Jennifer Two

EIGHTEEN.

June 23rd, 2016

We're back to the present tense; back to now. I had to start from the beginning to bring us back to this glorious moment in time, where I sit in my hotel room, revving myself up to visit Bret for the second time.

After I've showered and eaten, I look down at my phone to see a text from Kal. It's the first time he's communicated since the day he dropped me off, where he asked me if I got to a hotel safe a few hours later. I responded yes, and I left it there. I had a few missed calls and texts from my sister Jamie, too, but I didn't understand why; I'm sure my parents told her that I had ran away, and that there's nothing she should be worried about. It's a totally reasonable scenario.

I check the text, and it's Kal asking me when I'm going back to Bluebeach; I told him I live there on the journey to Presley. I remember him raising an eyebrow in surprise, knowing it's a pretty rich part of Cali. He probably thinks I'm some sort of entitled fortunate kid who thought I could make my own life as far away from home as possible. He can never know the ill-fated truth of it all, which is both relieving and irritating. I'm not sure whether to respond to his text right now, because my plan was to leave in a couple of days. I need to see Bret at least two more times before I make my way home.

The first time I saw him, last night, not much was said. Like I mentioned before, he just started crying. He was a drunken mess, completely out of his element and with no control over himself. He kept repeating how sorry he was, over and over again, and I could do nothing but console him like a soothing mother. I found myself rocking a thirty-five-year-old man out of his own shadowy depths, into a heavy slumber. I managed to slip away, feeling awkward and finding it hard to process what had just happened. I had trespassed into his apartment, seeing that the front door was left ajar for my convenience, like God knew I was making a visit. I kept saying to myself, what have you done? But above all, I got the reaction that I wanted, and that was just pure emotion and nothing else. No scrutiny or doubt; just emotion. This was something I now can see that Bret Wade needed.

◆

As I sit in Bret's living room on a sunny afternoon, I watch as the man turns towards the kitchen. "Want some juice?" He awkwardly asks, scratching his stubble as I kindly decline his offer. I can see him wondering whether he should have offered me one; if ghosts ever get parched.

Bret's hangover is shining over his head like a halo; he can barely keep his eyes open, and despite being a lot soberer, I can tell that reality is still not something he's in touch with. He's walking through an interactive dream, a lucid dream. He keeps looking over to me as if he's expecting me to disappear or morph into something else. I can tell that he's quite uncomfortable with the whole ordeal, but I also know that he is way past doubt. He thinks he's talking to Jennifer-Rose. I watched video tapes of her, trying to mimic how I thought she would act, despite the fact that our body language should be identical. She wasn't born again so that she could give herself away as a glitch; an almost-there. I don't want to be almost there. So I make sure any movement I make is in a way that I believe she would have done so.

But I'm not sure whether to play an omniscient ghost who knows everything in his life and has been watching over him like a hawk, or whether to play raised from the dead and doesn't have a clue about the present. I can really only show him how much I 'know' about our past. Jennifer One's past. It's not like I feel like I have known Bret all my life – I don't feel that sense of nostalgia that you would expect. I do feel familiarity, but that's something that I've imposed on myself more than anything. I forced myself to get used to him, and now I'm afraid I might not be able to give it up.