It wouldn’t be true to say I dislike every aspect of my ghostly existence. Over the course of my two-hundred-year afterlife, I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much more than I could have within a regular lifespan. The world around me is always changing so quickly, impossibilities shaking out their wings and leaping into existence, things I never conceived of when I was alive. This, to me, is the chief joy of becoming a ghost. You can stand back and watch time transform everything.

The drawback: I am always learning from a distance. It never felt right to sneak into someone’s house, even if they couldn’t detect my presence, and I dislike lurking in schoolhouses. I may be dead, but I don’t think that means I need to be creepy.

Instead, I sit on sidewalks and savor music escaping through open windows. I went to every movie shown at the Ketterbridge Drive-In during its short existence. I listen to people speak in languages I don’t know. I make regular visits to the little cart outside of City Hall, the one lined with magazines and newspapers. I read the covers, unable to open them. My knowledge exists within the confines of headlines. When the papers announced the moon landing, I stood there for a full six hours, reading in snatches over people’s shoulders, my head spinning. The impossible changes of the world, in an endless parade before me. If I could only go back and tell everyone else. Everything we imagined was too small.

I go to cafes and pretend I’m just another person among the crowd. I eavesdrop on the conversations people have in line, which I think is okay, because all of the living people in the cafe are doing it, too. From the fragments of overheard conversation, I make lists of things I don’t know of yet, stuff I’ll need to try and find out about later: podcasts, ‘a case of the Mondays’, warehouse raves (still haven’t figured this one out, but it sounds bad), something called a flash mob proposal (which… also sounds bad). Hawaiian shirts, DNA, Minecraft, snowcones, performance pieces, pepper spray, white noise generators. Minibars, mini-series, mini projectors, the Nintendo Super NES Classic Mini. I learn everything in little bits, trying to put together a puzzle where all of the pieces keep changing.

It’s essentially the only thing I do for fun, but there is an edge of frustration, too. I can never just open a book, or ask someone a question, or use the internet on a cell phone, the way everyone else in Ketterbridge can. No one ever actually tells me about anything, no one speaks to me. I am always playing catchup from the sidelines of other people’s lives.

Not so any longer, not since Kasey started returning regularly to Benton Street to visit me.

I suppose that technically we do not have conversations. Not in the traditional sense. But what about us is traditional? For all I know, we might be the only two of our kind in the world. In cut-and-dry terms, she speaks to herself, and I listen and answer and pretend that she can hear me. Whenever she asks me for warmth I happily reflect it back onto her, even though the period of black-out nothingness is always waiting for me on the other side. I never know how long I’ve been lost afterward, but it must not be long enough to discourage Kasey. She returns with increasing frequency.

Listening to her is so different from listening in on anyone else. Because she speaks to herself only, there are actual openings, silences long enough for me to answer. Strangely, I get the feeling like she’s trying to listen for me, leaving me these spaces to respond on purpose. This may just be wishful thinking on my part, but if I’m right about her looking for me, it would make sense, would it not? I let myself believe it. Why shouldn’t I? The only one who will end up hurt if it shakes out untrue is me. I walk with her and sit with her, bathing in her warm glow.

She hums and sings little songs. Climbs up on fences and walks along them, her short hair swinging around her neck.

We talk about the things that death took from us. She had been planning a trip to visit her grandparents in Vietnam. A film festival out of town she had wanted to attend. There was a new dress she was excited to wear, because, in her words: “I would have been serving Morticia Addams freshness, it was so litty-titties” - all words I’ll need to add to my list of things I don’t know about, but it sounds elegant. She’s most upset that she was inches away from her Ph.D. I actually do know what that is, and I know that it means she’s smart. My guess about her being a songwriter was incorrect: she’s a historian, and a passionate one, based on how she speaks about it.

“I had big plans, too,” I tell her. “You probably know what a log drive is, don’t you? You know about history.” I wait, like she might really answer, and she waits, like she might really hear me. “I was on the beat crew. The logs would move down the river, and we would jump from log to log on the water, watching for jams before they could cause a backup. A jam could cause the water levels to rise, stall out the whole drive. If we saw one forming, we had to leap over to it and break it up as quickly as possible. You had to be spry. It was a dangerous position, but I didn’t intend to hold it for long. I had my sights on moving up the ranks. I wanted to be a walking boss. You had to be a brawler for that gig, and that was one thing I was good at.”

Oh yes, I had plans. I remember the day that Mr. Newman, the big boss man himself, came to the site. It was just before I died. I remember the promises he made to us: bright futures for those men willing to help him with a few things off the books. For the good of the company, he explained. No need to tell Mr. Starr about this.

Kasey talks about her experience as a spirit thus far. It turns out we have differences - aside, of course, from the fact that she is both discernible to someone and in possession of a bodily form. She can disappear and reappear at will, which I cannot. She can touch things, where my fingers would pass right through them. She can hear when Jamie calls for her, which I know because sometimes she pauses, like she’s listening, and then simply melts away, which I can’t do.

Or so I thought.

It happens when she isn’t with me. I am drifting around Memorial Gardens, checking for any new graves I may have missed while spending time with her. I am not at Benton Street, because she always comes at night, and it is bright and breezy out still.

At first, I think the voice is coming from behind me, and I spin around, caught unawares. But there is no one there. I very clearly hear a disembodied someone say:

“Come on, don’t tell me you’re not excited that there might be another ghost in town.”

I recognize it. Is that - Jamie’s voice? I close my eyes, trying to make sense of this, and when I open them again, I am in someone’s home: a small apartment, with a lot of potted plants. This has never happened to me before. Confused, I swivel around, searching for my bearings.

Kasey and Jamie are both here.

“That is exciting,” Kasey says.

“And a logger, at that,” Jamie answers. “Imagine the shoulders. You could get a cute ghost logger boyfriend. I’m jealous.”

I freeze, shocked.

“Are you?” Kasey looks skeptical. “Given that you have a cute, uh, sorcerer boyfriend?”

“My boyfriend, yeah right. I wish.”

Someone just summoned me, I think, for the first time ever. A cute ghost logger boyfriend, Jamie said. And - he has a boyfriend, himself? Which means he is not with Kasey, presumably. I am tipped off my axis, stunned and confused. This is so much information, and I am too overwhelmed to even hear what they’re saying for a moment.

“We can still help Aiden find the ghost, right?” Jamie is saying, by the time I recover well enough to listen. “Don’t you want to find him?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?” Kasey answers. “If he’s from the 1700s he’s probably like an old racist who thinks women shouldn’t have rights or something.”

“What!” I sputter, though no one can hear me.

“But yeah, whatever. Let’s find him,” Kasey continues. 

I could fall on the floor as she looks right at me and says: “William! Can you hear me? We’re going to find you.”

William. The name rings with bright, ferocious familiarity. That’s - that’s my name. I had forgotten it decades ago, after my grave mossed over and became impossible to read, after no one called me by it for so long. But hearing it now, I know. There’s no other possibility. They’re talking about me. The cute ghost logger boyfriend is me.

My name, in reference to me, for the first time in as long as I can recall, and from her perfect, sweet, kissable mouth.

“I go by Will,” I hear myself say. I can’t help it; I dissolve into laughter, incredulous, ridiculous, barely able to believe it.

Yet another impossibility, rousing after a centuries-long wait. Shaking out its wings.