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went directly to the bed and sat down. I put my head in my hands and took a moment to gather my thoughts.
    “So that was awkward,” Chris said.
    I looked up at him. “I’m crazy,” I said after a moment. “I’ve lost my mind.”
    “I don’t know what you are, man. Maybe I’m crazy. I’ve never had a trip like this, though, so it seems weird.” He crossed over to the bed and put his hand on it, then slowly lowered himself to sit down. “Huh. I guess I can sit.”
    I thought about mentioning that he’d already found out he could sit in the other room, but I didn’t really have the stability to string together a long sentence yet. I put my elbows on my knees and focused on breathing normally. Chris reached over and touched my knuckles.
    “Can you feel that?” he asked.
    I moved my hand so that his fingers dipped into it. “No. Not really. Not at all, actually.”
    “The movies say ghosts are cold. It’s not cold or anything?”
    “No.” I pulled my hand away. “But it’s weird, so stop it.”
    “All right,” he said, pulling his own hand back.
    “Could you feel it?”
    He shrugged. “Same as the floor and the bed. I can tell when I’m touching something, but it doesn’t feel like really touching it. Just like there’s a barrier there. A little token resistance.” He dipped his hand into the mattress. “But it’s easy to break through.”
    I nodded, then sat up a little straighter. It was time to get back to business. “You appeared when I put on your ring, so . . .”
    He jumped to his feet and jabbed his finger at me. “Aha! So it’s not a replica! You did steal my ring!”
    I rolled my eyes. “Dude, I told you. I found it on the floor and tried it on. That’s not the same thing as stealing.”
    “Give it back,” he demanded, holding out his hand. “It’s mine. My dad’s wedding ring, man. It’s important to me, and I need it.”
    I laughed. “And where are you going to put it? In your ghost pockets? It would just fall right through you.”
    “Take it off. It’s not yours to keep.” He scowled and shook the hand he was still holding out like he was reminding me it was there.
    “Okay, okay.” I reached for the ring, then paused. “You appeared when I put it on. So if I take it off, you might disappear.”
    He considered this. “I’m not afraid.”
    “You’re not? That must be nice. Because I’m fucking terrified, let me tell you.”
    He gave me a Look. “You’re not the one who’s dead.”
    “Maybe not, but I am the one who’s sitting in an empty hotel room talking to a ghost while my coworker is probably on the phone with the guys in white coats, so I think of the two of us, I’m worse off right now.”
    “How is that worse than being dead?” He started pacing back and forth.
    I watched him for a few seconds before answering. “Well, it’s not like you’re getting any more dead. But I could potentially be getting crazier and crazier by the second.”
    “I think it must vacillate back and forth between more and less crazy,” he said, and for some reason the fancy GRE word sounded natural in his voice.
    I raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure that?”
    “Well, you were screaming,” he pointed out. “And then you were pretty chill with the whole thing for a little while. And then you started screaming again. And now you’re back to chill. So you’ve gone from crazy to not crazy and back to crazy and now you’re back to not crazy.”
    I thought about this for a moment. “Well, maybe. But I think maybe the screaming was the not-crazy part and the chillaxing is the crazy coming back out.”
    “That could be true,” he conceded. “So . . . good-bye, I guess.”
    I blinked. “What? Good-bye? Are you, um, moving on?”
    He stopped pacing and turned to face me. “Not that I know of. But if you take the ring off and it launches me into whatever afterlife I’m headed for . . . good-bye.”
    “Yeah,” I said, drawing out the word. I put my fingers on the