Something I Don't Know

24: ghosts probably shouldn't have cooking shows

Levi's cooking something. I can't say what it is or if it's edible, because I don't know. I just know that when I come home from work after nearly getting fired, there's a ghost in my kitchen, and he's stirring something in a pot with a wooden spoon.

Jamie and Violet are sitting on barstools across from him, watching him work. They both look up with startling synchrony as I step into the kitchen.

Violet asks, "How was work?"

"Fine."

Jamie leans over to whisper to his sister, "He's lying."

Except Jamie's whispers are not nearly as whispery as whispers should be, so I just glare at him as I drop my keys in the tin. "I can hear you."

Jamie shrugs as I meander over to the fridge, searching for something to chug. The cold—if that's a thing the cold can do—has left my mouth crazy dry, and if I don't drink something in the next thirty seconds, I very well might burst into flames. I grab for a bottle of Sunny D (do not ask me why we have these, though if you must, it's because Jamie's oddly obsessed with them) just as Levi calls over his shoulder, "Why are you lying, Grey?"

I tear the plastic cap off with my teeth, flicking the extra plastic bits off my fangs. "Because I can."

I shut the refrigerator door. Levi's looking at me quite skeptically, one dark eyebrow risen, the wooden spoon in his hand dripping red stuff onto the floor. I'm concerned for a moment that he'll get it on his clothes, but then I realize he doesn't wear normal clothes, but eternal, ghosty clothes—clothes that are probably immune to the terrors of red sauce.

Though I can sort of see the pot through Levi's transparent middle, I move to look around him anyway. He may have been dead now for 154 years, but he still seems a little sensitive about the see-through thing. "Oh!" I exclaim joyfully. "Is that pasta? Are you making pasta?"

"Bolognese," he snaps, as if throwing a fancy title on it makes it anything but pasta. "I am making bolognese because I can no longer allow you and the child to live off of microwave mac-and-cheese and pizza. Imbeciles, both of you."

"The child?" Jamie asks. He groans. "I'm almost sixteen!"

"Not now, Jamie," say Levi and I at once.

We regard each other with narrowed eyes, questioning if we are alright with having dual responsibility over the child.

We nod, and it is decided that, yes, we are alright with this.

Levi goes back to his stirring, and I take the last remaining barstool beside the Donahue siblings, which Jamie gracefully dusts off before I sit down. I expect them, either of them, to ask me why work was not fine, but they don't, which means that my Fine and Because I can must have translated well into Please do not ask me about this today, I am not in the mood and nor will I ever be. It isn't a complex translation, really, but sometimes, if you're Jamie, you either don't pick up on it or decide to ignore it.

He's better with his older sister around. Not that he was bad before. He's just better.

"So," I ask, resting my elbows on the island as the three of us watch Levi's translucent back. "What did you two get up to today?"

"I tried to show Vy around," Jamie answers, kicking his feet—which reach nowhere near the floor—underneath him. "We couldn't go too far, though. There were too many people around. Too dangerous."

"And the humans," Violet says with a sudden shake of her head. "I didn't detect so many of them when I first arrived here. Tell me I'm not crazy when I say there must be thousands more that got here just today, right?"