The Ghost In My Bedroom - By Heather Jones Page 0,3

usually read a book but I've read all your books a million times. And there's not a whole lot else going on around here. It's just not easy being me. And you are all I have."

"Oh."

"So just think about it you know, put yourself in my shoes for a day."

"Ryan?"

"Yeah?"

"Sorry. I'm sorry about everything. I never thought about it from your perspective."

"Well, you've been kind of self centered until lately."

I sighed and shook my head. "Look, I'm going to bed, you can keep listening but can you keep it down or put headphones on or something?"

"Absolutely." He went and turned down the volume so I could barely hear and gave me a thumbs up. I nodded and went out to the bathroom, wondering to myself if this was the start of a renewed friendship with my very own ghost or if he was just using me to buy him more music.

But it turned out The Cure was quickly turning into my favorite band too, with every new CD I bought. Then he introduced me to The Clash, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and all his other favorites. We would play them all the time and sing along and dance, mope, laugh and languor, whatever the mood that struck us. We grew closer through the music. It was an odd relationship, as he really wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.

At some point I realized that Ryan was the perfect boy, and somewhere along the line I thought I might be in love with him. However much I wanted him, I thought better of saying anything since I was worried about making things awkward if he didn't feel the same way. We grew closer, we slept in the same bed together with nothing ever happening, and I regretted that nothing could ever happen. We would talk about our days and our dreams and everything that came up, something I was never comfortable doing with anyone else. I spent most of my time in my bedroom with Ryan; it seemed for a while that just being in his presence was enough.

By my junior year of high school my parents started forcing me to look into choosing a college. My mom told me not to go following some guy to a college far away. She didn't realize quite the opposite was true, in fact I was purposely looking locally so I could commute from home just to be with Ryan. We had talked before about his existence, he tried leaving the house before, but he always ended up at the cemetery where he was buried. I knew it was impossible for him to follow me somewhere, and I worried about how many more years I could live in my parents' house.

Then the last year of high school I found myself in a relationship with what I thought was a serious boyfriend. Julian was beautiful, an athlete with a crazy hot body, and at first I didn't understand why he was chasing after me. I thought it was some kind of joke, it was well known at school that I was not into sports, but I finally gave in just so he would stop pestering me. He had an intensity about him that was exciting but overwhelming. We were together for most of the year, until we got in a huge fight just a couple weeks before the prom and we broke up. So I didn't go to my prom, and I missed out on the big teenage rite of passage. Ryan was very sweet that night, he watched a bunch of sappy movies with me and handed me tissues as I cried and cried, not once saying anything hurtful which is very unusual for him. He let me bitch and complain, he sat there and listened as I whined about how guys suck, he agreed with me as I swore they only wanted sex, he didn't even try to defend himself as a member of the gender on my diatribe against men.

And so the end of my high school career ended in a big mountain of suck. I leached onto my best living friend Ling, who was pretty much inseparable with her boyfriend Alex. I felt like the biggest intruder on their relationship, but I didn't really care. I was miserable, and yet Ryan seemed positively delighted by my breakup, stating numerous times how he knew Julian was psycho and he always hated that guy. The more he gloated the more