Mine Hill, NJ

“It was a dark and stormy night at an old house, there was a long hallway upstairs with a warped—”

“Stop it. I don’t want to listen to something like that while we’re here. My house already makes me feel like someone else is living there. I would rather hear one of those romance stories you’re always reading.”

The moon was high and the gravel made a crushing sound under her feet as they walked.

He moved closer to her because, in all honesty, stuff like that scared him. She kissed his upper arm. She kissed it again and then gave it one more little peck.

The air was hot, humid, and still to the point that it coated her lungs. She broke out with coughing from time to time.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” She spoke hoarsely, cleared her throat and then, “What if we get there and someone is there?”

“I told you to stop it. I really don’t want to think about stuff like that.” He knitted his brow and talked a little more tersely to her.

“Okay…well…don’t be mad at me. I won’t anymore. It’s just that they say ghosts come out with the full moon and stuff…”

“Come—”

“I know! I’m—”

“—on!”

“—scared! I’m just trying to keep things light or else I really will jump over nothing.” She kissed his arm again.

His shoulders dropped and he huffed. They had gone walking like this every night for the past few weeks, but she had forgotten to bring her flashlight with her this night. Not really though, she had thought a moonlit walk alone with him would be romantic.

“It might rain tomorrow…” she was trying to change the subject. “I’m probably…going to stay home tomorrow…”

“Okay.”

“Is that fine with you?”

“Yeah, why would I want to be out here in the rain?”

“Idk, the first time you walked by my house, you were walking through the rain at night…”

“I was just heading home drunk.”

“Okay…” she trailed off, thinking of anything else to talk about, and then exclaimed. “Oh! I got a new dress the other day!”

“Okay.”

She gave him a pouty look. What were men that they asked for no details about anything? “Hmph!”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

He looked at her confusedly. “What?”

She thought for a second. “Have you really not dated a lot of people before me?”

He blushed.

“Or, like, any?”

“No.” His voice came out quietly. He was slightly embarrassed to admit such a thing.

“Well, I got paid on Friday and headed over to that exhibit in Brooklyn.”

“Well, was it good?”

“Yeah, I bought one of those limited edition museum reusable bags. And I got into the mood of, ‘I bought one thing and I want to shop now.’” She looked up at him and laughed. “So, I kind of blew it all on this white tiger print, camisole dress. Idk, I think I’ll get some thermal tights so I can wear it in autumn, too. Just throw a sweater over it or something.”

“It sounds fun.”

“Yeah, I went to this Georgian restaurant afterward. They had this eggplant thing with nuts wrapped inside. It was really good.”

There was a pause in the conversation and the sound of frogs and her walking beside him made for a comfortable silence. Though, it wasn’t as agreeable to her.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked.

“No.” He said, “I was thinking maybe we could do something like that together next time.”

She blushed. “If you could do that,…I’d like that, if you really wanted to, I wouldn’t mind.”

He smiled. The gravel path ended and they were maybe half a kilometer away from her house.

She laughed.

“What?”

She smiled up at him. “I wouldn’t mind even if everyone stared at us.”

“Why would they?”

“Ha! Don’t look at me that way! I like you a lot, but I mean, well, isn’t it obvious? You’re—oh!” She looked down at her shoulder, wiped her hand against the faint ghost of a raindrop that had landed there, and looked up at the sky. He looked up, too. Clouds were beginning to settle in. “It’s starting to rain.” She turned back to him and, with a look of mild surprise, thoughtlessly declared, “It really is a dark and stormy night.”

“No.”

“Wait—! Sorry! I didn’t mean to say that!—I—”

“No—, it’s fine. I know you didn’t mean to say it.” There was silence for a moment. He thought for a moment. “Is there something wrong with how I look? Are you saying I would not fit in in that place?”

“No, it’s not that.—Or maybe,—I don’t know.—Maybe you wouldn’t, but if there’s a day you could go—that worked for you I would go. I just don’t know if you’d want to—maybe, I guess, it would be easier at night, but some of the museums and stuff close early, but maybe later in the afternoon—“ she was babbling to herself. “would work?”

His girlfriend was weird. She was eccentric and every once in a while, grew a little more so. The first time he met her, she was hanging onto a low branch, using it as a ballet barre, dancing under the full moon.

After their first meeting, he would find his Sugar Plum Fairy wandering around in the woods, utterly lost and trying to find her way to him. Her sense of direction was terrible, but maybe it was easier for him to find her home because he had passed it on the way to the mines ten thousand times before she had even moved in there.

“We could go on a weekend,” he cleared his throat. Were they not really dating? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t get it. She had asked him. He rubbed his face and felt the crater marks. He looked at that mochi smooth face. Was she ashamed to be seen with him? He had never met any of her friends or gone anywhere with her except for walks about these wooded hills. “So, your job,—a day you weren’t working, so we could go early—!” He was blushing. He was babbling now and the truth came pouring out. “Do you think I’m a country bumpkin? Do you not want to be seen with me?”

“No. I do, but—”

“Am I your boyfriend?”

“Yes—!”

“Then just say it. What is it? Why don’t—” A thought struck him like a bolt. She jumped at the sudden sound of thunder. “Do you have another boyfriend out there?”

“No.” The great sound of rain right before it hits you surrounded them and then it all began to pour out of him; as it always did when he was in a mood like this...

“Then what? Do you think I’m ugly?”

“What?” She screwed up her face as she got soaked. “No—” She deflated.

He stopped to look at her. “What? Just tell me.” There was a pause between them. She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “I think I’m falling in love with you. I’ve never done this before and I think I love you more than you do me.”

She opened her mouth again, but he didn’t let her speak. “Come on, I actually don’t want to talk about it right now. I know I said I was going to take you home, but we’re most of the way there and I really just want to head back.”

“Okay.” She was crying in the rain. He stared at her as she snottily inhaled and rubbed at her eyes. “Are we gonna see each other tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I have to see how I feel.”

She was a little like myself when I was young; in love with a guy, who, when he was mad, became a bit of a temperamental, emotional bully.

She sucked in her snot. He thought for the first time that she was a little unattractive. “I’m going to head home. I’ll see you…—soon. I just want to think about things first and I don’t want to hear a bunch of barking when I take you to your door.”

He turned around and headed home, not a step was audible. He remained wholly dry as the rain fell through him, disappeared when the lightning flashed, and illuminated the woods surrounding them.

She covered her head. It was no use rubbing her eyes anymore, the rain was too heavy. It was waterfalling into her eyes to the point of irritation.

How was she supposed to tell him? She didn’t know how he would take her telling him he was a ghost. Sometimes she thought he knew, but he wasn’t saying anything because he thought she didn’t know. Other times, she thought he really didn’t know.

Would he still want to date her then? When he knew? And what was she supposed to tell him?

‘Oh! I waffle outside your house because you’re dead and I don’t want to wake the family that lives in your old house up in the middle of the night!’ or should she tell him, ‘Oh, I know you don’t take even the smallest things well, but, well, surprise! You’re dead!’

She ran the final bit of the way home. The wind started picking up and the chime over her door was clanging like crazy. She pulled her keys out and unlocked the door.

The excited sound of scrambling claws against the floor and barking greeted her as she walked through the door.

She called out, “Zhucka! Dumpling! Cherubski! I’m home!”

Zhucka, her Irish Wolfhound, was bounding towards her, wildly, and Dumpling, her old pug, with his graying little muzzle and worsening arthritis was cutely wagging his tail in that modest and adorable way that old dogs do. He waddled in behind Cherubski, her oinking and portly teacup pig with his small, curly, and quickly wagging tale.

They were petrified of the floating specter that would often kiss their best friend at the door and they were relieved when they saw he was absent.

Zhucka’s tail was going crazy and as he put his paws on her shoulders, she thought:

‘If only my dogs and Cherubski were ghost people, things would be so much easier.’