Soul Fallen

"What do you think our renovates are?" Levana asked me as we waited in line for lunch. Our renovates were what all ghosts had to pass in order to become an angel. No one got them easy, but they were all different.

I shrugged reaching over to grab some chips. Levana reached for some too, but she'd always preferred cheddar over barbeque, which I'd gotten. I grabbed a coke and an apple and headed over to the checkout line. Levana followed after me with only some chips and a bottle of water. This was our only meal of the day which some students complained about, but it beats being an angel, who didn't eat at all.

Levana and I got ourselves a table at the back of the cafe.

"Where's Abdul?" I asked. Abdul was another friend of ours, and like us, he was a ghost.

"I dunno. He's probably caught up in a book" Levana said.

"You're probably right" I agreed.

Levana wasn't exactly thrilled to be talking about Abdul. They had had an on and off relationship for even before I'd come here. As of now, they were off. Levana still had feelings for Abdul, but I decided to change the subject.

"Did you hear some of the upper angels are teaching a few of the classes?" I asked.

"I saw them earlier this morning" She said.

"At least you got to see them"

"It's nothing special Eve. Most of the upper angels are jerks"

"That's not true" I protested. "You've never talked to them"

Levana started to get into a big argument about how the upper angels aren't as amazing as everyone says they are. I gave up making conversation. Levana was in one of her bad moods and needless to say she was starting to annoy me.

After lunch, we all headed to class excited for our renovates. It meant a chance at becoming one of the lower angels. To a ghost, that meant everything.

Levana and I slid into a seat in the back corner of the room. Two upper angels were standing at the front of the room each holding a stack of papers. Our renovates. Excitement surged through me. I could tell Levana felt that way too. She could barely sit still. The two upper angels headed down our rows of desks and began passing back the papers. Students pulled out their renovates in hope for a new beginning. When they reached us, they set the papers down in front of us.

I reached for my paper. I began to open it. I held my breath as I pulled out the renovate.

Renovate: aid your friend Seth, who struggles with depression due to your death

Seth? I'd met Seth when I was alive and we'd been friends for years. Once I'd died, I'd become a student here at the Soul Fallen Academy. I wasn't ever allowed to see him, so I'd never known about his depression. I kind of felt bad, but then I remembered, it hadn't been my fault.

"What's yours?" Levana asked me. I told her.

"Beats mine" She sighed. Hers was to learn why her murderer had killed her.

Most of the students looked disappointed, but as for me, I wasn't as disappointed as I was surprised. I hadn't talked to Seth for a pretty long time, and I wasn't sure as to what he was going to make of it when I saw him again.

After class Levana and I headed back to our dorm.

"Crap, I forgot the key" Levana said. She turned to me with a desperate look.

"You don't happen to have one on you, do you Eve?"

I shook my head. She sighed. We both headed down to the office to get an extra key, but this hadn't been the first time. This had probably been the fourth of fifth time this year. And I wasn't too ecstatic to see Ms.Acen who worked at the front desk. She always had something bad to say.

When we reached the front desk I let Levana do the talking. Ms. Acen got up and grabbed a key from the rack.

"You only have one extra key left" She growled. "You need to be more responsible and stop forgetting your key"

"Sorry. Won't happen again" She said. We headed back. When we got in, she plopped down on her bed and made herself comfy.

"We should work on our renatives" I suggested.

"Not going to happen" She said.

"It's not that late. Are you going to be going to sleep?" I asked.

"No. I'm going to talk to you"

"You already are"

"Oh right"

I sat down on my own bed next to hers and sat with back against the wall. My bed was up against the wall and right next to the bathroom. Also it was closest to our door.

The door opened and we both glanced over as Abdul walked in. His blue eyes were shinning as he entered the room.

"You know you really should knock" I said.

"You guys told me I didn't have to, remember?"

"I don't remember that" Levana muttered.

"So what are your renatives?" Abdul asked.

We both told him our own and then he told us his. He seemed way too overexcited about it. His was that he had to learn something new about himself. Something he'd never known. Something about a power he didn't know he had.

"If I can close doors with my mind" Abdul said. "That'd be awesome"

"That'd never happen" I corrected. "Cause then you'd flipping book pages with your mind and no one can have that much fun"

Apparently, he was too stupid to realize I'd been making fun of him. He grinned. "Maybe I can" He had that look. He was going to try it.

Levana sat up cautiously almost jokingly but she looked like she wasn't kidding. Abdul grabbed a book off the shelf and stared down at it. He looked like he was trying so hard to concentrate.

"You look like an idiot" I hissed. He glared at me a second then let it go. After a while, nothing happened.

He sighed. "Maybe it's something else"

"Obviously" Levana said. "Hey, you'd better get out of here before one of the teachers or upper angels comes in and see's you're in a girls dorm" The upper angels had just as much power against us as the teachers did. They were like respected royalty, except some really were royalty.

He grinned. "Oh okay, I'll leave you two alone then"

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" She yelled as he left, closing the door behind him.

I looked over at the clock. Ten thirty. Curfew. Levana got up to switch off a light. I lay down under my blanket. I couldn't stop thinking about Seth. Was he okay? How depressed was he? Why had the upper angels given me that as a renative?

I closed my eyes. The upper angels had never spoken to me, but I always fantasized about what it would have been like. I guess that sounded pretty stupid, but I really wondered sometimes.

And then if I kissed one...

The upper angels lived in a separate building than us. They're dorms were connected through a crossing hall. One upstairs and one downstairs below it. I once had been delivering something to a lower angel and had caught sight of a few of the royal upper angels. They took their time as they walked. They didn't have any wings, but they had whitish porcelain skin and were tall too. I'd found myself drooling (okay not drooling) but gaping. One of them had looked over at me. He glared. His eyes stared hard at me like I wasn't supposed to be there. I really wasn't, but suddenly I felt like liquid. I'd handed the stack of letters to the lower angel, and then ran down the hall with my converse squeaking.

I suddenly fell from my thoughts and into a dream. The dream was like nothing I'd ever encountered before. It was so different to anything I'd ever known.