Destinee🎙 10:15 PM Hey boo, is the Fling Thing still on this year?

Me 10:15 PM Ummm yes!!! Are you kidding we cannot tamper with tradition. The Fling Thing goes on as scheduled. You’re not skipping it, are you??

Destinee🎙 10:15 PM No I just wanted to check the date with you bc I actually…. Made it into that slam competition I was telling you about 🙈

Me 10:16 PM !!!!!!!! R U FLIPPIN JOKING CONGRATS THAT IS AMAZING

Destinee🎙 10:16 PM I know it’s big!!! The only thing is it’s SO out of town and I could really use a buddy. It would be for like 3 days

Me 10:17 PM Are you asking me??

Destinee🎙 10:17 PM Thing is if I invite one family member, they ALL comin

Me 10:18 PM Lol have noticed that about your fam

Destinee🎙 10:18 PM It would be a drive but I can pay for the gas and you’ll get into the show for freeee and there may be cute boys there

Me 10:18 PM Wait what does this have to do with the Fling Thing?

Destinee🎙 10:19 PM Well, to get to the competition on time we would need to leave pretty early in the morning and I think the Fling Thing is the night before 😕

Me 10:20 PM oh I see you’re asking me to not drink at the party so I won’t be hungover for the drive?

Destinee🎙 10:20 PM mmmmaybe

Me 10:21 PM Honestly, no problem. I’m going to ask Aiden if he wants to come and he doesn’t drink anyway

Destinee🎙 10:21 PM I’m sorry???????? Aiden CALLAHAN? Are you sure you want to be spending time with him? He hangs out with Ralph who is a gross gross misogynist

Me 10:22 PM He’s actually pretty chill now and he doesn’t hang out with Ralph these days

Destinee🎙 10:22 PM Who’s he hanging out with?

Me 10:22 PM With me 😇

Destinee🎙 10:23 PM You are so sus but I forgive you bc I really want you to come with me on my trip lol

Me 10:23 PM I’m in! The shop can be wildly understaffed for a few days, right?

Destinee🎙 10:23 PM Totally. Those flowers basically grow themselves. Which reminds me btw what is that plant you have growing in the back? I don’t recognize it and the leaves are such a weird shade of green. Black market purchase?

Me 10:24 PM Totally. Bought it with Bitcoin and everything. The Feds may show up any minute

Destinee🎙 10:25 PM I always knew one day the Feds would raid Kent’s shop AND I knew it would be your fault

Me 10:25 PM Hmmm maybe I DO want to drink at the Fling Thing and NOT go with you out of town?

Destinee🎙 10:25 PM I love youuuuu 💓 And drinking or not I have a feeling this is going to be the best Fling Thing ever!!

~~~~

“What exactly is the Fling Thing?” Aiden asks, stirring his cold brew. It’s a brutally hot day, and condensation is dripping onto his fingers.

“The End of Summer Fling Thing. It’s an annual tradition that started a few years after you left town. That hotel in the harbor, you know the one? They’ve started setting off fireworks on the beach on the last warm day of the season. You can see them really well from this one spot on the mountain, so people from our year started having a party up there that runs at the same time. Basically everyone gets together and gets drunk and watches the fireworks.”

“There has got to be a better name for that than The Fling Thing.”

“The party has never been like, official, so people were just calling it that and it kind of stuck. It’s bad, I know, but the actual party is pretty fun.”

“Where are you going with this, Jamie?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I wanted to see if you’d come.”

Aiden glances over at me, his eyebrows arched. We’re seated outside of the Ghost Office, taking a break to eat and let Aiden rest. The pebbled beach just beyond the door makes for a perfect spot, shaded by the swaying tree branches overhead.

“I thought,” Aiden says, swallowing, “That after what happened at the last party, you probably wouldn’t want to go to any more of them with me. People get really weird around you at parties when they know you’re a recovered alcoholic. As evidenced by last time, when things got - dramatic, should I say?”

“Okay, well, I’m not drinking either, because I told Destinee I’d go out of town with her the day after. So you’ll have a sober buddy.”

“Out of town?” Aiden pauses mid-stir of his drink.

“Yeah, but just for a few days. She’s doing a slam poetry competition.”

“Are you competing, too?”

“What?” I find myself surprised at the question. “Me? No. I don’t do poetry.”

Aiden is quiet for a moment. He sets his drink aside.

“I’ll miss you,” he says. My cheeks warm, and something in my chest begins buzzing pleasantly.

“Then come to the party,” I answer softly. “Hang out with me before I go.”

“When is it, exactly?”

“A little over a month from now. You have plenty of time to mentally prepare. Ralph and Co. are not coming, they got themselves banned from the whole thing like five years ago.”

“Of course they did,” Aiden mutters. “Well, I- okay. Yeah. Okay.”

“Really?” I smack his shoulder excitedly. “Fuck yeah! This is always my favorite party of the year.”

“I can’t believe summer is almost over already.” Aiden shakes his head, staring out at the river. “Where did it go? I came back right at the start of it.”

“There’s still plenty of summer left.” I stretch my legs out on the pebbles. “But I do know what you mean. Time flies when you’re having fun.”

Aiden glances over at me, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

“Now we know I can heat the Ghost Office, if the hunt goes into winter. Though I was hoping I’d have the glasses working by now, at the least.”

“Hey, we got information,” I remind him. “Like, super shady weird information.”

Aiden and I spent the remainder of our trip back to Ketterbridge discussing the possible meanings of the letter we found. We both agree on a few facts: that the company covered up whatever actually happened to William, and that the incident report that still exists is some kind of lie. When we got back we spent an entire day carefully combing through the other documents, but turned up nothing more about William Clarke or his time at the company. We printed out the scan of the letter and added it to our wall, along with our one photograph of William and the confirmed forgery of his incident report.

“What do you think really happened to him?” I ask.

“Honestly, Jamie, I don’t have a clear idea. This is a two-hundred-year-old mystery. It would be hard even if we were trying to solve it back then.”

“At least all the key players are dead already. Otherwise we’d probably have some shady lumber company guys trying to murder us and hush things up.”

“If we’re going by the letter, they didn’t even kill the witness that was actually there," Aiden points out.

“No, just silenced them. Does that sound less scary to you? And who was the witness? That’s a missing piece of the puzzle we didn’t even know about before.”

“I’m not sure that’s worth looking into,” Aiden sighs. “Whoever it was is long dead and they clearly kept quiet about what they knew. You saw what the letter said, their family was employed by the company. I’m sure talking could have pitched them into poverty, maybe even driven them out of Ketterbridge. Not to mention that tales of horrific death aren’t exactly the kind you share with your grandkids.”

“Fine. Then I say we revert to the glasses. We need to get them working.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing all morning?” Aiden groans and flops onto his back. The pebbles click beneath him, the trees casting long shadows onto his face. “What have we already tried today? Six, seven configurations?”

“I might have an idea.”

“Your last idea turned the Ghost Office into the Sahara Desert.”

“Only for a few minutes! And your last idea nearly put a hole in the ceiling. I’m surprised the entire loft didn’t come down.”

The most recent pair of glasses went on an insane journey around the rafters, hurtling through the air like an untied balloon before smacking into the roof and falling in a shower of plastic on our heads.

“Alright,” Aiden says. “What’s your idea?”

“I thought maybe we should put the stones related to memory closest to the middle. Ghosts basically are memories, right? We haven’t tried that one yet. We haven’t even put the memory stones on the board.”

Aiden opens his eyes very slowly, and I’m suddenly wondering if I said something wrong. He’s trying to hide it, but I’m getting pretty good at reading his face: the slight crease between his eyebrows, the way the corner of his mouth twitches.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Aiden sits upright, brushing off his hands. “I just - I don’t like messing with memory stuff. You…” He fades off, then clears his throat. “You can really fuck it up if you don’t do it right.”

A possibility occurs to me. A terrible, strange possibility that I don’t know what to do with.

“Aiden,” I say, very slowly. “You’ve - you’ve never messed with my-?”

“No.” He grabs my arm and holds it tightly. “Listen to me. No. I’ve never fucked with anyone’s memory, and nobody has tampered with yours. I promise. I just - I’ve seen it go wrong before. The consequences, they can reach farther than you would think.”

“Okay.” Relief floods through me. I’m glad I don’t have to wrap my head around the prospect of that. “Well - we wouldn’t be trying to mess with someone’s memory, we’re just trying to make the glasses work, right? So…”

Aiden thinks about it silently for a moment. He rolls his lip between his teeth.

“Fine. But I’m only trying this one time. If it doesn’t work, that’s it. Okay? And I want you to wait outside.”

“Wait outside, I don’t think so! Come on, I promise I’ll stay super far back. We’ve already weathered like one million explosions together.”

“That is not the concern. I don’t want any magic to hit you.”

“Aiden.” I poke his arm. “You can do it. We’ll be fine. This could be how we find William.”

“I-” He struggles with it for a moment. “Okay. Okay. But I’ve never done this before-”

“Come on.” I get to my feet and extend a hand. He takes it and lets me haul him up. “Quit stalling. This could be it!”

Inside, Aiden lays the memory stones out slowly. They’ve been sitting unused in the pouch this whole time, and it feels strange, their new silent presence on the coffee table. Aiden looks like he’s getting ready for a fresh attempt at talking his way out of this, so I pop my Ray-Bans on and stand back, waiting.

“Ready,” I say, before he can open his mouth.

“Fuck. Okay. Further back, though. No, further than that.”

“Any further and I’m going to be all the way out of the door, dude.”

Aiden comes to stand at my side. He raises his hands slowly. An extended silence falls over the Ghost Office.

At first, everything is still, but the longer the moment stretches, the more I feel like something is shifting in the air around me, heavy and slow. A breeze rushes over us, but the trees outside are still: the movement was contained to the Ghost Office.

“Aiden,” I whisper. “I think you-”

The window next to the refrigerator shatters. The entire thing falls away at once, glass skittering over the concrete floor and spangling it with bright spots. I gasp and fling my hands over my mouth, but Aiden doesn’t even react. His forehead is wrinkled with concentration, his eyes pressed tightly closed. The window next to the broken one trembles, cracks, and shatters, joining its neighbor on the ground.

“Aiden!” He isn’t listening. “Stop, stop!”

I seize his arm, and he opens his eyes and looks at me. His gaze is blue ice. He’s breathing hard. We both turn to take in the two destroyed windows, the layer of glass on the floor, the sunlight suddenly pouring in unimpeded.

The glasses are intact on the table.

“Did something happen?” I take off my sunglasses and shove them into my pocket. “Aiden, did-?”

“I don’t know! Maybe?"

I approach the glasses slowly and pick them up. Aiden trails after me, hesitant. I can’t be sure, but it almost looks like the memory stones are glowing. The glasses don’t fall apart in my hands; rather, there is an almost imperceptible vibration running through them.

“Can I put them on?” I ask, and Aiden shrugs.

“I think so? Do it slowly.”

I settle the glasses on my nose. They feel strangely warm, like someone left them out in the sun for a few hours. Everything looks the same through them, so far as I can tell. I turn to face Aiden, and freeze.

Where he had been standing seconds ago, there is now a child. A brown-haired child with a bandaid on his knee and small fidgeting hands twisted together. Tears are gathered in the corners of his blue eyes, his lips twisted up as if to hold them back. He’s younger than Ellen, I think, but not by much.

“Mommy,” he says, his lip trembling, “I’m sorry, I just wanted to practice. I thought you said I could practice with light.”

A second voice joins the other, this one seemingly from nowhere. Female, and cold with anger.

“I told you that you could practice, I didn’t say that you could do it out in the backyard. What if someone saw you? Do you know what would happen if anyone finds out what we are?”

“But what if - what if I want to tell someone, someday?”

“Do you never listen to me?” snaps the other voice. “Here’s what will happen if you tell anyone the truth. They will use you, exploit you for your gift, and when you get wise and stop offering yourself up, they’ll leave you like you were nothing. Just like how your father did to us.”

“Dad is one person,” the child answers, tears now escaping down his cheeks.

“Everyone, and I mean everyone, Aiden, has a seed of cruelty in them, and our gift draws it out. The greed, the selfishness. No matter how they seem on the surface or how well you think you know them. Listen to me very carefully, and don’t ever forget what I say. If you ever tell anyone what you are, you will never know for sure that they love you for you. And chances are, they don’t.”

I rip the glasses from my face, blinking rapidly, disoriented. Aiden - modern-day, six-foot-something Aiden is standing in front of me, his eyebrows raised. The glasses suddenly grow hotter in my hands, and I drop them. They dissolve into a pile of dust on the floor.

“Shit!” Aiden steps back before the debris can form a layer over his shoes. “That didn’t last long.” He looks up at me. “Well? Did it work, did you see any spectral traces?”

“Spectral traces.” I swallow hard. “No. No, it didn’t work.”

He observes the look on my face for a moment.

“You saw something, didn’t you?” His eyes linger on mine. “Something… about me?” He pauses. "Oh, god. One of my memories?"

"You were a very cute little kid," I manage, and Aiden's eyes widen.

"Oh, no," he murmurs.

I hesitate for a moment, then lose a battle within myself and fling my arms around him. I hug him tightly, breathing in his vetiver aftershave and squeezing him close.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to see it."

“I don’t want to know,” he says, hugging me back gently. “Don’t tell me.”

“I won’t.” I let him go and back up, suddenly trying not to cry, myself. “But I think you’re right.”

“That's a first. Right about what?”

“No more messing with memory stuff.”