How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.

Two boys stand before Apartment 406.

“You should say goodbye to him,” one boy says.

“I don’t think I can,” the other replies.

“You have to. You know you have to.”

“I can’t. If I say goodbye to him, I won’t have anyone left.”

“You know that’s not true. Seth is gone, but you’re not. You can’t let yourself become a ghost too.”

The boy with dark hair and circles under his eyes looks down at his feet, composing himself. He gives his friend a small nod and enters the apartment for the last time.

“Seth,” the boy calls. “I came to say goodbye. Parker and I are leaving the Foxberry. It’s not fair of me to leave you, but I can’t stay here. I thought I could. I thought that as long as I had you I’d be able to live in this sorry excuse for an apartment for the rest of my sorry excuse for a life. But I can’t.” The tears roll down the boy’s cheeks, creating thick, glistening tracks down his face.

He sits down next to the spot on their couch where he could always find his brother. He waits. And he waits. And waits and waits and waits until finally, he stands up to go.

“I’ll miss you. Always. And it kills me that I’m still here while you’re six feet under the earth and that I’ll live to be three, four times older than you even though you were supposed to always be older than me because older brothers are always there for their younger brothers. But you’re not and you never will be here again. I need to learn how to live again. And I can’t do that here. I’ll never forget you. I’ll miss you always. I love you.”

The boy stood up to go, knowing that he would never see this apartment again, never see his brother again. But as he laid a hand of the doorknob, the boy heard a voice.

“Noah.”

Noah turned around and saw his brother.

“Seth,” he said.

Smiling, Noah ran into his brother’s open arms and felt a warm, comforting presence as the siblings embraced for the last time. He closed his eyes and let the tears roll down his cheeks, trying to hold his brother tighter, but when he opened his eyes again, Seth was gone.

Noah wiped his eyes and smiled. The tightness in his chest no longer felt suffocating, and he released a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding in. For the first time since the death of his parents, since the death of his brother, Noah knew he would be okay. Seth was a ghost, and a ghost is simply a memory we carry so those we love never leave the world.