Chapter 27

Charlotte

I woke up in a hospital bed. My head hurt, and my ankle was wrapped in bandages. I looked to my left—there were no other patients in the room. Next to my bed were flowers in a beautiful vase.

“Charlotte!” someone said. “You are awake!”

I turned to my right and saw Dimitri. He was sitting in a chair next to my bed, by the window, like a guardian angel. He was alone in the room with me.

I was overwhelmed with joy when I saw him. I wanted him. Needed him. I immediately reached for him.

But my hand passed through him.

My chest tightened, and I met Dimitri’s gaze. I felt the blooming flowers in my stomach die all at once. Their thorns poked my inside in agony.

Dimitri looked sad and guilty, as if he did not know what to say. What was there to say? What could I say?

My lip started to tremble, and my eyes filled with tears. Immense pain started to dig a hole in the part of my heart that belonged to Dimitri. I could not speak. I could not think.

I started crying hysterically. My sister ran into the room and hugged me tightly. She must have mistaken my tears for the aftershock of George kidnapping me.

“It’s alright! Everything is alright now,” Juan said.

But it was not alright.

I looked at Dimitri right before he vanished into thin air—as if he was never there to begin with. As if he wasn’t real.

And it would never be alright again.

I did not know how or when it had happened, but Dimitri was dead.

***

I spent hours talking to the policemen. They wanted to know everything about George and my kidnapping. I told them every detail from the beginning, from when I got lost and saw Mia Brooks strangled.

The police had arrested George, and he would be in court soon. They told me I was lucky to have survived, but I knew it had nothing to do with luck.

I had survived because I had remained calm, allowed myself to think, and had not given up.

The police had also retrieved Mia’s body, and her friends and family would give her a proper burial.

It was over.

When the police left, it was my family’s turn to question me. I told them about the things that had happened, but I did not tell them about Mia’s ghost.

My mom had come to the conclusion that I was not crazy. She thought I had been stressed out over the past two months, and seeing things had been my mind’s way of coping.

I was tired by the end of the day and ready to go home. My parents drove Juan and me home from the hospital.

I was glad that they did not keep me there overnight. My head hurt, and my vision was blurry without my glasses.

When we reached our house, I was surprised to find Grandma May there. She had cooked dinner for us. Andrea must have made peace with her.

I gave her the longest hug, but nothing was said between us. I did not want to talk to any of them. How could I explain what I was going through? They would never understand.

I went to my room immediately and skipped out on dinner. Amore was jumping up and down on the bed.

She had known all along that Dimitri was a ghost. That was why she had always been barking and growling at him . . .

For once I did not greet her immediately. I went to my desk and took a deep breath. Then I opened the notebook.

On the first page was his name and number—which he had written down when he was alive. On page two, where he had drawn the pink orchid, was nothing. I paged through the rest of the book.

I knew the orchid, red rose, sunflower, milkweed, American water lotus, rough blazing star, blue flag iris, daisy, and Christmas rose had not disappeared. They had simply never been there.

Sometimes ghosts see what they want to see, other times we do.

The book was full of blank pages. I closed it and bit back tears. I had nothing of him. Not even a drawing. My heart felt as empty as the notebook.

I tried to sleep that night, but I could not. It was still dark when I got up, put in my contact lenses, and left my room.

“Where are you going?” Juan asked.

“I have somewhere I need to be,” I said.

“You should not be driving with that foot,” my sister said, and closed her laptop. “I’ll take you.”

Juan had been awake because she had been watching movies. She was in her sleepwear and did not bother to change.

We went to her car and got in, and we did not speak other than me giving driving directions.

“Pull over,” I finally said.

“Is this the cemetery where Grandpa was buried?” Juan wondered.

“Yeah,” I said. “Wait in the car. I have to do this alone.”

I climbed out of the car and embraced the coldness. I had goose bumps on my arms, and I was grateful that I was alive and able to feel them.

I struggled to walk with my sore ankle, but I forced myself to enter the graveyard. I passed my grandfather’s grave and headed to the grave where I had seen Dimitri standing.

He told me he was visiting his father . . .

I knelt by the grave and looked at the name on the tombstone: DIMITRI COLLINS.

Dimitri had been standing in front of his own grave that day.

I thought he had been surprised to see me because he had not shown up for our date. Actually, he had been surprised that I could see him since he was dead.

I started crying again. The sobs shook my body, and I let myself sink to my knees in a pile of pain and longing.

“Charlotte . . . ” a familiar voice said from behind me.

I looked at the gravestone and slowly got to my feet. I could not bring myself to face him. I looked at the date on his tombstone.

“You never ditched our date,” I realized. “You . . . ” I couldn’t find the words because saying it made it seem more real.

“Say it . . . ”

“You died.” I choked on the words.

There was a short pause in which I tried to bite back my tears. I felt as if two hands were wrapped around my throat and squeezing.

“I should have told you, but I did not want to scare or hurt you . . . ”

I closed my eyes. I remember him telling me he had lied to protect others’ feelings. I remember thinking he was considerate and supporting his choices. I had to know how it happened.

“How?”

“Do you remember I told you I was in a car accident?” he said. “Someone drove into me and . . . ”

My tears rolled to the ground, and I finally drew a shaky breath. I should have known all along, but I had been too blind to see it. I had seen what I had wanted to.

I remembered when he had secretly visited late one night. My mother had walked into the room and he had hidden under the bed abnormally fast. He had disappeared and reappeared.

When I went to his house, his mother had opened the door. ~“Dimitri isn’t here anymore!”~ She had told me that he was dead.

I remembered how he had hidden under my blankets when Juan walked into my bedroom.

I had thought Juan was keeping my secret, but we had never spoken about it, because Juan could not see him. He had not really been there.

I thought about how I had wanted him to text and call me. He had said his phone was broken—but as a ghost, he could not text.

Dimitri had said he had tried to catch his brother when he fell and broke his leg. Now I knew that Ethan had fallen straight through his arms, like falling through mist.

That day Quinton had walked to my car at school, he could not see Dimitri sitting in the passenger seat. He must have thought I was loony when I pointed to Dimitri.

As had the old lady in the hospital. That was why she had been glaring at me—she had seen me talking to myself, when I was talking to a ghost.

When Ethan was in the hospital, Dimitri asked me to call the nurse, because he could not.

I inhaled. I recalled Grandma May’s words: ~“I can tell you don’t drink tea.”~

She was special and could immediately tell that Dimitri was a ghost. She also said to me, “It’s not like you’ve never seen a ghost before.”

I had thought she was referring to other ghosts, but she had been referring to Dimitri.

On Halloween, I had thought Dimitri was wearing makeup. That was the first time I saw how he really looked. Those were the wounds that he had received in the car accident. The head wound he died from...

“I should have told you sooner, I know,” Dimitri said.

“I should have known,” I said.

I finally turned around to face him. He was beautiful, and I was thankful that I did not see his wounds.

“Dimitri, I am so sorry.” I wanted to hug him. I wanted to hold him like he had held me on Halloween—the only night the veil was thin enough for him to do so.

Of course he never touched me before that—he couldn’t. He also never ate, whether it was pizza or candy apples. The dead didn’t need to.

I remembered how he had kissed me and said he should not have. I remembered how he was distant after Halloween—because he could no longer physically kiss me.

Everything made sense now.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I am so thankful you found me. I was lost without you.”

Maybe that was what I was supposed to do with my life. Help and guide the lost souls...

“Why did you stay?” I asked.

Then Ethan appeared behind him. I should have known. Dimitri kept saying, ~“I can’t leave him.”~ His brother had been anchoring him to the earth.

~“I will see Dimitri soon. I’ll tell him you said ‘hi’.”~

Ethan had told me this. I now knew he meant he was going to die and join his brother in the afterlife.

“We came to say bye,” Ethan told me.

“I appreciate that,” I said, and turned my gaze back to Dimitri. “I wish you could stay.”

“I don’t belong here,” he said sadly.

“You are leaving me with a hole,” I cried.

“You should plant a flower in that hole and let it grow,” Dimitri responded.

Life went on. I could cry about losing him, or I could be happy because I had him in my life. I could use the things he taught me—courage and friendship—to grow in life.

“I love you,” I said. There was no doubt about it.

I loved him more than I loved sleeping late in the mornings. I loved him more than I loved reading my romance novels. And I would love him until I died and even after that.

“You are the best friend I’ve ever had.” I did not hide my tears. I did not hide from him.

“And you are mine,” he said. “I love you too. Goodbye, Charlotte the Brave.”

I watched as Ethan took his big brother’s hand. The two brothers walked among the tombstones as the sun rose. They faded away together.

The sun’s rays illuminated the sky in beautiful orange and red hues, as if announcing a new beginning. I wiped at my wet nose and tried to blink away my tears as I dragged my feet toward the car.

Once inside, I looked at Juan, who was gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were wide and her bottom lip trembled.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I said.

She turned her eyes to me. “I didn’t see a ghost. I felt it.”

I raised an eyebrow, and for a moment I wondered if she was poking fun at me. Then Juan pulled up her sleeve to show me a small handprint—the size of Ethan’s hands.

I had been so kind to Ethan, and he had liked me so much. Maybe touching my sister, showing her the supernatural existed, was his way of thanking me.

“When we were kids, I thought you just had an overactive imagination. Then we got older, and I thought you talked about ghosts because you wanted attention. And, recently, I thought you were mentally unstable.”

She choked on a sob. “Charlotte, I am so sorry for not believing you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I responded.

Juan pulled her sleeve down again. “From the red mark, it looks like he slapped me, but actually his touch was warm and soft. And now, I believe you, about everything.

“I regret all the times I had told you that you were making things up or that ghosts weren’t real. Right now, I swear I will start to listen to you.

“You need a friend who understands you, whom you could talk freely to, and who believes you. From here on, I will be that friend.”

I hugged her, tears running down both of our cheeks now. She believed me, and that was all I needed. I decided to tell her everything that had happened these past months.

I’d tell her about how I saw Mia murdered, how she had haunted me, and how she got justice.

I’d tell her about Dimitri and how he had fixed and broken my heart at the same time.

I’d tell her how he and Ethan faded away, like a memory.

^The End^