School let out two hours ago and I’ve been hiding under the bleachers ever since, freezing and waiting for football practice to end and writing his name in the sandy soil with a broken drumstick until finally it's over and I follow him home.

I've never been to his neighborhood before. It's all these super old huge houses that are haunted looking and tilted at weird angles and set into rambling yards full of old cars and half built skate ramps and tagged-up refrigerators which is so much better than the generic dead golf subdivision where I live. It even sounds interesting here, a soundtrack of dogs and TVs and a girl screaming NO, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME AT ALL which makes me stop on the cracked sidewalk and close my eyes and listen and when I open them again, he's gone.

It's dark now and it's raining a little and I start running and scanning the street until I see him again in his Tigers hoodie with his gym bag squeezing through a hole in a chain-link fence behind a tall mud-colored house. This must be it, I think, nervous, this is where he lives.

Now that I've seen it, I know I should just turn around and go home, but when I see this burnt up RV parked in the gravel lot behind his house I figure it's fate and change plans. It's not going to hurt anyone if I hide behind this thing and spy on him for a few minutes.

Watching him pick up beer cans and toss them into the recycling bin I remember all the things he told me about growing up here. Playing war in the woods behind his house, or climbing up onto the roof with his brothers, or rescuing a litter of kittens, these kind of Huck Finn stories he would tell me when he was falling asleep. I remember so clearly how he looked in my bed with his feet hanging off the end, this linebacker under a lace canopy, his beautiful Prom King face sharing my flower-print pillow.

And then without even thinking about it I call out his name.

Cary

He looks shocked, I mean, like electrically, his whole body stiffens and he turns and I think he sees me but then this tiny girl wearing a princess costume and camo boots bursts out the back door and runs down the concrete steps and grabs his legs and I duck back behind the RV, peeking out just enough to see him pick her up and spin her around.

This must be the cousin, I think. I remember some drama with her mother. It's weird because I imagined a completely different little girl and I also imagined me and Cary showing up at family events together, like birthday parties, holding hands, and then it all crashes down on me like what the fuck am I even doing here?

Cary doesn't want to see me again, not even in secret, and if any of his friends ever found out about us he'd kill himself and these are direct quotes.

I feel myself breaking apart into little bits. Floating up into the sky. Drifting like confetti through the power lines, disappearing into the atmosphere and crumbling into dust. I like this idea of being dust. Dust doesn't want anything, dust just is.

A lady's voice yells dinner's ready and the way Cary slings the girl over his shoulder is just like a movie, at least until she sees me and starts to scream, and she's looking at me with such fear I can see myself in her eyes, my sopping wet hair and my frantic face, and she keeps pointing saying ghost, that's ghost until Cary looks right at me and says there’s no such thing as ghosts, she isn't really here.