Page 90 of Ghosted

I tell myself I’m staying because Johnny could come back. Because her lock is shit. Because the stairs are loud. Because someone needs to be here.

All true, just not the whole truth.

The whole truth is that Alice is on the other side of that door, alive and too quiet, and I can’t make myself walk away.

So I sit there in the hall, bleeding through my tape, staring at nothing, knowing I’ll stay all fucking night.

8

JOHNNY

MAKE ME, LITTLE BROTHER

My little brother doesn’t come looking for me right away, which is rude as fuck considering the amount of effort I put into ruining his night.

I gave him the cage, the crowd, the photos, Alice’s name in my mouth like a lit match, and proof pressed against the chain-link right where he couldn’t ignore it. I watched Wraith, Brockville’s quiet little murder machine, turn ugly in front of everyone.

No sign of his usual patience or control. Just pretty violence and rage with fists.

It was fucking gorgeous.

For about five minutes.

Then he left the warehouse and went to her.

Not me.

Her.

That’s the part that crawls under my skin and stays there. Jagger wanted me dead last night. I saw it in his face. I put that here, handed him every reason to come here and put my head through a fucking wall, and still, before revenge, my little brother went to make sure his precious Ghost Girl was breathing.

Interesting.

But also fucking unacceptable.

You see, curiosity is a terrible fucking disease, and I’ve had it since birth. When he didn’t show up by midnight, I took a little stroll past her building and saw him from across the street, through the second-floor window, sitting outside her door like a dog too vicious to let inside but too loyal to leave.

That image has been sitting in my head all morning.

Naive fuck probably thought he was being knightly. That the gesture was romantic. It’s not. It’s pathetic in that special Jagger way, all clenched fists and devotion he’ll pretend is strategy.

But thats not what bothers me. What bothers me is he chose her first.

That means she’s no longer just a button I can press when I want him angry. She’s becoming something with weight.

Something that changes the order of things between my dear baby brother and I.

And I really fucking hate when people move pieces on my board without asking.

I’m in the kitchen when he finally pounds on my door hard enough to shake the frame.

The building is quiet this early. Converted historical bullshit. Old brick, shiny floors, and spoiled rich kids pretending they’re not living off their parents’ money.

My apartment isn’t huge, but it’s too nice for me and just fucked-up enough to feel honest. Black leather couch. Curtains half closed. Records stacked by the turntable.

A bottle of expensive Scotch sits on the counter beside cheap cigarettes, which probably says enough.

My butterfly knife is open next to the ashtray because I used it to cut an apple last night and didn’t bother putting it away, or maybe I liked it there.