ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[shesepankh]

"Are you personally in a position to hamstring the entire world? Should I be polishing my resume for you to get in on whatever cool world-changing thing you are doing?"

[castmyown]

He snorts. "I wish. No, sorry, but if I find something I will keep you in mind. There's lots of things I would fix if I could."

[shesepankh]

"Me too. Haven't picked one yet. I have a list in order by ratio of upside to likelihood with margin notes about fallback positions from the requisite college majors and skillsets."

[castmyown]

Darren smiles at her, then replies, "That's pretty impressive. My goals on the matter are, 'I don't know, science or social services or something, I guess.' Science because I'm good at it and it can be used to improve lives everywhere, social services because it's kind of a mess."

[shesepankh]

"My list could be summarized as 'medicine or politics or something I guess'."

[castmyown]

He snickers. "Both good things, if used right. I don't have the backing to get into politics, you need either lots of money or lots of charisma and I don't meet either requirement, I think. But it's an option, if I ever become incredibly rich. Or charismatic, I suppose."

[shesepankh]

"I wasn't necessarily thinking elected office, although I could easily fail hard enough at charisma to be hedged out of appointed positions, too. 'Politics' also loosely covers things like working for activism organizations. The ACLU or whatever."

[castmyown]

"Aha. My mind went to, 'Gets up there and speeches at things and is hopefully not horrifically corrupt' instead of other options. I need to think more outside of the box, apparently."

[shesepankh]

"Yes. What are you even doing in that box? Is it nice there?"

[castmyown]

"Yes, but sometimes I think I need to stretch my metaphorical wings."

Metaphorical. Ha.

[shesepankh]

"Sure. You can just keep a little nest in your box."

[castmyown]

"I'll come back to visit with trophies of my outside-of-the-box explorations, and put them on the walls or shelves or something. The box will end up very nicely decorated by the end of it."

[shesepankh]

"Sounds crowded, with all that stuff."

[castmyown]

"Well I'll have to get the box renovated, of course. To make room."

[shesepankh]

"Expand the box according to the findings of your explorations."

[castmyown]

"Exactly. Anything less would be a waste."

[shesepankh]

Bella giggles.

[castmyown]

Darren giggles, too. "It won't even be recognizable as a box when I'm done with it."

[shesepankh]

"It will look more like an entire apartment complex or something."

[castmyown]

"Yup. Nice little rooms for people to go to in case the apartment complex as a whole is too much for them. Then if they're ready, 'Oh look there's more to it than this room.'"

He realizes he should probably stop talking. His box isn't the same as other people's. He doubts it will come up and she'll directly ask him anything, but he's such a terrible liar that he should avoid it anyway. In a non-obvious way.

[shesepankh]

"Little restaurants on the ground floor. Lounge with pinball machines. Rooftop garden, or does that start to count as not being in the box-cum-complex anymore?"

[castmyown]

He snickers. "Yes, each room gets its own cool thing so everyone who ventures out of their room gets a pleasant surprise. I guess the rooftop garden would count as partially not in the box, but some people can take it, I think. That's probably a preparation to help anyone that would like to get out of the box but isn't quite ready, yet."

[shesepankh]

"And when they've gotten used to the garden they can stretch their metaphorical wings."

[castmyown]

"Yup! Then off they go, to decorate their own boxes, and my job is done," he laughs.

[shesepankh]

Bella laughs. "Well, that sounds pretty straightforward. Get on that, what are you waiting for?"