It was a Saturday evening like any other, as Luke stepped out of the wooden door that separated the fresh air and the dullness of his house. The clouds in the sky had just calmed down, the emerald grass started heaving sighs of relief as Luke got on top of his flaking grey bicycle. Cycling was a favourite pastime of his, but these days, he rarely had time to let his heart roam freely.
His days now mostly comprised of studying, crying and even more studying. He always felt on edge, at the edge and falling off the edge—all at the same time. But he had an hour now. Precious in the wildfires his academic workload never failed to leave behind. So he got on his bike, and he started to pedal away—picking up momentum as he rode into the maw of the sunset.
As the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, the houses cast down long shadows on the asphalt streets and branches began to sway in the warm streetlight. Luke cycled down all-too-familiar streets, wind rushing through his hair. Despite the orange hues painting reflections on his glasses, the air grew increasingly frigid, but this didn’t dampen the warmth in his heart.
“Are you Luke?” someone asked.
Luke braked out of shock.
The streets were devoid of a single soul, so was he imagining things?
“No, you’re not,” it responded, sounding closer to him now.
His head whipped to the right, where the pavement met an expanse of trees. There was a boy standing there. One as tall—if not slightly taller—than him. His outfit was one many highschoolers would rave about. But that wasn’t what stunned Luke.
The boy was translucent.
“Holy shit!”
Luke tipped off his bike, sending himself crashing onto the asphalt. His bike clattered down next to him with a sad clang, wheels still spinning.
“Sorry, but I can’t pick that up for you.” The boy pointed at the bike, as if that was the biggest issue at hand.
“No—no, wait, what are you?” Luke hesitantly picked up his bike, inching backwards.
“Oh, don’t be afraid. Just think of me as an imaginary friend. Like Ren—the one you had when you were younger, remember? You can call me that too, if you’d like,” the newly named Ren replied.
“What—who are you and how do you know about Ren? Are you some kind of scam? I’ve had my fair share of them to know something’s up,” Luke defensively replied, his eyes watering as he recalled his old imaginary friend, the one who’d follow him everywhere no matter what. The only one who would never leave him.
“Oh no, please don’t misunderstand, it makes me sad. But frankly, the moment I saw you, I just knew everything about you. I don’t even know why. But it’s interesting knowing so much about you/ I’ve never been this close to someone before.” Ren’s shoulders relaxed, the edge of his lips curving upwards softly.
“Oh, hell no! You’re some kind of demon, aren’t you?” Luke spat, clutching his bike so hard his knuckles turned white.
“No! You just looked really friendly, and I was drawn to that. So yeah, here I am.”
“Oh—thanks… but no thanks.” Luke couldn’t help blushing. He’d never heard anyone call him that—but regardless, he was creeped out. Creeped out enough to leap on his bike and race home as fast as he could, wheels kicking up clouds of dust into the night.
Am I being cursed? Did I cycle over something weird? he wondered. With the wind tearing through his hair and puffing his shirt away from his clammy skin, it was like he was cycling away from his horrors. But this time, he was actually cycling away from a horror.
The second he arrived home, Luke hardly bothered to haphazardly place his slippers at the doorstep before he was whipping his head left and right, searching for the—spirit, if that was what Ren was. But Ren was nowhere to be seen. Nothing but the trees greeted Luke’s stare, as if nothing had happened in the first place.
Luke let out a sigh of relief. Looks like he’s gone.
Exhaustion dragged him to his room on the first floor, worn to the bone. Hardly bothering to bat an eye at a suspiciously dark corner, Luke fell into bed. No preparation, no hesitation, no warning. Nothing but the dim embrace of his own dreams.
The sun was a gunshot. Filtering itself through white curtains just transparent enough to pierce Luke right in the eye, and for a moment, he allowed himself to think: Ah. It was all a dream.
“Still here, unfortunately,” a voice piped up from next to him, and Luke screamed. Ren’s translucent form occupied a good third of his bed, one elbow neatly propped up on his mattress, and as Luke watched with no little horror, the ghost extended his fingers in a shy little wave.
Heart hammering wildly behind the ivory of his ribcage—whether it was from fear or anger, Luke couldn’t quite tell—Luke spat, “Get out of my house! Go—wherever you call home!”
“I don’t want to.”
“You said you followed me because I looked friendly! Does this seem friendly to you? Do I look like I’m being friendly right now?”
Ren seemed to shrink back into his own skin—whatever was left of it, Luke supposed. A wounded dog being chastised. His shoulders slumped, melting into the arch of his spine, and for a second, Luke almost felt sorry for him.
He’s a ghost. He can go wherever he wants to. You don’t need to feel bad for him.
Somehow, he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that.
‘I’m sorry,” Ren said. And then, “Please don’t make me go back. I was so lonely.”
Luke’s mind raced. He knew what it felt like not to belong anywhere—but he didn’t want Ren to belong here. He didn’t want to be haunted. And Ren was a ghost. If that was what he even was.
As he watched, Ren’s form blurred before dissipating into mist, white smog around the edges of Luke’s vision. And just like that, he was gone. Luke sat on the edge of his bed, trying to choke down the sudden lump forming in his throat and the words that he refused to let out: You can stay, if you want to.
Ren returned. Of course he did. Luke knew it had been too much to expect a haunting to be a one-time thing. Some part of him had hoped it would stay that way, but when Ren reappeared in the back of his mother’s car, hands up like he was miming a steering wheel, Luke couldn’t help the pocket of relief swelling in his chest. Still, when Ren chirped “Are we going to school? Man, I miss school,” it didn’t stop Luke from yanking his earbuds out of his pocket and fumbling them into his ears, ignoring Ren’s resigned sigh.
For a while, Luke decided that was the best plan of action: to just ignore Ren as best as he could. It seemed like the logical thing to do—preventing him from effectively committing social suicide (if the few friends he kept saw him talking to thin air…he didn’t care much for what they thought, but if word got out to the rest of the school, he was absolutely cooked, for lack of a better word) and also maybe, just maybe, it would let Ren know that he wasn’t welcome in Luke’s life. Luke’s quiet, boring life, so mundanely uneventful—meaningless, the voice in the back of his head whispered—so relentlessly interrupted by one stupid ghost.
The problem? It was hard to ignore someone who never stopped talking once he started.
Ren was—helpful. At least, he’d try to be. Annoyingly so, but helpful, nonetheless. Maths had always been one of Luke’s weakest points, and for all his faults, Ren didn’t seem nearly as hopeless as Luke was with numbers. “Brackets first. BODMAS, remember?” he often preached in Luke’s ear, and despite it making Luke want to tear his hair out, he couldn’t deny the fact that Ren was helping. He was also ridiculously curious, almost in the same way a child was—asking about anything and everything, and every time he did, Luke couldn’t stop himself from pitying him. Couldn’t help wondering what it was like to be Ren—stuck in a time so far from his own. So desperately lonely.
He stopped pretending not to hear him.
“Ren,” he said. His first words to him after the morning he’d woken up with Ren in the bed next to him. “You’re kind of annoying, you know?”
Ren grinned, translucent and unapologetic. “And yet, you never tell me to leave.”
Luke sighed. “You’d probably ignore me if I did, just like you did the first time I told you to go home.”
Ren’s smile widened. “Probably. Kind of hard to go home when you don’t have a home to go back to.” Then, tapping a see-through finger to the corner of Luke’s textbook: “You forgot about BODMAS again.”
And that was how it started.
Despite Luke’s occasional animosity and relentless complaining, Ren didn’t judge. He listened in a way no one else did, as if every dull detail of Luke’s day mattered. As if Luke mattered.
At school, Ren trailed Luke down hallways, invisible to everyone else. When teachers droned on about equations and essays, Ren whispered commentary that almost made Luke laugh aloud. “If boredom were an Olympic sport,” Ren mumbled, “Ms Havisham would be the gold medalist six times over.”
Luke bit back a grin. He hadn’t smiled like that in months.
Sometimes, Ren drifted through lockers or hovered near the classroom window, face tilted toward the sunlight he couldn’t feel (or so Luke thought—he wasn’t quite sure about the logistics of supernatural sensorimotor capabilities, after all).
“You don’t talk to people much, huh?” he noted. Quiet. Non-judgemental. It was somehow worse than if he’d actually judged Luke for it.
Luke hesitated. “It’s easier that way.”
“Easier isn’t always better.”
“Spoken like someone who’s got eternity to think about it.”
Ren chuckled, soft and sad. “You’d be surprised how much time feels like too much when you can’t do anything with it.”
After school, Luke walked home with his earbuds in—music playing, but mostly for Ren. “You should hear this one,” Luke said, offering a half smile. “It’s pretty new. From this boy group—ZEROBASEONE or something.”
Ren listened. Eyes closed. Head swaying faintly to the rhythm.
“It’s weird,” he mumbled.
“What is?”
“Hearing something new when you’re not part of the world anymore. It’s like being on the inside of a car window, watching rain roll down the glass.”
Luke’s parents didn’t seem to care about what he did with himself after dinner, which was why it was easy to spend most evenings together with Ren at the playground—an empty place at night, just the hum of streetlights and the squeak of old swings. Ren hovered beside Luke, barely visible under the dim lamps.
“I used to come here too,” Ren murmured. “Before… everything.”
Luke turned toward him. “Before what?”
Ren hesitated, then exhaled deeply even though he didn’t need to breathe. “Before I gave up.”
Luke froze.
“You mean—”
Ren nodded, eyes distant. Universes filling the gaps between his irises. As if he was a million miles away, and nobody could reach him no matter how hard they tried. “People were cruel. I kept thinking if I disappeared, maybe they’d stop. Maybe I’d stop hurting.” His voice cracked slightly. “But it didn’t work. I just… kept existing. Alone.”
The silence that followed seemed to swallow Luke whole. Filled his chest with withering begonias that shrivelled until their petals rotted black.
“I’m sorry,” he managed, unsure of what else to say.
Ren smiled faintly. “Don’t be. You didn’t do it. You’re the first person who’s looked at me without flinching.”
Luke’s voice came out small. “I don’t flinch because… I get it. I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong anywhere.”
Ren turned. Studied him with eyes like streetlamps, glittering amber in the night.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I think that’s why I found you.”
The wind howled mercilessly through the desolate playground, a woman crying for the warmth of her long-dead lover. Luke tried to muster up something, anything, but all that came out of his throat was a frigid croak.
Ren smiled. “It’s alright, I also wouldn’t know what to say if I were you.”
Luke couldn’t help grinning back. “Oh… well, I guess all I can say is that I get you, and I’m sorry for whoever was in your life before this. You’ve got my back now, and I’ve got yours too, man—ghost?”
In the fading glow of the evening sun, Luke watched tears form in Ren’s eyes—ghastly and hazy, but there, all the same. “You’re too trusting,” Ren mumbled. “Imagine if I had bad intentions and I was actually here to possess your body, or hurt you.”
“Well, I’ve met my fair share of rotten apples. And I’d say you’re very far off from being fully ripened.”
“Oh, Luke… you’re too sweet.”
They both started giggling, laughter erupting from their chests and sending warmth tunnelling through Luke’s veins. When his guffaws finally eased, he put his hand over Ren’s shoulder—at least, where Ren’s shoulder would have been. “I’ve just realised that I don’t really know much about you, do I?” He paused. “Where did you live?”
“Just down at the corner, actually. Near where we first met last week.” Ren turned around and walked to the edge of the colourful flooring. “It was my home only by name. My heart didn’t belong there.”
Luke’s eyes widened. “Wait, isn’t that the house where…”
Unnamed boy, twenty…
“No, no, no, it can’t be…”
Found in the bathtub…
“It has most certainly been an overdue parting for me. From this world, anyway.” Ren’s voice trailed off, drifting away like petals in the wind.
Thought to have been self-inflicted…
“Wait, what?” Luke reached out for Ren, frantically trying to grasp the air between his fingers.
Emergency services declared him dead at the scene…
Tears welled up in Ren’s eyes, dripping down his translucent cheeks. “You’ve let me experience the one thing I always regretted never having in my last lifetime. Companionship. So I say this: thank you for being my friend, Luke.”
With that Ren smiled as bright as the sun at midday, before dissipating into white smoke once more.
“Ren? Ren? REN?”
There was no reply.
Luke slumped onto the deteriorating seat of the swing, realizing he didn’t even know Ren’s actual name.
The swing next to him still swung slightly, as if powered by invisible feet kicking themselves off, translucent hands wrapped around the rusted chains. At the sight, Luke couldn’t help the tiny smile flitting across his lips. A ghost of a thing.
Tamping down his tears, Luke stood up and began walking, grey shoes carrying him home. A cold breeze echoed through his chest. A mirror of his feelings on the inside. Above his head, the moon graced the sky with its embrace, painting the world silver once again.
by Caelan and Amberlyn
