The Ghost and Mr. Hummel (2/9)
“So how did you get here?” asked Kurt. He was idly flipping through Teen Vogue before bed as Dave was watching whatever game Kurt had flipped to. He guessed that the taller boy was a jock from the jacket, and was proved right when he saw Dave’s eyes glued to the screen.
“I’m guessing you mean dead?” Dave asked.
“Yes, that would be the main focus.” Kurt looked up from the magazine to see Dave drumming his fingers.
“It was about five years ago, right before the big game. I had a scholarship; this was going to clinch it all together. When the scout saw me, he contacted me the next day, ‘cause he knew I was good. Just one more game cleaning the ice and I would have had it.” Dave looked over at Kurt’s confused face.
“Hockey. I was going to get a hockey scholarship to Ohio State.” Kurt nodded his head, understanding. “But a few days before, there was an accident, a big one. The other guy wasn’t paying attention. He turned out okay. But me? Two days in the hospital and then I was gone.”
The room was silent for a minute before Dave chuckled. He shook his head at Kurt’s raised eyebrow. “It made me realize, shouldn’t I be haunting the hospital? But then again, I don’t think the patients would appreciate that.”
Kurt smiled and said, “I’m sure. What would you do, go running through walls screaming bloody murder?”
“There is a fun point to doing it, but I’m sure that would get boring eventually. Not to mention, what would be fun about old people shaking their canes at you? Or screaming children?”
“That’s true, but I still think that it would be hilarious the first twenty times,” said Dave. He stopped for a moment, pondering. “Actually, scratch the kids. They’d sound like banshees.”
Kurt shook his head. “You’re a goof.”
“Ahh, but I’m a cute goof!” gloated Dave. “So that makes it okay.”
“Humble, aren’t you?” Kurt said.
“I try.”
They both chuckled over being so silly, but Kurt sobered quickly.
“Can you tell me how it happened?”
Dave stopped, losing his smile. “What do you mean?”
“The whole story.”
“…I don’t want to talk about it right now,” said Dave quietly.
“Oh,” said Kurt, surprised. “That’s fine, that’s completely fine. So! Do you want to play a game of Hangman? I think I would love to play a game of Hangman.”
Dave looked up at Kurt’s abrupt enthusiasm over a game, appreciating his effort to change the subject. “Sure, I’d love to.”
Kurt began trying to understand how Dave worked in their house, and all the odd things about the teenage ghost living in his room. Why couldn’t Dave be seen by other people in the house? How could touch just about everything in his room, but not Kurt himself. He’d seen Dave reach out to slap him on the arm in joke, but all he felt was a cold chill. What made everything so different?
And also, why were there no other ghosts around? It seemed odd that he hadn’t seen any others, and the fact that the rest of the family couldn’t see Dave either. What made him different than the rest of his family?
Finally, he wondered how Dave really died. Dave wasn’t willing to divulge the details, and he wasn’t sure if they were even near close enough for him to broach the subject again. He would have to wait, and hope that Dave brought it up himself.
Kurt was mulling over this as he got home from school that day, and by the time he got to his room, Dave was reading some books that Kurt checked out of the library for him, leisurely flipping a page by blowing on it gently.
“Why are you blowing on the pages when I know you could just turn them?” asked Kurt.
“Because it’s fun,” said Dave. “Also, it takes so much more energy for me to actually touch the book. Might as well do it this way.”
“It seems odd, you being able to touch all these things, but not humans,” mused Kurt.
Dave swung around in his chair, shrugging. “Not really. A chair and a book are inanimate, they aren’t living. Humans and animals have a living force unlike plants and other things, there’s something special about them.”
“So you can’t touch a single human?”
“Nope, not a one. I tried once,” said Dave. “I tried to touch my mom when I first died, but all she did was shiver and shut the window. Haven’t tried since then, and usually people walk right through me.”
Kurt’s first instinct was to reach out and touch him, to try to make Dave feel better, but he stopped himself. No matter what he tried, he and Dave could never touch, and he hadn’t realized how much that disappointed him until then.
Continuing on his previous train of thought, he asked, “Why can’t the rest of my family see you? And why haven’t I see any other ghosts before?”
“As for the first question, I dunno,” said Dave. “Maybe it’s a quota-only one person per household can see the ex-tenants of the house?” Dave joked. Kurt shot him a glare, causing him to turn a bit more serious. “I honestly have no idea. No one before you has seen me, but the only other people to live here before you guys were an annoying couple with a crying baby, who probably would think they hallucinated me after what little sleep they got. And before that was my family…” Dave trailed off, stuck in his thoughts.
Pushing away his ideas on why Kurt could see him, Dave shrugged. “As for other ghosts? I haven’t ventured too much out of this house, but I think I saw one in that greasy diner down the road. And let me tell you, the way he was looking at me, I wasn’t willing to go over and talk to him, alive or dead. I haven’t seen anyone else except him. Probably because even in death, no one would want to stick around here.”
“I suppose that’s true,” conceded Kurt. “It just seems a little weird.”
“And talking to a ghost isn’t?” asked Dave.
“Now you’re just being annoying,” said Kurt, resisting the urge to scowl. He knew he was still young, but he did dare add to the possibility of wrinkles.
“Sure, sure, whatever. Now why don’t you be a good boy and do your homework?”
“Okay mother,” muttered Kurt. He sat down at his desk and pulled out his math homework, grumbling over the paper while he mustered the will to finish the problems.
Dave sat there silently, pondering over what Kurt asked. Why was Kurt the only one to see him? It did seem a little weird that no one else had. Was it because Kurt was special in some way? But special how, in general, or just to him?
He honestly didn’t know, but staring at the back of the live young man sitting across the room, he was just happy Kurt could see and talk to him. It had been getting lonely all by himself, he’d been hoping for a nice family to come along so that he could at least listen to their conversations and feel like he belonged just a little bit.
Maybe that’s why Kurt could see him-so he could feel like he belonged just a little bit in this crazy messed up place. If that’s what it was, Dave wasn’t going to take it for granted. He was going to enjoy every minute he could.