Today, Casy is wearing soft green slacks, the color of elephant ear plants. Her thin hair is pulled back in a sensible tail. However, as always, she has found a way to add bits of personality to her business outfit: a gold pin clipped near her hairline, the locket strung around her neck. It is her mother’s. She wears it every day, even though it’s made of copper and is leaving a subtle green stain across her collarbone. Her mom died four months ago tomorrow, and the pain has not lessened.

I haven’t seen her mom. Like her daughter, she always had things in order and never had regrets.

I watch as Casy walks towards the bus station, her strides firm and direct. The angle of her platform boots makes her lean back when the road slopes downwards. I always worry she’ll fall, but so far, we’ve been lucky. I’ve been musing, lately, on how easy it is to die. We’re so durable yet so fragile at the same time: like plates that survive a hundred falls only to shatter when you bump them on the faucet.

It is a dry autumn morning, chilly and overcast but with no rain. Casy looks up at the sky as she walks, then at the ground, then gives a small smile to the young mother passing by with her twins in a stroller. She doesn’t stare at her phone. Instead, she takes deep breaths of the morning air laced with exhaust fumes and rotting trash. Somewhere beyond the stink of the city there is the aroma of dew-drenched grass, birdsong, fresh earth, and leaves crunching underfoot.

She was raised in the countryside, and autumn is her favorite season. I know this still. Around this time of year, she will be wishing she was back on the homestead, carving pumpkins and brewing apple cider, not here in the workaday crush of the city. I can see the nostalgia in her eyes as she waits at the bus station, then steps forward with all the other slack-faced passengers.      That’s something new. I can see nostalgia. Casy slips into a seat and leans against the window. Her fingers absently drift to her collarbone and fiddle with the locket. No tears in her eyes, just resignation. (I can see resignation too. Neat, huh?)

I remember wrapping her hands in mine, that night after the Christmas market. Her fingers were icy. When she looked at me, her cheeks were rosy with cold, her lips smiling. Her face was nestled in the fluffy hood of her jacket, and her hair was a tangled mess from the breeze. I thought about pulling her close to my chest or putting my arm around her. Instead, I yanked her hood down over her eyes and dashed away cackling. (I slipped and fell in the snow a few seconds later, if you were wondering. She said I deserved it.)

That night, like so many others, I told myself it wasn’t the right moment – that if I waited a little longer it would all be clear. What an ironic misconception that was. If I had done something more swoon-worthy, though, would it have made a difference? Or was it always bound to turn out this way?

I try to shoo the thought away. Those kinds of unanswerable questions are what got me here.

I’m not sure if Casy ever knew. If so, she never let on. Once I died, it was easy to see that those off-handed compliments and teasing gestures that I had clung to were far less definitive than they had seemed. I could easily tell where reality stopped, and my obsession had taken flight. It was sad, really, to look back on. I wasted so much time longing for something that didn’t even have substance. Now I’m the one with no substance. Boo.

The trickiest part is, I still care for her. Even after waking up a ghost and realizing how deluded I’d been, I still think Casy’s wonderful. See, it was more than a crush. Casy and I were best friends – that’s one thing I’m sure of. She has a few secrets of mine that no one else knows. Her smile pops up in all my best memories. You can’t just shuffle that off as easily as you do the old mortal coil.  

The bus stops with a hiss. Casy stands up, waits in the clog of passengers, and then steps onto the street and strides off with that same firm, direct pace. Life has not been easy for her of late. She lost her mother and her best friend in less than half a year. How do you process that? I’m having enough trouble and I’m supposed to be the one at peace. Plus, I know she doesn’t love her job or the cheap apartment where she is living. She didn’t even when I was alive.

However, recently, there’s been a spot of sunshine. There is a young receptionist at the front desk of her office, and he’s been smiling at her each morning when she walks through the glass doors. That always warms her a little. It makes her think that life might not always be gray skies and crowded buses and sticky sidewalks.

I know things like that now, about people, just by looking. It’s a little unnerving. It’s not like I try to be invasive, you understand, I just know – like a whole new spectrum of vision’s been opened to me.

I watch until Casy reaches her office, yanks the door open, and slips inside with a flick of her auburn ponytail. If I descend lower, I will be able to see past the reflections in the glass door as she shows her badge at the front desk and proceeds to her cubicle. But to be honest, I don’t really want to watch the handsome young receptionist smile at her. I’m dead. That doesn’t mean I’m numb.

Instead, I drift onward, past the glass office tower, into the flood of people descending to the city square. There is a nice garden there, with a fountain. I watch a one-legged pigeon eye an old man’s sandwich; I stare at the pennies glimmering in the fountain’s pool; and I listen to the cacophony of shouting, car horns, phone conversations, tramping feet, skidding tires, and squalling birds. The symphony of city life.

At one time I used to love it. I was never able to imagine myself living anywhere but the metropolis. That was before I imagined a life with an auburn-haired girl with gold-brown eyes, on a farm in the countryside carving pumpkins in autumn. I let it go so far that I even imagined a family. I had never thought of having one, but it was a dream of hers. And with her, kids suddenly seemed enchanting. Once I even asked her what names she liked.

Usually people, you know, get married before having that conversation. Heck, at least a first date. Look at that, I’m even starting to cringe at myself. I guess transparency comes with being a phantom. Funny how enlightening it is to be able to see right through yourself.

At least, in the end, my mind had been made up for me. Now, I will never tell her what I felt. I will never know for sure whether she would have turned me down or given me a chance, despite the fact that I now know she was never in love with me the way I’d hopelessly been with her. That’s still hard to accept. It’s not that I think I’m entitled to anyone’s love, nor do I think I somehow deserved hers – it was simply that, with how close we were and how much I cared, it’s hard to imagine it was all in my head.

Those unfulfilled dreams are what’s holding me back now. I left life without ever resolving the unspoken thing between me and Casy, and of course my ghost latched on to that. What a melodramatic thing to do. Perhaps I watched too many romantic comedies while I was alive. But on the other hand, in weird ghost logic, it makes sense. The answer to my biggest, most terrifying, most enticing question was left unheard. I never expressed the depths of my affection, nor acknowledged how far my delusion had carried me. In life, I never got closure. And now, in death, I can’t “pass on.” I always thought that was a predicament reserved for unavenged murder victims, but apparently unrequited love will get you just the same.

At least autumn is the season for ghosts. If anyone feels my chill in passing, they can explain it away with the weather, or, if they are of a more superstitious nature, at least they won’t be surprised by my presence.

I don’t know what it will take for my ghost to, as they say, rest in peace. I didn’t exactly make a point of studying “ways to appease a restless spirit” while I was alive – too many romcoms, remember? But one thing I know. I can’t fix this by watching Casy go to work every day. For a start, it’s creepy. I’m actually haunting her, if you think about it technically, and who wants that? Good vibes only. But beyond that, it’s counterproductive. The receptionist is smiling at her, and she is letting herself smile back. I, too, need to learn to let go.

But how? Being dead doesn’t mean I’m better at these kinds of things. I just feel…colder. And kind of clammy, like refrigerator condensation.

Maybe the solution is trying to forget her. But that will take far longer than I care to wait around. Centuries, possibly. How can you forget the reason that you’re a ghost? You’re reminded of it every time you look through your own rib cage or wave hello to someone and watch them look anxiously over their shoulder and shiver.

Maybe I need to find my own joy in things like the flight of birds or the pattern of old buildings. Too bad most other hobbies are off-limits now. I can’t hold anything, and no one can hear me, so that firmly crosses out knitting and therapy, two tried-and-true methods for self-improvement.

Maybe I should let myself dream, one last time – live out every corner of that fantasy I cherished for so long, then wrap it tenderly in ropes and weights and carry it to the river, letting it sink into irretrievable depths. Maybe I should throw myself in instead. Can ghosts sink?

Maybe I should watch a sci-fi film.

– Charissa Roberson