“Did she?”

Willow nods, but the nod isn’t accompanied by a smile or a look of fondness while she thinks back on it. She just whispers, “Yes,” and then turns away from me. She lays her opposite cheek on her arm and looks in the other direction. I swim around her, wanting to see the look on her face. When we make eye contact, her eyes are rimmed with tears.

“What’s wrong?”

She laughs, embarrassed, and wipes at her eyes. “It’s just confusing. I have her feelings when I’m inside of her. I guess she’s sad right now.”

“How do you know the tears aren’t yours?”

Willow regards me with a stoic expression. “I guess I don’t.” She slips beneath the water, and when she comes back up, she wipes her burgeoning tears away along with the water.

I feel conflicted.

She’s inside Layla’s body, and if Layla is the one who is sad right now, I want to comfort her. Pull her against me and kiss away her pain.

But she isn’t Layla, so the need to comfort her and the knowledge that I can’t leave me feeling empty. It feels a little like longing, and I don’t like that feeling. This is all starting to become muddled.

“We should go back inside,” I say. “I’ll need to wash and dry her bathing suit before I go to sleep so she doesn’t notice it was used.”

Willow concedes, even though she seems like she isn’t ready to stop swimming yet. She swims to the edge of the pool and lifts herself out of the water. She grabs a towel and wraps herself in it, her back to me. Then she walks back toward the house, never checking to see if I’m following her. I’m still in the middle of the pool, watching as the door closes and she disappears inside.

I sigh heavily and then sink to the bottom of the pool, holding my breath until I can’t hold it anymore.

 

Willow is wearing my T-shirt when I get back to the bedroom, but she’s not wearing the shorts this time. When I close the bedroom door, my eyes linger on her thighs for a moment.

“I put her shorts back in the drawer where I found them,” Willow says. “I don’t want her to question herself by waking up in something she didn’t fall asleep in.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “Where’s the bathing suit?”

She motions toward the bathroom door. “I hung it up on the shower door.”

I walk toward the bathroom, but pause before I go inside. I’m not sure Willow is ready to leave Layla’s body. “You want to watch TV while I shower?”

She nods, so I grab the remote and turn on the bedroom television. I toss the remote to the bed and then go inside the bathroom.

I take a long shower—not because I’m trying to avoid Willow, but because I need time to clear my head. This whole thing feels wrong, but how does one properly interact with a ghost? It’s not like there’s a handbook, or people who could tell me if what I’m doing is morally corrupt.

Who would I ask? A psychiatrist would tell me I’m schizophrenic. A doctor would send me to a psychiatrist. My mother would tell me the stress from all that’s happened is getting to my head, and she’d beg me to move back home.

Layla would probably leave me if she knew what was happening while she slept. Who wouldn’t? If she told me she was allowing some spirit from a different realm to inhabit my body to fulfill some gaping hole in her life, I’d have her committed and then I’d run in the opposite direction.

There isn’t a single person I can talk to about this.

But that also means there isn’t anyone to tell me that what I’m doing is wrong.

It’s after midnight now, and I don’t really feel like staying up for an entire washing machine cycle just for a bathing suit, so I hand-wash it in the sink and then take it down to the laundry room and throw it in the dryer. While I’m downstairs, I pop a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

Willow is sitting up in bed, half-covered with the blanket when I bring it to her, along with another glass of water. She looks elated when she sees the popcorn. She sits up straighter and grabs for the bowl before I’m even seated on the bed.

“What are you watching?” I ask.

She shoves three pieces into her mouth. “Ghost.” I raise an eyebrow, and it makes her laugh. “I know. I’m a ghost, watching the movie Ghost. Ironic.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

Her eyes grow wide. “How have you never seen this movie?”

I shrug and take a handful of the popcorn. “It released before I was born.” My comment makes me wonder if that could be a clue. If she’s seen this movie before, how long has she been in this house, watching movies when no one’s around? “How old do you think you are?”

“I already told you I don’t know. Why?”

“You seem young. The way you talk. The fact that you know how to use a computer. But then you act like it’s crazy that I’ve never seen a movie that came out thirty years ago.”

Willow laughs. “I don’t think that’s a clue. This movie is like a rite of passage; pretty much everyone alive has seen it. Everyone but you. Hell, I’ve seen it, and I don’t even really exist.”

“Stop saying that.”

“What?”

“That you don’t exist. You’ve said it at least three times since we met.”

“It’s no worse than you calling me dead.” She shoves more popcorn in her mouth and leans back, focusing on the movie again. I watch a little bit of it with her, but the irony of our situation is too much.

“This is so weird,” I say.

“The movie? Or watching a movie called Ghost with a ghost?”

“All of it.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You know what would be even weirder?”

“What?”

“If another ghost showed up,” she says, grinning. “Then there would be a ghost watching a ghost watch Ghost while in someone else’s body.”

I study her for a moment, then take a few pieces of popcorn and toss them at her face. “You are so strange.”

Kernels of popcorn are all over her shirt, in her hair. She pulls a piece from her shirt and then eats it. I sit back and look at the TV, because looking at her is starting to stir something up inside me. Normally when Layla says something I find funny, I’d laugh and then kiss her.

There are moments when I forget that Willow isn’t Layla while she’s using her body.

I can’t react with her how I would react with Layla. But it’s instinctual for me to just want to grab her hand, or kiss her. But then I remember she’s not the girl I’m in love with, and it’s confusing.

Maybe I shouldn’t put myself in situations like this. Familiar situations where I’m sitting on a bed in our bedroom. It makes everything dangerously blurred.

I let Willow finish her movie, but I go downstairs and check the dryer. The bathing suit is almost dry, so I set it for five more minutes and go to the kitchen. I sit at the table and open my laptop, then go straight to the paranormal forum. I’m curious if anyone has said anything else that might give me any answers as to why Willow is here.

I never updated the group to let them know I did, in fact, speak to the ghost. I certainly haven’t updated them to tell them I communicate with her through Layla. Those two things seem too far fetched, even for a paranormal forum.