REMEMBER ME

Home

“Sweet, heartfelt, and real, a touching ode to the powerful connections that carry us through everyday life. If you’ve ever wanted Heartstopper with a supernatural twist, this is the book for you.”

—EDWARD UNDERHILL, author of Always the Almost and This Day Changes Everything

“Y’all, I didn’t realize a ghost story could be this cute! It is so cute! Remember Me is an adorably relatable ride through self-worth, ghost boyfriends, and first love.”

—JORDON GREENE, author of EVERY WORD YOU NEVER SAID

“A day ago, I didn’t even know this book existed. Now, I can’t imagine not having this story in my life. It was such a beautiful, heart-warming, emotional journey, one that had me falling more and more in love with the characters with each page. TJ never fails to absolutely amaze me with his skill as a writer, and I know that this will be a favorite I return to again and again!”

—forestthemlinreads, Instagram review

“Great romantic ghost story with a twist! So well written. I rooted for Alex and Noah to find happiness together and for the bullies to get their just desserts. A+++++”

—Ann, Goodreads review

“My heart broke for these sweet boys so many times; they made me laugh and cry and smile and feel so so much.”

—rainbowromanticreader, Instagram review

“A lovely, cosy story for winter evenings. I love that this book avoids common tropes and is focused on the main characters’ emotions, self-awareness, and internal growth. Read it if you’re a teen or a parent, queer or not.”

—PinkFrecklWavez, Goodreads review

“A roller coaster of love, sadness but mostly hopefulness. Written from the heart and so very refreshing”

—ROXANA, Goodreads review

“One of those stories that wraps around your heart and reminds you that, no matter what, there’s always room for love and second chances. Highly recommended!”

—GINA ROMA, Goodreads review

“First, read this book. Second, read this book! Third, trust me, this book is amazing. If you love a ghost romance, this is the story for you. I cannot recommend it enough.”

—Stephen, Goodreads review

---

EXCERPT:

             If anything can screw up your day, it’s having a dead boy show up in your first period class.
            Not that my day hadn’t been screwed up from the start. Dad was on my case again to join a club or a sport or something, “get some extracurriculars on your resume, because colleges really look for that,” and I’d had to once again inform him that (a) I did not do sports, and (b) I didn’t particularly do socialization, either, which would’ve made joining either a sport or a club a little challenging.
            So, my Monday wasn’t exactly shaping up to be spectacular, and it continued to be un-wonderful when I walked into English class and realized three things. First, Mr. Engle’s neat handwriting on the board declared we had a test today I’d completely forgotten about; second, Sean and Logan were snickering as they drizzled glue on the chair at my usual desk; and third, there was a dead boy standing by the window.
            At first glance, I thought the glow around his body was an after-image from the light outside, but as I made my way to the back row, avoiding Logan and Sean’s latest attempt to make my life hell by choosing another desk, I realized it wasn’t just the window behind him—the guy was straight-up glowing. A faint, bluish aura swam around his body, and no matter how many times I blinked or rubbed my eyes, it didn’t go away. The fact that I could also make out the outline of the radiator and the window through him was another pretty big clue as to his non-corporealness.
            I dropped my bookbag to the floor and folded my hands on the desk as I watched him. No one else was glancing in his direction—or running screaming for the exits—so it was a safe bet I was the only one who could see him. But why? Who was he?
            Aside from the whole transparent-and-glowing thing, there was nothing overtly scary about him, which was probably why I was sitting here calmly studying him instead of running screaming for the exits myself. He was tall and muscular, wearing a black and purple graphic tee and faded blue jeans with sturdy hiking boots. His hair was close-shaven on one side while a thick swath of brown curls flopped over his forehead on the other, bordering a square, good-looking face with high cheekbones, warm brown skin, and large, lost brown eyes.
            Eyes that were staring right at me.
            My heart gave a startled stammer in my chest. I was used to being nearly invisible at school. Except for some diehards like Logan and Sean, most people didn’t even bother bullying me anymore, preferring to flat-out ignore me. Gazes glossed over me like I was part of the background, and I’d gotten used to that. I’d gotten used to not being seen.
            So when the ghost boy’s eyes locked onto my face and really saw me, I was so stunned I couldn’t look away. We stared at each other for a few century-long seconds while my pulse thudded in my ears.
            Finally he opened his mouth, closed it again. “Can you see me?”
            I’m not sure what I was expecting—maybe an unearthly wail or a croak straight out of The Grudge—but his voice sounded completely normal, warm and low and trembling a little.  And instead of ignoring him and doing a last-minute cram for the test I was about to fail, I nodded slowly.
            He let out a shaky, relieved laugh. “Oh, thank God.”
            And then he knelt down and rested his ghostly, muscled arms on my desk.
            “So, I know this is pretty weird,” he said, “but nobody else can see me, so I just kind of wanted to confirm with you. I’m, like, a ghost, right? That’s what’s happening here?”
            I swallowed and managed another nod.
            His eyes widened as he sank back onto his heels. “Okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool. That’s what I thought.” He glanced around at the others in the room, most of whom were paging furiously through their English books. “So, I get that you’re in class and there’s, like, a test today or something, but is there any chance you could step outside for a sec so we can talk? I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m having kind of a weird day, so…”
            Tough choice. Stay in class waiting to take a test I was completely unprepared for, or delay the moment of academic failure to sneak out and have a chat with a hot ghost boy.
            I grabbed my backpack from the floor and got to my feet. The ghost boy grinned at me, showcasing a predictably perfect row of straight white teeth, and we slipped out into the hallway. The bell was going to ring in a matter of minutes, and I’d have a lot of explaining to do if I passed Mr. Engle on his way to class, but I could always claim I felt sick or something and was going to the nurse. And to be fair, I did feel a little sick, at least in the way my stomach had become populated by anxious moths (the less pleasant version of nervous butterflies).
            Luck was on my side for once, because I managed to get through the halls and out the nearest side door of the school without anyone noticing me. Being nearly invisible had its perks.
            The ghost boy trotted dutifully behind me, and I led the way through the school gates and across the street to the park. It was an unusually chilly day for September, and the park itself was deserted, just the way I liked it. I headed for my favorite bench tucked back among the trees by the pond, and soon I was seated in the crisp, cool air about to have a chat with a specter of the paranormal. The ghost boy sat on the bench next to me, and for a while we gazed out at the duck pond.
            “So, I should probably introduce myself,” he said. “I’m Noah.”
            A surprisingly un-jock sort of name. I’d been expecting it to be Bryce or Kyle or Chad or something.
            He cleared his throat nervously. “And you are?”
            “Alex.”
            He flashed me the perfect smile again, and I tried very hard not to be warmed or charmed by it. “Awesome. Uh, nice to meet you, I mean.”
            He held out a ghostly hand like he expected me to shake it. I stared at it and eventually he dropped it back into his lap.
            “So, has this ever happened to you before?” He still sounded nervous, and another grudging pang of sympathy shot through me. “Seeing a ghost, I mean.”
            “Nope,” I said. “First time.”
            “Yeah. It’s my first time, too. Being a ghost.” He laughed. “Obviously.”
            There was a pause. I studied him cautiously. “You don’t seem that upset about it.”
            His brow furrowed. “No, I mean, I definitely am. I think I’m just kind of…in shock? If that makes sense? I’m still half thinking I’ll wake up and realize this is all a dream.” He glanced around hopefully, as if this announcement would trigger the end of the dream sequence and return him to the safety of his bed. My chest ached a little as the hope faded from his face.
“But if this really is happening,” he said quietly, “and I really am a ghost, I guess I’m just not sure why. Like, what am I supposed to be doing? I figured since you can see me, maybe you’d have some idea. But if this is your first time, maybe you don’t.”
            I wanted to keep being guarded and cold—it was my default state in most social situations, for my own protection—but the walls I’d built around myself were already trembling. Good-looking jock or not, the guy sounded scared, and I hated hearing that tremor in anyone’s voice.
            “Look,” I said, “could it be you’re supposed to finish some business or something?”
            His brow furrowed. “I mean, I don’t have a job or anything. I’m still in high school.”
            A breath of a laugh sneaked past my lips. “Not that kind of business. Unfinished business. That’s what ghosts are supposed to have, isn’t it? Something they wanted to do or finish in life but never got a chance to because, you know. They died.”
            Understanding bloomed on his face. “Right. Right, gotcha. That makes sense.” He fell into a thoughtful silence. “I don’t know. I guess my main unfinished business is just living my life, but I can’t really do that now, so…”
            “Well, maybe you’re supposed to figure out what happened to you. How you—” The word caught in my throat, and I coughed. “How you died.”
            I was afraid the mention of his death might trigger some big reaction, but he just frowned. “I should probably remember that, shouldn’t I?”
            “Dying? Yeah, probably.”
            The frown deepened, digging a line through his brow. “I remember going out on a hike. Rigo and Jesse and me, we were going to do some rock-climbing on this cliff by a state park.”
            “You climbed a cliff? Voluntarily?”
            Noah shook his head, his gaze lost in the distance. “I don’t remember climbing it, though. See, our school has a teacher in-service day today, so Jesse and Rigo and me, we figured we’d go check out the cliffs. We camped out in the woods last night, then started hiking pretty early this morning. Jesse and Rigo got kind of ahead of me on the trail, and I stopped for a sec to take a breather, and then…” He shook his head. “Nothing.”
            “You don’t remember what happened?”
            “No. My memory just stops.”
            “Huh.” I was curious now despite myself. “That’s pretty weird.”
            “This whole thing is weird. So, I guess I died somehow in the woods?”
            I shifted sideways on the bench to face him. “Do you know where this was? I can do a search and see if there’s a news article about what happened to you or something.”
            “Oh, uh, Rigo planned the trip, and Jesse was driving, and I just kind of zoned out while we were going there. I want to say the state park started with a D? Or maybe an L. Might also have been a T.” His voice dropped to an embarrassed mumble. “Or, um. Maybe a B.”
            My voice went dry despite my best efforts. “So, it was a state park that began with some letter of the alphabet. Got it.” I tugged my phone out of my pocket and brought up the search app. “Let’s try a different tactic. What’s your last name?”
            “Thornbridge.” He looked relieved to at least have remembered that.
            I stared at him. “Your last name is Thornbridge.”
            “Yeah.”
            “Noah Thornbridge.”
            “Yes?”
            “That sounds like a character from Downton Abbey.”
            Instead of getting offended, he laughed. “Hey, man, that’s a compliment. I love that freaking show. I watch it all the time with my dad.”
            My lips twitched upward, and I typed Noah Thornbridge into the search bar and waited while my phone pondered the request. When the results popped up, I studied them with a slow creasing of my brow.
            “Huh, there’s nothing here about any accident or anything. Just…a lot of other stuff.”
            I scrolled through the results with my eyebrows raising. Unless there was another Noah Thornbridge in the area, he was from a town about half an hour away, and he was a star player on the soccer team (they’d gone to Nationals the year before, apparently), an outspoken member of the student government (Local Teen Encourages Peers to Take an Interest in Politics), and winner of some local songwriting competition, of all things.
            “Jesus,” I said under my breath. Noah was exactly the kind of son my dad had always dreamed of having, and here he was, mysteriously dead at seventeen while I lived on. It didn’t seem right, really.
            “So, there’s nothing about what happened to me?” Noah’s voice was right next to my ear, and I turned to find him sitting dangerously near, peering over my shoulder to look down at my phone screen. The fact that I could see the bench and the trees through his body didn’t change the fact that he was a stupidly attractive boy who was sitting very, very close to me.
            I shifted over an inch and thumbed off my phone. “No, nothing.”
            “Huh. So, I’m dead, but it seems like nobody knows it yet. Maybe we’re supposed to go find my body or something?”
            I had a flash of myself trudging through the woods, searching the bushes for the dead and possibly mangled body of the boy sitting next to me. My stomach gave a queasy lurch. “Uh, maybe?”
            Noah jumped to his feet. “That’s gotta be it. So, we just have to figure out where I was when this happened and then go there, find my body—”
            “Or,” I said, too loudly, “we could call one of the guys you were hiking with and tell them to go find your body.”
            Noah pointed a translucent finger at me. “Yes. That’s better. Especially since I can’t actually remember where we were when it happened.”
            I pulled out my phone again. “Okay, what are their numbers?”
            Noah’s pointing finger dropped to his side. “Oh. I don’t actually know. They’re in my phone!” he exclaimed when I stared at him. “Why would I know their numbers when they’re in my phone?”
            He started pacing back and forth, and I got to my feet because his movements were making me dizzy.
            “Look, don’t panic,” I said. “We’ll contact them some other way. DM them or something. But right now, I should probably get back to class, because as much as I might look like a nerd, I do not take tests like one, and I can’t actually afford to get a zero on this English test.”
            “Right,” Noah said. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Absolutely.” I felt his eyes on me as I slung my backpack over my shoulder and started back across the park. “But you don’t look like a nerd, just so you know.”
            I threw him a suspicious frown. “Uh, yeah I do.”
            He was smiling a little, which made me feel even more off-balance. “Nah. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with looking like a nerd, but you don’t. You look really cool, actually.”
            I turned my back on him and tried to focus on the sudden challenge of putting one foot in front of the other. I was pretty sure he was lying, but his words still made me do a quick self-evaluation.
            I’d never been the kind of guy people looked at and thought “cool.” I’d had hair down to my shoulders since I was nine, and when I was younger, I’d loved braiding it or decorating it with clips and barrettes. Dad had never liked that particular hobby of mine, but Mom had kept him from outright forbidding me to do it, at least.
            On the day I met Noah, my hair was pulled back except for one stubborn black strand that clung to the side of my cheek. My mom had a gorgeous Mediterranean complexion, but I’d inherited my dad’s paler Asian skin, and it looked particularly pasty since the sun and I were only passing acquaintances. I’d always thought my features looked too delicate, so I overcompensated with a pair of thick-framed glasses—black, of course, to match my general vibe and most frequent mood.
            Clothing-wise, I tended toward the darker end of the color spectrum. On that particular day, I wore a black hooded sweatshirt and dark-gray jeans, along with the same pair of worn black boots with the hole in the heel I’d been wearing every day for the last two years regardless of the season. My nails were painted with chipping black polish, and I wore an assortment of bracelets and rings since they gave me something to fiddle with when I felt anxious.
            This was what Noah was looking at when he said I looked “really cool,” so I had a healthy amount of skepticism. Probably the guy was just trying to stay on my good side so I’d keep helping him.
            I got to class about fifteen minutes late, Noah trailing along behind me, and Mr. Engle gave a slow shake of his head as he marked me tardy and handed me a test paper.
As it turned out, it was pretty hard to concentrate on nineteenth century literature when the ghost of a dead boy was a few feet away, gazing mournfully out the window. My attention kept darting over to him instead of focusing on articulating the primary themes of Great Expectations, and as a result, I only barely managed to scribble out my last few sentences before the bell rang.
            I started up the aisle to hand in my test paper—and failed to notice Logan’s foot stretched out across my path. I tripped over it and crashed to the floor, and a predictable roar of laughter followed from the onlookers. Great.
            I crawled to my feet with as much dignity as I could muster and brushed off Mr. Engle’s concerned questions. He’d missed the cause of my faceplant, of course, and despite the fact that Logan and Sean were literally high-fiving a few feet away, Mr. Engle never seemed to suspect they could’ve had anything to do with my sudden clumsiness. I guess when you’re six feet tall, blond, and stars of the basketball team, you can get away with just about anything.
            When I turned back around, Noah’s arms were folded, his eyebrows slanting angrily downward. “What the hell was that? Who are these jerkwads?”
            I smirked at the apt description but didn’t answer for obvious reasons. After taking the scenic route to avoid going past Logan’s desk again, I gathered up my stuff and headed out into the noisy, crowded hallway.
            Noah settled in beside me, and I was surprised to see he still looked pretty pissed. “Those guys are dicks.”
            “I’m aware.” No one was paying attention to me, so I figured I was safe to answer him, but I tried to keep my voice down just in case.
            “Why didn’t you say anything to them?”
            Weariness coursed through me. “What exactly would I say?”
            “I don’t know, you could tell them to stop or ask them not to be such assholes or something.”
            I snorted. “Yeah, that would end well. Talking back to those guys would just end up with me getting stuffed into a locker, and that’s a detour I could do without today.”
            “Isn’t there anybody who could stick up for you?” he persisted. “Maybe if it wasn’t just you, those guys would back down—”
            “It is just me, though,” I said. “It’s always just me. Nobody’s going to stick up for me because nobody cares, and that’s fine. That’s just how it is.”
            I wanted to sound breezy and uncaring, but there was a fractured note to my voice that made me want to cringe. Really, it didn’t bother me that I had no friends. I was used to it by now. I’d had some when I was younger, but things were different now. My old friends and I went to different schools, and I’d never figured out how to make new ones. I was just biding time until I could move to a big city for college, anyway, so what was the point of forging new relationships now?
            Sometimes I could almost believe that.
            Noah went quiet, and I thought we were finally done talking about it. But then he breathed a soft sigh. “I’m sorry.”
            I threw him a sideways glance. “What for?”
            “That sounds really tough. Having to deal with those guys, and not having anybody around to make it better. I used to get bullied a lot, and the only thing that made it okay was having my friends there with me.”
            “You got bullied?”
            “Yeah? You sound surprised.”
            “Well, yeah, I mean, look at you. You’re a stupidly good-looking jock. Who the hell is going to bully you?”
            He arched an eyebrow, and my face warmed as I realized what I’d said.
            “Stupidly good-looking, huh?” He looked a little too pleased, and I scowled but didn’t try to backtrack. I mean, it was true.
            “Well, this might surprise you,” he went on, “but I was the short, weird-looking kid with braces for a long time, actually. Plus, when you come to school wearing a Power Rangers outfit for two straight weeks, that does sometimes make other kids want to bully you.”
            I couldn’t help a grin at the mental image, and when I turned to Noah, hoping I hadn’t offended him, he was smiling too. And looking at me a little too closely, really.
            “You look nice when you smile,” he said.
            I rolled my eyes and firmly commanded my pulse to go back to its normal resting state. “Please.”
            “I mean it. Not that you don’t look nice when you’re not smiling, just—”
            I huffed out an exasperated breath. “Look, I’m going to help you whether you compliment me or not, so you don’t have to keep doing that. Really.”
            I hurried ahead to my next class before he could reply, and he seemed to get the hint that the conversation was over. He stationed himself at his customary spot by the windows, and I did my best to focus on geometry.
            I could already tell it was going to be a long day.