Liam tried his best to not feel lonely. But as he sat alone on his couch in the empty house, he had a hard time trying to fill the space. 

 He stretched his arm out lazily towards the TV, remote in hand. When did it say the pizza was coming? He thought to himself. Struggling to remember the time he was given over the phone, after a few moments of retracing his memory, he eventually gave up with a sigh and let himself sink deeper into the stained red sofa. 

He found it on the side of the road next to a sign marked ‘free’, and seeing as the down payment for his house had cost almost as much as the rest of his savings, he figured it would work just as well as any old couch. There were a few questionable stains left on the cushions, the most notable being somehow on the bottom of the couch, and lifting the left cushion just a little too far made the rest of the house smell like baloney for the next few days, but as he sat there after his long week, it felt like bliss. 

Glancing down at the stained cushions, he took notice of what he was wearing. The sweater he had on was one he hadn’t worn in a while. Its color was fading at the bottom and there was a small splotch of white near the collar where it had been bleached. He hadn’t worn this since his roommate had been around. Roommate, huh? He quietly thought to himself, sending him into a spiral of memories.

Liam met Sam after he lost his license from turning his car into a tree. He stayed up late hanging at some college party and was dumb enough to think he could drive himself back. He’d gotten himself taken in and was given some talk about how there’d be some serious repercussions to his admissions, but Liam just tuned them out. He was already failing all of his classes anyway. The cop was nice enough, and he was let off without a permanent mark on his record. But he had no license, no car, and no more university dorm. 

The university gave him 2 days to pack his things out of his dorm. That was where he met Sam. The same year in college as him and 2 doors down the hall, Sam was everything that at the time Liam wished he could be himself. Top of the class, decent job, and popular around campus, Sam was everything Liam was not. Including friendly. 

Liam had just finished taking down his final posters when one of the boxes he was carrying slipped out of his arms. Liam probably could have moved to catch it, but at the moment all he could feel was some sort of empathetic self-pity for the box; he too had slipped, far away from his parent's expectations, and far away from what he felt was hope he’d have a real future. Suddenly, an arm reached out and caught the box before it could hit the ground. Liam glanced up to meet bright green eyes and saw an unfamiliar face smiling at him. 

“Need some help there?” She asked Liam, who at this point was drowning in more self-pity and anger that someone else had to catch the box for him.

“I’m fine,” He snapped, snatching the box out of her arms. The stranger stared back at him with wide eyes and put her hands up.

“Well alright there, bud. Having a bad day, Space Ranger?” Liam was confused by this. The stranger didn’t even sound angry with him. And where the heck did she get ‘Space Ranger’ from?

“‘Space Ranger’?” He asked. She gestures towards Liam’s bag.

“Oh, sorry. It’s just you have this Buzz Lightyear sticker on your laptop. I guess I thought you were a fan. Toy Story was totally my favorite Pixar film when I was a kid.” She ruses bashfully. Liam is surprised. 

“Oh, yeah, it’s my favorite too. How do you even know about that?” Anger forgotten, Liam was suddenly more curious about the person in front of him. She points out the window to a small building labeled, “Creative Arts”. 

“You have Creative Writing at 11:00 a.m. on Thursdays, right?” Liam nods. “I do too. I’ve seen you in that class. I’m pretty sure the professor’s presented your stuff in the class before,”

Liam sighs. “Yeah, probably as an example of what not to do,” To his surprise, the stranger enthusiastically shakes her head. 

“No, no. I thought it was really good. Like that story about a ghost. That was definitely better than anything I could write,” Liam studies her expression for a moment trying to decide if she was sincere or not.

“Well, thanks I guess. Not that it’ll do me much good,” He looks down at the packed-up dorm room around him. The stranger glances across the room too.

“Oh. You’re leaving?” Liam nods and turns away, feeling tears start to prick up in his eyes. 

“Yeah, I just got into some stupid accident and lost my scholarship,” He mumbles. 

“Sorry. But hey, you could always reapply later, take a gap year,” Liam raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Really?” She nods.

“Yeah, one of my friends did something similar,” She’s about to launch into an explanation when a car horn blasts from the parking lot. Liam looks and sees his mom sitting behind the driver’s wheel looking impatient.

“Sorry, I have to go. My mom’s waiting for me,”

“Oh, ok,” Liam’s about to shoulder past her when she takes out a piece of paper and starts frantically writing something down. “Hey, why don’t we exchange numbers and I can tell you more about it later? I’m Sam by the way,” She finishes writing and offers the piece of paper to him. Liam takes it, expecting himself to probably just throw it out later. 

“I’m Liam,” He says, as he shoves the paper into his pocket and heads down the stairs with his stuff.

Liam frowned at the memory. Sam left to study abroad 6 months ago, and Liam was doing just fine on his own. No one else to pick up after, no loud music late at night. But he missed the noise. The way Sam would fill it with laughter and off-key karaoke. It felt empty, lonely. He sighed and pushed the thought out of his head. He was supposed to be relaxing, not lonely.

He almost kicked his feet back on the coffee table but stopped, inches away from hitting an open can left on its surface. That’s odd, Liam thought. He didn’t remember opening anything. He shook his head and put the thought aside. He must have opened it, he’s the only person who was in the house after all. What’s the harm, he thought, as he grabbed the can. He must have grabbed it from the fridge recently, it’s still cold, and a thin layer of condensation formed on its surface. He took a sip, set the can back down, and let the flavor sit on his tongue. 

Cherry-flavored soda. His favorite. Of course, he may have run out of cherry-flavored soda a few days ago, and still hadn’t been to the store to buy more, but it must have been somewhere in the back of the fridge. That place was probably equivalent to the closet from Narnia when it came to food surprises. He kicked his feet up on the table again, this time avoiding where he set down the soda. 

Come to think of it, that wasn’t the only weird coincidence lately. Like the other day, his car was mysteriously full of gas after driving it on fumes the night before. Or when he lost track of his keys and the next day had them appear in his coat pocket, even though he was sure he had placed them on the kitchen counter. But whatever, he brushed those thoughts aside. He must have done those things. How else would they have happened? 

The doorbell rang out and Liam got up off the couch. Making the trek across his modest living room to the front door, he moved his hand towards the handle. Only to have the door swing open before he could reach it. 

A tired-looking teenager is holding Liam’s box of cheese pizza, face illuminated in orange from his archaic outside light. “That’ll be $12.49,” They informed him. Crap, Liam realized. He left his wallet on the couch. Liam opened his mouth to ask them to wait there while he ran back inside to grab his wallet but stopped as a crinkling noise caught his attention. In his right hand, the same one he used to try and open the door, was a crisp $20 dollar bill. 

Liam probably didn’t even have 20 dollars in cash, much less a $20 dollar bill. But he offered it out to the deliverer and took the pizza back inside, all the same, waving off the event. Both of his hands are occupied with the pizza, but the door slams shut behind him. He sat on the couch and decided to put this little series of incidents out of his mind for the evening. He was supposed to be relaxing, after all. 

As he flipped through the channels while he ate the pizza, watching reruns of old sitcoms and nature documentaries, Liam noticed that even though he’d only eaten two slices, three were missing from the pizza. He picked up a napkin from a stack with his free hand, only to see a message inscribed in black marker ink on the front of it. 

Thanks for the pizza.

Liam definitely didn’t need to thank himself for his pizza. 

“Who wrote this,” He exclaimed out loud, more to himself than anything, not expecting anything of it. But to his surprise, another message appeared this time on the back, in that same ink. 

I did.

Liam got the feeling this was more than a prank from the delivery driver. 

“Is someone there?” He called out cautiously, not really sure if he wanted an answer. He swung his head around as he heard the door to the fridge open and close in the kitchen. 

“Hello?” Another message appears, this time on a different napkin. 

Hi.

His fingers fumbled around the thin paper as he brought it closer to his face to get a better look. He noticed that it looked more like the ink was bleeding through the napkin than it was being written on it. He glanced wildly around the room. 

“Who are you?,” He asked before he shook his head. “No, that’s rude. Uh, what’s your name?” He asks the invisible force. 

Another message appeared. I don’t know. 

“You don’t know?” He questioned, his attention now refocused on the napkins. 

No. It would be nice if I did though. 

“Uh, what are you then, I guess? Are you like a ghost or something?” 

I guess I’m something like that.  I’m not really anything though. I just am. 

“Oh. Well, uh, are you here to haunt me?” He asked. He started a little light-headed, as a bead of sweat trickled down his neck at his nervousness from this encounter. 

No. I’m just sorta here. And your food’s good. 

Liam’s eyes widened a little as he read the message, and his eyebrows furrowed. “Wait, were you the one who ate my pastrami?” 

It looked really good, sorry. I didn’t think you would mind, it was in the back. 

Liam let out a sigh. “It was probably nearing its expiration date anyway. Look, um, I can’t keep referring to you like this. Is there something I can call you?” He addressed the empty space. “Like a name?” 

I don’t have any names. 

“Okay,” 

You could give me one.

For a moment Liam’s taken aback by this gesture. No one’s ever asked him to give them a name before. Sam was the one who gave nicknames to people. 

Like Space Ranger for the sticker on his laptop that he’d forgotten about but Sam noticed halfway across the classroom. Nascar, for the accident that totaled his car and got him kicked out of college. Liam was upset when the name first popped up, but after a while, it was something he laughed at like it was a reminder that it wasn’t a big deal. At least not to his friend Sam anyway. Or Notebook. Sam called him Notebook the most. 

Sam got the idea from some stupid play on words. It was July, and they were sitting on the dirty kitchen floor of Sam’s parent’s house eating leftover Chinese food and talking about what they were going to do after college. 

“Ok, ok. How about NASA?” Sam suggests. Liam raises his eyebrows in disbelief.

“I’m a writer Sam, not an astronaut,” She rolls her eyes at him.

“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Smart Aleck. I meant as a journalist or something,” 

“Journalist? Why would they need one?” She taps her chopsticks on the sides of an empty rice container.

“Well, they’re gonna need someone to paint them in a good light,”

“Good light?”

“It’s probably not going to look so great for their image when they blow up America’s favorite janitor or something,” She falls back and bursts into laughter.

“Wha- Are you talking about the challenger! Sam!” Liam playfully hits her on the arm.

“I’m just saying!” 

“That’s horrible!” She starts laughing even harder. 

After her laughter died down, she pulled herself back up in a seating position with a serious look on her face and said in a matter-of-fact voice. “You know, you care a lot about that stuff,” 

Liam is confused. “About what stuff?”

“Being right I guess. The moral good,” She used her chopsticks to flick a grain of rice at his face. “You’re kind of like an open book. Always holding yourself accountable,” Liam stopped for a moment, having never considered that before. Sam noticed his pause and added, “Remember that one time at the State Fair when you refused to watch the pig races because it was,” Sam made air quotes, “‘The abuse of innocent animals for cheap entertainment’?”

Liam’s face turned red. “You should read some of the articles on that. What they do to those pigs, it’s really horrible!” 

A pause hung in the air before the two of them burst out laughing. 

“Like I said, open book. I guess more of a notebook really. You carry that thing everywhere,” She gestured towards the small leatherbound notebook Liam had placed by his side. Her eyes suddenly lit up with an idea. “Hey, I should start calling you Notebook!”

“Don’t you dare!” 

“Too late!”

He blinked. Sam did have a point there. Even when he was talking to some supernatural specter he was still being polite. “Alright, I guess. What do ghosts like being called? ‘Spooky’?” He suggests to them. Another message appeared almost immediately.

No. 

“Ok then, not spooky. Do you- is there anything you remember or…” His voice began to trail off as he saw the black ink start to bleed on the paper. 

Not really. Just it being cold. Like really cold.

Ok, that’s not creepy, Liam thought, deciding not to voice that thought aloud. 

“Um, how about Frosty?” Liam’s mind is filled with thoughts of a jolly dancing snowman. “Not that one either. Icicle? Snowy?” He rattled off a list of names. 

None of those sound great. 

“Thanks for the critique,” He grumbled. “I don’t really have experience at naming ghosts,” 

Just think of words. 

More name ideas popped up in his head. “Hail, Shiver, Sleet?” Liam’s wasn't finished before a reply was formed. 

What was that one? 

“Which one, Sleet?” He repeated the name. 

No, the one before that. 

“Shiver?”

 Yes, that. You can call me that.

The ink is stained messily, as the response was written even faster than the rejection written earlier. They’re excited, Liam realized. He wondered with a pang of sympathy just how long this ghost had been without a name. 

“Well alright then, Shiver?” 

Yes, the ghost, Shiver, wrote. 

“How long have you been livin- er, staying in my house?” Shiver took a second to reply. 

Ghosts don’t really stay anywhere. I guess I’ve been… Another pause. I guess I’ve been here for a few days now. I didn’t really…

The message trails on as Liam realizes he’s out of napkins. 

“Hold on,” He told Shiver, as he jumped off the couch and raced to his bedroom. When he arrived in the doorway, he was immediately hit with a blast of warm air. He guessed ghosts really did have a cold presence. Liam didn’t remember them being friendly though. Or enjoying pastrami. He dug through his drawers, pulling out old socks and wrappers he forgot to throw away, his hands finally clasped around the spine of a bound notebook. Liam hadn’t even taken a seat on the couch before he opened to a blank page. 

Your couch smells like baloney. 

Liam let out a small laugh. “I know, I know,” His voice faltered, “I can’t really afford a new one,”

 It’s not bad though. It makes me hungry, Shiver noted. Liam glanced back towards the pile of napkins. 

“What were you going to say before?” He asked Shiver. 

Nothing. A small black line appeared through the word almost as quickly as it appeared. A long pause occurs before a reply is written. I don’t really have anywhere else to go. Oh. Liam felt another stab of sympathy as Shiver continued. I’ve tried to earn my keep though. 

A light went off in his head. “So you’re the one who put my keys in my pocket. And filled up my tank with gas!” Liam tried to make a mental image in his head of this spectral force seeing him stumble blindly through the kitchen searching for his keys, slipping them into Liam’s pocket. He wondered just how much Shiver had seen but tried to put that thought out of his head. Some questions should be left unanswered. One thing Shiver did left him confused though. 

“How did you fill up my car? Did you bring the gas over or something?” 

I’m a ghost. Physics isn't the same. 

“So you lifted it over?” 

More like… There was a pause as Shiver was looking for the right word to convey his meaning. More like phasing, they replied finally. A moment passes as Liam tries to grasp the concept. Eventually, he gave up. 

“Well, thanks. For ‘phasing’ the gas. You didn’t have to do that one though. I probably deserved the consequences for my own actions,” 

The ghost draws a little picture of what appears to be a shrug. It’s the least I can do for staying here uninvited. Liam stops to consider that.

The ghost, Shiver, was here uninvited. Not that he minded though, seeing as he didn’t take up much space. But they were probably worried he was going to kick them out. Shiver was here uninvited after all. Liam remembered the time he was kicked out of college. 

Sam had been the one to help him out then. To be his friend. The person he could rely on. As he contemplated this decision, his mind wandered back to the last time he saw Sam in person.

“Well Notebook, here we are,” They were standing in the airport. Sam leaned up against her suitcase, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. She had driven them there, pointing out very basic driving tips and teasing him mercilessly about how he had lost his license for 6 months once and how she ‘could never trust him to drive’. 

But once they had gotten inside, that playful mood ceased. The studying abroad, the packing and saving, and paperwork. All of it suddenly hit Liam at once. He was about to lose his best friend for an entire school year.

“So. A year in Spain,” Liam’s mouth felt dry. 

“School year,” She corrected him, unable to meet his eyes. 

Liam swallowed. “Well, bring me back some Spanish souvenirs, alright?” He let out a nervous laugh. She offered him a smile.

“I’ll bring you the best notebook I can find. Try not to burn that house down before I come back, ok?” She paused, then let out a laugh. “What am I saying, you probably sleep next to a fire extinguisher,” 

Liam shot her a look. “Hey, at least I’m not the one who exploded our last microwave with a mac ‘n cheese cup,” 

They both start laughing, then stop.

“Alright then. Good. I’ll be good. You’ll be good. You’ll be good right?” She asked him, and Liam could see that she was holding back tears.

“I’ll be good,” He felt himself holding back ones of his own.

“See you in nine months, Space Ranger,” 

Liam snapped into a mock salute.

“See you in nine months,”

And Sam walked off into the airport.

Drawn back to reality, Liam realized Shiver was waiting for him to say something. 

He had definitely not invited the ghost in the first place. But still, they had helped Liam out. A lot. They even paid for the pizza he ordered. And it was kind of nice to have someone else fill up the space of his empty house, especially one that didn’t make any extra dishes.

Liam thought about Sam, about what she would’ve done. She probably would have started humming the Ghostbusters theme song and built a shrine for Shiver out of empty soda cans and a peach-scented candle her mom bought in 1994. He thought about what she told him. 

“You care about the moral good,” 

She was right. Liam did want to let the ghost stay there. It wasn’t much trouble after all. Maybe some more food bills, but the ghost had even paid for some of that. Shiver didn’t have anywhere else to go after all. And Sam would definitely find it awesome when she returned from Spain. He thought about the scene that would play out when she got back. 

“You’ve made a friend, Notebook,” She’d tell him. She’d then pretend to get offended, “Two whole years, and the one thing it took was me leaving?” She’d playfully punch him in the arm. 

“You know I have other friends than you, right?” Sam would fake a look of surprise.

“Since when?” She’d give him a look, and Liam would sigh,

“You’re right, you’re right,” He’d admit to her.

“I always am,”

Liam smiled. “You don’t need to worry about leaving,” He suddenly reassured them. 

The ghost seems taken aback by the sudden statement. Really? 

“Really,” Liam raised his arm and gestured at the dirty space around him. It wasn’t much, the trash bin was almost overflowing, and dishes lined the sink. But to him, it was home. 

“Consider yourself officially invited to my little cave of trash and weird stains, at least for the night,” Liam let out a small laugh before he caught a glimpse of the clock on his wall. “It’s getting late, I probably should try to get some shuteye. Goodnight,” 

Goodnight. 

A small blot of ink appears again, but it quickly disappeared. There’s nothing more written then, but as Liam checked the notebook before going to bed a new message is inscribed in it. 

For the record, it’s a nice cave. 

That night, for the first time in a long time, Liam fell asleep with a smile on his face.