How To Disappear: Part One

(Trigger warning: mentions of suicide, self-harm, homophobia, and bullying behavior)

~

Three days ago, Gabriel Hernandez threw himself from the fourth floor of his school building. The time was precisely four o’clock in the afternoon. He unlatched a window in the art classroom, stepped out onto the ledge, and jumped a distance of fifty feet down, landing on the concrete below.

He died on impact, they say. Or so Jayce Glenmoore has heard.

His skull was the first thing to hit the ground.

He was sixteen years old.

~

The night after Gabriel Hernandez dies, Jayce has a strange dream.

He dreams of the sun.

At first, it’s all he can see. He can barely make out anything else beyond its bright, shining rays right in his eyes, casting everything around him in a blinding, whitish-yellow hue.

But he can feel his legs pumping—he’s running. He’s grinning, too; he can feel the stretch of his mouth, curled upwards. And he’s dragging someone along behind him, their hands clenched together tight.

In an instant, he knows who it is.

He even knows when this is. It’s his seventh birthday. He spent most of it playing with Gabriel Hernandez, who had recently moved into a house down the block. And Jayce, who had been good at making friends but terrible at keeping them—even at that age—found himself bankrupt of any and all potential friends just before his seventh birthday.

Luckily for him, a new kid had come to town. Just a few weeks before his birthday, his mother had pounced on Gabriel’s like a snake unleashed onto an unsuspecting mouse. She’d managed to set up a playdate for them within a day of meeting the family.

Jayce didn’t like him very much, not at first. He thought Gabriel was a crybaby and a whiner and a sore loser who never stopped talking. When he wasn’t being any of those things, he was snooty and bossy as all hell, which was sort of Jayce’s thing at the time.

Contention bloomed between them almost immediately. They bickered all the time. It almost always ended with Gabriel thrusting a finger right in Jayce’s face, because he came to learn that Jayce hated that, so Jayce would shove Gabriel, and Gabriel would start crying his eyes out, and Jayce would usually manage to get Gabriel to forgive him within the hour so he wouldn’t get told on for pushing.

Their friendship would have been utterly impossible if Gabriel hadn’t liked Jayce so much, which he did. And Jayce knew he did.

Jayce grew to like him quite a bit, too.

It’s funny, how time can turn things like irritation and resentment into adoration. How something annoying or stupid eventually becomes okay, because it’s them. It’s your friend. Slowly but surely, this was the way it became between them.

Jayce could be gracious. He could be kind. He always had good ideas, and others had a lot of fun with him, because of him. But he could also be strange, and selfish, and sort of mean. The way he talked to people turned them off and away from him. He knew that, even as a kid.

But Gabriel was never scared off so easily.

Gabriel was bossy and bratty, but he lacked Jayce’s mean streak. In the end, he would always listen. He would always go along with what Jayce wanted to do. Wherever Jayce wanted to go, he would follow.

Gabriel Hernandez. The kid who, despite his whining, was always willing to get dragged along—or left behind.

~

Jayce’s mother insists on taking him to the wake.

It doesn’t matter how hard Jayce tries to explain to her that him and Gabriel weren’t close friends anymore—and that they hadn’t been, not since they were in middle school—and that his presence at this tragic event could be construed as somewhat of an insult, even, considering that Gabriel, rather non-discreetly, hadn’t really liked him very much anymore, since they’d both matured and changed and grown so far apart, so very fast. For all Jayce knew, Gabriel had went home and talked about what a huge asshole Jayce was to his mom every single day.

But there was no getting through to Ma. Thirty minutes later, Jayce found himself hugging Ms. Hernandez, who was still inconsolable, as he knew she would be. Gabriel was my whole world, she kept saying, over and over. Ma hugged her tight, ferociously so, as she sobbed the words into her shoulder. Even when Jayce stepped awkwardly to a different corner of the room, attempting to look particularly contemplative or sad, he heard her saying it to other people. Gabriel was my world. My world. My whole world. My boy.

The picture of Gabriel in the dedication plastered by his casket—a closed casket, of course—is a good one. Gabriel had a nice smile. A wide, brilliant white smile. He always had good teeth.

He looks happy in the picture. It doesn’t look very old, either. It must be fairly recent, within the year.

Jayce stares at it hard, looking for any signs. A forced twist of his mouth. A tired gaze. A pained expression hidden under a beaming face.

“What are you doing here?”

Startled, Jayce turns.

Mary Moore, dressed in a long, sad-looking black dress with ruffles, stares at him with red-rimmed eyes.

Gabriel’s one, and potentially only, friend at their high school.

“I’m here for my Ma,” Jayce says, deciding to be honest. “She was friends with Ms. Hernandez.”

“You’re not here for Gabriel.”

It isn’t a question.

“I’m sad he’s dead,” Jayce tells her—like he even has to say it, only clearly he does. Is he really that much of an asshole? “I think it’s really fucking sad. And tragic.”

“Okay,” Mary says. Like she doesn’t believe it.

Jayce blanches at her. “I don’t have to be his friend to think that.”

“You just don’t look sad.”

“It’s sad, Moore. Obviously it’s shitty and awful and sad. And it sucks.”

“You could have thought Gabe’s death sucked from the comfort of your own home, Glenmoore.”

Jayce stares at her, lost for ideas of what to say.

“But you’re here,” Mary says pointedly. “This is for friends and family.”

“And my mom’s his mom’s friend.”

“You were his friend once, too,” Mary says, somewhat coolly. “He told me.”

Jayce stiffens.

“Yeah,” he says shortly. “When we were kids.”

“He said you became too big-time for him. Super popular and all.” Mary’s lip curls, only slightly. “That you left him behind because you were embarrassed of being seen with him.”

“Basically,” Jayce mutters.

“You’re an asshole.”

“I’m not proud of it. Obviously I’m not. Especially not now. But we just… stopped getting along. We couldn’t connect anymore. Things got weird.” At Mary’s blank stare, he adds, perhaps a little coldly, “People change.”

“Gabriel never changed,” Mary says quietly. “Not once since I knew him.”

There’s a surge of something ugly in his chest.

“Well, he’s fucking dead now,” he snaps. “There’s a change for you.”

Mary’s face morphs into one of anger. “You don’t belong here.”

“Are you really telling me to get out? Is that what you’re doing right now?”

“What if I was?”

A few people around have started glancing their way.

Jayce closes his eyes and takes a short breath. He needs to shut things down before he regrets it.

“This isn’t the place to fight,” he says, his voice dropping low. “Just leave me alone and go pay your goddamn respects to your friend, Moore. Jesus.”

Mary’s eyes are wild and fierce, but she looks like she might start crying.

A weird, spiteful part of Jayce hopes that she does.

Another part of him wants to reach out and take her hand, and just hold it. Maybe press a long, hard kiss to it. A kiss of understanding. Of… shared loss, or something.

Shared loss?

Jayce bites his lip hard.

He dismisses the ridiculous idea the moment it comes to his mind.

“Why are you really here, Glenmoore?” Mary asks him. There’s a rather defeated tone in her voice now.

She looks beyond tired.

Everyone here does.

“I told you,” Jayce says quietly. “My ma—”

“Right,” Mary says tightly. “Got it.”

“And so what if I wanted to say goodbye, anyway? I always… I never wanted this to happen. Or thought it would.”

“And now that it has, you can’t even tell me why you’re here besides the fact that your mom made you come.”

“Why the hell would I tell you anything about it anyway, Moore?”

“Why would you show up for Gabriel now, after all this time?”

“I’m showing up,” Jayce snaps, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Do you think Gabriel would say that?”

A tense silence sets over them.

“Why is it okay for you to speak for him?” Jayce mutters finally.

Mary, her arms crossed tight over her chest, gives him a blank stare.

“For you to stand here and tell me he needs a reason from me to be here. That he would’ve kicked me the fuck out.” Gabriel’s unbearable, sunny smile burns bright and white in his mind. “How could you even know that?”

At that, Mary’s face drops. The anger there smoothes away into something else, something sadder.

Suddenly, Jayce wishes she would glare at him again instead. It was much easier to look at.

“If you ever really knew him at all,” she says quietly, “you know he’d never do that.”

Jayce lets out a long, quiet exhale through his nose as Mary walks away, her steps small and silent in her flats as she goes.

She could have been a ghost.

Beside the casket, the picture of Gabriel in front of him beams back at him once more, blinding and radiant as the summer sun.

~

The night after the wake, Jayce has the same dream yet again.

Feeling the clamminess of Gabriel’s prepubescent hand in his own is strange. It feels real, like Jayce is really, truly back there again—back when he was actually pretty good at school, and pretty smart when he tried to be. Before teachers started cringing at the sound of Jayce’s name. Back when life was like a vibrant ray of sunlight, bleary and shiny and endlessly fascinating. Back when making and having friends was mindless—a necessity like a reflex, an itch scratched. Back when holding another boy’s hand wasn’t a death sentence—not yet.

The air smells thick and lush and all too familiar. Birds twitter above, soaring above their heads.

Jayce turns around and lets himself look, if only for a moment.

The sun blocks most of Gabriel’s face. He can only make out dark curls bouncing as his scrawny legs propel him forward. Knobby knees, untied shoelaces. A heart throbbing with childlike glee. A sense of adventure.

An ignorance, of what’s to come.

Jayce forgot how short Gabriel was back then. How small he was, too.

He almost forgot what it was like himself.

Being smaller. Weaker. So close to the ground.

Jayce wants to sink into it. To immerse himself in the coolness of the dirt and stay there, unmoving and still. Just to rest his eyes, and his mind.

Despite it all, child Jayce runs.

~

For whatever reason, Jayce starts seeing Gabriel everywhere, in all of the places that he is no longer and never will be again. In the hallways. In the cafeteria. In the bleachers. Outside the art classroom. In his empty desk in English, at the opposite side of the room from Jayce.

On the bench outside, nearest to the school entrance.

The last time he’d talked to Gabriel had been the day before his death. He’d been sitting on that very bench with Mary, chatting it up with his short legs folded like a pretzel. He always sat in rather bizarre positions and said they were comfortable, even as a kid.

Jayce had left school late that day, and he’d caught a glimpse of them as he passed them on his way home.

“Ooh, he smokes now,” Gabriel had remarked—to Mary, of course, but loudly enough for Jayce to hear, and purposefully so.

Jayce had turned around, leveling him with an unimpressed stare. Gabriel only quirked an eyebrow at him in return.

“What?” he asked innocently. “It’s badass, man. I fucking love lung cancer.”

“Piss off, Hernandez,” Jayce shot back, somewhat half-heartedly.

He’d been so tired that day from getting nearly no sleep the previous night, and he remembered thinking Gabriel looked tired, too. The circles under his eyes were dark, more noticeably so than Jayce had ever recalled seeing them before.

“You piss off,” Mary fired back, her arms folded haughtily across her chest.

Mary was annoying, and that’s really all Jayce could say about her, considering he didn’t know or want to know her very much. But they were a killer duo—an infamous one. She was always there at her best friend’s side, riding for him no matter what.

He had to give that to her, at least.

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, his eyebrows lifting in challenge. “Watch it, Glenmoore. Or I’ll tell your mommy you’re smoking.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Damn right it is,” Gabriel said. He adjusts his folded leg by pulling it up even more. “I still remember where you live, you know.”

That comment in particular felt like a punch to the gut.

They’d never talked about their childhood together, the years of friendship they’d left behind in the dirt to rot and fester and fade away in their memories. Untouched. Too messy. Too complicated.

Jayce gave him a long, hard look before smiling sardonically down at him. “Maybe I moved.”

Gabriel picked up a fake cigarette with his two fingers, pretending to take a rather obnoxious puff. He aims the invisible smoke right at Jayce, blowing it out into the spring breeze.

“Doubt it,” he said loftily.

Jayce huffed out a soft noise—something between a laugh and a sound of exasperation.

For what, exactly, he didn’t know.

He took a puff of his real cigarette, letting the smoke into his lungs before breathing it out like a sigh of relief.

“Head home already, you idiots,” he’d told them frankly, gesturing to them with the cigarette. He felt like his damn mother. “It’s almost dark out.”

“He’s worried for our safety,” Mary told Gabriel matter-of-factly. She glanced back at him and smirked, a twisted little thing on her pretty face. “I think he wants us.”

Gabriel grinned at Jayce, leaning back in the bench. His invisible cigarette still hung from his slender fingers, his black-painted nails glinting in the sun.

“He wants us bad,” he said, his gaze alight.

Jayce’s stomach twisted.

Mary laughed—a grating sound.

Gabriel nudged her arm, smirking.

With a final glance at the pair of them, Jayce turned back to the road and set off for home.

And even though he remembered cursing himself for doing so, for whatever reason, Jayce had said goodbye. He said goodbye to Gabriel the final time ever that day, in the only way he knew how.

He’d raised a hand in a silent farewell, his cigarette sending smoke curling into the empty air with it, marring it black.

“Get home safe, chainsmoker!” Gabriel called back to him.

His voice, though twinged with teasing—as it always was, nowadays—was friendly, too. Almost sweet.

He’d always had a sweet voice. Gabriel.

In the woods, where they’d spent so much time in their youth, he used to sing to the birds outside in Spanish, and Jayce, after he got tired of making fun of Gabriel for singing like some Disney princess wuss, would close his eyes and rest listening to it. Sometimes he’d even fall asleep on the goddamn twigs and sticks, or against a tree, listening to those sweet, pretty songs he’d sing.

Jayce doesn’t think about it.

Or, he tries not to.

~

Again, he dreams of the woods. Of sun in his blond hair. Of warm summer wind in Gabriel’s curls.

He thinks he hears Gabriel laugh behind him as they stumble through the woods behind Jayce’s backyard.

He thinks he hears himself laugh, too.

He can’t remember the last time he laughed like that.

They climbed a tree that day. Gabriel ended up falling and fucking up his knee, and he lied afterwards about how bad it was, even with tears in his eyes.

Jayce believed him.

It was easy to believe him.

He carried Jayce all the way back home on his back, scrawny arms locked under Jayce’s thighs. All the while, Jayce was pretending to be a king, ordering Gabriel around to go this way or that way, poking his face and his sides and his shoulders hard, like a real asshole.

But Gabriel still laughed all the way home.

He showed up to school with a bandaged knee the next day, Jayce remembers. That isn’t a part of this, the dream. But it’s true.

As it turns out, his knee had been hurting ever since the fall. It had been hurting terribly. Gabriel just hadn’t said anything.

Jayce didn’t bother asking why, because he knew why.

It had been Jayce’s birthday, after all.

It was things like that that made Gabriel so respectable in Jayce’s eyes. Cool, even. He was strong, even though sometimes he acted weak. He was determined, being able to balance the pain of his knee and keeping Jayce happy and entertained. And he actually cared, even if he was really bossy and dramatic a lot of the time. None of Jayce’s other friends cared about him like that.

Suddenly, strangely, Jayce can recall the exact strangled little sound Gabriel made after the fall, after the loud crunch of leaves and branches below—something between a gasp and a cry.

It reverberates in his ears.

The sound of it is terrible.

Jayce wakes up with a strangled sound himself, wide-eyed, heart pounding.

The moon glows back at him through the window, pale and empty.

~

School isn’t exactly strange without Gabriel. What makes it strange is the whispering that suddenly fills the halls about Gabriel. The school is quieter now, but not quiet enough to be talking about anything else but the boy who killed himself—teachers and students alike.

Jayce wishes they would all drop dead, too.

~

“I think you should see a therapist,” Ma tells him later that evening, over a dinner of beef stew.

She gestures to him with her spoon when she says it, because that’s Ma. She always has to gesture with something.

Therapy. The word sounds ridiculous coming out of a Glenmoore’s mouth.

“Why?” Jayce asks, rather flatly. Defiantly, almost.

He knows why.

“You lost a friend, sweetheart.”

“A childhood friend. From forever ago.”

“Your childhood best friend,” Ma corrects, frowning. She takes off her reading glasses, which means she means business. “That’s a lot to deal with.”

“He wasn’t my friend anymore, Ma. I told you that.”

“Don’t say that, Jayce.”

“He wasn’t. Honest, he wasn’t. I’m not trying to be mean. We just grew apart.”

“Well, maybe a therapist can help you with your apathy problem, then,” Ma suggests.

Jayce blanches at her. “I don’t have an apathy problem.”

“You do. You’re very apathetic. Why would you ever grow apart from such a sweet boy?”

“Ma, it happens. Jesus.”

“And you’re angry. Way too angry. I wasn’t angry like this when I was your age. Were you, dear?”

“No, dear,” his step-dad says from across the table.

He’s been too busy stuffing his fat face with stew to put in much input otherwise.

Jayce tries his best not to roll his eyes.

“And you’re sad too, Jayce,” Ma says. “You must be. It’s very sad. Don’t you think?”

“Of course it’s sad. But—”

“How about just one session? Just one?” Ma wags her spoon at him. “If you hate it, that’s fine. You don’t have to go back.”

“I’m okay, Ma. Honest.”

“I know you are. You’re a strong boy. But please, Jayce. For your own good. Just a session.”

“Okay,” Jayce says, exasperated. “Okay, I’ll go. Happy?”

Ma looks absolutely elated.

“Very,” she says. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

“You’re a good kid, Jayce,” his step-dad agrees.

Jayce fakes a smile at him that he’s sure looks more like a grimace.

Always agreeing.

If Ma hated him and wanted him dead, Chris would take a club to his head in a millisecond.

Jayce stares up at the ceiling, where one of the three kitchen light flickers dramatically above their heads.

“A good kid,” he repeats.

The middle light flickers one final time before it goes out.

~

Jayce is on his tenth lap around the gymnasium before he sees it—a distance behind Gabriela Mayori and her best friend’s heads is Gabriel Hernandez, sitting cross-legged in the bleachers.

He’s in a large green hoodie and baggy jeans. His chin rests his hand, his elbow on his knee. He looks beyond bored, like he’s ready to fall asleep.

Jayce blinks once, then twice. Then rubs his eyes hard.

Gabriel doesn’t fade.

He only tilts his head, his inquisitive eyes on Jayce’s face, as if Jayce’s attention had somehow woken him up.

Jayce could fucking scream.

He doesn’t.

He finishes his laps.

He doesn’t look at the bleachers again.

Is this shit really so depressing that he’s hallucinating his childhood best friend turned awkward acquaintance watch him run laps during fucking gym class?

Jayce guesses, yes. Yes, it is.

When he finally looks back one last time, Gabriel isn’t there anymore.

Maybe therapy isn’t such a bad idea after all.

~

“Can you believe this shit?” Jayce hears a boy say to his friend after class. His voice is all hushed in tone, but not in volume. Not that it matters, really. The echo in the locker rooms at this school is ridiculous. You couldn’t help but overhear every goddamn thing everyone says. “Hernandez jumping out the goddamn building?”

Jayce stares into his empty locker, unmoving. His hand rests motionlessly on his bag. His head throbs.

His friend, a short, skinny blond kid, slams his locker shut. “Crazy shit, dude.”

“You’re telling me,” the boy says, shaking his head.

“Can you see me, Michael?” a third voice asks, and Jayce’s blood runs cold.

It’s echoey, almost as if it’s underwater.

Fucking hell.

Jayce wants to bang his head as hard as he can against his locker.

He doesn’t.

He risks a glance to his left.

Sure enough, Gabriel is there again.

He’s in his gym clothes now, swimming in a long blue and black t-shirt and black shorts. His cheeks are flushed with color, like he just got out of class with the rest of them instead of being dead, dead, dead.

Jayce levels a fierce glare at this fraudulent, idiotically induced ghost of Gabriel Hernandez in front of him, hoping to scare it into keeping its distance.

It had worked in the past, when Gabriel had gotten old and annoying and embarrassing to have as a friend, and Jayce’s newer, cooler friends had encouraged him to distance himself with mean looks and comments and cold, blank stares.

But Gabriel isn’t watching Jayce.

He’s watching the boys behind him.

“From the fucking art room upstairs, too,” the short blond says. “Do you know how high that must have been?”

“Damn high.”

“He was always hanging out around there, too.”

“Hernandez?”

“Yeah. Every time I saw him, he was chilling by that classroom. The art room. Drawing, with his friend. Jeff and his buddies always knew to find him there, but for some reason, he never moved.”

“Guess he was a pushover like that. If I was him, I would have avoided that place like the plague. Everyone knows Jeff likes to hang up there by the art room.”

“I liked the art classroom,” Gabriel says out loud, somewhat crossly, and Jayce nearly jumps out of his own skin hearing that voice again. “Mary did, too.” He folds his arms. “I wasn’t a pushover. I just wasn’t going to let Jeff scare me out of going there.”

Jayce whirls around, staring at the boys behind them, who seem to have heard nothing.

“Maybe he just really liked that spot,” the blond offers. “Didn’t want Jeff to scare him out of it.” He yawns obnoxiously, before adding thoughtfully, “Jeff probably would have found him someplace else and bullied him there, anyway.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel says. He hops off the bench. “Thanks for preserving my memory, Mike.” He claps Mike on the shoulder, and Mike doesn’t even bat an eye. Jayce gapes wordlessly at the scene. “You’re a good guy, when you’re not being a dick.”

His eyes dart to Jayce.

Heart pounding, Jayce narrows his brows, clenching his hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

“I still can’t believe he’s dead,” the other guy says. “He seemed like a nice kid.”

“Thanks, James,” Gabriel says fondly.

“He was nice,” Mike agrees. “Too fucking nice, if you ask me. That’s why he got bullied so bad.” The blond lowers his voice. “I hate to say it, but I don’t like when gay guys are too damn nice like that.”

Gabriel’s head hangs down a bit, as if in exasperation, before leveling Jayce with a small, half-amused smile.

This time, Jayce can’t bring himself to look away.

“I hear you,” James agrees. “Just keep your distance like I did, and it’s whatever.” He grimaces. “It still sucks, though, that he killed himself. Even if he was gay.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. “He must have been, like, depressed or something.”

“Michael, don’t kill us with these brains, now,” Gabriel says.

“Maybe it was the bullying,” James suggests.

Gabriel jerks his thumb at James, his dark brows raised.

Like he’s asking, Can you believe these guys, Glenmoore? Geniuses, huh?

Jayce can’t look away.

“Maybe that, plus being lonely. Like, maybe he really wanted a boyfriend, but he couldn’t find one here. Because no one’s gay.”

Gabriel actually laughs out loud at that.

“No one’s out, you mean,” James corrects. “Someone else has got to be gay at this school. It’s fucking massive.”

“Yeah, probably. Who do you think could be gay?”

Their two voices blur together in Jayce’s ears as he manages to wrench his eyes away from Gabriel down to his own trembling fists.

What the hell is wrong with him?

He wasn’t Gabriel’s friend. Not really. He hadn’t been for years. What the fuck is going on? Why is his brain doing this?

Why is everything having to do with Gabriel Hernandez affecting him so terribly?

In the fuzzy midst of his own loud thoughts, Jayce catches the blond kid’s latest sentence. “I wonder what the fuck he looked like, all splattered down there.”

The callous, almost giddy words float through the air before they sink in, seeping into Jayce’s skin like poison.

He can’t help but look to his side.

Gabriel’s face hasn’t changed at all. He still wears that small, shallow smile.

Unfazed.

Unmovable, like a statue.

“Gruesome, man,” his friend says—grimacing, all with a half-smirk on his face. Jayce wants to smack it off. “I bet it was a mess.”

Jayce slams his locker shut, hard.

The two boys jump at the sound.

“Can you idiots shut the fuck up about Hernandez already?” he snaps at them. “You two stupid, bitch-made cowards probably never spoke a word to him in your goddamn lives. So just stop talking about him, and get the hell out.”

James and Mike exchange nervous glances with one another before grabbing their things and scrambling out of the room.

Jayce glares at their retreating backs as they all but stumble out the door.

“Scary,” Gabriel says light-heartedly.

Jayce rounds on him, fists clenched hard. He forgot how much larger he was than Gabriel. He almost feels like a fucking bully, pressing the ghost of a suicide victim. It’s incredibly pathetic. “What is this?”

Gabriel reaches out to touch the locker in front of him, wearing a rather complicated expression. “I’m… trying to figure that out myself.”

“What the hell are you?”

The boy looks at Jayce like he’s stupid.

“I’m me,” he says, like it’s obvious. “I’m Gabriel.”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh, come on, dude. You see me, don’t you?” Gabriel gestures to himself. “It’s really me.”

“Fuck you,” Jayce snaps. “You’re fucking dead. And you’re in my head.” He presses his hands to his face. “This is… this is all just some fucked up trick my mind is playing on me.”

“I’m not in your head,” Gabriel says, frowning. “I’m—”

“Bullshit, you’re not. No one else can fucking see you!”

The ghost of Gabriel is glaring back at him.

Jayce can’t remember the last time he looked at him like that.

It’s not him, a voice in his head reminds him.

“I’m not some guilt-induced hallucination, you self-centered prick!” he says indignantly.

Jayce glares at him, his mouth twisted.

“I’m really here,” Gabriel insists. His fists are clenched at his sides. He looks so real, so alive, that it’s scary. “I’m back here, for some reason. I’m just… not in my body. And from what I’m noticing, only you can see me.” He settles down on the bench, a distressed look on his face. “I’m trying to understand things as much as you are.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jayce mutters, right to the locker in front of him. “I’m going crazy. I’m literally going insane.” He casts Gabriel a forlorn look over his shoulder. “I’m seeing dead people.”

“And I’m seeing a real asshole who isn’t helping the dead. At all.”

“How the hell can I help you? What do you even want? To haunt the goddamn school?”

“What I want is to rest in peace,” Gabriel says softly. “I want to get out of here. But I must have been sent here for a reason.”

“That’s on you to figure out, then.”

“But no one hears me!” Gabriel cries. “I tried talking to Mary, and Ms. Trebol in the art classroom. I even tried talking to Mom, but…” His lip quivers, and he bites down on it hard. “They can’t hear me. Only you can.”

“This is insane,” Jayce mutters. He reaches up to tug at his hair. “Maybe I am fucking crazy.”

“Come on, Glenmoore,” Gabriel pleads from behind him. “Please help me.”

Jayce swings his bag over his shoulder.

“Please!”

The locker room door slams shut on the ghost of Gabriel on his way out.

~

After school, Jayce heeds his mother’s wishes and goes to therapy.

His therapist’s name is Mrs. Boone.

She’s ugly and old, and smells like cat food.

Her office is decorated with tons of little clocks. He doesn’t know why.

The chair he gets to sit in is uncomfortably comfortable. Way too fucking comfortable. It’s so soft, he feels like he’s sinking into it.

She asks him nothing but questions about Gabriel. What he was like. What their friendship meant to him. Their shared memories together. Their falling out.

If Jayce feels responsible for any of it.

Gabriel stands there across from him, arms folded over his therapist’s chair, staring at him the whole time.

Wordless.

Like he’s waiting for something.

Like he’s—

Jayce storms out in the first ten minutes, slamming the door behind him.

He hears the clocks rattle.

~

Jayce skips school the next day.

He goes to the park instead.

He smokes two cigarettes on a bench under the afternoon sun, staring into the lake.

Hundreds of little fish swarm in the shallows.

“Oh, to be a fucking fish,” Gabriel’s ghost says behind him, menace in his voice, and Jayce glares into the beautiful, sparkling water. “To be surrounded by comrades who wouldn’t leave you stranded, even in death.”

“Is that what I am to you, Hernandez?” Jayce grits out, his eyes never leaving the water. “A fucking comrade?”

“You’re the only person who can hear me,” Gabriel points out. His arms are crossed tight over his chest. “That makes you the closest damn thing to it.”

“Please leave me alone.”

Jayce doesn’t remember the last time he said please to anyone.

“Please help me,” Gabriel insists, “so that I can.”

He buries his face in his hands for a long, silent moment.

Finally, he lifts his head up, running his hands down his face.

“What the hell do you need from me?” he asks finally.

“I must have unresolved business,” Gabriel says decisively, “with people in my life. Maybe that’s why I was sent here—a pitstop, of sorts, to resolve it all before I move on.” He pokes Jayce in the arm. “You can help me relay it.”

“Relay what?”

“Messages.”

Jayce rubs hard at his eyes, his mind reeling. “To who?”

“All the people I have messages for.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Hernandez.”

“It’s a lot, I know,” Gabriel says with a sigh, sitting next to him. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, I can’t think of any other reason I’d find myself here again.”

“What unfinished business do you have, exactly?”

“Oh, plenty,” Gabriel says simply. “I repressed a great deal of my actual thoughts and feelings, you know. It’s one of the reasons I killed myself.” He leans his head back, staring up into the sun. “I have some ideas of where to start.”

Jayce gives him a long, complicated stare.

“And… if I do this, you’ll leave me alone?” he asks slowly. “Even if all this doesn’t end up working, if I do whatever you say, and tell everyone all your… your messages, you’ll leave me alone?”

Something like a shadow passes over Gabriel’s face, but it’s gone in a flash.

His head lolls back to stare back at Jayce.

“Sure,” he says.

It sounds empty. Easy but wrong, and twisted. Like cupped hands offering up water, but being bone-dry to the touch.

“Do you promise?”

“Yes, of course. Didn’t I always?”

“It won’t change anything for anyone, you know.”

“What won’t change anything?”

“Your messages.” Jayce’s skin vibrates with every word that slips out of his own mouth. “You’re still gone. It doesn’t matter what I say to anyone about it.”

“I’m still gone,” Gabriel echoes. “In this world, that’s true. I’m here, but I won’t be here forever. I can feel it.” He cocks his head at Jayce and smiles. “But in another world, who knows?”

His dark, curly hair ripples in the wind.

Jayce almost wants to reach out and touch it.

He can almost see Gabriel’s face again, like he does in his dreams—younger and sweeter and boyish, twisted with youthful joy.

In another world, who knows?

Hell if Jayce does.

Hell if he knows anything, anymore.

“I’ll do it,” he says.

Gabriel rockets forward, eyes wide in disbelief. “You’ll help me?”

“I’ll help you,” Jayce concedes.

And Gabriel Hernandez beams at him under the shine of the burning sun, bright as the star itself.

__

Thank you guys so much for reading!

Part 2 should be coming within the week :)