My cousin Monty was obsessed with drawing ghosts. We were both sitting in his room during Aunt Nora's dinner party as he rubbed charcoal on a blank sheet of paper and made silhouettes of humans, dogs, and trees with a knotted eraser. I asked him why he didn't just draw an outline and color the rest of the paper black and he looked at me like I was stupid.    

"Why would I do that? A ghost isn't white, everyone knows that."

Monty was ten and I was fourteen, so I knew more about drawing and ghosts than Monty did. I had tried my first cigarette summer before school started. I didn't even cough when I inhaled, like the way they show in the movies about people smoking for the first time. Mom thought I was morbid because I had read Lolita that summer also and quoted the line "everyone dies alone" at dinner. I looked it up and it wasn't Lolita who first said the line—she stole it so I stole it too.

"Everybody dies alone," I said to Monty.

He kept erasing, both of his forearms black with charcoal, and didn't even look up. He didn't respect me because whenever there were family gatherings people treated us the same. Aunt Nora and Dad went back and forth hosting parties at their houses. Monty didn't have to come to our place if he didn't want to, but Dad always made me go to Aunt Nora's. Mom had started refusing to go about a year ago, saying she had a migraine or an early day at work. When we had parties at our house, Mom cooked all the food, but then retreated upstairs.

"I draw better than you," I said.

I was bored of watching Monty draw. The adults weren't thinking about us. They were in the living room eating expensive cheese and thinly sliced meat.

I said, "Let's sneak out. I'll teach you to draw a horse if you sneak out with me."

He considered it, and said, "OK, I want to draw a headless horseman soon."

We climbed out his first-story window and quietly unhinged the back gate. We walked for a bit and I asked Monty if there were any big dogs living in the neighborhood. He said no. I started smoking and he looked at me wide-eyed but I just told him that if he looked at the smoke he would see the color of ghosts.

I asked him if he thought something was wrong with my mom because she wouldn't come to Aunt Nora's parties any more.

"She's just sad," Monty said.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," I said.

We passed by a fence and a dog tried to jump on us. It was dark and the dog was scared. We ran away, laughing, but then Monty said he wanted to go home. It didn't take long for us to walk back, but I realized it was getting to be jean-jacket weather.

I hoisted Monty through his open bedroom window and then got in myself. Nobody had checked on us. The adults were still drinking beer in the living room, and I could hear the boom of Dad's voice. I went to the bathroom and used Monty's mouthwash so nobody could tell that I had smoked.

Next morning in third-period art class, I stole Monty's way of drawing ghosts. My best picture was of a broad-shouldered ghost man walking his ghost dog on a ghost leash. I sprayed the paper with adhesive and brought it home. When I showed it to Mom, she said we should hang the picture up, but we never did. She forgot.


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