Goodbye, Evan

7

I remember the first soul I had to help better than almost all the others. It's not exactly something you can forget. Her name was Tabatha, and I remembered her being in some of my classes when I was still alive. She was a short, dumpy girl with her blonde hair always in two braids. She wasn't the brightest bulb and her voice was irritating, but I remember just being glad that somebody could finally see and hear me. That I wasn't alone anymore. It was two months after I'd died when I heard her calling for me.

I was up a tree, I think, just starting to explore parts of the school grounds that I'd never had the chance to when I was alive. I very nearly fell when I heard her annoying little voice in my head and the tug of her in my chest, just managing to hang onto one of the branches. It wasn't like it would've hurt even if I did end up hitting the ground. I didn't need a physical body to help her so back then I didn't even know I could have one. She wanted to learn her spellings, so I read them from a chalkboard for her and she wrote them down.

Then I checked them over, had her correct them and we repeated the process until she got them all perfect. The next day in school, I walked right up to her to ask how her test went, hoping she would somehow be different from all the others who passed right through me. But she did. She walked through me like I was nothing - which I was. I followed her around for the entire day trying to get her to notice me but to no avail.

When I first became physical, I abandoned the kid I was supposed to be helping to go talk to her. I stepped right in front of her and she crashed into me - for a moment, I thought it was a victory. I asked her if she remembered me - I'm Evan, I said, the one who helped you with your spellings. She scowled at me, said that she had never seen me in her life. Then she walked right past me. I learned how this all works the hard way.

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Theo doesn't acknowledge what happened last night. I think he's ashamed; I don't push it. He has toasted waffles for breakfast, slathered in jam and butter. It's gross. He offers me one, which I decline. I know I would've even if I did need to eat. How is he so skinny if this is his diet? I sit and watch him while he eats, tapping the marble-like tabletop with my fingernails and thinking over the plan I made when I went back to bed last night.

"Theo," he looks up from his waffle, "Not to sound callous or anything, but I actually think a list is the best way to go about this." He frowns at me, but he has jam on the end of his nose, so it doesn't quite have the intended effect. "What do you mean-" He cuts off suddenly when the front door flies open. I turn around quickly (I'm sitting on a stool that can turn a full circle and it's way more fun than it should be) and my eyes land on a woman with a shock of blonde curls wearing a copious amount of eyeliner. Theo doesn't yell at her to get out or act frightened in any way, so I guess this woman bursting into the house at an ungodly hour is a thing. With a huge grin on her face, she makes a beeline for Theo, planting a kiss on his bed hair and turning to me, the sharpness of her gaze slipping away into nothing as she does.

"Who's this, Theo? Your new boyfriend?" Her voice is dull like she's an inexperienced actor reading from a play script. "No, Georgia," Theo snaps. I can see the blood rushing to his cheeks. "He's a friend from school. He's helping me with a project."The woman, Georgia, looks at me with slightly misty eyes, like she's trying to discern me from the other side of a waterfall. "Well, you're welcome to stay for dinner," she says distantly. "This house is too big for Theo to be all alone." She blinks and looks back at Theo, smiling, and it's like she suddenly remembered who she is. "Well, I'd better start work."

"You're the reason I don't have any friends!" Theo yells at her back. Just as she passes through the kitchen door, she flips him the bird. I burst out laughing and even Theo lets himself chuckle. "She seems nice," I comment, following Theo as he dumps his plate in the sink. And she does - it's not her fault she can't really see me, just like everybody else. "She's more like my sister than our maid," Theo replies, dousing his plate in water so the food doesn't dry to it before it's washed and drying his hands. (Problem with having a maid: how is he going to learn self-reliance? He can't even wash up.)