The ghost’s whimper nested itself in the corner of Endi’s soul reserved for tradition and cobwebs.
“Hello?” Endi asked, “Where are you?” He shone his phone’s flashlight into a nameless teddy bear’s eyes, a box of his ex’s forgotten belongings, and finally, the corner of his closet Ghost cowered in.
“You’ve changed,” Endi said, but what he meant was “you look awful.” Ghost nodded, agreeing on both the said and the unsaid. “I thought you were gone,” Endi said then, because what else do you say to someone you drove away four years ago?
The Ghost Endi had once known was reduced to a shadow of himself and Endi couldn’t help but wonder whether Ghost thought the same of him. It’s likely, Endi thought. Four years of high school will do that to you.
Ghost hid behind a baby blanket, and Endi took a deep breath.
He let it out, and Ghost broke into tears. “Please, Ghost, don’t cry,” he entreated. “Please, I need you to stop.” Yet when Ghost at last sat still and wiped away his tears, it didn’t seem like a victory. It felt to Endi like a defeat. Sorry, Endi wanted to say, but he wasn’t one for apologies. Eighteen-year-olds don’t apologize to the ghosts in their closets. They don’t talk to the ghosts in their closets either.
In the years Endi had known Ghost, he never once, he realized, had truly considered his friend’s feelings. Why should he start now, after four years of a silence he’d never intended to break? Changing his ways now would require admitting that his old ones were wrong. Instead, he contemplated shutting the door and pretending he’d never heard a thing. He contemplated leaving for college with a ghost in his closet back home. Then he contemplated how another lonely four years would affect Ghost and he knew he couldn’t.
Ghost peered over the blanket’s hem, watching Endi through wide, haunting eyes. When he sighed, something in Endi’s soul was undone. Until then, the boy hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Ghost.
“In the beginning, I was your best friend,” Ghost said, his voice hesitant and raspy at first. “We were like twins; we were one, really. I was you, and well, you were me. You were eleven when everything changed.”
Eleven, Endi wondered. He’d met Ghost when he was eleven.
“For the first time, you were you, and I was … this. A ghost. A past. Your—our—past. No longer was there a ‘we,’ only ‘you’ and ‘me.’ Your insecurities tore us apart.” Ghost took a deep breath, and Endi slammed the door behind him. No, he wasn’t doing this.
He’d had enough of Ghost’s nostalgic rambling.
“When you went out with your so-called friends, you neglected and eventually abandoned so many parts of you,” Ghost continued, his voice penetrating through the door and sending a shiver down Endi’s spine. “You left me and with me, you left all the parts of you that make you you: your imagination, your singing voice, your curiosity, your fanfiction, your sense of style, and your dreams. You left it all with me, only keeping the parts that fit into the narrative you let your so-called friends spin. Most crucially though, you left your love; your love for your parents, for your best friend, for your little sister, and above all for me, with me. You replaced it with hate, for all of us, for me, for the parts of you that made you you.”
I am me, Endi thought. I’m not the ghost in my closet. Eighteen- year-olds are not the ghosts in their closets. He wanted to hit something, someone in particular, but how do you smite the ghost in your closet? How do you force it to quit gnawing at you? How do you ignore it when it does?
“One last story,” Ghost said, “then I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you’d like, but you have to hear me out.” He wasn’t one for hearing people out, Endi told himself.
Eighteen-year-olds don’t hear the ghosts in their closets out, he told himself.
“Initially, you entertained the idea of a friendship with me, as long as it was hidden. But two years of hiding will teach you what you’re hiding is wrong.” Endi gulped, leaning against the closet door, head in hands. He wanted it to stop. He needed it to stop. “When you were fourteen, you screamed at me. You shoved me, told me I was a dork, a freak, a nerd. Don’t you dare cry, you told me. No one cares about your feelings, you told me. Shut up, you’re a crybaby, you told me.
“Come on, now,” Ghost coaxed, “tell me to shut up. Tell me to crouch in the corner of your closet until we die. Two words and I’ll be silent forever. See, I’m already calming down. Look, I won’t say a word.” Endi waited and waited, but Ghost didn’t speak. Endi waited longer, too scared to face what Ghost had to say. His words, his imagination, his singing voice, his curiosity, his fanfiction, his sense of style, his lost dreams, his love, all the parts that made him him—they petrified him.
“Don’t,” he finally said, his voice breaking. “Don’t shut up.” Eighteen-year-olds weren’t ones for pleases and thank-yous, but Endi was. “Please,” he said, choking up. Scaredy-cat, he remembered him calling himself the last time he’d cried like this, Coward. He’d shoved himself, he remembered, into the corner of his closet reserved for tradition and cobwebs. He, never the ghost, had been the coward all along.