You’ll Never Get Away

MY ROOMMATE, SWEENEY, YELLS FROM THE KITCHEN, “Motherfucker, get in here!”

He sounds like my dad, or maybe that he thinks he’s my dad, even though he’s younger than me and can’t grow a beard. I walk toward the kitchen and the hardwood floors creak with every step, and in the doorway between the library and the kitchen, there are a couple of loose floorboards that make it feel like you’ll fall through to the basement. That’s where I stop. On the part where it feels like I might fall at any moment.

I say, “Ghosts again?”

Sweeney says, “Shut the fuck up, motherfucker. The house isn’t fucking haunted. Stop saying that.”

He’s on a real motherfucker kick lately.

I look at him like he’s crazy and say, “Claire’s dead, dude. Everywhere is haunted.”

Before we go any further—here are three things you need to know about Claire:

1. She looks like the kind of girl who has ivy hanging in her bedroom.
2. She knows more about glow in the dark stars than you ever will.
3. If she could steal any animal from the zoo; she’d steal a mouse.
4. The last thing I ever texted her was, “People are always saying shit like, ‘then like a ghost she was gone,’ but the real truth is ghosts have to stay forever; only humans get to leave.”

Yeah, you’re right I said it was three things and gave you a list of four, and yeah that last thing wasn’t really about Claire as much as it was about me. Right again.

Sweeney says, “The rat is back in the sink.”

Apparently, we’ve left my mind and returned to the kitchen with Sweeney. He’s holding a fly swatter or a spatula in one hand, and a Wawa plastic bag in the other. He’s wearing his high school lacrosse helmet.

I look him up and down, then say, “Why are you wearing your lacrosse helmet, dude?”

He points at the sink with his spatula hand and says, “Motherfucker, deal with it. It’s your turn.”

Here are two things you need to know about the red house on Levering Street:

1. It’s haunted.
2. We have a mouse problem.
3. We call the mice rats.
4. We take turns killing the rats, because when I kill the rats I capture them in a bag and throw them into our neighbor’s backyard. When Sweeney kills the rats he bashes open their skulls and flushes their corpses down the toilet.
5. We call the mice rats because mice remind me of Claire.
6. Claire didn’t die here. She died in Colorado.
7. That doesn’t mean her ghost isn’t here.
8. Or maybe not her ghost, but a ghost that knows her.

Yeah, I said a list of two and gave you eight. Deal with it.

I’m in the kitchen again, out of my mind and I inch toward the sink and say, “Is he trapped in there?”

Sweeney says, “Yeah, dude, capture him or I will break his stupid fucking face.”

I inch closer and see the rat looking up at me. Its eyes are so big they take up half her face. I say, “It’s a girl.”

Sweeney inches closer and says, “How do you know?”

I stare at her grey body, so small she could fit in a straw. Well, not that small, but still very small. Little pink ears. Tiny pink feet. I say, “I can just tell.”

I can hear him rolling his eyes. He says, “Dude, get it together.”

I stare into the rat’s eyes, black as obsidian. No, black as tar. No, black as the love child of Voldemort’s soul and the mold growing in the second floor bathroom. Eyes so black that when I look into their depths I can see beyond time.

Sweeney says, “Fuck it,” and slaps his spatula into the sink.

The rat dodges left, ducks right, and crawls down the drain.

I grab Sweeney and say, “What the fuck, dude. It’s my turn.”

He pushes me off him and says, “Dude, she was getting away.”

That sentence somehow sends me spinning back into imagination land. Here are the first three things I think:

1. I know I’m acting crazy, but that’s what happens when you fall in love with a girl on a ski trip and she’s got black hair as black as a black hole. Then the ski trip’s over and you’re back home in Philly and you talk every day, like constantly, weeks, months, talking everything. Talking dinosaur gods, and which plants look best dead and how old we were when we lost our last tooth. Talking how to steal animals from the zoo, and sad music, and glow in the dark stars, talking and talking. Until one night, well one night I ask her about the first time she saw a ghost and next thing I know it’s two in the morning and she’s telling me about the ghost’s teeth, and it’s eye sockets and how it fed on the clothes that no longer fit her. Then, it’s 2:22 exactly, like it means something and she’s not texting me back, she’s not texting me back, she’s not texting me back, and then a day later, two days later, a week later—“This is Claire’s sister. She committed suicide. Stop texting her phone.”

I know I said I’d give you three things, but one was enough.

We’re back in the kitchen and Sweeney is turning on the water, and saying something about the garbage disposal. I’m saying, “Fuck you.” Sweeney is pushing me off him and I’m saying, “Fuck you.” Sweeney is on the ground and yelling, and I’m saying, “Fuck you.”

Then a glass hits my head and I’m falling to the ground, and there’s salty blood in my eyes and I’m not sure what I did, or what I was thinking, or where I am. Sweeney is standing up and he’s turning on the garbage disposal, and I’m screaming. Or maybe I’m not the one screaming, maybe it’s the rat. Maybe it’s Claire.