Caleb

I think I can be happy here. I have become an expert at knowing instantly if a placement is going to work or not. And this might be the best one I had in a long time. The lady seems very nice, I am the only foster child here so I even have my own room. As usual, the question is: how long will this last? At this stage, I am just hoping to find a nice place I can age out of the system quietly.

The social worker drops me at the house and stays a few minutes as I am introduced to Mary, my new foster mother. Liz has been my social worker for six years. She and I have been through this countless times by now. Actually, not countless. I know exactly how many times. This is my thirteenth foster house. Still. She knows I know the drill. And she apparently knows and trusts this woman so she keeps the meeting short. I decide to see it as a good sign.

Soon enough, it is just me and Mary.

“I am not going to bore you with house rules,” she tells me. “I assume that you know all of that by now. Liz told me that you have been in the system for a long time.” I nod. “Do you want to talk about that?” I shake my head. “Right. She said you were very quiet. I am always there to talk, but I understand if you don’t want to either. I know I’m just a stranger. But I would also like for this to be your last home. Would you like that?” I nod because shrugging would be rude. But I don’t know her and even if I want to settle until I’m eighteen, I don’t know if I want to do that here. She seems nice. But she will probably be fed up with my social awkwardness soon. Or decide she wants a younger child. Or want to add more children to get a bigger cheque. Or simply move on with her life. Maybe get married and have a child of her own. I’ve faced all of that before. I know we are replaceable.

“Okay. I’m going to let you get upstairs and unpack. Your room is the door straight across when you reach the top of the stairs. I’ll call you when it’s time for dinner. But, of course, feel free to come down before if you want to. This is your home now.”

“Thank you,” I say. I know those two words are really light to express one’s gratitude, but I really am grateful. Hopefully, she’ll see that before looking for a more rewarding project.

I grab the bag holding all my belongings – my entire life, really, and head upstairs.

I open the door and freeze. I might have misunderstood something. There is a boy sitting at the desk, by the window. I thought I was the only boy in the house, but clearly, I didn’t get that right. There is only one bed in the room so I am pretty sure this won’t be my room. Unless the other boy is leaving today? I don’t see any bags, though.

I guess the best thing would be to just ask. I push the door fully open, take a step inside and the boy turns around and frown. He seems confused. That startles me somehow and I don’t know how to ask the question on my mind.

The boy stands up and walks toward me. As he gets closer I take a step back but he doesn’t stop and I put a hand forward to stop him but I don’t touch him. Not that he stopped. The boy walks straight through me.

I turn around, shocked, but the boy isn’t there. When I turn around again, the room is different. I mean… not really. But the desk is empty, the bed is bare, and there is no trace of the boy anywhere.

I… What?

Okay… clearly I am tired. I just imagined all of that. I must have. What other explanation could there be?

Liam

I think… I might be losing my mind a little. It all started with little things. Details that could just have been me not paying attention. My bedroom door opening, probably because of a draft, my window being open when I would come back to my room. The light was already switched on when I would wake up in the morning…

But then… I started to see the boy.

Fragment. Sitting on my bed, looking at his phone. Sitting at my desk, doing his homework… But when I stare or come closer, he disappears.

It’s always in my room. Never anywhere else. And my siblings never seem to notice him. I haven’t asked Adam because I didn’t want to sound like a weirdo. I asked Sam, though and she laughed, probably thinking it was a game. She said she could see him but looked in the wrong place and she said he looked quite different from what I could see. She also wasn’t very consistent, making me think she was making this up rather than seeing another boy.

I am a logical person. I will approach this scientifically. There are several options. The first one, as I said, is that I am going crazy. I am not ready to go there yet. I do understand that mental health is precious, that we need to take care of it and get help when we have to, that people don’t always have the capacity to say that they are unwell… I do get all of that. But I have this intimate conviction that this is something else.

It could be a ghost. I mean… no one died brutally in this house, these grounds never were sacred land or a cemetery of any kind (although… I’m sure at least one person died here in the history of times), I do not own any antic object that could hold a fragment of someone’s soul… And I do not believe in ghosts.

He could be from another world. Although… I really don’t know how I feel about parallel universes. Especially the notion of one that looks so similar to ours. I still like this better than ghosts.

I could be having a bad reaction to something. Or maybe I am being drugged at school. It seems very farfetched, but not massively more than my other theories and I wouldn’t swear on my life that the boys from school are better than this.

Taking the scientific approach means investigating this. Gathering clues and performing experiments. Which is extra difficult when he disappears so easily…

I started taking notes on how often I see him. I would say that it is roughly once a day, most of the time between eight and nine p.m., and it lasts anything between three and fifteen minutes when left alone. He is gone within ten seconds when I focus on him.

If he is a ghost, he is not haunting me. He doesn’t try to interact with me whatsoever. He is just… living his life. I just get glimpses, but from what I can see – as long as I don’t stare – he is sporty and studious. At the very least, he works out and does his homework.

He tends to stay longer when he is doing his homework. But that’s probably because I just end up staring when he works out. Which I know is morally questionable, but I do promise that I looked away the one time he changed in the room. I even stepped out of my own bedroom to give him some privacy.

I still haven’t heard him speak, I don’t know his name, and when I try to look at what he is writing, he disappears before I can get close enough to the desk.

I am still a bit freaked out by the situation, but… I am also very intrigued. This might be the most exciting thing that will ever happen to me…

Caleb

All things considered, I think I am happy here.

Mary is among the best foster parents I ever had. She doesn’t mind that I am shy (although… shy is an understatement. The term doctors used is ‘selective mute’), she doesn’t mind if I sit with her for a few hours, not saying anything, just enjoying someone else’s presence, she always listens when I do want to talk, she tells me about her life…

She makes me feel pretty confident that I am here to stay. At least until college, that is.

I don’t have friends yet, but I do talk to a few people in school. I might try out for the swimming team next month. I haven’t properly trained for four months, so I probably won’t get in. But it’s worth a shot, right?

So… yes, things are going pretty well.

There is one thing that keeps me from feeling… at peace. There is still this boy I saw in the room. I did ask Mary that first night, but she had only one foster child before and he was an eight-year-old African American boy. So… nothing like the teenager that walked right through me.

I didn’t tell her anything about it. I really didn’t need to already give her a reason to think that I was unstable and consider sending me back.

Plus, at first, I just thought that I had been tired and imagined the entire thing. That was the only logical explanation. Even when I saw him the second time… It was after my first day at my new school, I came back in the room, and he was sitting crossed-legs on the bed, reading a book. A large illustrated science book. I walked closer to him and he became blurry before disappearing entirely. Once more, I just assumed that I was tired and that my brain was tricking me.

But… when your brain is tricking you almost daily… that’s the beginning of madness, isn’t it?

And yet, this doesn’t feel like that. Something tells me that he is real – which I guess could be another sign that I am going crazy, I know – and… it’s not like he talks to me and tells me to do things. I just see him in this bedroom, living his life.

He does speak. Just not to me.

The first time I heard him speak, I nearly had a heart attack. I didn’t even know he was there. But there he was, standing in the middle of the room, a closed book in his hand. He was reciting a list of properties for something or other, then he opened the book to check that he was right, smiled, and disappeared.

My room seems to be haunted by a clever apparition. Maybe in time, I will be haunted everywhere and he will be able to take tests for me…

Another time, I heard him talk to who I think might have been his sister. I’m not sure. I could only see him. From the tone of his voice, I could tell he was talking to someone younger, but he didn’t really adapt his vocabulary or talk to her as if she was lesser than him. I liked that. But as I tried to listen in to the conversation, he disappeared.

The last time I heard him, he was on the phone with ‘Maisie’, whoever that is. They sounded close. She’s probably his girlfriend. Which… made me jealous for some reason. I’m not sure what about. That he is straight and can find love much easier than I ever will? That he doesn’t have to move around every few months and can form meaningful relationships with people? That he is taken? That last one would be ridiculous. I hardly know him, if at all, and he fades away when I look at him.

And he always fades away. Because I always look at him…

Liam

If I stay far enough, I can look at him, now. I can stare and he won’t vanish. I still can’t come very close, but I can look at him. And it feels so important somehow.

He is very quiet. And I think he was lonely at first, but he is getting more and more messages so I think he is making friends. Which leads me to think that maybe he moved here – wherever here is – because that seems like how someone’s social life would grow as they move somewhere. But it’s not really like I can really ask him.

One evening, I was sitting at the window sill, and he was in the bed, listening to some music through his headphones, reading a comic book, when he suddenly looked up toward the door. I looked too, but there was nothing for me to see. And I heard him speak for the first time.

I drank all the words he said, all small openings to the secrets of this boy.

I could only witness half the conversation, and it was very frustrating, but… it also gave me some answers. His school is indeed a new school but he is settling in. He made it to some team and he gets on well with the boys. He thinks his grades are improving. And when he can choose takeaway, he goes for pizza…

At the time, I remember thinking, stupidly, that I could help him with school if he wanted me to.

After that time… he was on my mind more and more. As if hearing his voice, his gentle tone, had made him more real and more important somehow.

I heard it a couple of times on the phone with friends. Or teammates, at least. Making plans for practice. I learned that he is selfless, always trying to accommodate others before himself.

I do know that I am not really drawn to the boy. I still barely know him. It is the mystery that attracts me. That makes me spend so much more time in my room, hoping that he will show, feeling completely empty the days he doesn’t…

It has to be the mystery. Otherwise, that means that I am becoming obsessed, maybe developing a little crush on the handsome, kind, shy boy that sometimes appears just to quietly spend time with me?

Then again, why wouldn’t I develop a little crush on him? My brain probably created him for me in the first place…

Tonight, as I get back up to my room after dinner, my brother teasing me, asking me if I have a secret boyfriend, my parents pretending not to hear the joke, I know that I do not have a secret boyfriend. That even if he is real, he has no idea who I am, and that he probably wouldn’t be interested anyway. But I have a secret, it is a boy, and I need to tell someone about him.

Maybe Maisie? Would she believe me? I know she couldn’t see him. She would have to trust that I am not lying, trust that even if I were telling the truth, I wouldn’t be crazy, trust that… trust what? What is all of this? And do I really want people to know anyway? I have zero answers to give anyone and that all feels so personal… I don’t know. Maybe this is all just for me.

I open the door and I am beyond pleased to see him there. He is sitting on the desk – not at, on – seemingly just out of the shower, hair still wet, shirtless — which I won't complain about — looking down at his phone. He is lit sideways by something that doesn't exist in my room.

Seeing him used to be a source of stress, but tonight, as often lately, I feel calmer just from seeing him.

"Hey you," I say even though he can’t hear me. "I'm glad you're here."

He freezes and slowly looks up from his phone to look straight into my eyes, mouth open in shock.

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