A tale of the Common People
By Kelly "Kielle" Newcomb
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I happened to be in the same room with my pal Laersyn when I came up with the following piece, so although he can't be directly blamed for it, I do blame his sinister disturbance in the Force for twisting my generally cheery mind into this particular direction... ;) Seriously, for personal reasons, this story is dedicated to Laersyn. This is a Common People story, which means that it is set in the Marvel Universe but isn't about heroes or anyone else anyone you'd recognize. Warning: "Ghost" contains a mature theme -- not rated anything above PG, I promise. Just terribly, terribly thoughtful.
Lunch. Tuesday. AP History in half an hour, band practice after school. Same-old same-old. The last thing I could possibly have expected was--
"I have to talk to you, Kevin. Right now. I'm dead serious."
--Tristan Jacobs.
You see, Tristan Jacobs was...well, it would be kind to say that he wasn't a people-person. I hadn't even known his name until a month ago, when Mrs. Anderson stuck us both on the same project in English. He was not the kind of guy I would have picked for a partner: his long brown hair half-shrouded a perpetually grim expression, he wore a chain for a belt, and I never did see him in anything other than faded heavy-metal t-shirts. He was about a foot taller than anyone I knew and probably skinnier too, except for the fact that he never took off his bulky denim jacket, so who could tell?
He was equally unhappy with the enforced joint assignment, I could tell. After the initial round of awkward introductions and some half-hearted jokes about Mrs. Anderson's fright-wig haircut, we both hunched over our copies of "A Separate Peace" and were painfully silent until the end of the period. Then, to our mutual dismay, we were informed that this was intended to be an extra-curricular assignment. We had to meet after school. On our own time.
Not a prospect which either of us treasured, obviously.
The awkwardness lasted right up until dinner that night. I was a little nervous as to what my mother would think of him -- I had friends, sure, but we usually hung out over at their houses. That, and of course none of them looked like heavy-metal-freak Jacobs.
To my amazement, the sullenness with which he enshrouded himself vanished the moment Mom called us in for hamburgers. He was charming, polite...hell, he even offered to do the dishes afterward. Mom refused, of course, and shooed us back upstairs.
It was the silent treatment for me again after that, but I took a second long look at the guy. Sure, he looked like the stereotypical "scumbag rocker" at first glance, but his hair -- though long -- was washed and carefully trimmed. His clothes were neat, and he seemed smart enough when he spoke up with an answer or an idea for the termpaper to which we were shackled.
Maybe he wasn't a jerk after all. Maybe he was just shy.
I resolved to try to get to know him after that. Call me crazy, because when I was younger I'd been pretty hard on kids like him who didn't "fit in," but it suddenly struck me that hey, it's our senior year and this guy doesn't seem to have any friends. None at all. Now that I thought about it, I HAD seen him before: in the back of the class, reading a book in the library at lunch, lost in a pair of headphones during passing period. He didn't play any sports; he didn't belong to any clubs; he got decent grades but didn't participate in any outside activities, special assignments, or field trips. Tristan Jacobs was like a ghost, simply drifting through high school.
I tried, I really did, but I don't know if I got through to him at all. He'd smile and answer politely enough, but that was all; he always seemed aloof and far, far away. When that approach failed to force me to retract my friendly overtures, he became a master of coming up with excuses for getting away from my clumsy attempts at social contact. Maybe he didn't want me around after all. I admit it: I almost gave up.
I hadn't seen him for a week. Now here he was, folding his long frame onto the lunch bench opposite my chosen munching spot, leaning forward across the table with a terrible urgency radiating from every inch of his body.
"I have to talk to you, Kevin. Right now. I'm dead serious."
"Matter of life or death?" I joked around a mouthful of limp crinkle-cut fries.
He scowled at me through a fine brown spray of bangs which fell past his stubbornly out-thrust chin. "Actually, yes. I have to tell you something, and I have to tell you fast. I don't have much time. Are you listening?"
I gulped down my mouthful of the hideous cafeteria food and nodded, astonished at his intensity.
"Good. Okay. Just hear me out. All this time we've been...well, known each other, you've never met me. Not the real me. That was just a, a hologram I guess. The real me was always at home, doing other stuff."
I must have been goggling at Tristan, because he sighed and tried again. "Dammit, Kevin, how much clearer do I have to be? I'm a mutant." He didn't bother to lower his voice; I glanced nervously around the lunch area, but no one seemed to have noticed. "I can...project myself, I guess. Like a hologram, but a little more solid and with more brains. I can only do it up to a mile or so away -- enough to 'send myself' to school."
I finally managed to regain my voice. "You're kidding. You've got to be kidding me. You're high, man."
He shook his head, hard. "No. I'm not. I got this, uh, 'power' a few years ago, and I thought it was kinda cool at the time. I was goofing around with it one day in my sophomore year, when I was home sick from school, and I thought it might be a kick to see if I could fool people at school with it. I managed to get my projection through an entire day of classes without anyone noticing." His voice lowered, became harsh. "Not like anyone cared enough to really LOOK at it to find me out, anyway. So pretty soon I didn't even bother to go to school any more. My parents both work, what do they care?"
He's nuts. He has to be on something, I thought rapidly. Humor him till lunch is over, that's all... "But, if it was just a hologram, how..."
Tristan allowed himself a small, tight smile. "Oh, the projection is really like a part of my mind. It acts just like me -- I mean, it's not like it has THAT much to do here. I made sure of that. When it gets home, I can kinda mentally sort through what it did that day. It's like I got to fast-forward through high school, just living through parts I needed to maintain my grades. Pretty cool, I thought back then. But now..."
He fell abruptly silent. After an awkward brooding moment I felt compelled to speak up. "'Now' what?" I prompted, feeling really stupid at how I just sat there feeding him "So what do you mean?" questions like a sidekick in a bad action show on TV. But I really couldn't think of anything else to say. Could you?
Tristan seemed to snap out a momentary dark spell. "Oh. I've been thinking about it for a month now. Killing myself." He said it so offhandedly that I almost missed it, almost missed the importance of what he was saying. "I mean, I've thought about it before, but this time... I don't have anything, Kevin. No friends, no true memories, no life, no future...just a puppet me, walking around pretending that it doesn't need friends or memories or a life or a future."
Were those tears in his eyes? I tried to say something but he forged ahead without allowing me to speak.
"What really gets me, though," he continued bitterly, "what REALLY got me thinking was that my projection wasn't all THAT convincing. If anyone had bothered to get to know me, anyone at all, they would have figured me out..."
I finally managed to wedge myself into his tirade. "Look, it's not their fault. You put up this, this impenetrable shield, and everyone thinks you WANT to be left alone. What did you expect?"
"That's not the point," he whispered, staring down at his hands. "That's just not the point. If I'd been worth something, someone should have wanted to get to know me. But no one cared. Three years, and no one ever even tried."
Tristan looked terribly pale all of the sudden, and it suddenly occurred to me that he might have already swallowed a bottle-full of pills. The dismayed look which crossed my face at that point must have been quite obvious, because he glanced up from his shaking hands with a wry crook at the corner of his mouth. "No, no, nothing like that. I had it all worked out, you see. I was going to send my projection to class, as always, and wait until it was lunchtime at school. Then I was going to get my father's handgun out of his dresser and blow my brains out.
"It takes my projection a few minutes to fade away after I 'turn it off,' you see. Or after I turn MYSELF off, I'm guessing. So I was going to have it find someone, anyone, and tell them my whole story before it faded out. Sort of like a living suicide note. When you started trying to talk to me -- yeah, I did notice your efforts, thank you -- well, I decided that you'd be the one I told."
I stood up then, a little too suddenly perhaps. My knees felt rubbery. This was too much, too fast. All I could think of was that it wasn't too late; not if he was telling me his plan ahead of time. I could still prevent it. "C'mon, Tristan. Screw AP History and the campus narcs. We're getting off campus, somewhere we can talk this over in peace and quiet -- how's Burger King sound? My treat..."
Tristan stayed sitting right where he was, shaking his head and smiling a sad little smile. And my stomach dropped a mile as it all suddenly became ice-crystal clear.
"I'm sorry, Kevin," he said softly. "Thank you for trying, but it was already too late."
And then he faded away.