There are more people than I expected milling around the apartment when I arrive, even for a Mrs. Moon party, but the instant I walk in she hugs me like she hasn’t seen me in years and kisses my forehead.

“I’m so glad you made it,” she says in a low tone, enveloping me in the scent of cinnamon and ginger, “Kattar’s been waiting for you…”

She looks like she wants to say something else, but just then, an older woman with bright red hair calls from the kitchen “Clara, I can’t make heads or tails of this oven. Could you set the casserole to heat?”

Mrs. Moon’s mouth closes quickly in something just a bit like Disappointment, but she covers it quickly with a honey-sweet smile, and whispers “Later, darling. Make sure you get yourself something to eat, and have some lemonade. I have to help our guests.”

She sweeps away as briskly as she swept in, leaving me paralyzed, standing awkwardly by the door. 

Kattar’s waiting for me.

I don’t know whether to be happy or worried - “Guilty” is automatic.

Slowly, I set my bag down on the end table by the front door, all the while taking a mental inventory of the room.

The living room connects directly to the kitchen and dining room by two big archways, without doors, like frames for the ordinary life scenes dancing on their insides.

There must be 20 or so people present, besides Kattar and Mrs. Moon. Some of them I recognize as her pretty business lady friends, whom I’ve met at Christmas parties and New Year's events throughout the years, and a smaller percentage of the party are Kattar’s groupies. Nobody is anyone who I really know, and I wish I could evaporate into thin air.

Fragments of conversations I don’t want to hear bounce into me like dodgeballs.

Car accident. The poor dears. Did you hear? The girl. Kattar. Paralyzed.

Long sympathetic, ‘ohhhs,’ almost identical to the sound the nurse made, all those weeks ago that felt like yesterday.

Mrs. Moon bustles about like a rosy-cheeked, ‘hostess with the mostess,’ smiling at everybody - asking everybody if they’ve had something to eat. 

She tells them to set their gifts on the kitchen table, and I push mine further out of view, behind the lamp.

“We’ll open them a little later.”

You’d think she was throwing a nine-year-old’s birthday party. I half expect her to bring out a pinata, or a clown.

“Don’t worry there’s plenty - I baked way too many - take as much as you like. ‘Licia,” she casually makes her way back into the living room, nodding to everyone, and taking me by the hands leads me into the main area, where Kattar is sitting by the table in his new wheelchair. 

My heart falls to my toes.  

I start to look down, fidgeting with my fingers. Why did I agree to come…? I should’ve stayed home…

But Kattar leans forward in his chair until his eyes lock with mine, catching my gaze before it hits the floor. As soon as he knows I’m looking at him he smiles.

I can’t smile back right now, but he doesn’t have a chance to care.

One of his friends puts their hand on the back of his chair and starts speaking over the din in a loud, laughing tone about Kattar’s “action movie antics.”

“Let’s be honest, you just refuse to die in any way that isn’t glamorous.”

Kattar chuckles, with his confident, light-hearted charisma, despite the wheelchair, which he manages to make look like a throne, somehow.

I can barely even swallow the lemonade in my glass, and I wish it was a potion to take me home.

As the crush around Kattar and Mrs. Moon grows thicker, I slip slowly away from the main group, until I find myself sitting on a chair in the corner, eyes locked on the carpet, hands in my lap.

The voices ricochet around the room and pelter me, breeding little bruises that bleed beneath the surface. I hear older women cooing and asking if he wasn’t scared - young men asking him to explain for the ten thousandth time how it all went down.

I cover my ears and try to force down the recall as the voices scream in and out like feedback-

-I don’t want to remember-

Why am I here?

Someone starts talking about presents, and I hear Kattar’s sparkling voice laughing, “Fine, fine.” As if he’s consenting to his fans' ardent appeals, “Mama!” Mrs. Moon looks up from where she’s adding ice to the lemonade, “Why don’t we just open the presents now?”

Mrs. Moon smiles sweetly and nods, without words, or maybe, I just can’t hear them over the racket in my head. Bodies begin passing around bags - piling them into his lap.

Some are useful presents. Snacks and premade meals. A strap Mrs. Moon is going to anchor to the ceiling, to help him get out of bed. A cane for when he starts to learn to walk again.

I wring my wrists until the palms of my hands burn like hellfire.

Other presents are more light-hearted and casual, but still, I read into them. A mobile game console, a collection of old movies - action flicks, and 2-bit, stunt-man classics - several albums, all things to help him bide the hours and days he’ll be spending here in more or less complete solitude, trying not to feel as trapped as he really is.

Someone starts talking about a Steven Seagal film, and I rest my hands on my pounding head, welcoming the headache, eeking its way in. At least the pain leaves less room for the memories.

I’m glad I chose to leave the present bag by the door, lest he unpack it in front of everyone, and make them wonder why I brought him a bag of trash…

I laugh at myself - but it sounds a bit more like a sob than intended.

Suddenly, I realize someone’s saying my name-

“Alicia? Lise?”

I look up again, meeting Kattar’s gaze, with some effort. He nods his head toward the bag on the end table.

“Is that for me?”

My heart jumps into my throat. I had thought nobody noticed...

“It’s…for later,” I say quickly, reddening up to my ears. 

Some of his friends laugh teasingly and elbow each other.

“Shut up,” Kattar half moans, pretending to be irritated. He rolls his eyes at them aggressively and then smiles in my direction as if to say “Stupid kids,” with a shake of his head.

This time I manage to fake a smile, before the bodies, crisscrossing back and forth around the crowded room block him from view again. 

Various different conversations surge and crash over each other slurring into murmuring, rushing nonsense. Some of them are talking about Kattar - some about the accident - but most are talking about stuff that has nothing to do with either of us - things I know nothing about.

“Did you read the most recent issue of Clara’s magazine? She’s getting a lot of big names on the covers these days.”

“Yo, did you guys watch the new episode last Wednesday? Dude, it was epic. I can’t believe you missed it.”

The wall of white noise rushes closer and closer until I’m trapped in a little, dizzy bubble all my own, made of words and crazy worlds I’m not part of.

I could try to butt in, and say something, become part of the conversation, but I’m not a loud person. No good at speaking when I’m not spoken to.

I feel sick.

And it’s so dumb.

I wanted to be lonely. To stew in my misery, undisturbed and unhampered.

So why does it hurt so bad that nobody’s trying to stop me?

The rain starts to bubble up on the inside of my dark cloud. 

I want to cry, but that would be stupid - in front of all these people? Not that they would notice.

I guess I wanted to be miserable, but not miserable like this.

What I wanted was to stay locked in my comfortable black hole where time stayed on the outside and days cried themselves to sleep - into dark nights - without any sign of change - where I could pretend I wasn’t a piece of anything you could call real.

Here time passes. It just passes me by. I exist, on the outside. A specter who can’t make herself known.

She knocks on life's door but no one has the time, or cares, to let her in.

This is what it’s like to be a ghost - if a ghost, can exist in a body, that isn’t dead yet, by some glitch in Fate.

Everyone else is moving on, whether in this life or the next, while I stand, haunting the memories, in this imperfect middle ground, somewhere between. living and dead.

I guess I still haven’t learned to be any good at making choices.

Kattar’s bright smile flashes in my mind like a blinking light, and devours my sanity, sanding my lungs raw…

I was stupid for thinking I’d be able to talk to him about the paintings today, and even if I could have, I don’t think that I should…not now…not…after everything.

I don’t want to see the look on his face, and I don’t want to-

-I should go - I should go-

-but at the same time I do.

And a part of me roots itself to the chair despite my best efforts to be reasonable - to make sense of this.

And I can’t shake it off.

I just can’t.