Absent

9: NAMES

“DO YOU EVER HEAR PEOPLE SAY YOUR NAME?” I ASK BROOKE and Evan.

Mere feet away, the goalie paces from one end of the goal to the other. We’re in the soccer goal, right inside where the ball is kicked, Brooke stretched out long, Evan and I crouched under the drape of the net. The field is bald but for a few stubborn patches of ashen snow. The team is shivering, sweatshirt sleeves pulled over their hands. I can feel it, too, the cold, but it doesn’t chap or sting me. It’s as if I’m only imagining what it feels like to be cold, as if I’m only saying the word cold. It’s round in my mouth like a stone.

Shouts sail from the other end of the field, where the soccer ball dances between the feet of the eager players. I’m hoping the ball will stay over there. Brooke, however, likes it when the play comes this way. She rises and mimics the goalie’s movements, shifting behind him. If a kick gets by, she’ll pivot as if to catch the ball that he couldn’t. But, of course, it just punches through her gut and socks into the net behind her.

“Do people talk about me?” Brooke says. “Yeah, all the time. They say, ‘Brooke Lee is hanging around your boyfriend’ or ‘Brooke Lee has syphilis’ or ‘Brooke Lee is getting an abortion after school.’ ”

“I mean since you died.”

“In that case, it’s more like ‘Brooke Lee traded hand jobs for cocaine’ or ‘Brooke Lee snorted lines off the bathroom floor.’ ”

I look away guiltily. Usha and I used to say things like that about Brooke. Everyone did. Though that’s hardly a good defense.

“Do you mean just your name?” Evan asks. “Like someone is whispering it, but you don’t know who?”

I sit up on my knees. “You’ve heard it, too?”

“I used to hear it. Down the hall or just behind me. Evan, Evan. Really quiet. Almost too quiet to hear.” Brooke and I share a look. This is the most Evan has ever spoken about his death.

“Could you tell where it was coming from?”

“Not really. I heard it mostly right after I died, then less, then eventually it stopped. I haven’t heard it in years.” He looks away with a half shrug. “Honestly, I thought I’d gone crazy. Crazy enough to hear things, anyway.” He looks at me. “But you hear it? Your name?”

“Sometimes,” I say carefully. “One of the times, I thought it was Usha’s voice.” That’s what it had sounded like, that moment during the physics quiz when I’d plunged my hand into hers. It was the same whisper that she’d leaned over, desk to desk, and poured into my ear during class hundreds of times before.

When I climbed back up to the physics classroom, I tried to repeat what I’d done, to slip back into Usha’s body. I tried for the rest of the hour, but this time there wasn’t a bump; there wasn’t anything. My hands passed through her like she wasn’t even there, even though I knew it was me; I was the one who wasn’t there.

I’d tried it with other people to see if that might work—up and down the rows, even the stupid sub, even Kelsey Pope. Nothing. When the final bell had rung, I’d walked out into the busiest intersection of the hallways and let them walk through me, all of them—well-rounders, biblicals, testos, burners, and the rest. The waves of people marched through me, and I’d tried to re-create the feeling I’d had with Usha of something fitting into place, a seat belt clicking, a deadbolt turning. But at the end of it, they were a procession of ghosts, and I was standing alone in an empty hallway.

I hadn’t planned on hiding what had happened with Usha from the other dead kids until I found myself not telling them. But it was the right choice, I reassured myself. Brooke would have pestered me with questions, and Evan would have worried himself sick about the ramifications of it. And for what? Who even knew if I could do it again? I decided that I’d keep it to myself for now.

“Let me get this straight,” Brooke says. “You think Usha is sitting around chanting your name?”

“She’s not chanting my name,” I explain. “It’s like—”

“Like she’s thinking it,” Evan finishes, “and you can hear her thoughts.”

“Yeah. Exactly. Like she’s thinking it,” I say. “You’ve never heard it?”

“Do I hear voices calling my name? No.” But she rises and stands by the edge of the net, staring off into the field as if what we’re saying has bothered her somehow.

The sun is almost gone now, its last few rays skating along the flat field. The soccer players amble off in twos and threes, balls kicked out ahead to chart their trajectory, the lines all meeting back at the school. The school building looks small from out here at the edge of the field, like you could jump off it and stand up on the ground with a ta-da!

“Did she say anything else?” Evan breaks into my reverie.

“Who?”

“Kelsey Pope. Did she say anything else about you?”

“No. I . . .” Inhabiting Usha had made me clean forget about Kelsey and the suicide rumor. But then a thought punches through me, strong and quick as the soccer ball through Brooke’s gut: If I could mark Usha’s quiz score, what else could I do? Could I walk around as her? Could I say things as her? Could I use Usha to tell people that the rumor isn’t true?

I think of Evan’s words in the library: We can’t talk to anyone, can’t touch anything, can’t change anything. I smile because maybe now I can do all of those things.