Layla

I stare at the back of her head for a while, but then I turn away from her. I certainly can’t sleep, though. Especially now.

I’m staring at the alarm clock when it turns over to 1:30 a.m. Layla has already fallen back asleep. She’s snoring lightly.

I can’t sleep, no matter how long I lie here.

I sneak out of bed, grab my cell phone, and go downstairs. I take a seat on the couch in the Grand Room. It’s 1:35 here, but it’s only 11:35 back in Seattle. My mother never goes to sleep before midnight, so I text her to see if she’s up. She responds with a phone call.

I lie against the arm of the couch and swipe my finger across my phone screen. “Hey.”

“You guys made it to Kansas?” she says.

“Yeah. Got here around five o’clock.”

“How’s Layla?”

“Fine. Same.”

“How are you?”

I sigh. “Fine. Same.”

My mother laughs because she can tell when I’m full of shit. But she also knows I’ll tell her what I feel like telling her when I feel like telling her.

“How’s Tim?” He’s the first guy my mother has dated since my father died. I’ve met him a couple of times. He seems all right. Meek. Gentle. Just the kind of guy I’d want for my mother.

“He’s fine. His morning class didn’t have enough students, so it got dropped. Now he has an extra free hour in the mornings. He’s really liking that.”

“Good for him,” I say. And then, before I can even think about the words coming out of my mouth, I ask her, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“That’s random.”

“I know. I just don’t remember you ever talking about ghosts.”

“I’m kind of indifferent to the idea of them,” she says. “I don’t not believe in them, but I don’t know that I’ve ever had an experience that would make me believe in them.” She pauses for a moment, then says, “Why? Do you?”

“No,” I say. Because I don’t. “But earlier . . . I don’t know. Something weird happened. I almost caught the house on fire while I was cooking. I was upstairs before I noticed the smoke. When I got back to the kitchen, the rag I had left on the stove was in the sink. Water was running on top of it. The pan had been knocked to the floor, and someone turned off the burner. Layla was upstairs the whole time, so it couldn’t have been her.”

“That is weird,” she says. “Does that place have a security system?”

“No. But the house was locked up from the inside. Even the windows, so no one could have put a fire out and then left without being seen.”

“Hmm,” she says. “It’s definitely weird. But if someone saved the place from burning down, it sounds like you have a guardian angel. Not a ghost.”

I laugh.

“Or a haunted house . . . keeper,” my mother says, laughing at her own pun. “What else is going on?”

I sigh again, but don’t elaborate on the sigh.

“It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling, Leeds.”

“I didn’t say I was feeling any certain way.”

“You don’t have to. I’m your mother. I can hear the stress in your voice. And guilt has always been your worst trait.”

She’s right about that. I press my palm to my forehead. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Let’s see . . . ,” she says. “You were attacked in your own home. The girl you love almost died. You spent an entire month by her side in a hospital, and even longer after that caring for her. I can imagine that’s pretty stressful,” she says. “And to top all that off, you have a ghost.”

I laugh, feeling the tension ease from my shoulders. She’s always had a way of justifying everything I don’t even have to tell her I’m feeling.

“You know what I miss?” my mother asks.

“What?”

“You. It’s been six months since I’ve seen you, and those weren’t good circumstances. When are you coming to Seattle?”

“Soon. Now that Layla has been cleared to travel, I’ll see what she wants to do. Next month sound good?”

“I don’t care when you get here as long as you eventually get here.”

“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow after I talk to her.”

“Sounds good. Miss you and love you. Hug Layla for me.”

“I will. I love you too.”

I end the call and stay motionless in my defeated position on the couch. Maybe I’m depressed. Maybe I need therapy.

As shitty as it is to think, I kind of hope everything I’ve been feeling lately is a result of depression. A chemical imbalance of some kind. I could take a pill every day and then hopefully start to fall back in love with my life.

This all sounds like it could be a song. I reach over to the end table where I left my laptop earlier, and I open a Word document. I start typing out lyrics.