At First Contact by Janice L. Newman

Author:Janice L. Newman [Newman, Janice L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-951320-16-4
Publisher: Journey Press
Published: 2021-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

“I told them.”

Will flickered next to him. Leo had spent the past week mostly stuck in bed, hobbling around his grandma’s house on crutches and struggling up and down the stairs. He was getting better at it, at least.

Thank goodness Will was here. Leo would have been going stir-crazy if he’d had to spend the time alone. His grandma was nice, but there were only so many games of parcheesi and backgammon one could play. She’d tried to teach him bridge, and he’d tried to teach her poker, but neither of them were particularly adept teachers, especially when they could only half-remember the rules themselves.

With Will, though, things were always easy. Usually Leo liked to read, but the painkillers made the words slide away from him and he found his mind wandering when he tried. When Will offered to read to him, it was different. Leo found he could just curl up, letting Will’s voice carry him, turning the page whenever Will’s tingling, electric touch brushed over the back of his hand.

Honestly, Leo had been lucky. It turned out someone had called an ambulance; probably someone who lived inside one of those fenced-in areas in the woods, he’d figured. Apparently they’d somehow seen Leo fall and had called for help, so the paramedics had ended up coming for him much sooner than he’d expected them to, long before dark. They’d helped him contact his grandma, too. It had been such a relief when they’d shown up, it had taken everything he’d had not to burst into tears.

Now he was stuck with a cast on his leg for the last few weeks of the summer, which sucked, but things could have been a lot worse. The paramedics had even praised him, telling him that waiting for help had been the right thing to do, rather than risking aggravating his injury. Leo just wished he knew who had called for help so he could send them a thank-you note.

Being unable to go outside had left him with a lot of time on his hands, time he’d mostly spent with Will, but there’d been some time to think, too.

He took another breath and let it out. “I came out to my parents.” He’d told them on the phone last night, after Will had ‘gone to bed’. (For a ghost, he seemed to weirdly dislike the dark. Every night around when the summer sun was going down, he would tell Leo that he had to leave.)

Now Will’s shimmer intensified, the flickers getting faster. “What did they say?”

Leo gave a little laugh at the memory. “My mom scolded me for telling them over the phone because she couldn’t hug me long distance. My dad thanked me and said he’d just won ten bucks. I guess they’d bet on when I would come out to them.”

“They knew.” Will’s tone was more amused than surprised.

“Yeah. I asked why they never said anything, and my mom said that they hadn’t wanted to push me. My dad said he didn’t want to lose the bet.

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