by Sean Adams

Milo catches ghosts in jars as a hobby. He started when he was ten and now, at the age of seventeen, his collection contains seventy-nine ghosts. Three of the ghosts are famous – the ghosts of Norman Rockwell, Lenny Bruce, and George Washington Carver. The famous ghosts get the nicest jars, the ones with glass shaped like vines or flowers crawling up the side.

“What the hell is the ghost of Lenny Bruce doing around here?” Asks Tim.

“I don’t know, dude,” Says Milo. “Maybe he performed here in the sixties or something.”

“Like, I was watching this movie about ghosts, and it said ghosts are spirits with unfinished business and stuff.” Mark Says. “So, like, aren’t you keeping these ghosts that you got all up in jars from finishing their unfinished business?”

Milo doesn’t know how to answer this question. He is aware, though, that they have unfinished business. They remind him every night, “boooing” loudly from their shelves in his bedroom as he tries to sleep. At first, when his collection was in its beginning stages, Milo was kept awake by the ghosts. He even considered moving the collection to another location. He never got around to it and now he needs the “boos” to fall asleep.

“I bet all you got is air in those jars,” says Tim.

“No dude. They’re totally ghosts,” Milo says, defending himself.

“Yeah whatever,” says Mark as he and Tim get up from the lunch table. Milo watches them leave the cafeteria. They steal some donuts from the snack stand and hide them in the pouches of their matching Skull Theory hoodies. Tim and Mark often play pranks on Milo, and make fun of him for his ghosts, but Milo has gotten used to this over the years, and, considering that Tim and Mark are the only kids he ever talks to, Milo sees them as his friends.

Milo rides his bike home at two, when he finishes up with school. Although he could try and get his driver’s license, Milo has never seen the point. School is five minutes by bike and the Ricardo’s Pizza Plus is seven and that’s all Milo needs. When Milo gets home he goes to his room, sits down at his desk, and starts his homework right away. He needs to be done by eight o’clock, because that’s when it gets dark, and when it gets dark, his ghosts wake up and start making all sorts of noise. They sleep quietly during the day.

Milo finishes with his homework around seven thirty. Happy to be done early he decides to listen to some music for a half-hour before his room will become haunted. He sits on his bed and listens to the new CD by the Murdocks. The Murdocks are a two-man group comprised of an electronic music programmer and a traditional folk guitar player. They make very quiet, repetitive music that Milo finds soothing. Everyone else at school listens to punk rock bands like Johnny Forthright, Firecracker Glove or Skull Theory. These bands hurt Milo’s ears.

Milo’s Murdock session is interrupted midway through the third track by a phone call. It’s Tim.

“Yo Milo, like, you’re gonna want to get over here quick, man.”

“Why?” Milo is always wary of being the butt of another joke.

“Because I got a ghost in my house,” Tim says. “You gotta come over and catch the thing in a jar man.”