Intro
Something woke me up. I didn’t know what—or who—it was, but I could feel it. Something was different. Off.
I opened my eyes and saw a figure standing in front of the window. Their body was silhouetted in front of the moon’s rays, and I couldn’t see who they were. But for some reason, their presence didn’t alarm me.
The first thing that came to my mind was, Is this like Twilight where the possessive boyfriend watches his girlfriend while they sleep?
The second thought: Wait, I’m a guy.
Then I thought that the situation might be more like that book that recently became popular at school where a boy becomes friends with a witch whose uncle sneaks into the boy’s room at night and steals his dreams.
My fourth thought: I’m not dating a witch.
So who was the figure standing by my window? I pushed my covers aside and stood up, then walked over to the light switch. I flipped the lamp on, but the light burned my eyes and temporarily blinded me. When I could finally open them, I stared in wonder at the person on the other side of the room.
It was a girl. 15, maybe 16 years old. But it wasn’t her age that surprised me. It was the way she looked. Pale, gaunt, like she’d been living in a cave on a non-protein diet for the last ten years. Her clothes, consisting of a white nightgown and a simple pair of socks, were tattered and covered in dirt. Her eyes stared back at me from behind a veil of long, black hair.
“Are you alright?” I asked her. My mind told me that I should be afraid, that this wasn’t normal, but I didn’t listen to it. All I could think about was how sick she looked and how badly I wanted to hold her and tell her it would all be okay.
“You have to help me,” she whispered. “I’m dead.”
YOU ARE READING
Butterfly Summer
Teen Fiction“I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.” - John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne.
