Memories from New Year’s Eve transformed from obscure to clear the more I thought about them until I had a total recall of events. In my memory, I was in a blackout state, but still functioning well enough to know what I needed to do. After the midnight celebration of fireworks and champagne, the crowd began to break apart, and I had to grab onto the opportunity to get myself out of here.

“Anybody know how to get back to the apartment on Gorham Street?” I asked what remained of the crowd.

Most of these people, although familiar faces, I didn’t see at the actual party, but one person stepped out from among them. It was a young man named Charlie, who I had been in a couple of plays with in the ‘96-’97 school year and was part of the class that graduated a year ahead of mine.

“I’m heading back to the apartment. You can follow me.” he said.

Charlie, Noah, someone I had met on the trip to Ho-Chunk the previous winter, and I set off to return to the apartment on foot. The only thing I could see was the sidewalk and the two of them in front of me. Everything else looked like a dark blur. The only thing I could feel was not the cold around me, but the contents of my stomach getting more and more restless, until finally I couldn’t keep it down anymore.

“Hold on a second,” I said very casually as if nothing was wrong, and then threw up whatever was down there in the grass.

“Ughh!,” Charlie said.

I guess I surprised him since I didn’t let onto what I was doing at all. It was a quick and done one, and then I was ready to keep going.

“You alright?” I asked Charlie.

“Yeah,” he said.

Kind of ironic that I’m in a blackout state and just threw up asking someone else if they’re alright.

We got back to the apartment on the second floor and the front door was open. Stosh was leaning with his back against the door frame talking to a couple of guys who were in the apartment.

“You’re back! Where did you go?” he asked.

“I followed some girls to someplace outside where there were a bunch of people lighting off fireworks and drinking champagne,” I said.

Even in this state of being in extremely low consciousness, something made me turn around, and my eyes met another pair of eyes that were gazing at me so intently that it was like two laser beams cutting through the dark. Lisa was standing there in the dark, by herself, blankly staring at me, just as she had done when I was leaving the apartment to go outside. I felt so connected to her at that moment that it was almost like we were one person in two bodies, but after several seconds, she looked down and away.

I walked up to Lisa and smiled. She looked up and smiled back, and then looked away again. I did what felt natural to me, and I moved closer and put my arms around her, and she reciprocated. It suddenly felt like no one else was there in the apartment except for us. I had no awareness of what anyone else was doing anymore. Finally I had the chance to tell her what had been happening over the last year, but in a blackout state, and her in at least a drunken state, it probably wasn’t going to come out too well. It would be a hard thing to explain even if we were both completely sober. After talking to her for a few minutes, I let her go and went back to talk to Stosh and some others. Unfortunately, I had no memory of what we actually said to each other.

The last thing I remember was looking at Lisa standing there in a group of her friends quietly listening to them. She had kind of a quiet intelligence about her and wasn’t always the most outgoing. I smiled at her, knowing I finally got to see and touch this living ghost. Lisa smiled back, and then I went over to lay down on the couch and it was over. Everyone who was left began clearing out around the same time.

In my mind, the mystery still hadn’t been solved about this strange connection between us. I still didn’t know what it was about, and I wanted the chance to talk to her again, but this time sober so I would actually know what happened.

I finally told Stosh about the situation, as much as I thought he would understand, and he mentioned a girl who she was at the party with who I had a class with in high school. It was the only clue I had, and since I was desperate for answers so I could get on fully with my life again, I decided to give it a try, thinking she would be willing to give an old high school classmate a hand.

I looked up the friend’s phone number in the phone book, back when people actually used them, and gave her a call. Everything seemed fine, and she gave me Lisa’s phone number.

I called Lisa a short time later, and she answered. She didn’t seem to remember the events on New Year’s Eve too well either as I tried to remind her about what happened and who I was. I tried to arrange a casual meeting so we could have a chance to talk.

“Would you like to meet at a coffee shop or something sometime?” I asked.

“I don’t think my boyfriend would like that very much,” she said.

It was fine with me that she had a boyfriend, because I just wanted a chance to talk to her, in full consciousness, to see if I could figure anything out about why all these strange things that I had never heard about before, even in the movies, were happening with her and only her.

There was a pause, and then she had a counter offer.

“My friend is having a house party in a few days. You could come to that if you wanted.”

Lisa gave me the time and address of the party and I was happy I would finally have the chance to get this whole thing settled!

On the night of the party, I drove to the apartment on Dayton Street with a few of my boys from the south side crew. I was having a hard time finding the apartment, so I walked around for a few minutes by myself and told them I’d come back and get them once I found the place.

After finding the apartment, I went up to the second floor and went inside. The living room was full of people I didn’t know. I stood in the middle of them and looked around, like I was in a separate reality from everyone else. Then, suddenly, Lisa came through the front door. She didn’t see me in the crowd and was about to walk right past me. I focused all of my attention on her without saying a word and she instantly spun around and put her face about a foot in front of mine like she had been pulled in by a rope, her eyes big and wide staring into mine like she had no control of herself. I didn’t have any control of myself either, just like the other two times on New Year’s Eve. The magnetism between us was palpable.

After a few seconds, it seemed like she regained control of herself, and she smiled, but I still couldn’t move. Then she put up her hand to shake.

“Hi. I’m Lisa,” she said.

“Hi. I’m Andrew,” I said as I shook her hand.

Then she turned around to leave the room.

I was very confused. Why was she talking to me like she had never seen me before?

“That’s all?” I asked.

She turned back around.

“I don’t really have anything to say to you,” she said in a reluctant way that was not completely devoid of sympathy.

“I have some things to say to you if you would just listen,” I said.

“I’m tall…” she said.

I didn’t know why she was talking like that. She already mentioned over the phone that she had a boyfriend, and my main objective was to have a conversation in order to understand why all of these crazy things were happening: the dreams, the number 111, staring into each other’s eyes uncontrollably, and whatever else.

Then a short blonde-haired girl came into the living room whom I recognized instantly as my old high school classmate, the one who gave me her phone number and whose party it was, and had a few words with Lisa. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but then she came over and talked to me.

“You’re Andrew?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered, confused about why she was also acting like she had never seen me before.

“You manipulated me into giving you Lisa’s number! She says she doesn’t know who you are!”

I was shocked on the inside. How is this even happening???

Lisa was standing there looking at us talking. She looked like she wanted to step in and say something, but she didn’t. She turned around and left the living room, leaving me to the wolves.

“If you don’t admit to me that you manipulated me into giving you her phone number, you can leave this apartment right now!” she said as she pointed at the door.

I didn’t say anything and just stared at her. I wasn’t going to admit to something I didn’t intentionally do.

She began interrogating me and trying to figure out what I was doing there. I explained myself as best I could, but she wasn’t very understanding at all.

“She was drunk on New Year’s. When people are drunk sometimes they just stare off into nowhere,” she said when I tried to explain to her about the staring thing, but it wasn’t just the alcohol.

She was on me for about ten minutes. I just wanted the conversation to end. I didn’t care about explaining myself to her, but there was no other way except to leave, which almost seemed like a good idea now. After a while, she slowly seemed to gain understanding about my situation, but it wasn’t enough to get her off of me, but then I finally intuitively picked up on an important detail, one that could end this whole confrontation.

“You still don’t remember me, huh?” I asked.

“Wait. What? What do you mean?” she asked back.

“We had a class together senior year. Don’t you remember?”

I explained to her exactly which class, and she instantly went from cold and confrontational to warm and bubbly. It was almost funny to see the transformation, but it was hard to find humor in anything at this moment. After a minute of talking about our old class, she backed off completely.

“Why did Lisa invite me here?” I asked as my final question.

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her,” she said as she walked away.

There was only one thing left to do in this situation, as much as I was invested. I poured myself a drink and went out onto the balcony. There were a few tables with guests drinking and chatting. I sat down among them and talked to a few of them to pass the time. After a few minutes Lisa came out and bent over to talk to someone at another table. I walked up behind her and tapped on her shoulder. She slowly turned around and stood up straight.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Oh, that’s OK. My friends are a little overprotective of me sometimes. Have some drinks, talk to people, enjoy yourself!” she said.

“I don’t know about that,” I said as I looked away.

“Why not??” she asked.

“I’m just going to have one more drink…then I’ll be gone,” I said.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I’m more than sure,” I said while continuing to look away from her.

“Awwwww,” she said, sounding disappointed and pausing for a moment to look at me, then walked away, again.

She couldn’t say anything at this point. I was done. And why did she suddenly now start caring about whether or not I was here?