February 15, 2010
10:15 a.m.
Sadie’s Pizza Parlor

I walked into Sadie’s and spotted Kristy already sitting at a table in the back corner. I walked over to it and sat down across from her.
“Hey,” she greeted me with a warm smile.
“Hey,” I replied, a bit nervous. How was she going to react when she found out that I was jealous of Cole’s new girlfriend? Or when she found out that Ash’s ghost had come back to haunt me?
“So what do you want to talk to me about?” she asked me.
So rather than thinking about how to start or how to put things, I just began talking. “You remember yesterday when we were here with Cole and I told him I wanted to be more than just friends?”
“Yeah, I remember.” she told me.
“Ok, well later that afternoon, he came by my house to talk to me about it. He told me that he has a new girlfriend that goes to his college.”
“Really? He didn’t tell me he has a girlfriend.”
“Well he does. And to be honest, when he said that I felt like he’d just completely shattered my heart. And I also felt like if I’d have just chosen him over Ash, then maybe I would actually be happy right now…but Ash didn’t like it that I was thinking that.”
“What do you mean?” she inquired. “Ash isn’t alive anymore.”
“Yeah, I know.” I took a deep breath, and pulled my diary off of my lap, placing it on the table. “But he’s still here. He’s a ghost. And I know it sounds crazy, but I’m serious. I have proof!”
She sat there for a moment, staring at me as if I were a psychopath. “And what kind of proof do you have exactly?”
“Well, Ash sort of talks to me. But I can only hear it inside my head. You see, he follows me everywhere, and he can read what I’m thinking. In fact, he’s probably watching us right now.”
“Oh, he is?” she questioned. “Ok, fine. Hey, Ash, it’s me, Kristy. If you’re really here, then come grab this salt shaker out of my hand.” She held up a small glass salt shaker and looked around, waiting for him to grab it. When nothing happened, she placed it back down on the table and smirked at me.
“Stop it.” I scolded her. “Besides, that wasn’t my proof anyways.”
“Then what is?”
“Well, today I woke up and was about to write an entry in my diary, but when I opened it up I found a letter from Ash. He wrote my a letter in my diary, and I have it right here so you can see it.” I flipped my diary open to the page that I’d left dog-eared, which was the one with Ash’s letter on it, and held it up for her to see.
“Evalynne, there’s nothing there.” she said to me.
I set the diary down in front of me and looked at the blank page in confusion. “But it was there this morning! I’m telling you, it was there!” I cried. Quickly, I flipped through all of the pages, frantically searching for the letter. But I came up empty-handed.
I slammed it shut as a tear rolled down my cheek. “I’m not lying.” I told her. “It was there. I remember. I read it!”
She was staring at me sympathetically. I knew what that stare meant. It meant that she thought I was going crazy and she felt sorry for me. Well I wasn’t! That letter was there. Maybe Ash had stolen it before I got the chance to show it to Kristy. But why would he do that? Did he want me to seem like a lunatic?
“Evalynne, Ash was your husband. And I’m sure you miss him very much, right?” she asked me.
“Of course I do,” I replied.
“Ok, well sometimes when you lose someone that was very close to you, your mind doesn’t want to accept the fact that they’re gone. So it starts seeing them again. It gets the illusion that the person is still there.” she explained.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I demanded. “Well I’m not! And I’m not just seeing things either! I wasn’t the only who saw Ash’s ghost either. Lori saw it too. In fact, the shock of seeing him is what caused her heart attack. She told me herself.”
Kristy pondered this for a moment before replying. “When did you start seeing this ghost?” she asked me.
“Yesterday afternoon,” I responded.
“So after Lori told you that she’d seen him?” she continued.
“Yeah, I guess so.” I had absolutely no idea where she was going with this.
“And throughout the entire six months in between now and his death, you didn’t see this ghost?”
“No,”
She nodded, a knowing look flashing across her face. “When Lori told you about Ash, you’re mind probably wanted to believe her. You wanted Ash to still be alive, so when you found out that someone else had seen his ghost, you wanted to believe it so that you could see him too. So when you got home, you saw it because you wanted to. Not because it really happened.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, and thought about what she’d just said. It did make sense. And who knew? Maybe I was just hallucinating because I missed him.
“But it just seemed so real. How could I have imagined all of it? The conversation I had with him, how he slammed my kitchen cabinets open and closed, the letter?”
“Apparently, the human mind is capable of a lot more than we give it credit for.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” I agreed.
“Yeah, so what exactly did that letter say anyways? I’m just curious.” she said.
“Well it said that he was sorry for yesterday, because we started fighting about how I didn’t want him following me around and reading my thoughts. And then he said that he only followed me around to protect me because he didn’t want to see me get hurt. He told me that I shouldn’t be feeling lonely too, because he’s always with me. And he said that he just wanted me to be happy, and he knew that Cole wouldn’t make me happy. He told me not to feel bad about Cole’s new girlfriend and that I should just stay away from him. And then he summed it up by telling me that he loved me.”
“Wow, it seems like your conscience is telling you that Cole’s no good for you,” she told me.
“But I really like him.” I replied. “And I don’t care if he’s not good for me. I just want to be with him so bad. I’d give anything just to go back in time and choose him over Ash. Yeah, I love Ash, but he’s dead now. I chose him, and he died. If I chose Cole, I could’ve been happy.”
She bit her lip, her eyes filled with empathy. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to tell you. You could always tell him how you feel. What did you say when he told you that he has a new girlfriend anyways?”
“I acted like I was ok with, and told him that it was great that he has a girlfriend. I didn’t mean a word of it, but I just couldn’t get myself to tell him how upset I really was.” I explained to her.
She nodded, “I know what you mean. But if you want him to consider being with you again, you have to tell him how you feel. If you don’t, he’s going to assume that nothing’s wrong.”
“Yeah, I know. But he just seemed so happy when he was talking about his new girlfriend. I think he might be in love with her. And I can’t ruin that for him. I know what it feels like to have to try and decide two people you love, and I don’t want to put him through that.”
She smiled at me sadly, “You really do love him, don’t you?”
I nodded. “And that’s exactly why I can’t tell him the truth.”
She sighed, letting out a deep breath. “So that’s your decision? You’re just going to give him up to some other girl?”
“Well I don’t want to hurt him. What else am I supposed to do?” I shot back.
“You’re supposed to fight for him. You’re obviously in love with him, so don’t just give up. You’ve got to keep fighting. He still loves you, Evalynne. He might not realize it now, but he will once he finds out how much you still love him.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe Cole did still love me. Maybe if I just told him how I felt, things would work out in the end. But then again, maybe she was wrong. Maybe Cole was over me and didn’t love me anymore. Maybe if I told him how I felt, I’d end up hurting both him and myself.
“What makes you so sure that he still loves me?” I inquired.
“Would he have come back here if he didn’t?”
I bit my lip, processing this. It made sense. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I got that she was right.
“Ok,” I finally said. “I’ll tell him how I feel.”
She grinned, “Well he leaves this afternoon to go back to Michigan, so you have to do it now.”
I nodded, “Then let’s go.”