How To Disappear: Part Two

Part One:

-

“Jayce, you’re being ridiculous.”

Jayce doesn’t make excuses.

It’s starting to become exhausting to do so.

He doesn’t tell his mother about anything that happened yesterday, or today. He doesn’t mention the cigarette he smoked by the lake, or the way the fish glittered under the gleaming sun.

He doesn’t mention the boys in the locker room and what they talked about, or the way that damn therapist spoke to him, asking all the questions he can’t even bear to repeat in his own mind, or the way that his very school, all of a sudden, is seeming to radiate this strange aura, this dark, whispered sort of elation, that makes his skin crawl at the mere thought of it.

And he doesn’t tell her that he’s seeing a dead man walking wherever he goes—everywhere now, except at home.

Jayce doesn’t tell her about any of it.

He opts for, instead, lying down in bed and staring at his ceiling, not saying a word.

“Talk to me already, Jayce,” Ma says, more impatiently this time. Her foot is tapping the ground anxiously; Jayce can hear the soft sound of it beating rapidly against the carpet. “Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened, Ma.”

“Then why did I get a call this morning saying you threw a fit and stormed out of Mrs. Boone’s office?”

A black speck near Jayce’s middle lightbulb moves, suddenly and without warning—a skitter to the left.

“That was yesterday,” he says blankly.

“I know when it was, Jayce,” Ma says tightly. She closes his door behind them with a hard click. “You can’t be doing this.”

“Doing what?”

It’s a bug—a spider. Jayce can see all its little legs if he squints.

“Lashing out at people,” Ma accuses. “Shutting us all out. Lying. Skipping school, too? I mean, really? Because I got that lovely call today as well. This all seems like appropriate behavior to you?”

“There’s a spider on the ceiling,” Jayce says suddenly.

“Jayce—”

“I mean it. Right there, by the light. I just saw it move.”

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

Jayce straightens up, eyes still locked on the ceiling. The spider stays there, motionless. His hands scramble for a tissue. “Let me just—”

“Jayce, cut the bullshit,” Ma snaps. “Leave the fucking spider alone.”

Jayce’s hand freezes in midair.

“Just talk to me.” The pleading note in her voice turns Jayce’s mouth sour. “Tell me something, Jayce.”

“Or what?”

The moment the words leave his mouth, Jayce wishes they hadn’t.

“Or,” Ma says, dangerously calmly, “you’re going to be talking to Mrs. Boone again before you can even say Ma, fuck you.”

Jayce’s heart drops into the pit of his stomach. “I… I’m sorry.”

“I need something more than that, Jayce.”

Jayce closes his eyes.

He breathes in, holds it for a long moment, and exhales out of his mouth.

“I can’t stand being in that school anymore,” he says quietly. Ma’s eyes are intent on him, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “I hate everyone there. They’re all…”

Jayce gets this terrible feeling, all of a sudden, that he might cry.

“They’re horrible,” he finishes.

It comes out as a near whisper.

Ma notices the look on his face—because of course she notices.

She doesn’t say anything at first. She just lets out a long, tired sigh, her shoulders dropping, before walking forward and sitting at the edge of his bed, folding her hands in her lap.

“And you couldn’t talk to Mrs. Boone about that?” she asks softly. “You don’t think talking through why that is could help you at all?”

Jayce presses his head into his hands. “I’d rather talk to myself in the damn psych ward than talk to Mrs. Boone again, Ma.”

“You said the appointment went well.”

I lied.

“It went fine,” Jayce says pointedly. “I just didn’t like her.”

“Why not?”

“She had these little clocks all over the room. It was weird. And I think she was kind of a Jesus freak, too. She’d brought him up already in the first ten minutes.”

Ma just sits, and stares, and waits.

Jayce releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“She… talks at you,” he mutters. “With the questions. I barely had time to process what she was fucking asking. And she looked at me like… like I was damaged. Like she understood me so much after five goddamn minutes, when I’d barely even said a word. I hated that. And I hated her.”

“You don’t like anyone, Jayce,” his mother says, a bit tiredly.

A light sting.

“You would understand, Ma. If you were there, you’d understand.”

“Maybe.” Her hand lands heavily on his ankle, squeezing it insistently. “But you need to talk to someone.”

“But I’m really fine.”

“You aren’t fine. You need help. Someone to talk to.”

Jayce lets out a short, impatient breath. “You said I didn’t have to go back if I didn’t like her.”

“I want you to give her another chance, Jayce. Just one more. If it doesn’t work out, we can find someone else.”

A sudden rush of anger courses through him. “I’m not going back to that bitch therapist!”

Ma gives him a long, hard look.

The disapproval in her gaze makes his heart sink.

Jayce reaches up and rubs hard at his temples.

“I’m tired,” he mutters. “Can we talk in the morning?”

“Yes,” Ma says quietly. “We can do that.”

“Goodnight,” Jayce says, just as quietly.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Ma.”

Ma reaches out and cups his cheek before she stands up. “Rest up, sweetheart. For school,” she adds, the last word stated rather pointedly.

“I know. I’m going in tomorrow. I promise.”

“Damn right you are,” Ma says. She hangs onto the door a bit, her intense gaze fixated on his face. “You can always talk to me, Jayce. Always. About anything.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

Ma closes the door, and an empty sort of silence fills the room. Jayce’s head is throbbing, and exhaustion crashes down on him like a tidal wave.

The spider on his ceiling is still there when he closes his eyes.

-

Tonight, Jayce doesn’t run alongside Gabriel Hernandez in his dreams.

Tonight, he dreams of darkness.

He tries to remember how it felt to run, to sprint down a dirt path through the trees and laugh loudly and fully with his whole chest so hard his lungs hurt, but he can’t. Can’t move, can’t think, can’t even see. He’s stuck in it—the dark. In the limp, eternal hold of blackened silence, like staring out at the world with his eyes closed.

Within this space, he feels older, estranged, nearly decrepit. Those childhood memories seem years, centuries, millennia away. Insignificant. Fraudulent.

Nonexistent.

Nothing around him seems to be much of anything, anymore. He is there but barely, unmoving, paralyzed and without any soul. He is nothing, and feels close to it too. He can only feel the visceral reality of himself existing within his own body, stuck within the suffocating confines of his own skin.

He wants to get out. To rip him away from himself. He wants it so bad it hurts.

He feels the sensation of hands on his arms, fingers curled around them. It’s his own touch, he knows. He’s holding himself, clutching his own forearms, like he’s giving himself a desperate sort of hug.

He feels pathetic, clinging to himself like that.

Even so, he can’t quite bring himself to let go.

Even more so, he feels horribly, devastatingly alone.

And all he can see around him is that same pure, nearly endless darkness, with only the slightest flicker of light in the far off distance—a dim and waning gleam.

-

Jayce wakes up with a start, his heart pounding against his ribcage.

He feels sick to his stomach.

It isn’t a new feeling.

The time—7:38 a.m.—flashes at him from across the room.

Jayce closes his eyes, lets his chest rise and fall.

He doesn’t even have a moment to rest.

Heaving himself out of bed, Jayce manages to turn his brain off as he puts himself through the motions. Brushes his teeth, combs his hair. Yanks on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and slides into his sneakers before hoisting his schoolbag onto his back.

He reaches out and pulls his curtain to the side to look out at the sky.

It’s a fairly clear day, with only a few grayish clouds looming above. It’s been a bit chilly lately, even for early spring.

He’s just decided to leave his jacket at home when he catches a glimpse of something that makes him freeze.

Gabriel Hernandez is sitting cross-legged in his yard with his hands folded in his lap, staring right at him.

-

Jayce blinks at him.

Gabriel blinks right back.

Jayce lets the curtain fall back into place.

He stares at the red linen for a long, quiet minute before he wills his feet to move.

-

“Jayce?” his stepdad manages, probably through a mouthful of cereal, as Jayce’s feet bang down the stairs. He’s always fucking eating something. “You leaving?”

“Yes,” Jayce calls, snatching his hat from the shelf.

A gross, gulping noise, a hard swallow that sounds like a potentially escaped choking hazard, comes from the kitchen, before a rather hoarse, “See you later, kid.”

“Bye,” Jayce gets out through clenched teeth, slamming the door shut.

He doesn’t even bother locking the door.

-

“Finally,” is the first thing Gabriel says to him, as if this is just fine and dandy and all too fucking normal. His feet are all crossed in his stupid brown boots. “I was starting to think you might skip school again.”

Jayce fights to keep his voice even. “Why the fuck are you on my lawn?”

Gabriel make a gesture that’s a little too close to an eye roll for Jayce’s liking. “I just thought—”

“You thought what?” Jayce snaps.

“—that we’d go over the plan as we walk to school together.”

“The plan,” Jayce repeats. It’s all he can bring himself to do, at this point, to stay somewhat sane. “School. Together.”

Using the tree behind him for support, Hernandez gets to his feet.

Today, he’s in a fuzzy green shirt Jayce would never touch with a ten-foot pole, and baggy black jeans tied tight with a brown belt.

It’s such a genuinely Gabriel Hernandez outfit that it’s hard to believe he’s just a ghost.

Just a ghost.

Jayce feels vaguely nauseous again.

“Yes,” he says confidently, his pointed chin held high. “Together.”

—

Just like he had as a human, Gabriel Hernandez walks fast for a ghost. Jayce has to damn near jog in order to try and keep up with him.

Jayce’s house, and Gabriel’s by extension, is only about a seven minute walk from the school. It’s a shaded, peaceful trek on a dirt-streaked suburban sidewalk through the trees, where it merges all the way up and into the trail to Genevieve High: a wide and winding brick pathway, always packed to the brim with stalling students in the mornings, leading all the way up to the school’s doors, with several small brown benches scattered along the way.

“The first person we need to find is Mary,” Hernandez says matter-of-factly, turning his curly head to look back at Jayce. His brown hair rustles in the wind.

Jayce’s heart sinks in his chest at that. He side-steps a jacked football player in his class he forgot the name of just in time to avoid crashing into him. “Mary?”

“Mary Moore,” Hernandez clarifies. “My—”

“I know who she is.” Jayce lowers his voice as they pass two pretty brunette girls in ponytails, holding hands and talking to each other excitedly. “But you don’t have any bad blood with her, do you? What’s the point? Why waste time talking with her?”

“Because I have things to say,” Gabriel says simply. He squints around at the campus, as if he’s scouting her out. “And because she might be able to help us.”

“Help us?”

“If all you’re going to do is repeat me, Glenmoore—”

“You’re not going to tell her about any of this,” Jayce says, frowning. A girl in a blue tracksuit flips her long black hair as she passes them, and a strand tickles Jayce’s cheek. “Are you?”

“No, I’m not,” Gabriel agrees, and he arches a brow at Jayce. “You are.”

Jayce halts in his tracks.

“Excuse the fuck out of me?” he demands.

“You’re making a scene,” Hernandez says, a half-smile on his face.

Jayce glances behind him, where three nervous-looking freshman on a bench are staring at him like he has three heads.

Clenching his teeth, he rips forward, his hands clenched tight in his pockets.

“Let me get this straight,” he grits out. “I’m supposed to tell Moore that her best friend is a fucking ghost?”

“Yes,” Gabriel says, and upon seeing the look on Jayce’s face, he waves a hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you exactly what to say.”

Jayce gives Gabriel a disbelieving look. “You seriously think your friend’s crazy enough to believe any of this shit?”

“That I’m back from the dead, with my spirit unstuck in time and lost in space?”

“Uh, yes?”

Gabriel throws his face back towards the sun and smiles up at it.

“Absolutely,” he says.

—

They find Mary Moore by her locker on the fourth floor, looking rather forlorn as she rummages through her things for a textbook. She’s wearing a white sweater dress with a turtleneck, clunky black shoes, and a heavy-looking golden necklace. There are dark circles under her eyes, which are distinctly red-rimmed.

She looks exactly how Jayce feels.

Jayce, already feeling exceedingly awkward, opens an empty locker and pretends to look at something in it, peering discreetly around the door to watch.

Gabriel looks considerably more depressed standing in front of Mary than he did relaxing on Jayce’s lawn, or speed-walking on the path up to school. His brown eyes are big and sad, heavy with an emotion Jayce can’t quite name.

His stomach jolts unpleasantly as Hernandez reaches a hand out for her shoulder, hovering over it for a moment before he goes to grasp it.

Instead of touching her, his fingers curl onto nothing.

They pass right through her.

Gabriel’s hand falters almost helplessly, his black-nailed fingers lingering limply in the empty air.

It’s such a horrible thing to witness that Jayce almost wishes he hadn’t seen it.

Slowly, Gabriel turns from her back to him.

“I can’t touch her,” he says quietly.

As if it needs to be said.

Maybe it does.

Try again, Jayce finds himself wanting to say, wanting to snap, at Gabriel.

He doesn’t know why. It’s a ridiculous sentiment. He’s a ghost. He can’t touch people, not anymore. It isn’t possible.

It isn’t—

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

“Try again,” he says under his breath, still pretending to observe the empty locker he has open.

Gabriel stares at him. “What?”

“Try again,” Jayce whispers fiercely, right into the locker. His voice is barely audible, even to himself.

“Glenmoore, there’s no point. I knew there wasn’t. You’ll have to talk to her for me. I just…” He shakes his head, his big, sad eyes glued to Mary’s face. “I just wish she could feel me.”

“Just fucking try again, Hernandez,” Jayce hisses, louder this time. His head is damn near buried in the locker now, and it smells like shit.

Gabriel looks almost angry now.

In three long strides, he’s nearly nose to nose with Jayce.

“Why are you fucking with me?” he demands. “You think this is funny?”

It’s usually funny to Jayce, when someone considerably smaller than him comes up and tries to confront him. Nothing about this situation, though, is funny in the slightest.

Jayce pulls his head just far enough back out of the locker to look him straight in the eye.

“That girl loves you,” he snaps, and Gabriel’s eyes shoot open wide. “She went up to me at your wake and stood up for your fucking honor, asking me why the hell I was there, basically calling me a deadbeat loser of a friend, because she cares. She fucking loves you, and she misses you, and she respects you. And she’d do anything, anything, to fucking feel anything you have to give her. Anything. It’s so obvious that’s the case. And you’re just going to give up after one damn try? What are you, a fucking pussy?”

Gabriel is still for a long, silent moment before his eyes fill up with tears.

Jayce stares at him, his mouth agape.

Did he just make a ghost cry?

Worse than that—did he just make a dead kid’s suicide ghost cry?

Before he can think of anything to say, Gabriel cuts in. “You’re right.”

“I’m—what?”

“I said, you’re absolutely right, Glenmoore.” Hernandez straightens up, his shoulders lifted high. “Goddamn it. What the hell’s wrong with me?”

Jayce half-gapes at this new version of Gabriel, rejuvenated and reborn by his words.

“This is Mary,” he says emphatically, striding towards his friend. “It’s Mary.” A sort of hysterical laugh escapes him. “Of course she’ll feel me. I’ll make her feel me.” He takes another step towards her. “She’ll feel me, and she’ll hear you.”

And, with an air of the utmost confidence, Gabriel throws his arms around Mary Moore in a tight hug.

His arms close around thin air, holding nothing.

But Mary stops in her tracks, her back rigid, her eyes blown wide.


Her small, pale hand closes around her upper arm, atop the very ghost of Gabriel’s fingers, and she whirls her head around.

Her blisteringly blue gaze meet Jayce’s.

-

“Glenmoore?” Mary asks, her brow furrowed. Her eyes flicker over him, suspicion evident in them already. Her hand doesn’t move from her arm, as if she can feel the warmth of Gabriel’s flesh beneath her fingertips. “Your locker isn’t up here.”

Jayce opens his mouth to speak, before realizing he has absolutely no idea what to say.

“Get her alone,” Gabriel says to him, which doesn’t help in the slightest.

He looks like Christmas has come early, grinning down at his friend—right at her side, holding her without her knowing it.

“Can we talk?” is what Jayce decides to go with.

“I don’t know,” Mary says, somewhat flatly. “I’m not very interested in talking to you.”

Gabriel laughs out loud at that.

It’s a nice sound, even if it’s at Jayce’s expense.

“Classic Mary,” he says, all but beaming.

“Please,” Jayce says.

“It’s about me,” Gabriel says, smiling at her.

“It’s about Hernandez.”

Mary’s eyebrows raise. “What about him?”

Jayce gestures to the empty classroom next to her. “Can we talk alone?”

Mary gives him one last long, suspicious look before relenting. She reaches for the knob and pulls the classroom door open.

—

“So,” Mary says slowly, digesting Jayce’s words. She’s barely moved or even reacted since Jayce started talking, telling her everything. “Gabriel’s ghost is here at school.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the only one who can see and hear him.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not crazy—he’s really here,” Mary elaborates, before gesturing to her side with a hand. “Next to me. Right now.”

“Yes,” Jayce says a third time, much more confidently than he feels.

Gabriel is nodding rapidly alongside him like a bobblehead, silent but resolute, as if to reassure her.

“And he needs to resolve things with people in his life and find peace,” Mary concludes, “before he can move on for good.”

“That’s right.”

Mary takes a deep breath, in and out, before biting down on her lip hard.

“That’s…” she says, bringing a hand up to her head. “Well. I don’t… really know what to say.”

“It’s a lot,” Jayce says. “I know it’s a lot. And I know how fucking insane it sounds. But it’s true. I wouldn’t make up something this crazy.”

Mary’s eyes are closed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

“He’s really here,” Jayce insists, leaning on the desk behind him. “I swear it. Hernandez told me to go to you first. He said that you’d get it, that you’d understand—”

Mary interrupts him to ask, “Where is he?”

“Right here, Mar,” Gabriel says softly. His voice is so warm, so tender, that it almost aches to hear. “Right next to you.”

“Next to you,” Jayce translates. “To your right.”

Keeping her head level, Mary turns to her right, and she looks Gabriel in the face without seeing him.

Gabriel gazes right back at her, looking about one moment away from crying his eyes out.

But he doesn’t.

“Am I looking at him?” Mary asks quietly.

“Yes,” Jayce says, just as quietly. He takes a small step back.

“What is he wearing?”

“Nothing,” Gabriel says, his lips quirking up.

Jayce rolls his eyes at that. “Nothing, he says.”

“Idiot,” Mary says, her mouth twitching. She leans forward before saying, almost hesitantly, “Glenmoore giving you a hard time, Gabe?”

An almost knowing laugh slips from Gabriel.

He leans forward too, so that their noses are nearly touching. The sight is almost romantic. “What do you think?”

Mary smiles wide, as if she heard him say it.

“I’m doing what I can,” Jayce tells Gabriel, folding his arms.

Gabriel can’t seem to rip his eyes away from her.

“Glenmoore,” he says. “Can you tell her something?”

“He wants to tell you something,” Jayce says to Mary.

“Go ahead, Gabe,” Mary says easily, as if Jayce isn’t even there.

“I never should have left you alone.”

Jayce lets a second pass, then another, before he speaks. “He says, he never should have left you alone.”

“I don’t resent you for it,” Mary says, her pale blue eyes boring into Hernandez. “I knew how much you were struggling. More than anyone else, I knew.”

“You did,” Gabriel says softly. “You were always there for me.”

“He knows,” Jayce communicates. “You were always there for him.”

“So he should know that I understand it,” Mary says firmly. “And it fucking hurts, because of course it does. But I’m not mad at it. Or at you, Gabe. I never could be.”

“I fucking love you, Mary.”

Before Jayce can even voice it, Mary says, “Did he say he loves me?”

Jayce looks at her, mouth slack in surprise.

Mary smiles at Gabriel, and Jayce realizes with a start that she really does see him. Not physically, not now—not anymore. But she sees him, clear as day. Clearer than Jayce could ever see him; clearer than he’s ever seen anybody.

“I miss you,” she says, her voice cracking. “That’s all there is to say, really. I love you and miss you, and I hate that you had to go.”

“I hate it too, Mar,” Gabriel whispers. “I hate all of it. How it all turned out.” He shook his head, his eyes meeting Jayce’s. “Don’t tell her any of that. No more gloom. Tell her to be strong like she always is, and beautiful like she always is, and to keep her pretty head up high. And to show those motherfuckers hell when they try her.”

Jayce clears his throat awkwardly. “He says to… keep your head high, and stay strong. And show people hell, or something.”

“I will,” Mary agrees. “Of course I will.”

“Of course she will,” Gabriel says proudly.

“I wish I could hear you,” Mary says mournfully. “Just one last time.”

“I wish you could too, Mar. I don’t know why the hell—” Gabriel’s gaze flickers to Jayce. “I mean, I’m not sure why it’s Glenmoore and all who can hear me, and no one else. But he’s helping me, so I’m grateful.”

“He doesn’t know why it’s me who can help him,” Jayce paraphrases, narrowing his eyes at Gabriel. “He wishes it was you.”

This time, when Mary looks at Gabriel, there’s a strange look on her face.

“You don’t know why it’s Glenmoore?” she asks him, the words nearly aghast.

Gabriel stares back at her with a face like a blank slate.

Mary lets out a long exhale. “Oh, Gabe.”

“You know?” Jayce questions her skeptically.

Mary completely ignores him.

“It’s so obvious, Gabe,” she insists, leaning closer. “Come on. Think about it.”

“Can’t you just tell me?” Gabriel asks her, a little desperately. Confusion is set in the lines of his face, scrunching up his nose.

“Can you tell him?”

Mary’s gaze flits over to Jayce’s, just for a moment, before returning back to Gabriel.

“Not now,” she says, after a moment’s pause. “But if you still don’t know when it’s almost time to go, or if you need to know before you leave, come find me.”

“She’s so smart,” Gabriel says admirably, either to Jayce or to himself.

The school bell rings, signaling that it’s time for first period.

Jayce stands up straight. “Well?” he asks. “Everything resolved?”

“Everything’s resolved,” Gabriel agrees, a new sort of glow in his eyes now.

“I’m so glad,” Mary whispers. Jayce stares at her as tears begin to cascade down her face, mascara leaving black smudges on her cheeks, but she pays it no mind. Her eyes are locked on Gabriel, even still.

“I’m so glad,” she repeats, wiping her eyes hard. “I’m so, so glad I get to talk to you again.”

Gabriel’s crying too, now. Jayce watched him hold it on the whole time, and the minute Mary sheds a tear, he’s cracked like a dam.

“I fucking love you,” he says brokenly. “And I’m sorry.”

“He loves you,” Jayce tells her quietly. “And he’s sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Mary says fiercely. “You hear me? Absolutely nothing.”

Gabriel says nothing. He only drags his palms across his eyes and embraces Mary in one last hug.

“He’s hugging you,” Jayce says to her.

The smile on Mary Moore’s tear-streaked face is alight with nothing but love.

“I know he is,” she says, and her hands find the small of his back and rest there, as if holding him close.

—

Thank you guys so much for waiting and for reading! Let me know what you think :)

There will be a Part 3, and potentially a Part 4 too, because I can’t write a piece of fiction that isn’t a slow burn. I’m physically incapable of it.

♥️