The Ones That Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones

Author:Stephen Graham Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror
ISBN: 9781607012351
Publisher: PRIME BOOKS
Published: 2010-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

Raphael

By the time we were twelve, the four of us were already ghosts, invisible in the back of our homerooms, at the cafeteria, at the pep-rallies where the girls all wore spirit ribbons the boys were supposed to buy. There was Alex in his cousin’s handed-down clothes—his cousin in the sixth grade with us—Rodge, who insisted that d was actually in his name, Melanie, hiding behind the hair her mother wouldn’t let her cut, and me, with my laminated list of allergies and the inhaler my mother had written my phone number on in black marker. Three boys who knew they didn’t matter and one girl that each of us fell in love with every morning with first bell, watching her race across the wet grass to make the school doors by eight.

“We’re the only ones who can see us,” Rodge said to me once, watching Melanie run.

I nodded, and Alex fell in. When Melanie burst through the doors we each pretended not to have been watching her.

It was true, though, that we were the only ones who could see us. And there was a power in it. It let us live in a space where no one could see what we did. The rules didn’t apply to us. Maybe that freedom was supposed to balance out our invisibility somehow, even. The world trying to make up for what it had failed to give us. We used it like that, anyway: not as if it were a gift, but like it was something we deserved, something we were going to prove was ours by using it all up, by pushing it farther and farther, daring it to fail us as well.

Or maybe we pushed it just because we’d been let down so many times already, we had no choice but to distrust our invisibility, our friendship. Anything this good, after everything else, it had to be the opening lines of some complicated joke. We were just waiting for the punch line. By pushing what we had farther and farther each day, testing each other, we were maybe even trying to fast-forward to that punch line.

But, too, it just felt so good to be part of something, finally, and then act casual, like it was nothing. Even if it was the rejects club, the ghost squad. Because maybe that was where it started, right? Then, next, weeks and weeks later—homecoming—maybe one of us would understand in some small but perfect way what it felt like at the pep rally, to give a girl a spirit ribbon then watch her pin it onto her shirt, smooth it down for too long because suddenly eye contact has become an awkward thing. Or, maybe one of us would be that girl. Or, just get swept away for once in the band’s music. Believe in the team, that if they can just win Friday night, then the world is going to be good and right.

More than anything, I guess, we wanted to be seen, given a chance.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.