The Things Death Couldn't Take

The first thing I learned about being dead was that nobody could hear me scream.

The second was that nobody could hear me laugh, either.

And somehow, that was worse.

My name was Melissa Wang. I was seventeen years old when I died, and I've been seventeen for the last forty-three years.

I don't remember dying.

I remember the rain. I remember running down the stairs, my mother's voice calling after me. I remember being angry about something that seemed terribly important at the time.

Then nothing.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing in my bedroom.

My mother was sitting on my bed, crying.

I tried to hug her.

My arms passed straight through her.

At first, I thought I was dreaming. I shouted her name, waved my hands in front of her face, even threw myself against the bedroom door.

Or tried to.

I went straight through it.

For three days, I followed my mother around the house, begging her to look at me.

On the fourth day, she packed my clothes into cardboard boxes.

On the fifth, she left.

And I stayed.

That's another thing nobody tells you about being a ghost.

The world keeps moving, even when you don't.

Forty-three years is a long time to spend in one house.

I've watched wallpaper peel, floorboards rot, and families come and go.

The first family had two children who fought constantly. The second had a dog that could see me. His name was Biscuit, and he barked every time I entered a room.

I liked Biscuit.

The third family was an elderly couple who barely spoke. Sometimes, the husband would sit in the living room and stare at the empty chair across from him.

I sat there often.

I don't think he knew.

Eventually, the house stood empty for seven years.

Those were the worst.

I spent my days counting cracks in the ceiling and trying to remember the sound of my mother's voice.

That's the cruelest part of death.

You don't forget everything at once.

You forget in pieces.

First, the smell of your favorite food.

Then the melody of a song you used to love.

Then the exact shade of your mother's eyes.

Until one day, you realize you remember loving someone more clearly than you remember the person themselves.

I was beginning to forget my own face when the little girl moved in.

Her name was Amrita.

She was eight years old, with tangled brown hair, mismatched socks, and a habit of talking to herself.

Her father carried the furniture inside while she explored the house.

I watched her from the top of the stairs.

"Hello," I said automatically.

She stopped.

Looked up.

And smiled.

"Hi."

If I'd had a heartbeat, it would have stopped.

I stared at her.

She stared back.

"Can you see me?" I whispered.

She tilted her head.

"Of course."

I nearly cried.

Well, I tried.

Ghosts can't cry. Not properly.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Melissa."

"That's a pretty name. I'm Amrita."

"I know."

She frowned. "How?"

"I heard your dad calling you."

"Oh." She considered this. "Are you a ghost?"

I nodded.

"Cool."

I laughed for the first time in forty-three years.

Amrita and I became friends.

Every afternoon, she'd come home from school, drop her backpack in the hallway, and run upstairs to tell me about her day.

She told me about spelling tests, mean classmates, and a boy named Xin who kept stealing her pencils.

I told her about the world before cell phones, about music on records, and about how people used to memorize their friends' telephone numbers.

She thought that was ridiculous.

Sometimes, we'd play hide-and-seek.

I always won.

"That's cheating!" she'd shout when I floated through a wall.

"Being dead has very few advantages," I'd reply.

She'd laugh until her cheeks turned pink.

For the first time since my death, I didn't dread the mornings.

I waited for them.

But something strange began happening.

Whenever Amrita touched my hand, I could feel it.

Only for a second.

A tiny flicker of warmth.

The first time it happened, I pulled away in shock.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said.

But it wasn't nothing.

For forty-three years, I'd felt nothing.

No cold.

No warmth.

No pain.

And now, somehow, I could feel her.

One November evening, Amrita came upstairs quieter than usual.

She sat cross-legged on the floor beside my old bed.

"Melissa?"

"Yes?"

"Do you miss being alive?"

I looked toward the window.

Outside, rain tapped against the glass.

"Every day."

She nodded slowly.

"Do you miss your mom?"

The question hurt in a way I hadn't thought possible anymore.

"Yes."

"Where is she?"

I hesitated.

"I don't know."

Amrita looked down at her hands.

"My mom died last year."

I knew, of course. I'd heard her father crying at night. I'd seen the photograph he kept beside his bed.

But Amrita had never spoken about her.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Do you think she's a ghost too?"

"Maybe."

"Do you think she's lonely?"

I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to promise that her mother was somewhere beautiful, somewhere warm, somewhere that smelled like fresh bread and summer grass.

But I didn't know.

So I told her the truth.

"I think," I said carefully, "that if she's anywhere at all, she's loving you."

Amrita wiped her eyes.

Then she reached for my hand.

And this time, I felt her fingers wrap around mine.

Not for a second.

Not for a flicker.

I felt her.

Completely.

And suddenly, the room changed.

The walls shimmered.

The old wallpaper returned, yellow flowers blooming across the plaster. My childhood books appeared on the shelf. The broken mirror above my dresser became whole.

And standing in the doorway was my mother.

Not old.

Not sad.

Exactly as I remembered her.

"Melissa," she said.

Her voice.

Oh, her voice.

I'd forgotten it.

I'd spent decades trying to remember, and now it was here, as familiar as breathing.

"Mom?"

She smiled.

"I've been waiting for you."

I looked at Amrita.

She was still sitting on the floor, but she was staring at the doorway too.

"Who's that?" she whispered.

"My mother."

Amrita smiled.

"She's pretty."

My mother held out her hand.

And somehow, I understood.

I'd spent forty-three years believing I was trapped in that house because I'd died there.

But that wasn't true.

I'd stayed because I was afraid.

Afraid of what came next.

Afraid that if I left, everything I'd ever loved would disappear forever.

And now I knew.

Love didn't disappear.

It waited.

I turned to Amrita.

"I think I have to go."

Her smile faded.

"Will you come back?"

I knelt beside her.

"I don't think so."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"But you're my friend."

I reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face.

For one beautiful moment, I could feel the softness of it.

"And you're mine."

She threw her arms around me.

I hugged her back.

A real hug.

The first in forty-three years.

"Will I see you again?" she whispered.

I looked at my mother.

Then back at Amrita.

"Someday," I said. "But not for a very, very long time."

She nodded against my shoulder.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

I don't know how to describe what happened next.

There was no tunnel.

No blinding light.

No choir of angels.

There was only my mother's hand in mine.

And the feeling of finally going home.

But before I left, I looked back one last time.

Amrita was standing at the bedroom window, waving.

I waved back.

Then the house, the rain, and the little girl disappeared.

Twenty years later, Amrita returned to the house.

She was twenty-eight now, with her own little girl holding her hand.

The house was old and empty again, waiting for someone to love it.

"Mama," her daughter asked as they climbed the stairs, "why did you want to come here?"

Amrita smiled sadly.

"Because I had a friend who lived here once."

"Where is she now?"

Amrita looked toward the bedroom doorway.

"Somewhere good, I hope."

Her daughter nodded, then skipped into the room.

A moment later, she stopped.

"Mama?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"There's a lady by the window."

Amrita froze.

"What lady?"

"The one with the pretty dress."

The little girl waved.

"She says hello."

For a long moment, Amrita couldn't move.

Then she smiled through her tears.

"Tell her," she whispered, "that I never forgot her."

And somewhere beyond the walls of that old house, beyond the years and the distance between life and death, I heard her.

Of course I heard her.

Love, after all, was the one thing death had never managed to take from me.