He Started It

‘It’s weird being back here,’ I say, changing the subject. Everywhere I look, I imagine us here as kids.

‘I guess,’ Portia says.

‘You don’t remember.’

She looks around, like she’s trying to conjure it up in her mind. ‘I remember Nikki being tied up. I remember the ghost stories and the marshmallows and the cocoa.’ She stops and stares at the campsite in front of us. ‘That’s about it.’

‘Yeah.’

She starts to say something. Stops. Starts again. ‘Sometimes I think I remember but I don’t know if it’s real or I’m just making it up.’

Felix looks at us through the trees and I wave him off, letting him know that we’re fine. He doesn’t have to come save us from any bears. ‘Like what?’ I say, taking a gulp of the strongest drink I’ve had in a while. ‘What do you remember?’

‘I think she said goodbye to me,’ Portia says. ‘I swear I can hear her whisper it.’

I nod. ‘I bet she did. I bet she said goodbye to you.’

Portia tilts the bottle and downs a lot more than a sip. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and chuckles. ‘I was joking,’ she says. ‘Nikki never said goodbye to me or anyone else. She was nothing but a selfish bitch.’

I feel like I’ve been slapped.

‘But you loved her,’ I say. ‘You worshipped her.’

‘Beth, she tricked me into drugging everyone. Into drugging myself.’ Portia scoffs and shakes her head. ‘Nikki was a horrible person.’

She walks away, leaving me in the woods by myself.

We don’t use sticks for the marshmallows. Not this time, not with Felix around. He bought a set of metal spears made just for roasting marshmallows, because ‘I’m not eating anything off a stick because a bear could’ve peed on it.’

Once the campfire is lit, we heat up our store-bought soup and eat it with our store-bought bread. For dessert, we roast marshmallows while drinking Portia’s screwdrivers. I drink very little because the orange juice doesn’t mix well with the marshmallows. I also can’t afford to have another memory blackout. Once in my life was enough. Bad things always happen during blackouts.

‘Your turn, Beth,’ Eddie says. He was finished telling a story about a ghostly fisherman who rises from the lake. ‘Don’t make it stupid, either.’

He didn’t set the bar very high. Eddie’s story was about as generic is it gets.

‘Once upon a time, on a dark and moonless night …’ I ignore Portia rolling her eyes. ‘There was a group of teenage boys who wanted to have some fun. Well, really they wanted to get laid, but since they were all virgins and didn’t have any prospects, they had to come up with something else.

‘They decided to break into their high school, because where else would teenage boys go? One of them says there’s a broken window latch in his math class, so that’s where they go first. It doesn’t take much to get in, because the school is old and budgets have been slashed and who pays attention to window latches? Not this school.’

Eddie clears his throat. I take it as a sign the story is stupid, but I don’t care. I have a point to make.

‘They went straight to the teacher’s lounge, just to see what it was like. None of the students were allowed inside, and as far as the boys knew, no one had ever tried to get in. The lounge was like the black hole of secrets, and the boys wanted to be the first to know what they were.

‘They were surprised to find the door unlocked. All these years, and the damn thing was unlocked. They walked right in, assuming it was empty. It was not.

‘A whole group of teachers stood in the center of the lounge, huddled together like they were gathered around a campfire. Except they weren’t. Instead, they were all smoking. The air was so thick it was hard to breathe. The teachers didn’t see the boys until one of them coughed.

‘“Oh crap,”’ the boy said.

‘All of the teachers turned around. Their eyes were hollowed out. They all had grey skin and sunken cheeks. Like they were dead.’ I glance at Felix, whose expression doesn’t change. ‘One of the boys pointed at the teachers.

‘“They’re … floating,” he said.

‘He was right. The teachers hovered about a foot off the ground, and their feet looked like wisps of smoke.

‘One of the boys said, “They’re ghosts.”’

‘The comment made all the teachers start puffing harder on their cigarettes. They also started moving closer to the boys.’

‘Do ghosts smoke?’ Eddie said.

I ignored him. ‘The boys took off running back down the hall, but the smoke followed. They turned and found another hall filled with smoke, but they plowed forward, into the abyss.’

‘One boy screamed, “Screw the alarm” and they ran toward the front doors of the school. The first boy burst through the doors, setting off the alarm. All the others followed behind, but the boy who came out last was never the same. He started smoking that very night. Didn’t stop, refused to even try. Within a month, he got kicked out of school for smoking on campus. The boy wouldn’t do anything except smoke; he wouldn’t go to any other school, wouldn’t see his friends.’

‘His parents had to put him in an addiction center, but he was kicked out for smoking. Next they put him in a psych hospital. He’s still there, still locked away in a room. He doesn’t say a word. Never has.’

I pause to glance at Felix again. Still no expression, no reaction to my story about his new habit.

‘Oh shit,’ Portia says.

‘All the boy does,’ I say, ‘is smoke.’

Everyone stares at me.

‘Was that supposed to be scary?’ Eddie says.

‘It was supposed to be creepy,’ I say.

No one responds.

Portia wiggles like she’s shivering. ‘Jesus Christ. Who the hell thinks of smoking ghosts?’ She stands up from her rock, brushes off her butt. ‘Now I have to use the facilities. If I scream, it’s because I saw a smoking ghost.’

‘What did you think?’ I say to Felix.

‘Not bad, I guess.’

Dick.

I roll my eyes and stand up, walking into the woods after Portia. Maybe Felix is still pretending to fight, or maybe he really is as quirky as Portia says.

She doesn’t hear me coming because the guys launch into a loud, drunken conversation. I see her kneeling down and assume she’s taking care of business. Instead, I see her slip something out of her pocket and hide it beneath a tree, under some leaves.

I wait until she’s done before walking closer.

‘Hey,’ I say.

‘Oh hey.’ She whips around, the guilt in her eyes as clear as the nighttime sky.

‘You forgot the toilet paper,’ I say.

She smiles. ‘Yeah, I just realized that.’

We go back to get some and I make a mental note about that tree, so I can come back to it.

After we go to bed, I wait an appropriate amount of time for everyone to fall asleep. Half an hour, at least, and then I get up as quietly as I can. Using only my phone as a light, I make my way into the woods, toward the tree. It isn’t hard to find. Earlier I noted a particular branch it had, the way it bent out like an arm with a broken elbow. Just as I’m about to kneel down, I hear him.