Wyatt was the embodiment of everything I hated about men. His desperation for sex knew no bounds, so much so that he had decided to drive to Florida for the sole purpose of having sex with a girl he had met online. He was my boyfriend Ethan’s best friend, and Ethan being the loyal friend that he was, didn’t tell me that Wyatt had also taken a bottle of vodka for the road and had been found wasted in his Camaro in some parking lot in Baltimore, over 900 miles shy of his destination. I winced every time Ethan told me they were going out together. I'd always thought Wyatt had the impulses of a primate but the emotional capacity of a ghost, but I was shocked to find out he’d been dead since the day I met him.
Ethan casually told me that Wyatt was dead at an event that I could only describe as an unconventional car show; I didn’t know why we were there or how I’d gotten there. Suddenly I’d found myself on my high school football field. The last time I’d been there was for my graduation. The sky had been overcast until it opened up and ambushed us with sheets of rain. I’d decorated the top of my cap with red construction paper that bled, running down my face and onto my white gown. Like Carrie White, I stood in front of the crowd with my gown drenched in red and accepted my crown in the form of a diploma that became speckled with dark spots within a matter of seconds. I shook my headmaster’s hand and smiled, longing for a drink to ease my shivering. I thought about little else for the remainder of the ceremony. That miserable rainy day was my final send-off, and I thought I’d never be back.
This time it was night, the sky was a deep navy. It was too dark to be as vibrant as it was, the kind of midnight blue I’d only seen in cartoons. There were several spotlights, illuminating four cars with large price tags attached to the side mirrors; none of the tags carried a price higher than $50.00. I found this strange until I noticed that all of them were totaled, they were little more than masses of crushed metal and broken glass. The first one that stood out to me was bright red with shattered tinted glass, even in its tragic state I could tell it was once worth the equivalent of a small house. As I stared longer I recognized it as Wyatt’s Camaro, which I’d always thought had been a wasted expense on someone as reckless as him.
“Damn, his car was totaled almost as bad as him,” Ethan said. I thought I’d been alone, until he materialized next to me, wearing a blue button-down shirt and salmon-colored shorts, just like he’d been wearing at my graduation.
“The hell are you talking about? Wyatt’s doing great, he has a new girl he doesn’t cheat on and he’s been sober for years now.”
“Well, his ghost is doing fantastic. Thinks he’s new and improved and has all the self-control in the world now. His body that drove him to drink and be a dumbass is scattered across a highway somewhere in Baltimore.”
“Stop fucking with m,e dude. He walked out fine, with some scratches and a DUI but nothing beyond that. I saw him the other day, flesh and blood, he went hiking with us.”
“I mean he accompanied us, I guess. I’d hardly say he hiked. He’s mere air at this point, he just kinda floats. Also, he doesn’t look like anything. You’ve seen pictures of him and your mind filled in the blanks. To his girl, he could look like Channing Tatum for all we know. He has no clue and is happy as can be. He doesn’t know he’s in limbo, and if that car doesn’t get sold soon, he won’t be anywhere”.
“What does the pile of junk have to do with where he ends up?”
“Well, it’s not really a car, it’s the value of his life. It was originally listed at $100,000 because he was a good-looking rich kid who attended private school. But people aren’t remembering him as a good kid, who made a wrong move. Everyone thinks he’s a waste of a good education and a loving family, who managed to royally fuck up anyway. His life’s worth is dropping, if it gets to $0 he disappears, like he never existed.”
I stared at the price tag hanging off the broken mirror of Wyatt’s red Camaro as the number slowly kept dropping. Then I turned my attention to the car beside it, which I swore had not been there a minute earlier. A once pristine Subaru Impreza with a price tag of $200,000 hanging off the broken mirror. The dent in the passenger side door and the crack in my front bumper that I’d once obsessed over, were now insignificant amidst the disaster that was once my car.
“Am I dead?” I asked Ethan.
“Newly, yes. You’re starting high babe, so don’t panic. You were smart and beautiful, ready to attend a prestigious college. This was an out-of-character move, and no one knew you had a drinking problem, so I don’t think your price is gonna plummet too quickly.”
“Well I hope not, I wasn’t Wyatt. I never got to where he was, I’m sure I didn’t. The drinking was his life, this was a mistake in my life. God, it was only a mistake. Ethan help me.”
“I would but I’m dead too pretty girl. I told you about the stop sign, but I knew we were gone. It’s a shame too, you’d just graduated. I can’t save you, let’s hope someone else does.”
I then looked at the tag dangling off my obliterated car and saw it had already dropped to $150,000. With tears in my eyes, I ran over to the Subaru that was my life and collapsed onto my knees in front of it. Please don’t let me be gone, I prayed. Through tears, I caught a glimpse of gold in the distance. I raised my head to see Ethan’s Gold Toyota Avalon in pristine condition, even the dent in his passenger door had disappeared. The tag on his mirror read infinity. I had killed him, but he was untouchable now.
I woke up with my heart pounding and an empty bottle of Smirnoff on my bedside table.
Holly Smyth is an 18-year-old aspiring writer from Fairfield, CT. She is a first-year student at Lafayette College and is studying International Affairs. She writes in all genres but has a focus in poetry, with common themes revolving around love and relationships, familial tensions, mental health, and women's issues.