Ghost Fish

by Stuart Pennebaker

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A tender coming-of-age novel about a young woman haunted by her sister’s death, who starts to believe that her beloved sibling has returned to her—in the form of a ghost fish, for fans of Sweetbitter and Our Wives Under the Sea.

Alison is mired in loneliness and grief. Freshly twenty-three and mourning the loss of her younger sister, who has drowned at sea, she’s moved out of her hometown and into a cramped apartment on New York’s Lower East Side. Now she’s living the cliché, barely making rent as a restaurant hostess and avoiding her roommates, while watching the bright, busy passersby from her bubble of grief. She doesn’t need originality; she just needs to be alive. So why does she feel she isn’t truly living?

Until late one night, when she rounds the corner and sees a shape in the air—a ghost. And how strange, it looks like a fish. What is it? Alison knows, without hesitation: it is her beloved sister, finally returned to her side. Safe in a pickle jar filled with water, the ghost fish goes wherever Alison does: in an alcove at the restaurant; in a tote bag on the subway; in her room at night as her roommates chatter outside. She knows she has to keep her safe from the world, the way she didn’t before. She knows that, together, they will never be lonely again. But as Alison’s new life in New York begins to grow, and as she navigates the murky waters of dating, friendship, and desire, she must ask: what if her sister is keeping her away from a life outwardly lived?  

With tenderness and heart, stretching from New York, New York to Key West, Florida, Ghost Fish is a meditation on grief, loneliness, and the strange, kaleidoscopic ways we help ourselves—and those we love— through it.

Release date: August 5, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 256

Sample

IT WAS A TUESDAY NIGHT, but the air vibrated like it was a Friday. I wondered if all of summer would be like this. Full of potential. I stopped at the bodega on the corner for a veggie sandwich. It tasted like French fry grease and I felt like something rare and precious, eating a bodega sandwich while I walked down a city street. When I was halfway to Jen’s apartment, I realized I had nothing to drink, and I wasn’t sure if her invitation was for me to drink her drinks at her apartment or if I was supposed to bring my own. I turned back and bought three single cans of Tecate at the bodega, then opened one on the sidewalk and had that as I retraced my steps.

A few weeks before, I’d turned twenty-three and realized I could hold every good memory I had in one hand. I lived alone in my dead grandmother’s empty house. My mom was dead; my sister too. I didn’t need originality; I just needed to be alive. So I messaged a boy named Tyson on Craigslist who had space to rent in a four-bedroom in the East Village, gave my two weeks’ notice, emptied my grandmother’s house of all the dusty, useless things she’d left behind, and took bright bouquets of grocery-store flowers to the graveyard where everyone I’d ever loved now lived. And then I packed my car and drove away from the town that clung to me with every single tentacle of its octopus body.

Jen and I had grown up together in Awnor and still loosely referred to each other as friends. We were from the same patch of nowhere land, a negative space she’d shed four years earlier and that I’d only just escaped. She was someone who’d known me well enough to attend my mother’s funeral when we were fifth-graders, and my sister’s when we were old enough to truly understand what death meant. But she’d vanished from my life when she’d gone away to college. Still, she was the only living person I knew in the city, so when I’d packed my car and pointed north a few days prior, she was the only one I told. We hadn’t spoken for some years, but she responded to my message with lots of exclamation points and invited me to “pre-drink drinks” at her apartment. I hadn’t met my roommates yet or put sheets on my bed, and most of my clothes were still in trash bags on the floor of my tiny room, but I was eager for my new life to begin.

When I got to Jen’s building, I stared at the silver box on the wall. There was a button next to her unit, 7C, but I wasn’t sure if the correct etiquette was to buzz her or text her. I pressed the button, but nothing happened. Then I heard a loud metallic sound and Jen’s voice, distorted and robotic, yelled through the speaker: “Come up!”

I opened the heavy glass door. A doorman sat at the desk.

“Good evening,” he said as I entered the building. A gush of AC made the loose strands around my face blow straight down.

“Oh. Hello. I’m Alison.”

“Hello, Alison.” He wore a uniform that included a cap perched like a bird on top of his head. It was silent for a moment and I felt awkward, like maybe I wasn’t supposed to introduce myself.

“Seven C,” I said. “That’s where I’m going.”

“Elevators are right around the corner,” he said.

I could hear the hum of a party from inside Jen’s apartment when I stepped off the elevator. It sounded warm and busy. Fun—that’s what it sounded like. I almost forgot I would know exactly one person at this party, or pre-drink drinks, or whatever it was. I knocked on the door.

“Alison!” Jen shrieked as I stepped inside. She was tiny, a piping plover, light brown hair streaked with expensive-looking highlights that were new since the last time I’d seen her. She threw her arms around my neck. “Oh my god, I am so-fucking-happy to see you. It has been so long. So, so long!” She sounded like when we were teenagers and she’d tried tequila for the first time.

“Oh my god,” she said again before I’d had time to reply. “You did not have to bring beer! We have plenty of stuff. You’re so cute! And tan! How was the move?”

I smiled. I had almost forgotten about Jen’s boundless, relentless happiness. I’d seen her truly upset only once, sobbing in the girls’ bathroom in high school after she made a D on a math test. Even that was just for a moment before she returned to herself, tied tight again in a perfect pink bow.

The first time I ever went shopping in Belk, the only department store in Awnor, was the day before my mom’s funeral. My ears felt like they were full of cotton. Everything was a dull roar. But neither my sister nor I had black tights or coats, and it was January, and dead people are typically buried outside, so our grandmother took us shopping. I was in the dressing room behind a red curtain staring at my reflection in the mirror, realizing I looked nothing like my mom, when Jen poked her head through the curtain. Her face was like a pale, full moon. We were in the same homeroom, although we weren’t really friends yet. She walked straight into the curtained-off room and said she’d run into my sister in the shoe section. Then she sat on the bench in the corner of the tiny room and started talking about coats and shoes, her favorite brands of clothing, did I know Trevor tried to touch Beth’s boobs after the fifth-grade dance, could I believe that, and she’d never really stopped talking at me until she went away to college.

“Hi, Jen,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

She released me from her tight squeeze. “Let’s get you something to drink!” she said, her voice bright.

I followed her through the enormous kitchen and past a flight of stairs to a large room of chatting, perfectly dressed humans.

“Mark!” Jen said. “Meet Ali!”

Mark was Jen’s boyfriend. We’d never met but I’d seen photos of him on social media. He was shorter than I’d anticipated.

“Yo,” he said. “How was your move?”

“Good, thanks.” I shifted my weight to my other leg. “It still feels kind of surreal to be here.”

“Right on,” Mark replied.

“Mark, take Al to get a drink. I’ve got to run upstairs to check on Lauren, my roommate,” she told me. “I think she did coke.”

I smiled weakly at Mark’s back as he pushed through the crush of bodies in the living room. I couldn’t believe Jen lived in an apartment with two floors.

There was a bar cart in the corner with a silver ice bucket engraved with the words Gramercy Hotel. Mark put ice in a red plastic cup and said, “Gin and tonic?”

“Please,” I said.

“Yo! Noah!” Mark said, looking past me. He gave someone a bro-y high five over my head as I turned to introduce myself, and I found my face pressed into a guy’s chest.

“Noah, Ali,” Mark said.

“You must be Jen’s friend. The new girl,” Noah said. He smelled like salt and damp soil or something fresh. He was much taller than me and reached down, gave me a side hug as he said hello. I flinched, then wrapped an arm around his back. My stomach flipped. I wasn’t used to people touching each other as a form of hello. I realized I was still standing very close to him, and I took a step back. I wasn’t sure if I liked the way he said new girl, but I did like the way he’d entered the room, as if we’d been waiting for him. I liked the way he smelled. I cleared my throat.

“Noah and I went to college together,” Mark said. “Now we work at the same hedge fund.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s nice.”

They both smiled in a forced way, the kind of smiles that follow a silence where words should have been.

“Is that for me?” I asked, pointing at the red cup in Mark’s hand. The beer I’d chugged on the sidewalk, or maybe Noah, the strange, almost primal reaction I was having to him, had made me feel a little bold.

“Oh, shit, yeah. Sorry.”

I took the cup from his hand.

“It was nice to meet you,” I said to Noah. “I’m going to go find Jen. Lauren did cocaine.”

“Nice to meet you, Alison,” Noah said. He had half a smirk on his face. I didn’t want to leave him, oddly, but didn’t want to stay close either. I set off in search of Jen, the word crush like a Greek chorus in my head as I walked away. I hadn’t had a silly crush in such a long time, the kind that was based on things like the length of a boy’s eyelashes and the way he said the word hi. Was this what it was like? Maybe. I felt a little thrill at the potential of a crush, of being at its precipice.

Jen was in the kitchen, bent over the counter. For a second I thought she was snorting something, but when I got closer, I saw that she was cutting limes into half-moons.

“I don’t actually know why I’m doing this,” she said. “I didn’t even know we had limes.”

“Oh, okay,” I replied. “Um, how are things? With you? Mark seems nice.”

“He’s so great.” Jen’s eyes looked flat. She was still cutting, wielding the knife in a surprisingly deft fashion. I watched her divide the last lime into six clean wedges. She put the knife down and looked at me like she had something important to say. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“Do you want to borrow something to wear?” she asked finally.

Instead of feeling offended, I nodded and followed her through the crowd in the living room, up the magical, impossible stairs, to her bedroom. It was white in a bleached-teeth way: white walls, white bed frame, a white marble desk. I felt the distinct tickle of central air on the back of my neck as I slipped off my shirt. Jen’s closet had white slatted accordion doors. She opened it and pulled a blouse from a hanger. I slipped it on and, of course, it felt as if a tide pool were a piece of fabric. I was sure it cost more than my rent, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t care if Jen had so much compared to my single room and anonymous roommates.

“How are you?” Jen asked. Her voice was level and serious. We hadn’t had a falling-out or anything, but after my sister died, we’d drifted apart. I’d barely noticed until Jen was gone, off to college, and I realized my last text from her was months old. I was surprised she’d asked. Jen was historically not one for deep conversations.

“I miss her,” I said. Her meant so many people.

“Of course,” Jen said.

“This is beautiful,” I said, gesturing to the blouse. “Thank you.”

“Okay, yeah. We should probably go, right?” Jen asked. I felt both disappointed and relieved that she’d let me change the subject.

“I mean, it’s only eleven, but there will be a line at Ray’s.” She squinted at her phone. “Yeah, let’s definitely go. Mark!” she called. There was no way he could have heard her through the closed door and down the stairs, not to mention over the din of bodies pressed against each other outside her white room, humming, a low roar. But almost instantly, he opened the door.

“Ready?” he asked. We followed him through the throngs of bodies in Jen’s living room and out of the building.

“How’s the city so far?” Noah asked me as we stepped into the murky air. It was newly strange, summer in a city. It felt different to be so hot and so far from the wide-open ocean, although we were standing on an island, technically.

“I’m not sure yet. Today is my first full day,” I said.

“Do you live around here?”

“Yeah, a few blocks away,” I said. “Where do you live?” I asked. I could feel the heat of a blush licking at the tips of my ears, flushed beneath his attention. And then I felt embarrassed at the embarrassment pinking my face.

“Midtown. We city-biked here.”

“Right,” I said, pretending like I knew what he meant by city-biked. “Hey, Jen,” I called out. Noah and I were walking in a pair a few yards behind Jen and Mark, who were drinking out of matching pale pink coffee cups with giant handles. Three girls who looked like models were walking a few yards behind us, and I found it very strange that nobody had introduced themselves yet. I felt like the rule was that the person who was outnumbered didn’t have to initiate the introductions, but maybe I didn’t know anything at all.

“What’s up?” Jen tossed over her shoulder.

“Who’s Ray?” I asked. She laughed and pointed toward the end of the block at a building that was painted purple with the word RAISE in a neon-lit sign above the dark-tinted doors. I had misunderstood. I was strangely disappointed to still be so close to my apartment.

We joined the back of the line. Jen leaned against a metal gate protecting a storefront.

“Oh my god,” she said suddenly, startling me. “I totally forgot! Al, this is Noah. Noah, this is my friend from home I was telling you about! And she’s a freaking Gemini!”

“We met,” Noah said. I felt my cheeks pink all over again.

Jen smiled and shook her head, pleased, as if she could tell the future and knew something we didn’t.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew you two would like each other.”

When I looked up again, Noah was taking out his ID to show to a bouncer in white go-go boots and a purple shirt that matched the walls of the building.

“Coming?” Noah asked. I removed my Georgia driver’s license, bendier and brighter than his piece of plastic issued by New York, from my wallet. The bouncer took what felt like hours to find the birth date.

“Bottom right,” I finally said, and he nodded and handed it back to me. I ducked into a dark room that was lit by disco balls dripping from the ceilings, stacked on the bar, attached to the walls. I couldn’t see Jen or her friends and stood still, scanning the room for a familiar face. I felt an arm wrap around my shoulders, and every inch of my body went hummmm and I was hip to hip with Noah.

“We thought we lost you,” he said.

“I knew it!” Jen said again, behind him.

I danced like a fish out of water flailing its hopeful body. A tall girl named Victoria said: “Shots!” Mark said: “Does anyone have Adderall?” A Prince song played and another girl, also named Victoria, sang, “‘If I came back as a dolphin, would you listen to me then?’” She had a stunning voice, raspy and clear at the same time. I wanted to be exactly like her, sexy and in my skin and so, so pretty.

It was a painted-purple club with a waterbed instead of bar stools, so of course Noah and I danced closer and closer. It was an uninspired mix of music, but we were not deterred, the breath from his lips hot against my neck until I was ready to dissolve.

“Be right back,” Noah said, motioning to the bar. I nodded and backed away from the dance floor, leaned against the wood-paneled wall. I was feeling a little lightheaded and then, suddenly, very bad. Tequila-Adderall-tequila-bad. I hurtled away from the wall and toward the exit, flung open the glass door, vaulted outside, and threw up into a trash can. The air felt warm and damp, and I was empty. I could still almost feel the bass in my ears and breath on my neck, and I laughed, delirious, into the velvet night air. I pulled Jen’s one-shouldered blouse away from my body with my fingertips and shook it to create a personal breeze. It looked like something a Greek goddess would wear, but black.

The line to get into the club was now wrapped around the block. I felt bold in my goddess shirt and walked to the front of the line, up to the bouncer in the shiny white go-go boots who’d checked our IDs a few hours ago.

“Hi,” I said.

“No,” he replied.

I shrugged. “Fine. I like your boots.”

“Still no, princess. Go home.”

I checked my phone. It was dead, which seemed like a sign. I walked two blocks in the wrong direction, then turned around and walked back. I found the dry cleaner’s and the scaffolding with HOMESICK graffitied on it in electric-yellow paint, my new north stars. The streets were quiet. I wondered if anyone would notice that I’d left without warning, disappeared from the purple-painted club like water on a summer-hot sidewalk. I reached out my hand, let my fingers brush the metal grate of the closed laundromat as I passed. I tried to remember the last time someone had worried about me. I couldn’t.

I woke up sweaty, still wearing the blouse I’d borrowed from Jen the night before. The mattress was wedged between the room’s one window and the wall, like spinach stuck between two jagged teeth. For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was. The narrow room looked alien, then came into focus: East Village. Avenue D. Apartment 2B. A room that used to be a hallway with a window onto the fire escape. My new home.

My head felt like it was full of wadded-up tissues and shards of glass, and I could smell tequila emanating from my pores. I felt my cheeks burn. I was a bit embarrassed about disappearing the night before until I thought about Noah’s breath on my neck and curled my toes. I wanted to lie there all morning and watch the hot sun move across the room, but I had a job interview and I really did need a job.

In my old town, I had been the manager of a very small bookstore–slash–coffee shop. My boss’s husband had grown up in New Jersey and knew a guy who knew a guy who managed a restaurant in the West Village. The guy’s name was Brandon, and he’d agreed to interview me for a job at three p.m. my first Wednesday in the city—which was, unfortunately, today.

All of my clothes were still in trash bags on my floor, and every article of clothing I owned now seemed deeply uncool. Sunlight poured in through the window yawning over my bed and my room felt unfairly hot. The heat, the smell . . .