Sunflowers in Bloom

Lizzie was looking down at her hands, oddly quiet. She chewed her bottom lip, and the sight of it made Nate draw a ragged breath, which he covered with a cough.

He'd seen a number of striking women in his life—women like Holly, for example—but Lizzie was... different. There was a softness about her; her skin, her lips, her hair—it all looked impossibly soft. She was lovely, her features wholesome, pure, real. The vibrancy and openness of her personality was both discomforting and refreshing. She took out all the guesswork of getting to know a person. She shared her thoughts so freely, as if they'd been friends for a long while.

"Talk to me," he said gently. "If it's a secret, Lizzie, I'll keep it. I won't turn you out."

"What if I'm a murderer on the run?" she asked, looking up. Her eyes were sad, but her tone was playful. It almost hurt to look at her. She was deflated but failing miserably to hide it.

"See, I don't think you are," he said carefully. "I think there's a good reason you're here and it hasn't got anything to do with you killing anybody."

Lizzie blinked and a single tear rolled down her face. She hastily wiped it away.

"Christ, I'm sorry. I've really bodged this up," Nate said, getting up from his chair. He knelt down on the kitchen floor beside her and reached out to take her hand.

But — he couldn't. His hand went right through hers.

"Do you get it now?" Lizzie asked, her voice soft.

The room swam. His ears were ringing, his heart caught somewhere in his throat. He felt like he was suffocating — suffocating.

"No," he whispered. "You're—"

"Dead."

Flowers began appearing everywhere. There weren't enough vases; there were just so many of them. Overflowing in the breakfast nook, gathered in bunches in the loo, stuffed into the few vases that Nate did own and arranged in the lounge. The water jug hadn't survived the attack either; it sat on his desk, filled with flowers that made him feel like sunshine had been captured in them, warming him just from being there in front of him.

Sometimes he'd be deep in thought at his desk, staring at the typewriter as if daring it to give him an idea, and he'd reach up to scratch the back of his head(a nervous habit) and find a braided flower crown that Lizzie had snuck there.

"Liz, this is madness," he would say, never really meaning it.

It was as if she was trying to fill the dull cottage with as much life as possible. Moving to the countryside had been something Nate had fantasised about doing for years, but no amount of planning could have prepared him for Lizzie. She was just so—so much. So much energy, so much nosiness and interrupting and talking and dancing to records at all hours of the night.

She was so much madness.

It hadn't a thing to do with her being dead—no, that was something by which he was never given the chance to be bothered. She weighed down his thoughts with other things, following him around, reading over his shoulder, driving him near mad at times. There were other times, the times where he couldn't imagine how he'd have survived in the cottage without her.

On clear cloudless nights, they would gaze out through the telescope, breathing in the fresh air from the open window, a record playing in the background as they talked about everything and nothing. She asked so many questions, wanting to know every single detail about everything and everyone, especially him. She wanted to know what made him tick, what had made him the way he was.

Lizzie was just so unapologetically herself that he forgot to care that she wasn't alive — because to him, she was alive. He'd never known anyone more alive than she was.

She was like breathing, right there with him even when he didn't notice, present even when he wasn't paying attention, even when he wasn't looking at her—and he did like looking at her. He tried to be discreet about it, but he suspected that she knew because there was nothing that girl missed. She observed him like he was the most interesting thing in the world, picking up on things he hadn't even noticed about himself.

"You miss the same spot every time," she said from the doorway of the loo, arms crossed.

"What are you talking about?"

She pointed to a place beneath his jaw. "You always miss it, shaving."

"Do I?"

It amused him so much that he began to miss the spot intentionally, just so he could hear her complain about it again.

Within a week of knowing him, she began to take Holly's paintings down.

"What are you doing?"

"You hate these."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

He hadn't even told her about Holly. Not a word, not a hint, nothing, but Lizzie had sussed it out anyway, catching the tiniest flicker of anguish in his eyes when he passed the paintings on the walls. She never asked about it, as if she knew that it was one thing that was too painful and personal to pry into.

"You're slouching again."

"Liz, let it go."

"You'll become a hunchback and the village kids will throw fruit at you."

"Let them."

"Stop slouching."

"Make me."

So she chucked a throw pillow at him.

That was the weirdest thing, the fact that she could touch things.

"So you can't walk through walls?"

She bit her lip, and he swallowed, trying not to stare.

"I can't walk through walls, no."

"So just me then."

"Well, I can walk through any person, really. Though my clothes can't so there's no point in making a habit of it. A bit impractical to be walking through a person and leaving my clothes behind, don't you think? It's weird anyway."

That was a lie. She'd put her fist through his head, laughing at the scowl he'd give her. She would wiggle her fingers to tickle his ribs and then push her hands into his chest, trying to capture his heart like some kind of annoying sea witch. She'd try to catch him unawares, making him jump for the fun of it. She did it simply because she knew he hated it.

"Will you stop?"

"Nate, you wound me. I've done nothing wrong."

"Didn't you just stick your bare foot up my arse?"

"Might have done."

It was like that every day. Getting annoyed with each other, fighting, brooding, apologizing, laughing, teasing, talking like old friends and then doing it all over again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Ezra was smitten.

"Why doesn't anything like this ever happen to me?"

Alfie looked up from his book and shot him a look. "Everything already happens to you. You get all the birds."

"You're not bad looking, Alf. You've just got to stop dressing like my dad."

Alfie really wasn't bad looking. Though he did wear thick-rimmed black glasses that Ezra joked emphasised his seriousness, they still sat on a face that was rather nice to look at. He had striking emerald-green eyes that complemented his clean-cut red hair and had a surprisingly fit body hidden beneath the "dad" clothes. Of the three boys, Alfie was the only one whose face still seemed to have a soft boyishness to it, so to counter it, he'd started keeping a beard from his Uni days. Ezra always teased that he was bound to be mistaken for Aristotle's younger, lesser-known ginger cousin.

"He dresses just fine," Lizzie said, giving Alfie a warm smile.

"Shame I can't touch you," Ezra said, putting out a cigarette he'd been smoking, and danced towards her. A Jackie DeShannon vinyl record was playing in the background and Lizzie was already twirling in the center of the room.

"You can try."

He did.

"Shame," Nate said when Ezra's hand went through her chest.

"Did you just try to grope my breast?"

Ezra shrugged. "You didn't specify where I could touch you."

"You're disgusting."

Ezra danced with her, singing off-key because it made her laugh.

"What the world needs now is love, sweet love, It's the only thing that there's just too little of," he sang terribly.

"What the world needs now is love, sweet love, No, not just for some, but for everyone," Lizzie sang along, her singing voice no less horrendous.

"You two are tone-deaf," Nate said, laughing so hard that he wheezed.

"Sing with me, Alfie!" Lizzie said, giving him such a dazzling smile that for once, Alfie didn't seem so no-nonsense and serious. He put down his book and obliged.

"Lord, we don't need another mountain, There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb, There are oceans and rivers enough to cross, Enough to last 'til the end of time," Alfie sang with Lizzie, his deep baritone complementing her sweet (but off-key) tone.

Ezra and Nate looked dumbfounded, eyes bulging.

"C'mon, everybody now!" Lizzie yelled, laughing.

And then they were all joining in, the three boys getting up and putting their arms around each others' shoulders and singing to Lizzie so horribly that she laughed until she cried.

And that was how she became one of them. Just like that.

One day there was just the three of them, just Nate and Alfie and Ezra, best mates who had grown up together, and then suddenly there was Lizzie, waltzing into their lives like a thunderstorm, uprooting them like she was the gale, dancing in the lounge, twirling like a tornado, rendering all of them speechless.

"Why can't you cross the property line?"

Lizzie was sat on a chair with one leg propped up, painting her toenails with yellow nail varnish that Nate had brought back per her request from the store earlier that afternoon. She wiggled her toes, admiring her handiwork before she looked up and smiled sadly.

"Because I'll disappear."

Nate slid back his chair from his desk and turned to face her.

"What d'you mean?"

"If I cross the line I'll disappear."

"That doesn't explain much," he said. "How do you know that'll happen?"

"I just know."

There was so much Nate had learned about her, almost like he had begun to know her better than he knew himself, but in some aspects, she was still a mystery. There was no explanation for the way things were; they just were and there was nothing else to be said about it.

"Have you ever tried it before? Crossing the property line?"

Lizzie avoided his gaze, looking out the window with softened eyes.

"No."

Nate had thought a hundred times that it would've been nice to take a long walk with her through the English countryside, maybe even sneak her into town at night just so she could see what the world was like out there, but she'd never accepted his offers to tag along. She'd always said she couldn't leave, and he'd always accepted it.

There was a small part of him that didn't believe that she couldn't leave the property. Maybe she just didn't want to. Or maybe he just hoped that were the case.

"I'm confused, Liz," he said and let out a sigh. Not one of frustration, but one of defeat.

"I'll explain someday," she said, turning to catch his eye. She gave him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Someday you'll know everything."

"Okay," he said.

And that was that.

Nate would've liked to have said that the novel was really coming along, but he'd never been a very good liar.

"Stop throwing these away," Lizzie said, digging through the bin in the study to flatten out discarded crumpled papers. "There'll be something in these—a line you might vaguely remember having written, but it won't come to you. Then what'll you do? Mope around a bit more?"

"I'm lost," he said miserably. "Something's just off and I can't figure it out."

"It's as if I don't exist," she muttered, rolling her eyes. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, smoothing out a sizable stack of papers, working carefully, taking her time to preserve every single word he'd written—every single word he'd hated enough to throw out.

"Of course you exist. I don't see how that's got anything to do with it."

"Why don't you ever ask me to read it for you? I suppose no one much cares for the opinion of a dead girl..."

"Emotional blackmail, that," he said. "I never thought you'd be interested, honestly."

Lizzie brightened instantly. "Oh, I hadn't thought of that! And all this time I've been agonizing that you've not considered me worthy enough to read it."

"Why are you so critical?"

Lizzie gestured to the pile of discarded papers. "Why are you?"

All right, he had to give her that.

He leaned back on his chair, crossing his arms behind his head as he looked out the window. The weather was becoming cooler and cooler by the day. Leaves were beginning to drift off the oak tree, littering the yard in a scattered mess. Lizzie sometimes went out there to rake it into piles, only to have Ezra come dare her to jump into them every time he visited.

Juvenile, the both of them.

"What are you most self-conscious about?" Lizzie asked out of the blue.

Nate thought about it for a moment.

"My ears, I guess," Nate said. Some knobhead in primary school had pointed out that his big ears made him look like a certain cartoon elephant. He'd been called "Dumbo" by some boys for a whole afternoon before Ezra'd come out of class and decked them all in the face. Nate's ears really weren't that big, anymore. He'd grown into them, but the old feeling of humiliation from that afternoon was something that he still hadn't been able to shake.

"That's shallow," Lizzie said. She got up from the floor and dusted off her hands.

"Never said it wasn't."

Lizzie hopped onto his desk, settling right in front of him. At one time it might've made him uncomfortable, someone sitting so close to him like that, but he was used to Lizzie by now. She was the in-your-face kind of girl, the get-over-it and I'm-not-sorry girl, testing his patience, forcing him to adapt.

"And you? What are you most self-conscious about?" he asked.

She was so close, her striking blue eyes glowing with such warmth that he felt as if it was contagious, warming him, too.

"My heartbeat," she said, holding his gaze.

"What's wrong with it?"

"I haven't got one."

"Do you remember what it was like?" he asked, not thinking. "Sorry, that was insensitive."

"No, I don't mind." Lizzie swept her long white-blonde hair back from her face, smiling to reassure him. "I do remember a bit, yeah. I suppose it doesn't really matter, anymore. It can't have been that special. I'd hardly ever noticed it when I was alive. It's really rather silly to be self-conscious about it, isn't it?"

Nate didn't know how to feel about that. His own heart was confusing. It clenched terribly when he looked at her. His eyes always sought her first in a room, registering her before everything and everyone else. He'd sometimes see her bent over watering the plants, humming to herself, her body swaying gracefully, dancing when the only music was in her head, and in those times his heart had hurt.

He didn't want to think about why.

"Hmm, you're thinking too deeply," she observed.

"I am." He sighed.

"Let me read it," she said, placing a hand over the half-finished manuscript on the desk beside her.

"Go on then."

So Lizzie read.

And read and read and read.

Six hours, it took her. She carried it with her through the house, following him around like she always did, only this time her nose was buried in the manuscript rather than in his business.

"You can continue it tomorrow, you know," Nate said over dinner.

Lizzie's body was not capable of digesting food so there was no point in eating, not if she was just going to heave it back up in the toilet later. She sometimes said she felt hunger pangs, but Nate was pretty sure she imagined them when a particularly good meal was presented at the table. She often seemed content enough eating with her eyes, but Nate never missed the longing look she gave to shepherd's pie. Even though it was a comforting dish that reminded him of his mum's cooking, he'd stopped making it altogether. The look of yearning in her eyes was not worth it.

Still, she seemed to enjoy sitting with him through every meal. He liked having her there, eating silently while she talked up a storm, her hands moving animatedly as she told him everything he did and didn't want to know. How her brain could hold so much information, he'd never know.

"Liz, really. You'll burn yourself out. Read it later," he said, trying to get her attention.

Lizzie held up a finger, her eyes scanning the final page, mouthing the words silently.

"I can see right away what the problem is," Lizzie said, putting the manuscript down.

"Ouch."

"Oh, honestly. You're a writer. Constructive criticism is a charity you should accept humbly."

Nate waved a forkful of roast potatoes defiantly.

"Never."

"Do you want to know what I think or not? Or is it because I'm just a dead girl—"

"Shut up, Lizzie. You know it's not that. I'm just having a laugh. I do want to know what you think."

She stuck her tongue out at him like a little child, and Nate felt a rush of affection for her. She should have been annoying, should have been bothersome, but she wasn't. She was Liz, and there wasn't a damn thing about her that wasn't likable or endearing. Save for the times when she drove him mad, of course.

"Your antagonist is one-dimensional. Makes all the problems seem bland, cartoonish."

"Okay, that did sting a bit."

"Oh, relax. It really isn't all bad."

"Yeah, that makes me feel loads better."

"Well, it should. You are a good storyteller and I'm confident in your writing abilities. When I say that the antagonist is one-dimensional, I'm not saying that you are. Don't make it so personal. This is an opportunity for you to reflect and add some depth to your character. He's got all the classic qualities of a villain—which don't get me wrong, it's good—but he's not realistic, he's not real. Even villains have heartbeats, Nate. They can love, too, even if they don't know how."

Nate gazed at her, this passionate girl, this infuriating, bossy, beautiful girl and wondered where the hell she had been all his life. Right in this cottage, apparently.

"No one's actually ever been that honest with me," Nate said, scratching the back of his head. "I mean Alfie's read it—made some great points, but Alfie critiqued the book objectively. The things he said made sense, but I couldn't exactly figure out how to apply them. The thing is, Liz, I think you've just critiqued me. I might've needed that. How'd you know?"

"I know you, Nate. That's how."

"Because you wanted to. Because you tried."

"Anyone who doesn't is an idiot. Especially that—oh, what's her name?"

"Hell. Who told you about Holly?"

"Ezra," they both said together.

"What was so great about her, anyway?" Lizzie asked. She rested an elbow on the table and perched her chin on her hand.

The thing was, Nate didn't really know, anymore. He hadn't thought much about Holly at all lately. There was no longer a dull ache in the center of his chest at the mention of her name.

"I don't really know," Nate said. "I think I really just wanted someone to love, you know? And Holly was the complete package—beautiful, the real artsy type. Watched foreign films, painted pictures, wrote poetry. I had my head so far up my arse, Liz. I might've convinced myself that she was the one for me when nothing could've been farther from the truth."

"Why d'you reckon she liked you?"

"I mean," Nate nervously scratch the back of his head. "I dunno, Liz."

"Want to know what I think?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "I think she liked you for your potential, not for who you actually were. I think she wanted something safe, wanted to groom you into the man of her dreams. The other bloke might have been easier to mold. The thing is, she didn't see you, Nate. She only saw what she wanted to, and when you challenged that by just being you, she left."