if it's empty, you know? Why is that? Why do we stop being just because we've spilled?”
He turned his back on her, checked the distance to the door again. There was nothing blocking his way. He’d never said the rest out loud and he had to keep the exit clear, in case he needed it. The room was teeny. What had he been thinking?
He faced Skye again and sat on the edge of the table where he could see both her and the door. She was the danger now. He was handing her a knife she might decide to put through his heart. But he forced himself to keep going—to test her, and himself.
“Brody shook, before he died, like he was cold. I couldn’t make him warm. I wasn't paying attention to anything else, see? Then there were three guys standing there. I knew them, too. The one with the gun raised it, like he was going to shoot me, but another one said, “Don't bother with The Ghost, man. He ain't worth no bullet. He won't squeal, neither. I know his momma, and he knows what I'll do with her if he talks. Ain't that right, Ghost?”
It was if the kid’s voice had come out of him, and he wanted to throw up until the taste and feel of it was gone.
“And you didn't talk.”
“I didn't talk. Even when Brody’s mother looked into my eyes and asked me who killed her son, I told her I didn't know. I told the cops I didn't know. I told my mom...I was very convincing for a thirteen year old.”
“Why did he call you Ghost?”
“When we moved there, I didn't want to make friends. I was just killing time, waiting to move home again. I tried to blend in and not be noticed. Some idiot called me a ghost once, and it stuck.”
“Could have been worse, I guess.”
“Yeah. Granddad went to school with a kid named Stinky Cunningham. After a while no one remembered what his real name was.”
“So you didn't tell anyone.” She brought him back to the subject.
His eyes felt puffy, dry. He blinked a lot.
“No, I didn't tell anyone. Fear and hide, that's me.”
“I'm sorry about what I said, about you hiding on the tree house. I wanted to push you, see if you could get Texas out in the open. I didn’t touch your memories, I promise.”
“Is that what you were doing? I thought you just wanted to remind me that I'm a coward and I've ruined your...life.”
“You're not, and you haven't ruined anything. You didn't fear and hide in Texas; you feared and protected. There is a big difference. Lost Horizon is not the only book ever written on the subject, you know. The only thing you were wrong about, besides thinking we were murderers, was thinking we are all either hiders or fighters.”
***
With his mom still at the hospital there was only one place Jamison could stand to go. The tree house.
And when he got up inside, he didn't think about anything that had happened up there since he'd moved back to Flat Springs. He went inside his head, opened up what was left of the box he kept his treasures and secrets in, and sifted through the days when his granddad had helped him make the tree house his own.
There had been so few gray hairs then. The famous T-shirt was new and legible—”God answers a Scotsman's prayers, the rest of ye are on ye're own.” He and Grandma had giggled over that for days. She'd had it made along with two others that read, “A Scotsman has God’s ear, so don’t piss me off,” and “Gaelic is spoken in Heaven, English in Hell.”
Jamison rolled himself up in the Indian blanket, closed his eyes, and took that last ride with his granddad, over and over again. They’d talked about Grandma and the scones they would never taste again, the things Jamison’s mom did just like her.
Granddad had lived a good life, except for the lonely years at the end. He’d loved a good woman and she’d loved him back. Even now, in the coma he’d slipped into before Jamison and Skye had left the hospital, he was probably dreaming of a walk in some misty Scottish glen with his sweetheart.
Dreaming. Wishing. Praying.
He’d forgotten to ask Skye what his granddad had prayed for. Maybe he was ready to handle it now, whatever it was. First thing in the morning, he was going to ask her. Then