Free Bridge: a shade short story by Jeri Smith-Ready

 
     
     
     
    Bridge
     
     
     
    Everyone knows
    Elvis died in the bathroom.
    Thanks to the internet,
    everyone knows
    that I did too.
    But at least I was wearing pants.
     
    My favorite Quiksilver cargo shorts,
    which I’ll wear every moment
    that I stay in this world.
    No laundry needed,
    because ghosts never sweat
    or piss
    or anything.
    I’m as dry as the bones
    crumbling in my casket.
     
    ♪
     
    “Must be nice,”
    Aura mumbles into her pillow
    when I tell her
    I’m going to meet George Clooney.
    That’s our code
    for “the beach,”
    because when lifelong Baltimoreans
    say “down to the ocean,”
    it sounds like,
    “Danny Ocean.”
     
    When we were kids,
    our gang of friends
    pretended we were in Oceans Eleven .
    My big brother Mickey was Clooney,
    and I was Brad Pitt.
     
    We’d stroll down the Ocean City boardwalk,
    not nearly as slick as we imagined.
    Our illusion of cool would crumble
    whenever Aura or anyone younger
    had to dodge the dead.
     
    “Post-Shifters,” they call themselves,
    the generation who sees ghosts.
    I’d be one
    if I’d been born two months later.
    I’m glad I wasn’t,
    since ghosts can’t see each other,
    not even the ghosts of post-Shifters.
    It was bad enough to lose the living
    without losing the dead, too.
     
    “Senior Week trip,”
    I remind Aura.
     
    She opens her
    espresso-drop eyes.
    And though the morning light
    washes out my violet glow,
    making me invisible,
    those eyes find mine.
     
    Aura never looks through me.
     
    She whispers, “Good luck,”
    and reaches out her hand.
    I cover it with my own,
    wishing I could hold it.
    I’d pull it to my lips,
    against my cheek,
    around my waist,
    down my back.
    Both hands
    squeezing,
    sliding,
    stroking.
     
    It never ends,
    this desire.
    Not for me.
     
    But Aura dreams of other hands.
    In her sleep
    she whispers his name.
    I wonder how much is hope
    and how much is memory.
    I don’t want to know.
    Because whether she sighs for the past
    or sighs for the future,
    she sighs for him.
     
    ♪
     
    “It’s sooooo hot.”
    My sister, Siobhan, winds her hair
    into a purple-streaked black knot,
    then cranks up the car’s air conditioning.
     
    I can’t feel the breeze,
    but the rattle and hum of the compressor
    sounds comfortingly normal
    to this paranormal dude.
    We’re stuck bumper to bumper on the
    Chesapeake Bay Bridge,
    just like old times.
     
    In the driver’s seat,
    Mickey turns the AC knob back down.
    “It spits out hot air
    when you put it on max.”
     
    Siobhan scuffs her Skechers
    against the Corolla’s frayed blue floor mat.
    “ When are you getting rid of
    this old piece of shit?”
     
    “When I can afford
    a new piece of shit.”
     
    She stretches her neck—
    a fiddler’s habit,
    but she does it when she’s stressed.
    Her mouth opens, ready to shout,
    “You can afford it!”
     
    But Mickey won’t spend a penny
    of what he calls my “blood money.”
    The millions our folks won
    from the record company,
    who sold me a dream
    and gave me the bullet
    that took my life.
     
    In the backseat beside me,
    Siobhan’s boyfriend, Connor,
    sleeps,
    lips pale and slack.
     
    “We deserved that money,” she tells Mickey,
    “for what they put us through.”
     
    “We deserve nothing.”
    Mickey’s voice is as flat as the farmland
    beyond the bridge.
    “We were supposed to take care of him.”
     
    (They won’t say my name.)
     
    “Stop punishing yourself.”
    Siobhan sounds too scared
    to be mad,
    which is saying a lot.
    “Please.”
     
    “Spend the money,” Mickey says,
    “if it makes you feel better.”
     
    Our sister’s eyes fill with tears,
    and I want to kill him.
     
    “I hate you,” she whispers to her twin.
     
    “I hate you too,” her twin whispers back.
     
    I want to wake Connor,
    tell him to make peace.
    That’s what bass players are for, right?
    But he hasn’t been
    our bass player
    since the night I died
    and killed the Keeley Brothers
    forever.
     
    As the car