answers.
Billy went on reading what James had written and Jenny read my part.
“That was amazing,” he read.
She read, “How true.”
And Billy read, “Why do you haunt this place?”
Jenny asked him, “This place? The school?”
“Keep reading,” he urged.
Then Jenny read, “I don’t. I’m attached to Mr. Brown.”
My spirit tingled with joy.
“The English teacher,” Jenny whispered.
Billy smiled and read, “Why?”
Jenny read the one word answer. “Literature.” She blinked and swallowed before she read on. “He’s my host.”
“Lucky man,” Billy read.
A woman pushing a cart of books passed by the study carrel and Billy leaned in even closer to Jenny as she whispered the next question I had asked James that day. “Have you ever seen Billy’s spirit since you took his body?”
Jenny looked at him, amazed. I had been standing behind her chair, resting my hand on her shoulder. But now I felt shy. I stepped back and stood halfway through the window, but still I watched and listened—I couldn’t help myself. It was a peculiar sensation, to have one’s most intimate love notes recited as if they were lines from a play.
“Only once,” Billy whispered as he read. “I thought I saw him watching me for a moment the first night I slept in his room.” As if it was the most natural of gestures, he laid his hand on Jenny’s arm. “Is this freaky or what?”
Without answering Jenny read, “Did he speak to you?”
And Billy read the reply. “Alas, no.”
I read the next line along with Jenny. “So you go home to Mr. Blake’s family at night?”
Memories of Billy’s house made me nostalgic for my few days with James. It was a sad home, in many ways, no mother or father, few books, unkept grass and no flowers, empty beer bottles and piles of half-read newspapers. But it was also the place where James and I slept in the same bed; even before I had a body, my spirit lay beside him. I even loved the garage with the rusty patchwork car in which we drove to school one day, and the kitchen where I watched Billy bite into an apple, something I had been deprived of for more than a century.
Billy read James’s remark about this home as if he was not in the least insulted, “Such as it is.”
Then Jenny read the two words, “No room.” She shook her head, but Billy grinned and placed the other page over the one in her hands.
Jenny smiled back. “They ran out of space to write on the first piece of paper, didn’t they? This is so weird.” The beginning line on the new page was James, so Jenny waited for Billy to start.
“Sorry,” he read, then the next word made my heart jump. “Helen.”
I knew what we’d written. I remembered it perfectly, but still it made me ache. I began to weep at the sound.
“Don’t go home with Mr. Brown,” Billy read. “Come with me.”
“Wow.” Jenny covered her cheeks and read my words, “I’m afraid of leaving my host.”
“You must’ve changed hosts before,” Billy read.
Hosts was just a word to these children, one they barely understood. But to me it was like a fan unfolding, recollections of my beloved ones: my Saint searching the cairns of books in her tiny home for a certain volume of Homer; my Knight dressing for the theater before his great mirror, struggling with his stiff collar. My Playwright falling drunk onto the bed he shared with dozens of half-read books, their spines cracking under him. My Poet in his dark office, hunched in the light of a single lamp, his gray hair fallen over his spectacles, rereading a poem about Zeus. Mr. Brown driving with his elbow out the open window of his car, looking so young and as if he would live forever, the briefcase on the seat beside him hiding his unfinished novel.
Then Billy read, “Help me.”
CHAPTER 17
Helen
JENNY TURNED THE PAGE OVER, but that was the last entry. She was trembling. I came to stand behind her again and rested my hand gently on her back to quell her fears.
Billy seemed uncertain now, took his hands off her arm. “Are you scared?” he asked. “They’re ghosts . . .”
“I’m not afraid of them,” she said. “I think one was trying to talk to me yesterday.”
I tensed, my spirit rippling with nerves. I wasn’t sure I wanted her to share our experience with Billy.
“Really?” He watched her face, fascinated. “What happened?”
Jenny folded up the pages. “It’s hard to describe. But I think maybe