CASPER

Here’s something the doctors don’t tell you—the heart bleeds. The same way words can cut, the heart can bleed without actually bleeding at all. It’s a phantom leakage, a different pain to heart break. A bleeding heart is one a slow numbness and fatigue. You feel the slightest puncture somewhere in your chest and before you know it, you’re cold all over.

Casper had been cold for days. Despite the horrid spring heat, despite the humidity and sweat—he’d been cold ever since he got the call telling him his best friend was dead. Since he opened the door to Will’s house and had Freya Rigby cry over his shoulder. He’s gone. He’s gone. My baby. 

Casper didn’t think his body could get any colder without completely shutting down, didn’t think he could possibly feel any worse looking at that grim casket knowing Will’s body was in it, trapped, decomposing.

But then Nathaniel Fife started playing the violin, and it was like an arctic breeze had just blown in through the non-existent windows and sunk straight into his bones.

Because of course he played the fucking violin.

Of course he did.

Musicians were a rarity in Venoir, especially in the North. Casper didn’t know and didn’t want to know how and why Nate learnt to play the violin, nor did he want to know how Freya got a hold of him to do it.

The sound swept across the stifling church like a breath of fresh air, each note resonating. Casper didn’t recognise the sad piece of music, but it didn’t matter. He’d started crying in the middle of the eulogies, and now he couldn’t stop. There was a part of him that almost wanted to laugh. If only Luka were here right now, if only Will knew that Nathaniel Fife would be playing violin at his funeral. He imagined himself knocking on Will's casket, hey, Will, wake up, you don't want to miss this. 

Nate Fife had been the trio’s own little inside joke. Now, Casper was the only one alive to laugh about it. Ironic, really. 

It didn't surprise him that Nathaniel played the violin the same way he did everything else; like his heart wasn’t in it, like he’d rather be somewhere else—like he wasn’t there at all. And yet there was a grace to his movement, a grace to the way the stain glass colours bounced off his cheeks, his hair.

Casper hated it. He hated that someone like Nate, with all the emotional prowess of an emotional anorexic could move him to tears—move an entire crowd to tears.

Casper couldn’t wait for the funeral to be over, yet he hated that it was ending. He was getting all kinds of random, irritating thoughts in his grief. 

They wouldn’t do an open casket funeral. Freya hadn’t seen her son’s body. And neither had Casper. He didn’t know how to feel about that, because now he was trying to remember what it was that Will looked like the last time he saw him, what were his last words to him, what were you wearing? Did they change your clothes before shoving you into that boring casket you would’ve hated?(Casper could hear him now, black? Just plain black? I want colours, galaxies, I want to be buried with the stars, Casp. Where’s the pizazz?)

He was relieved when Nate stopped playing, angry that he'd left right after like it was all he'd been there for--to show off and leave--such an asshole thing to do. 

After that, Casper couldn't stop question how he felt. How was he supposed to feel when they watched the casket go six-feet under? Was the right answer to feel the temptation of jumping right in there with him? Was it to feel like he were drowning? 

How was he supposed to feel when Freya handed him her son’s gas mask and told him to keep it, that she knew Will would’ve wanted him to have it? Was it pathetic of him to cry the way he did? Should he have said something more meaning to her? Held himself up like a man? No, today of all days he thought he was allowed to be broken.

Casper stared at the mask on his way home, stared at it as the Skyway cart rocked back and forth. He ran his fingers absently through the worn maroon leather, remembering how much he’d envied Will this gas mask. Casper liked the colour, the soft elastics, in comparison to his bulky archaic one. Will had promised to give him it when they were younger.

“You can have it when I’m dead.”

Fuck you, Will. Why would you remember such a stupid, insignificant thing? Why would you remember this but not the fact that you promised you’d find Luka? The you promised road trips, promised to mention Casper in the acknowledgments section of your first novel? Where are those promises now, Will?

Apparently, dead with the casket they buried him in. Casper knew he shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but God, Will was a dick for leaving him behind like this.

The house was barely lit when Casper arrived back home, but he knew his mother was home when he stepped through the door and smelled something baking in the oven. He didn’t have to speak. He’d barely taken off his shoes when his mother appeared in the doorway and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes.

Casper broke.

“Oh, honey.” She hugged him the same way he’d hugged Will’s mother at the funeral, like he shattered and she was trying to keep him together in her arms. Suddenly he was six years old again, crying into her chest because there was no Christmas tree in the living room. Now he was a foot taller than his mother. Casper wondered how much taller Will was compared to his mother, wondered how long it’d been since Will had last hugged Freya like this. “I’m so sorry.” She said it like she knew he was sick of hearing it, but had to say it anyway. Casper shook his head, not trusting himself to speak just yet.

His mother was still in her uniform that came infused with the smell of barbecue no matter how many times she washed it. It was late. Nearly midnight.

His parents had wanted to take time off work to go to the funeral, but after many calculations and denied offers to swap shifts around, they couldn’t chance it—not with the bills, the debt. Tax was high even in the South Venoir thanks to ventilation costs. Only in Venoir do you have to pay to breathe clean air.

“I’m okay,” Casper said, though his voice broke terribly. His mother smiles a little at his effort and wipes the tears off his cheeks.

Casper didn’t remember stepping in a puddle on the way here, but his socks were wet when he slipped off his shoes. The way here from the church had been a blur. Somehow he’d managed to get three buses, a skyway cart and pass the border on autopilot. Considering he was numb from the neck down and could barely open his eyes without his eyelids throbbing, he thought he’d done pretty well.

Casper caught his mother checking behind him, as though expecting someone else to walk through the door. He knew who, but didn’t comment.

“Is Dad back?” Casper dragged himself into the kitchen, where a sweet potato pie sat steaming on the kitchen island. Casper could smell it from here, and even though his stomach was empty, the fatigue somehow convinced him he didn’t need feeding.

“He’s out cold in his room. He wanted to wait for you but…I guess the late shifts are catching up to him.”

Casper nodded. His dad worked as a cleaner, though if anybody asked, he was a civil servant. Servant being a grimly accurate word for it, considering his dad spent twelve hours a day doing heavy labour and either came home smelling like week-old waste or sewage.

The Adams lived in the South, only a few blocks away from the Northern border because their financial situation wouldn't allow them an inch in the North. But if there was anything they weren’t willing to compromise, it was Casper’s education and wellbeing. Despite barely being able to keep over their heads, despite the stress, the expenses, Casper’s parents wanted what was best for their children, and they were adamant that the North was how he was going to get it, even if it meant working extra hours just to pay for Casper’s travelling expenses. Sometimes Casper wished his parents didn’t love him so much. Maybe then they’d love themselves better than this.

Casper worked at a mask maintenance store in the South but went to school at Richmond North. He earned a pretty penny being the school’s photographer, but he figured that job went to flames along with the school.

The living fuck were you thinking, Will?

Casper kissed his mother on the cheek and dragged himself to his room, one soggy foot at a time.

The darkness in his bedroom was welcoming, but the stuffiness wasn’t. Casper pattered about to turn the fan on and managed to swap out of his father’s suit for his work overalls. He changed his socks for a drier pair and finally braced himself to turn the desk lamp on.

He knew what to expect, but seeing it hurt all the same. The light illuminated the rows and rows of photos stuck to the walls, to his front desk from childhood photos taken by his mother to his own pictures taken over the years, vintage prints to mini polaroid’s. Casper dragged his gaze over the pictures, at Will and Luka smiling at him, at each other, at birthday cakes and ‘first-day of school’s’. He touched his chest, expecting there to be blood seeping out of him because surely there should be a wound where it hurt so much. It hurt to look at them, hurt to remember these people he treasured—gone.

Gone. He couldn’t grasp it; this concept of having someone there one day and then, just, not. He tried to remember the first day Luka was reported missing, if it had felt like this, or maybe disappearances didn’t warrant the same grief and heart-ache that came with a death. Maybe there was still an infinitesimal part of him that still believed she was safe, that believed Will, who’d always believed she was alright. 

Casper dropped onto his bed. Bad idea. It was going to be an effort to get back up. 

He couldn’t stop looking at the pictures. He plucked one out from under the camera lens at his desk, lens that Luka and Will had saved up to get him for this fourteenth birthday. The photo was dated at the back as four years ago. He recognised Will’s basement, the ugly green beanbags that Luka and Casper were sunken into. Freya had taken this one. Casper had been talking mid-sentence, unaware of the camera whilst Luka had only just discovered it. Will on the other hand had pounced up from his own seat, wrapped his arms around both of them, game controller in one hand, smiling that goofy smile of his just in time for the photo. They were still in their high school uniforms, same hall, same form, still so young.

“I’d want the power to teleport.” Will told them that night, randomly, the way Will always was, right in the middle of watching a film. “Telekinesis and flying are so generic and over rated. Teleportation can take you anywhere in a blink of an eye. You’d save fortunes on travelling expenses. You could poof your way out of Venoir, out into the rest of the world, one would know.”

“If you’re talking about fortune, then why not just have Midas’s touch?” Luka commented. She'd been messing with one of her old gas masks for two hours, a girly pink model that she was trying to scrub into a paler cherry blossom shade. Casper couldn't remember if she'd been successful. “You can turn anything to gold. You’d be set for life.”

“That story doesn’t have a good ending.” Casper had reminded her. “Would you not want to hold your child?”

“Brave of you to assume I want children.”

The boys looked at her.

“Okay, so I do. Even so, being rich would be pretty nice.”

Casper hadn’t commented on the fact that, at least to him, both Luka and Will were already well beyond their means of wealthy. Even if Luka only lived with her grandmother in the North, Luka could drop out of high school and still be set for life. She wouldn’t have to work a day in her life.

“What about you, Casp?” Will asked. “Any power in the world. I’ll give you extra points if you can make one up.”

Casper had thought on it for a long while, perhaps longer than need be. Only when the film was nearly finished did he finally have his answer. “Time travel.” Luka and Will had made a sound of approval.

“Good one.”

He wanted that power now, wanted it so much he ached. Casper wanted to turn back time and go back knowing what he knew now. And if he couldn’t stop Luka from disappearing, couldn’t stop Will from dying, then he would have savoured every moment he had with them, every moment took for granted, changed every shift he never missed at work to hang out with them, said fuck-you to homework and class projects to bake that birthday cake with Luka.

But then Casper remembered the more recent Will, the one who doesn’t have dozens of pictures of—the one from Ludwidge College. Casper hadn’t let himself think about that Will, but there was no ignoring it now. He didn’t know how to feel when he thought about the last few times he saw will before he died? Anger? Fear? Regret? A vile concoction of them all? He hated that he didn’t remember his last words to him, but more than that, he hated knowing that whoever it was he spoke to, it hadn’t been the Will he’d known his entire life. By that time, the drugs had gotten to him, he’d been too far gone, and he should have known better than to let him out of his sight.

And then, somehow, Casper’s mind reeled back to Nathaniel Fife.

He could still hear the resonance of the violin in his ears. 

Two weeks before Will died, Casper had spotted Nate and Will outside the leisure centre near the school parking lot, right in the middle of a heated argument. Well, Will had seemed pretty heated. Nathaniel looked the way he always did, like either nothing was worth his time or everything was wasting it. At this point Will had already transferred to the South; there was no reason for him to be in the North, let alone talking to Nate Fife. Not a minute after Casper spotted them, Will had shoved Nate hard enough to knock Nate’s skull against the brick wall and stormed off.

It didn’t mean Nate had anything to do with Will’s death, but it was still a missing piece of a puzzle Casper refused to believe was already finished.

Suicide from overdose. Casper imagined Will’s ghost practically ripping his hair out in frustration, looking down at him, shouting: that’s not it Casp! That’s not it!

He’d never believe what the police say anymore. No. Venoir Police could go fuck themselves. If he wanted answers, he was going to have to get them himself. 

And he was going to start with Nate Fife.