The bike headlights cut corners, whiz down the straight paths, flicker through the trees. There’s a brine in the air, the tide lapping back in. Kit follows the bike, bracing for the bumps, the rough saddle, the brakes just a smidge too far from her fingertips. She feels as if she’s flying through space, as if the earth, like her dad that first time, has let go of her banana seat and let her fly. She hears Theo’s chain clank and pedal churn disappear down the path ahead of her, the night closing in between them. She breathes in the salt air, hears crickets doppler pass in the grass, occasional sky-rending calls of terns.
He yells something she can’t hear, and she whoops back. She feels dangerous and ungoverned, one with the skater kids who clatter through town after midnight, two of them suspended from her school. She’s picking up speed, taking the turns wide, lifting up as she rides bumps. She can see glowing eyes ahead, a possum, and Kit veers as she trundles off, babies clinging to her belly.
She sees him take the sharp dip to the water. Tall grasses and blackberry brambles whip at her arms and knuckles. They come to the dock, fly off their bikes, tires spinning to the air, and run to the water. He’s first, his shirt a white flag in the darkness, her bathing suit sweat-stuck under her shorts.
They dive into the darkness, water murk and evening chill, but soon they find glow and shimmer soon surrounding them, some caught in Kit’s hair. Theo stands and moves his arms in arcs, trails of light. And that’s when they see it, the sky mimicking the water, the swaths of color overhead, brushstrokes of a sun storm, Aurora Borealis, a sky show to stun them both. Kit thinks of the way their dad dressed in his silver pants and gold shirt, rolling and flipping on his skates, a clown and genius. Gone now, she thinks of him, standing waist-deep in the glow with them, bright sky overhead, watching the sky watch the water. He’d belt a song, choreograph a dance, find a way to join the show.
She sees Theo in the glow of sky and bioluminescence, his thick curls dripping.
“Hey Kit, do you believe in ghosts?
He dives under. As moments pass, she feels Theo dying slowly in the silence. Loss stalks them, a mother they never knew, a father who simply didn’t wake in the morning. She yells, feels the night’s chill creeps into her skin, crawl up her neck. She regrets the long ride ahead, dripping wet and freezing, she regrets the dark water, the night she forgot to tell her dad goodnight. Forgot to take in his smile over dinner, forgot to lean against him as they watched television together.
Theo calls from a distant rock. Her twin, her boy self, even more reckless, even colder in the night. She calls back, almost tearful with relief. He is so happy, he squeals and claps at the sky, perched on his rock like a seal. She calms and hugs herself in the chill. Her first best friend, her only brother, safe and wild in the dark.
“Well, do you? Believe in ghosts? Because this feels like beautiful ghosts.”
“Sure!” she yells, melting her regrets, watching the water glow around her, watching the sky dance in pinks and greens.
We’re the ghosts, she thinks. We’re the beautiful ghosts.
