THEN I HAD TO DEAL with Dad. As soon as I walked into my room, he was there.

I ignored him for a while, focused on setting up the computer. It was a lot faster than my old one, and the monitor was tits, so I was happy with it. But having Dad moan and rock away in the corner was putting a damper on the project.

“I went to the movies today. I invited Jane Sawyer, and the bitch hooked up with Harry,” I said, almost casually, as I labored under the desk with power cords and video cables. “Pretty messed up.”

Dad was quiet—real quiet. I backed out from under the desk and turned to see if he’d left.

He hadn’t. He was on his knees right behind me, looking over my shoulder. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. His skin now almost translucent. If he wasn’t so grimy, I’d probably see dark veins running all over his body like a road map. “You got girl trouble, Son?” he said, and smiled wide.

He had a few teeth left, I guess. But there was a lot of gum in that smile. He began to breathe weird, and I wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, then I realized he was laughing. Laughing at me. What the hell, right?

“Yeah, I do. You have any advice or anything? You are my father.”

He stopped the weird laughter then, put the point of his finger to his chin to indicate deep thought. “Well,” he said. “I’ll tell you what: You take back your wish, and I’ll tell you how to … you know … get the girl.”

The last few years he’d asked a lot about the wish thing. Honestly, if I had the first clue about how to take it back, maybe I would have. But frankly, why should I? He’s my father. He left me when I was just a little kid. And yeah, he looked like a homeless bum these days, and he wasn’t the best guy to have heart-to-heart chats with… And okay, he scared me a little. Or a lot. He was pretty creepy. But if I took back the wish, I’d never see him again. Ever. It wasn’t something I was ready to let go of just yet. Part of me liked having him around once a year. It was comforting.

“I don’t know how,” was what I told him. What I always told him. “It wasn’t like I planned any of this. It just ….” I shrugged, toyed with the HDMI cable in my hands. “Happened.”

He stared hard at me for a moment, the smile faded but still there, stretching those cracked lips. Finally, he gave a small nod. “Just happened,” he said. “Just happened … just happened ….”

A few fat tears slipped from his wide eyes, ran clean streaks down his face. He crawled away across the floor, back toward the corner. His bare, bony ass a visual aid to his thoughts on my lame excuse.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

16

ON MY SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY HE tried to possess me.

I’d been asleep and having this weird dream that I was drowning. The water was gray and freezing, my chest tight from not being able to breathe.

“You’re so very warm,” a voice said. “So very warm ….”

I opened my eyes and felt him moving into me. It was about the most awful feeling you could imagine. Like having someone slide their hand beneath your skin and wiggle their fingers against raw bone and muscle, feel up your organs, tickle your heart. I cried out, nearly gagging.

“GET OUT!” My voice was thick and raspy. Some protective instinct kicked in and, using my mind, I was able to push him out. Like suppressing a bad memory or burying an emotion. Once gone, he rolled off the bed, smacked the floor with a wet thump. I sat up, breathing heavy, ran my hands protectively over my body—my bare chest, my pajama bottoms. I felt disgusted. Violated.

I heard him laughing in the dark.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he was saying. “It’s just so cold, Jonathan. It’s so damned cold. It’s like I’ll never feel warmth again. But you? You’re so warm. So wonderfully warm.”

I’d had enough.

And so … I promised.

I told him on my next birthday—my seventeenth—I’d undo the wish. I’d wish to never see him again. Wish that he would be released from whatever purgatorial state he was in and go away, go wherever he should have gone on the day he dropped dead in the backyard, leaving burning burgers on the grill and a half-formed balloon animal dead in the grass.

“You swear?” he said, the words choked with emotion. “You’ll do it?”

“Yes, I swear,” I said. “Now tell me how to get Jane Sawyer to like me.”

He laughed at that, as if he’d found one last battery of saneness in his storeroom. He sat at the foot of my bed, and we talked for a while. It was nice. He told me about how he met my mom, about things he thought were important when it came to women. About being kind and respectful. Stuff like that.

I enjoyed hearing him talk, and for a few minutes I loved my father again. And yeah, missed him. The real him.

If he had known I’d been lying about the wish thing, I doubt any of that would have happened.

17

WHEN I TURNED SEVENTEEN, I was out of the country. Me, Tyler, and Drew went backpacking in Europe for Spring Break. Harry, who was now officially dating Jane Sawyer, was not invited. We hadn’t spoken much since that day at the movie theater, and I doubt I’ll ever forgive him for stealing her from me.

The guys and I had a pretty good time, though. Taking the trains and sleeping in hostels, walking through old cobblestone streets with giant backpacks strapped to us—young and free and alive. It was great, and I had zero intention of being alone any time before midnight. To play it safe, I stayed up all night on my birthday. The boys and I found a Brauhaus in Luxembourg that was happy to accommodate young Americans and all the other tourists until dawn the next day. We drank from steins, ate sausages, and sang along with the rest of the crowd in the high-arched hall. In many ways, it was my favorite birthday ever.

I did see him, of course. He stood among the crowd, watching me with a weird blank expression. Sometimes he’d be in a corner, tucked between revelers. Sometimes slouched at the end of the long tables at which we all sat. Once he even set down across from me, rubbed elbows with a pretty, fat German girl who had been giving me lovey-eyes all night. It was interesting to see her move aside when his blackened skin brushed her smooth white flesh, but nobody could see him, I guess. Just me.

I ignored him as best I could—just smiled and sang and drank. A couple times I grinned at him, and he’d grimace, or smile back, or just stare.

After a while I didn’t see him anymore, and that was fine. I’d had enough. Enough of being haunted. Because that’s what it was, really. A haunting.

It was time to let go.

And on my eighteenth birthday, that’s exactly what I did.

What I tried to do.

18

IT HAD BEEN A QUIET day. The older one gets, the less a big deal the whole birthday thing is. I get that, and I don’t mind. Tom and Mom took me for a steak dinner, where Tom revealed he was going to buy me a car.

He said we’d go together to the used car lot and pick out something nice. Something safe and reliable. I was ecstatic, and even though I knew the guy was sucking up to me because he was boffing my mom and laying the groundwork for marriage, I didn’t care. A car was a car, and if Tom had ten grand to blow on his future stepson, I was more than happy to give the guy a big hug, kiss my mom on the cheek, and wish them both the utmost happiness.