My Summer as a Hallucination

It’s been a shit year for Derek, and it’s been a good year for me. That sucks.

I’m enjoying my first car, my grades are good, and I’m even getting into rock climbing. At least, I went twice this spring. Derek stays in his room 90% of the time. You can feel tension around him and his family, even just walking past their house.

Nobody admits it, but we all want to make our best friends jealous sometimes. It just stops feeling good when you clearly have every advantage. In the seven years we’ve been friends, Derek and I have always been on basically the same level. In weirdly specific ways, too. Our moms are both chain smokers and birders. Our dads are both bad at keeping jobs. We’re both trying (trying) to learn how to code. There are some reasons why I might be the jealous one. He’s better at sports and gets a new phone basically every year, but he’s not annoying about it.

Things went downhill fast for him after his brother Miles died, back in February, the middle of our junior year of high school. Derek didn’t drop out, but he was absent more often than not. I don’t know if he passed any classes. It was a bad, bad time. But the really weird stuff began after school had ended.

In June, Derek was hired to dig up all the rocks around these 14 condos on the road toward the water treatment ponds. They’d never had lawns, just yards full of dirt, weeds, and an absolute shit ton of rocks. Now, the property owner, Melinda, wanted to lay turf. She was friends with Derek’s mom, and Derek’s mom asked me to take the job too, to keep Derek company, keep him in good spirits and his mind on positive stuff. And to be his ride. It seemed like a good idea. I needed a summer job, and I’m great at distracting people. I can go on and on about basketball, the “Fast and Furious” saga, even politics or philosophy, as long as the person I’m with isn’t too smart. Derek will stand there and listen. At least, he’ll respond as though he’s listening. I don’t test him on it.

He’s one of these people who’ll keep quiet all day, then suddenly blurt something that makes everyone crack up. He can do spot-on impressions of Hank Hill and Emperor Palpatine. But before, when he was quiet, he still seemed at ease, just lost in thought. The difference now is that he looks more like he’s trapped in thoughts than lost. He clenches his jaw and paces around.

The first time we talked about his hallucinations was our first Friday on the job.

We’d been working on the second front yard for about five hours. I had just dumped my third wheelbarrow load of rocks in a pile at the side of the road, and Derek was busy with his shovel. Busy isn’t the right word. He was wandering around a corner on his half of the yard, poking at the ground occasionally. He’d already removed practically every pebble from that corner, and now he was doing that slump-shouldered, zoned-out thing he does these days. I wasn’t too worried, but this was why his mom wanted me here. To keep him from getting too far lost (or trapped) in his own head.

I threw the wheelbarrow down on the rock pile and said, “Break time!” He jumped at the sound, then we both went to my truck and grabbed our lunches from the cooler. We ate on the condo’s side porch in the shade of some aspens. I chewed my roast beef and swiss with my mouth open, breathing heavily, more winded than you’d think. Non-stop digging and wheelbarrowing is a serious workout. And these were big rocks. I wiped sweat off my forehead with a dirty hand. Derek didn’t make any noise as he ate. He hadn’t been exerting himself as much. He’d worked hard the first two days, so I could tell something extra was weighing on him.

When I’d finished my sandwich, I cawed like a bird. The kind you hear in old west movies when someone’s stranded in the desert. It was something he and I did on apocalyptically hot days like this.

“For real,” he said.

“Your ears are way red. Did you put on sunscreen?”

He gave a small laugh, but didn’t respond.

“Did you hear me?”

“Uh huh.”

“McKayla tagged you in her Instagram story,” I said. “Looks like she misses you.” She was this religious girl at school who’d had a crush on Derek. Pretty hot despite kind of having a mustache.

“I saw that,” he said, and then, “Hey, you want to know something freaky that I don’t usually tell people?”

That question should have made me nervous, but he sounded casual, like he was about to tell me about a birthmark on his thigh or something. And I was just glad to see him talking a bit. I responded with an eyebrow raise. It was supposed to mean “Duh, I want to know,” but I think he read it as something else. He hesitated before saying more.

“What?” I said.

“I have hallucinations.”

That raised the hairs on my neck. I don’t judge people for that kind of thing. Mental illness or whatever, but it was not what I expected.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I sometimes hear people talking when I’m alone, and I see people that I recognize in places where they shouldn’t be. Like, back when I first moved here, I saw people from my old elementary school in the cafeteria.”

“Whoa.”

“It happens when I’m really stressed. It mostly stopped after freshman year, and I thought I’d grown out of it, until it happened again a few days ago.” He brushed crumbles of dirt out of his hair, “I was sitting on my couch, dicking around on my phone, and I felt somebody walk up behind me. So I turned around, and you were there.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I almost said, ‘nothing,’ before realizing that you couldn’t actually be there, because it was like 10:00 PM and you hadn’t texted or called or knocked on the door. Then I blinked, and you were gone.”

“Was it scary?” I asked. “Did I look weird?”

It probably wasn’t the right kind of question to ask.

He shrugged. “No. You just looked like you. It’s sometimes scary, but mostly frustrating. Confusing.”

“Have you told anybody?”

“My doctor. Not my parents. It’s not a huge deal. But I guess it makes sense for it to start again now, considering everything.”

I felt a twinge in my gut. Everything referred to Miles, to the accident, and all it had done to Derek that I still couldn’t possibly understand.

“That’s crazy,” I said.

I know you’re not supposed to say “crazy,” but he’s not easily offended. I kept my mouth shut then. Didn’t want to grill him, and I definitely would if we kept talking about it. Would he have to take some kind of medication for the hallucinations? Was it possible for him to hallucinate anybody? Did he see Miles? If he did, was Miles… intact?

“Sorry if this is weird,” he said, “I just felt like I should tell you.”

“I’m glad you did,” I replied, hoping he’d seem more relaxed now that this—confession?—was off his chest. I tried to engage him in conversation about all the drama he’d missed in school that spring. But he kept that same glazed look and only sort of responded to me for the rest of the day.

The weekend came. On Sunday evening, I was home watching a plate of buffalo nuggets turn in the microwave, when a memory came into my head.

Okay, here’s the thing. It’s hard to explain. It wasn’t a normal memory. It was like remembering something you saw on TV once, not something you were really present for. Like déjà vu, except that with déjà vu, you eventually realize that the thing you’re remembering never actually happened.

I was standing in my kitchen, and out of nowhere, I remembered standing in Derek’s living room, behind the big sectional sofa where we’d spent hours—days, honestly—playing Grand Theft Auto and Skyrim. I could still see the microwave, but in my mind’s eye, I saw Derek’s living room. It was all blurry. Derek was sitting on the couch, hunched over with his face practically touching his phone, like he was trying to see something tiny, or trying to keep others from seeing the screen. It might have been porn. I really hope it wasn’t. I could tell the windows were dark. It was nighttime.

He suddenly turned around to see me. His face wasn’t super clear in my mind’s eye, but my brain filled in the missing details. And I heard (or remembered hearing) the words “What are you doing?” in my own voice. I stressed what and doing.

And that was it. I blinked, and I was still in my kitchen, the microwave beeping, its glass fogging up with buffalo nugget steam.

I tried to remember when this had happened in real life, what had happened before and after, and I could not. I hadn’t recently snuck up behind Derek’s couch. Not that I could remember.

But I did remember the hallucination he’d described to me.

As far as I could tell, I had just remembered his hallucination as though I’d actually been there.

Derek’s parents got him the rock-digging job as a way to keep him busy, focused and involved in something physical, since he really doesn’t have a lot to do this summer, especially now that he isn’t driving. Legally, he could drive. Everyone knows the accident wasn’t his fault. His car didn’t have four-wheel drive, and the tires slipped on the ice. It could’ve happened to anybody, but he still won’t get in a car these days.

He broke his wrist in the accident, got some scrapes and a concussion, but nothing serious. Miles, who’d been in the passenger seat, broke his neck and died.

I’d only met Miles once or twice. He was ten years older than Derek, but they’d been close anyway. Derek talked about him enough for me to have a good idea of who he was—biology teacher, reptile enthusiast, pothead, “so chill he’s more of a sloth than a human,” in Derek’s words.

Like I said, Derek had missed school most days after Miles died, and he hardly left his house for months, but I still saw him as often as I could. When summer came around, he’d probably put on 20 pounds (noticeable on a lanky guy like him) and he looked so white his skin was practically see-through. He was definitely in need of some outdoor activity.

Anyway, I thought I was totally up to the task of keeping him out of his own head, but I was not prepared for the hallucination-memory thing that happened that Sunday evening after the first week. When we were back at work at the condos the next day, I felt completely off my game, and I struggled to think of stuff to talk about. I stared at the wheelbarrow for long periods of time without actually putting any rocks in it. It didn’t help that it was 98 degrees out.

At one point, Derek had to repeat himself twice before I realized he was asking me to come look at a bug.

We walked over to a big, upturned rock, underneath which was a fat and juicy Jerusalem Cricket with a nasty orange head and striped abdomen. It looked at least 25% eaten by the ants crawling all around it.

“Frick, it’s literally an alien,” Derek said. “Isn’t that the same thing that you found on your backpack in Vegas?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened again?”

“It was…uh…”

My mind went blank. It was like that memory of standing behind his couch was hogging all the room in my mind, burying my real memories.

“Didn’t you freak out and throw your backpack at someone?” he asked, though he knew the story as well as I did.

I nodded.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Then, of course, I didn’t know how to act natural, so I forced myself to look him in the eyes. He gave me a look like come on, aren’t you supposed to be the one keeping my spirits up?

I swear the sun got ten degrees hotter. It was no secret that yes, that’s why I was there, but I didn’t want either of us to have to acknowledge it, even silently.

“Okay seriously, what’s wrong?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Alright.”

He went back to using the tiller, which made it too loud to talk.

Then things were not only awkward, I also felt guilty. But I highly doubt it would have helped him to hear the reason for my weird mood. Telling him that I remembered being present in his hallucination, where he might have been watching porn, probably wouldn’t ease his mind.

He used the tiller and kept his headphones in for the rest of the day. His shoulders slumped more than usual, and somehow he kept his jaw clenched the whole time. Couldn’t have been good for his teeth.

The only break from our silence was when a lady came out of the condo we were working on and offered us lemonade. I actually jumped because she startled me so bad. It was easy to forget that people lived in some of these condos. I sometimes saw cars leaving or pulling up, and I heard people inside sneezing and laughing, but they kept their blinds closed while we worked.

Another hallucination-memory thing came on Wednesday while I was scrolling through Netflix, out of nowhere, just like the first time. I saw Derek in his backyard, and again, it felt more real than a memory. More like a dream, because I could see and hear stuff. You know how sometimes you’re drifting in and out of sleep, and you’ll know that you’re lying in bed one second, then the next second, you might be standing in the ocean, seeing and hearing the waves? This was like that, except I never fell asleep or forgot where I really was.

His backyard was blurry and bright, but there were flower bushes like the kind Derek’s mom grows, and a big yellow shape that was probably the back of his house. He was sitting on his porch, writing on a piece of paper. I’d never known him to write anything that Mr. Deursch didn’t force him to for class. He looked up at me with the same startled expression as when he’d seen me in his living room, then he crumpled up the paper, and the memory faded away.

I don’t know when it actually happened. As in, I don’t know when he had the hallucination of me in his backyard (if that really was what was happening). I guess it could have been days, maybe weeks earlier.

Thursday morning, I considered telling him about the memories, since it had happened twice by then, but I couldn’t imagine the conversation going in any good directions. Either he wouldn’t believe me, which would completely suck, or he would, which would also suck, because then we’d have to figure out whatever supernatural thing I was experiencing.

We hardly talked that whole day. I couldn’t figure out how to act like nothing was bothering me, and he seemed especially gloomy. He had dark circles under his eyes and didn’t crack a smile once. I did ask him if he was feeling alright, and he said, “Just another hundred degree rock-digging day.” I wanted to ask what was weighing on him, but he would have shot the same question right back at me. And besides, I already knew at least part of what was weighing on him. Miles, the crash, all that horrible shit. That had to have something to do with the hallucinations. Right?

Melinda came by to see how the job was progressing. She was happy with our work, mostly, but I could tell she wanted us to have done a bit more than we had.

The third memory-dream came on Friday evening while I was sitting on the toilet. In that one, I was suddenly in the old park that overlooks the river at the mouth of the canyon. It was dark out, so the mountainside behind the park was just a big black lump, but light from some lamp posts made it possible for me to see where I was. Everything was clearer this time—the wooden sign with “God and Guns” spray-painted on it, all the weird playground equipment made of tires. The park is about a ten minute walk from Derek’s house. We used to go there a lot back in sixth grade, but it’s pretty rundown now. It’s not a place people hang out anymore—at least not kids or families. The equipment is rusty, and the chain link fence that runs along the cliffside above the river to keep kids from falling has some holes in it. Somehow the city hasn’t considered those important to fix.

Derek was just a few feet away from me, pacing back and forth by the old twisty slide. This time, when he turned to see me, he didn’t look confused, but more upset. “Hello?” he said. I didn’t say anything. He shook his head before the memory ended.

It felt more present than the previous memories had, probably because I was able to see more details. I even saw the scar on Derek’s jaw from the time he fell off a skateboard, and I could hear the rushing of the river below the park. While I didn’t feel much, physically, I lost track of feeling where I truly was, which was in my bathroom. I didn’t feel my body. It was like I was floating.

I think this one was a memory of a hallucination he’d had just the night before, because he was wearing the same white shirt and brown hoodie he’d worn that day. And that would make sense considering the fact that I could see and hear more clearly. In regular memories, it’s easier to recall details when they are more recent.

As that memory faded out of my mind, I got a deep, cold shiver.

I was even more sure that it would be a bad idea to tell him about the memories. The fact that he’d had this hallucination in that weird old park—in the middle of the night—made it feel private, like I was seeing something he wouldn’t want me to see. I can’t imagine what he’d have been doing out there on Thursday night, all by himself. Maybe he and Miles had played there when he was a little kid? I hated to think about that. It must have been so painful for him.

I thought about telling someone else, though. A therapist, maybe. Not the school counselor. A few months after Derek’s accident, she’d said “is it actually helpful for him to miss school, or is he maybe finding a reason to miss school?” I didn’t have the money for a real therapist though, and anybody else would have thought I was insane. But keeping it to myself was like keeping a bowling ball in my chest. It was easy, at least, for me to act chill around my family. If my parents noticed that I was quiet or different, I could chalk it up to being exhausted from digging rocks.

The whole second work week had been painful, since Derek and I barely talked, and the weekend was hardly better. I couldn’t stop worrying and ended up getting sick with a fever and stomach ache on Saturday night. Sunday morning, I was supposed to wake up early to drive Derek to a bake sale that some of the girls from our class had put on to raise money for the volleyball team.

I slept in until one.

The bake sale would have been Derek’s first time around some of our friends from school since the accident. We still weren’t sure if he’d be going to school again next year. Even before the accident, he’d never been much of a school person, and sometimes he’d just walk home after lunch, leaving me to suffer through Mr. Deursch’s lectures on my own. This bake sale was supposed to be like a toe back in the water.

I texted him when I woke up to apologize for sleeping in, and he responded, “Don’t worry about it. I slept in too.”

I felt like a pile of crap. He’d been looking forward to seeing some of our friends again, especially the girls, and I’d worried that when the day came, he might change his mind and back out. I could’ve forced him to go if I’d woken up.

Derek didn’t show up for work at the condos the following Monday, and he only worked a couple of hours each day for the rest of the week. He said he’d caught the same bug as me, because he’d been throwing up, and he didn’t want to exert himself too much for a few days. If he was lying, I wasn’t going to call him out.

The rocks still had to get dug up, so I worked extra hard. Melinda showed up a couple times, and she seemed unconcerned about my lack of progress. She knew Derek was sick. Still, I wasn’t comfortable about it. She was going to pay us a handsome sum, as an old British person might say—around $2500 each—and some of that was contingent on finishing the job on time.

I got a gnarly sunburn on my neck, fat blisters, and black fingernails. I must have sucked at using the tiller, because it just scraped against the rocks (worst sound imaginable) without actually pulling them up. I don’t know how Derek managed to make it work.

The few hours that he did show up for work, it wasn’t any easier for me to be cheery, but I tried harder. I forced myself to talk, even if I could only think of stupid things to say, like “How’s your mom’s candle business” and “I wish we’d get some rain.”

At one point, he stopped digging, leaned on his shovel and said, “Okay for real, you’ve been acting weird. What’s the deal? You can just tell me.”

I stalled by pulling off my work gloves then ruffling the dust from my hair.

“I’m just, you know, worried about figuring life out after high school. College applications and stuff.”

He frowned.

“Why wouldn’t you just tell me the truth?”

It was a good question. He’d opened up to me about his hallucinations. Didn’t he deserve my honesty?

“I am telling the truth,” I said.

“No you’re not.”

“Well, I don’t have to tell you everything I’m thinking about, do I?”

My tongue dried up as I spoke. My mind knew it was a reasonable statement, but my body still didn’t like me saying it.

Derek sucked on his upper lip, shrugged and turned away. “Fair enough.”

The last thing it felt was fair.


We were still working on the fifth condo when we should have been done with the seventh. That week, another two memories came.

On top of my growing pile of questions and anxieties, I knew that if Derek was having more hallucinations, it meant he was getting more stressed out. I was failing miserably at both the job of digging up rocks and the job of cheering him up.

These two memories were even clearer than the memory of the park, which made me think they also came into my mind shortly after Derek’s actual hallucinations. In the first one, I was in Miles’s old bedroom. I recognized it by the framed pictures of Derek and Miles from their trip to Mexico back when they were kids. Derek was sitting on the floor with a box of papers, books, and a couple of those Peruvian pan flutes. Miles’ old stuff. When Derek looked at me, his eyes were red and swollen. I heard myself say “Hey, it’s alright,” and he turned away as the memory faded.

I felt another deep shiver after that one. Even with all that’s happened to him, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him cry.

The second one freaked me out more, though. I was in the rundown park by the canyon, at nighttime again. There was a breeze, and the swings on that junky, rusted swing set were swaying and squeaking. This time, Derek was sitting down on a bench beneath a group of trees that cast him in shadow. He looked off toward the cliff side over the river.

He never looked at me.

That was new, and scary. I mean, all of the memories scared me, and the memories of the park were especially unnerving, but the fact that this time Derek hadn’t noticed me—that I was just there, doing my own thing. That was a lot.

I decided then to tell him what was going on. It was the only way to ease my mind. His as well, but mostly mine. I’d barely slept for days and felt sick whenever I ate.

I went to his house on Sunday evening, and it took about two hours of cringy small talk and aimless wandering on Skyrim before I mustered the courage to say something. I sputtered it out while he grabbed Mountain Dews from the fridge.

“I have something to say that’s weird and serious. It’s not supposed to be a joke.”

“Okay,” he said, and there was a hint of excitement in his voice. He was probably ready for me to say something real for the first time in two weeks—not more BS about his mom’s business or the weather.

My heart pounded. It made my voice catch, but I forced the words out. “I think I’m starting to… remember times that you hallucinate me, as though I’m actually there. As though I’m not just a hallucination, but there somehow. I’m getting these images, just popping into my head, and––and––”

My mind spun out. I had prepared a clear explanation before going to his house, but after I started talking, all hope was lost.

He wrinkled his eyebrows, like I’d held a calculus problem up to his face. And he just stood there holding the Mountain Dew cans, totally silent.

“The first time was when you saw me standing behind your couch. I remembered being there, seeing you, hearing myself talk.” I cleared my throat. “The times since, you’ve been around your house, or outside. And a few times, you’ve been—”

I paused.

“I’ve been what?” he said with a low, tight voice.

“You’ve been at the old park by the canyon.”

His mouth opened. His eyes got wider.

“When?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know when it actually happens. The memories show up later. But the first time I remembered seeing you at the park was last Friday.”

He blinked a couple times, put the Mountain Dews on the kitchen counter and kept his eyes on the floor.

“Will you leave?” he said.

“What?”

“Will you leave, please? I don’t want to talk about whatever this is.”

“But—”

“No, don’t say anything else. Just leave please.”

He gave this straight-mouthed and piercing-eye look that I’d never seen on him before. So I stood up, dropped my Xbox controller on the couch, and left.


He avoided me completely after that. Didn’t show up to work on Monday or Tuesday, wouldn’t respond to my texts, and he left me to do the stupid rock job on my own. I get that he was stressed out, but how did it help to make us get even farther behind with the condos? How did it help either of us for him to ignore the problem, and ignore me?

It’s not like he was the only one affected by the hallucinations.

I kept texting him, and I called his parents. They said he was feeling sick again, but at least they apologized for the fact that I was having to do his job for him. They’d spoken to Melinda, who told me it was okay if the job took a few extra days. That only relieved like 5% of my stress. It didn’t make the work easier or less hot.

I wondered who else he sees in his hallucinations, and if the same thing happens to them that’s happening to me. I also wondered about the words I spoke to Derek in his hallucinations. I mean, I’m not the one thinking of them, I’m just the one remembering them. So who is it that’s thinking of things to say? Is the hallucination version of me thinking on its own?

The worst thought that occurred to me was the possibility that Derek knew something about these memories that I didn’t. What if there was something going on that he didn’t want me to know about?

What if he was making this happen?

Mostly, I wondered if I was just going insane.

I hoped that if I kept having the memories, I’d eventually figure out what was happening. Every memory I’d had up to that point had been clearer than the one that came before, and that had to mean something. At some point, would I become more conscious when the memories arrived, like with lucid dreaming? Would I be able to control my hallucination-self?

Digging rocks and tilling dirt all by myself for two days was a steamy mound of bullshit. My hands were two big, oozy blisters by Wednesday, and once again, Derek didn’t show up. I was so exhausted after work that I collapsed into bed as soon as I got home, filthy and sweaty. My whole body ached, and as badly as I wanted to fall asleep, I couldn’t shake this feeling that maybe I should try yet again to contact Derek. I was in no mood to chat with him, but maybe I could at least know if he was doing okay. Since I knew he wouldn’t answer my texts or calls, I forced myself to get out of bed, walk to his house and knock on the door. His bedroom window was lit up, and I saw some movement through the blinds, but he didn’t answer.

Boy was I mad.


Friday night came. I was not doing well. No sleep, endless blisters, and another sunburn from pushing that god-damned wheelbarrow. I was ready to confront Derek at all costs. No bullshit. Even though it was 11:00 pm, I was going to go to his house, pound on the door until he answered, and demand that he tell me what was going on.

But a memory came into my head as I knelt by the front door, tying my shoes.

It was different. Really different.

I could see it too clearly. The park, the playground equipment, the trees on the mountains, even the bark of aspen trees on the cliff above the river. I felt the night breeze, the cold, dewy grass––I was barefoot in the hallucination. Still, I could sort of see my house and front door, where I really was, but it was much more blurry. I felt the warm wind outside more strongly than I felt the conditioned air in my house. My surroundings were dark, even though I knew the lights were on in my house. I was in both places at once, and much more in the memory-dream thing than I’d ever been before.

It wasn’t a memory, I realized.

It was happening now.

Somehow, I could tell that there was no distance in time between what I was seeing and Derek’s hallucination. He was there at the park, beside the chain link fence on the cliffside above the river, looking at me. And I was looking at him.

Relying on what little I could see of my real surroundings, I went outside and got in my car. I saw the road with only a fraction of my vision. My body felt like it was floating again, and I barely felt the gas pedal beneath my foot, the sensation of wet grass overwhelming it. I kept swerving, unsure if the trees I saw in front of me were trees in the park or trees on the side of the road. And as I drove, too fast, Derek still stood in front of me, and I stood in front of him, motionless.

I wondered, when I arrived, would I see the hallucination version of myself, standing there by Derek? Would it disappear?

Would I disappear?

Was I a ghost? Was I turning into that hallucination version of me? If that version was getting more real, was my real self fading out of existence? Like Marty in that photograph in Back to the Future?

I drove over a curb twice.

The sound of the river grew louder in my ears.

A car honked at me when I started to drift into the oncoming lane.

But somehow, I didn’t crash.

I got to the park and left my car in the middle of the parking lot. Couldn’t park in the lines even if I’d taken the time to try. I could see Derek with my actual eyes now, and he was alone, looking at the spot where the hallucination version of me should have been standing. I didn’t see it. From my point of view––my real point of view, it looked like he was staring at nothing.

“Derek!”

He turned around, and my other point of view—the hallucination’s point of view, disappeared.

It was just me now, seeing everything through my own eyes.

Derek ran up to me.

“Are you real?” he said, sounding so desperate, so scared, that I forgot how mad I was, and every suspicion I’d had. All I could think about was how pale he was, how dark the circles under his eyes had gotten.

“Yes.” I said.

He shoved my shoulder, hard enough that I stumbled backwards.

“I’m real!”

He put his hands on top of his head, pacing in a circle. “How am I supposed to know? I could be imagining all of this!” He swore.

“Hey!” I said. “Relax! I promise I’m real. I don’t know what’s happening either. But let’s just sit down and breathe for a second.”

It took a long time for him to stand still and slow his breathing, but when he did, we sat on the bench by the playground.

“I knew you were out here,” is what came from my mouth.

“I know,” he said, then after a long sigh, “And I know you were telling me the truth, about what’s been happening.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why were you so upset?”

“I didn’t want to believe you. It made everything worse. But I knew that you had to be telling the truth. You always show up.”

“What do you mean?”

“You always appear. Here, and other times when things are really bad. God, if my mind is already this screwed up at seventeen,” he said, “what’s it going to be like when I’m forty?”

“It might get less screwed up. It doesn’t have to get worse.”

He stood up from the bench, then lay down flat on his stomach in the grass, which glimmered with dew.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked.

“I’ve been seeing other people, too. Random people I knew when I was a little kid. And Miles, sometimes. He’s blurry. Only there for a couple seconds. None of them seem as real as you. They don’t move or sound like real people. And they’re never here.”

“Why are you out here?”

Derek sighed, still flat on his stomach in the grass. “I think about jumping off the cliff. I wrote a note and everything. You were there for that.”

“Oh,” I said. “I…”

“Still,” he continued, “even you might just be a figment of my fucked-up mind. What if I’m in a coma or something?”

“You’re not. Both of us are actually here.”

Derek turned his face away from me.

I doubted my own sanity then. He was right. Nothing made sense unless one of us was imagining everything. Maybe I was in the coma.

“What will convince you that I’m real?” I said.

He reached back and batted his hand around until hitting my ankle, which he grabbed and squeezed.

“I guess I’ve never been able to touch you before.”

I thought for a long while, and he kept hold of my ankle. His hand was ice cold.

“You can’t just hallucinate anybody that you want, can you?” I said.

“No. I can’t control anything about it.”

“I drove here on my own. Didn’t just appear. So let’s go find someone else and see if they can also see me.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Gas stations are open. We’ll ask the cashier if they see me.”

“Oh god.” Derek let go of my ankle and put his hands beneath his face.

“Am I wrong?”

He groaned. “No. Let’s try it.”

It took what felt like ten minutes, but he got up, stretched, and picked up a wood chip and threw it like a frisbee. He looked at me every few seconds as we walked to the car.

We went to the nearest gas station and got blue raspberry slushies. I barely tasted mine. The cashier said she could see and hear both of us, and she didn’t seem to care why we’d asked.

I slept on the floor in Derek’s room that night. Neither of us faded out of existence.

We didn’t talk a whole lot. But at one point, as he lay on his back, one arm slung over his eyes, he said, “I know it’s not my fault that Miles died. But it’s hard not to blame myself anyway. And now that it’s happened, it’s like, how can I ever feel okay again? What if things get worse?”

“I’ll try to keep that from happening.”

“How?”

“No idea. However I can.”

I fell asleep before he said anything else.

In the morning, Derek asked his mom to take him to the hospital. I just hope he gets some rest and doesn’t hallucinate there. I hate hospitals. I still haven’t decided if I should talk to someone about what’s been happening. Part of me thinks it could be bad if I got this fixed, whatever it is, because I was the only hallucination of his that ever showed up when he was at that creepy old park, on that cliff above the river. While I sure as hell don’t want to show up there again, I also hope that I do. If he needs me.

Dallin Hunt has an MFA in creative writing and teaches at Utah Valley University. A story of his was recently accepted for publication in SORTES, and he was just named a finalist in the 2023 Owl Canyon Press Hackathon. He loves mountains, snow, Mario games, hockey, and libraries.

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