Page 17 of All Her Ghosts

“Easier ways to get my shirt off, but if you wanna play doctor, a gentleman doesn’t kink shame.”

Despite the tightness in my chest, I laugh. “Stop, I’m serious.”

“Who says I’m not?” Glancing around, Bas plops down on a felled log and throws himself back like a damsel on a chaise lounge, a dramatic arm cast over his eyes. Not that it lasts long. He can’t resist checking my face to see if I’m laughing. Peeking under his sleeve, he blows me a kiss.

My chest creaks. My rib cage strains, holding back a stirring in that strange ocean. I breathe his name.

Something in the way I say it, and Bas softens. He sits up, face falling serious.

“Yeah, all right, if you want,” he says. “Doubt you’ll hear much, though.”

My stomach jolts, hope and dread warring for territory. I hold the stethoscope up to what cloud-dimmed light punches through the remaining leaves.

“Why, does this look broken to you?”

Bas shrugs. He tips his head at the mossy patch on the log beside him. “See for yourself.”

I hesitate at his tone. So solemn and…oldsomehow. Like he’s been here before and knows what will happen. But a small smile breaks across his face, and I grab the stethoscope, throwing myself down next to him.

It’s time to be brave, I remind myself. I’m done running.

Hyper-aware of his scent, the soft vibration of his gray hoodie against my corduroy jacket, I pincer the stethoscope into my ears, swallowing down the way my blood pounds when my hip accidentally brushes his.

Grin widening, Bas winks. I ignore him. Ignore my own flaming blush, too, my traitorous body burning white-hot all the way up to my hairline. I’d give anything for a breeze right about now, but the sky seems determined to spite me, clouds evaporating in a rare cascade of unimpeded sunlight, spilling down the back of my neck. Abruptly, the woods fill with birdsong. The leaves stir, trees sighing awake. The distant sound of traffic filters to us from far away, dregs from another world, the whisper of cars passing not unlike waves.

Swallowing, pretending my hands are shaking from the cold, I press the listener to his heart.

“You’re not going to hear anything through my hoodie.” Bas plucks the hem away from his body, holding it out. Stuck in the moment, I can’t move. My eyes fix on his, teeth clamped down on my inner cheek. I want to know, I do. Iwantthis. But I can’t help feeling like I’m standing with my toes curled over a high ledge. If I take this next step, I’ll plummet, and there’s no way back.

His fingers on mine lighter than a ghost touch, Bas takes my hand. He pulls it closer, hesitant, like he expects I’ll melt into the mist at any moment, salt-struck and hissing. God, maybe he’s right. Is this whatghosts feel like? This swelling tear inside my chest, the pulsing hum in my ears?

My world narrows to this singular moment, our hands doubled, his calloused fingertips guiding me through the interior of his clothing. Together, we press the listener into the skin of his bare chest, blazing with a feverish heat. I hear—

(A wall of flaming arrows loosed, hanging like stars over the open ocean—)

(A laden shroud deposited in sea-foam, a sleeping body headed home—)

(Reeds on a riverbank, the slow chuckle of an oar ceaselessly treading—)

Nothing.

That isnota heartbeat.

My eyes fly open, seeking his. Time loops around us, spiderwebbing outward. Bas stares, his night-sky eyes fixed on mine, patient as the sleeping earth, an emotion in his gaze so huge and vast and ancient I don’t know its name.

My thoughts break. I shatter. For a second, I’m everywhere and nowhere, too big for my body, my soul another lost leaf in the wind. Except, Iamthe wind. I am the leaves, the soil, the sleeping roots. I am—

My chest seizes, shattering into coughing. The moment breaks. I slam back into my body, bent over and hacking up an inconvenient lung. I sink my fingernails into rotting bark to ground myself, blushing hard. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Don’t know what weird fantasy worlds my broken brain keeps escaping into. Time didn’t freeze. And Bas isn’t anything stranger than a teenage boy regretting his decision to skip class with the new weirdo—

Except he closes his fingers over mine again, pries the stethoscope from my numb fingers, and presses the flat of my palm to the silentplace where I should have heard his heart beating. Where I should feel it beating now, his pulse point utterly silent beneath my fingers.

“Told you,” he says, barely more than a whisper. “Us dead kids gotta stick together.”

I… don’t know what to do with this. Swallowing hard, I choke down something worse than butterflies rioting in my—apparently empty—rib cage. This is crazy.I’mcrazy. I search his eyes, the lines of his mouth, the place where his nose wrinkles when he laughs, waiting for the joke, the punch line, the insult, anything. Because of course he has a heartbeat. Nobody just doesn’t have a heartbeat.

I force a smile, but it shivers flat.

“So it is broken,” I mutter. I pull my hand out from under his, shove the stupid tool deep into my carpetbag where I don’t have to keep looking at it.