hair with touches of grey at the sides and wears a navy blue suit. The two talk and laugh as they eat, jovial voices filling the room and carrying out the window.

The longer I look, the more similarities I notice. The woman has Harry's lips and nose, and her hair color matches his. The man has Harry's facial structure and eyes, as well as his tall figure.

"Look how happy they are," Harry says, almost disdainfully.

I look up at him, his fingers tightening around my wrist with every moment we watch the couple.

"Isn't that what you want?" I ask, making sure to keep my voice quiet. "For them to be happy?"

"Do you see even a photo of me anywhere?"

I look back into the room. There are shelves next to the table, by a door. I squint at the picture frames, and don't recognize Harry in any of them. I stop at the last photo on the shelf.

It's the same one I found in the small box at the beginning of all of this, of Harry. I recognize the haunting smile on his face. The only difference is this one is in a simple black frame.

"There," I whisper. "At the end."

He leans past me, and I watch him from where I am. When he turns back to look at me, we're merely inches apart.

"They should be mourning me," he whispers, and no doubt I would feel his breath on my face, if he had any breath. Being so close to him sends chill after chill down my spine.

"Maybe they are," I whisper back. "You just don't see it."

"I've spent days here, watching them," he replies. "Just after they moved, I spent a long time waiting for them to show any sort of grief, but I saw none."

I don't know what to respond. I turn my head to look back into the room and see Harry's mother pouring more wine into her husband's glass. The color of the liquid reminds me of blood.

"They live their lives with me as a distant memory," Harry says, his voice close to my ear. "It makes me wonder if I ever knew them at all."

Without thinking, I move my hand from Harry's grasp and lace my fingers through his instead. I squeeze his hand before I can remember that he can't feel it. The sadness in his eyes says that he wishes he could.

I drop my hand.

"Should I knock on the door and ask them some questions?"

"It's no use."

"Maybe-"

"I said no, Jane."

I am silent.

I watch as Harry's mother walks past the shelf with the photos sitting on them, holding a stack of dirty dishes. When she gets to the end, she suddenly stops in her tracks and turns her head to look at the lone photo of Harry. I expect her face to show some sort of grief or sadness for her deceased son, but it remains stoic as she moves her gaze away and continues walking.

-

Harry and I go straight to the clearing behind Cadence Manor as soon as we get back from Vancouver.

It's past midnight, and I'm sure my parents are worried sick. I always used to do this when we lived in Sacramento, though-come home late with no explanation.

"Do you see what I mean?" Harry asks, beginning to pace in front of the willow tree. "They don't care about me."

"Why would they close the murder case?" I muse.

"They didn't. They didn't close it."

"Jenna said-"

"I already told you, she's wrong. The police didn't release a reason why the case was shut down."

"But it's a possibility, isn't it? That your parents paid off the police to close the case?"

Harry pauses. "Yes. It's a possibility."

"I should have asked them about it," I say. "Your parents could have had some information-"

"You still don't get it, do you?" He turns back to me, eyes flashing. "They have moved on. In fact, I don't know if they were even grieving that long. My mother cried at the funeral, and that was that. That was all I got from them."

I watch him walk back and forth before me.

"They should be devastated still. My mother should be crying herself to sleep and my father should be distraught. They should be looking for a sliver of something to make them happy, they should be remembering me instead of casting my memory away like it's nothing!"

"Maybe that's how they deal with grief," I interject. "Everyone deals with it differently, you can't blame them for moving on with their lives."

"Yes, I can. If they really were the ones to close my murder case, what does that say? They didn't want to put forth any time, money, or effort to find my body and my killer," he spits.

"You're being selfish," I say. "You don't know how they're feeling; you only know what it looks like from the outside in. You can't just demand that they be devastated when this may be their way of dealing with their grief."

"What do you know about grief? You've never lost anyone!"

Anger envelopes me. "You're wrong."

"Alright, then. Enlighten me. Who have you lost?" He crosses his arms over his chest.

"I've lost myself a good number of times, wouldn't you say? Since you know so much about these!" I point to the scars on my wrists.

Harry steps back, guilt crossing his face briefly. "You're right. I'm sorry."

I yank my sleeve back down and huff, trying to swallow the lump forming in my throat.

"Jane," he says. "I'm sorry."

"Leave it." I look away from him.

He sits on a swing and puts his head in his hands. "I don't mean that I want them to be unhappy," he says. "I just want to be mourned. I was their only son, their miracle child. Doesn't that mean anything?"

He looks up at me, his eyes full of sadness. I sigh and sit down on the swing across from him.

"I wish I could tell you that I understand," I say.

"I wish you could, too."

I lower my voice to a hush. "Harry, do you think..." I swallow. "Do you think your parents could have something to do with your death?"

"Anything's possible," he whispers.