I don't think you're a ghost.

Not just because nobody actually knows whether you're alive or not anyway, but because you can't be. You would never be an ordinary ghost, a wavering white wailing thing lingering around the places you used to be. Ordinary was never your style, and neither was scaring people. I don't think that would change, even if you did turn out to be dead.

It's most likely now that you are though, right? It's been so long, and I've watched enough shows and spent enough time hiding behind the door while the so-called adults talk in hushed whispers to the police to know that it's really not likely that you'll turn up fine and dandy. When the doorbell rings, it won't be you standing there dusty and apologetic but intact, it will probably be the droopy-eyed detective with the bad news written all over his face. I know that. I know it, and I'm prepared, I really am.

But I don't think you're going to be a ghost.

You won't mysteriously knock objects off of tables or make floorboards creak when nobody is near them or wail mysteriously. You won't write messages in the mirror or appear as a shadowy apparition in a room corner. You won't appear if the ridiculous idiots at school try to summon you with an Ouija board. Nothing like that, I don't think.

I'd hope, somehow though, that you will be around somehow, when you die. Not like some wishy-washy angel in heaven, wherever the hell that is (hah!) or reincarnated as someone else in a new life thousands of miles away. But somewhere…somewhere like…oh, did you know? Did you know, there are some people who believe that when people die, their souls become stars? So all those stars in the sky we used to look at when you took me camping, according to those people, they once used to be people who had died. Perhaps stars are ghosts then, in a different way.

I'm not so sure about shooting stars, I never heard anything about that. But they're special, aren't they? Even if they aren't strictly stars as such? I'm sure maybe those, too, were once people. People who really didn't live that long but who were dazzling and brilliant and one-of-a-kind. Or rather, they were the ghosts of those people, in a different way.

I think, if you had to be a ghost, you'd be a shooting star. Wouldn't you?

It's the only thing that can make sense, really. If you are dead, you can't be reincarnated or an angel or a typical ghost. But I don't want you to just be gone, either. I hate that, the idea that that's it, there's no more, there's nothing left of you anywhere except everything I remember about you and the gaping hole your disappearance left in the world. Don't you see, you have to be a shooting star? You have to be.

Either way, I'm going to find out for sure. Tomorrow night, they say there will be a shower of shooting stars. If you're amongst them, I'm sure you'll be there, right? So I'm heading out to the field behind the theme park-you know the one-and setting up camp there. It'll be weird, camping alone, but I can do it. After all, you're the one who taught me. But anyway, I'm going out there and I'm going to watch all the shooting stars dart across the sky from start to finish. I'll be back home before anyone notices I was even gone, anyway, so it's not a big deal, but that isn't the point. The point is, if you're there, I'll see you. I'll see you, and I'll know you're there, so it'll be okay. You'll just have to make sure to shine extra-bright for me, so that I can see you easier, that's all.

And once you do that, once I know for sure you're gone, I'll be alright. I will, I really will. It'll make it easier if and when they do find your body and the droopy-eyed detective has to come to our door. If I know for sure that I saw you and your not so ordinary ghost, then I'll be fine.

So, please, be there.

I'll be waiting.