My Soul To Keep

Chapter 1

September 2012

I was only at school for five minutes and already I was seeing ghosts.

I saw someone—or something—flicker along the sides of the building and in between trees, and then disappear. The overbearing sunlight caused me to blink repeatedly, and each time it was like the flashes of a camera bringing people in and out of focus until they were gone.

People say that seeing is believing...or is it believing is seeing? Truth is, I never knew if I believed in spirits before I had a reason to.

Spirits were all I obsessed over after my own brush with death.

In my grief, I started to look for him everywhere, trying in vain to see if there was a part of him that still floated around. My mom took me to different doctors, the kind that gave you medicine and the kind you had to sit and talk to. I spent my time alone when I wasn't in school. Except, of course, for the therapy sessions.

"I have the poem you wrote in school," the doctor said gently. She held the unfolded notebook sheet in her hand, spread out against a clipboard with my name, grade, date, and teacher's name scribbled in the top left corner. "Can you tell me what was on your mind when you wrote it?"

"I don't know," I said.

"It's a very morbid poem for a sweet girl like you," she said. She handed the clipboard over to me. "Will you read it to me?"

I looked at the poem I wrote for class, the one that made the teacher cross her brow at me worriedly and call home, as though any single thing I did meant I was emotionally unstable.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

And if I die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The doctor nodded, holding the tip of her pen to her chin. "Is it about wanting to be protected, no matter what happens to you?"

"My dad will protect me."

"He will always be with you," the woman said.

"He is with me right now."

"Yes, in spirit he is."

"No," I said. "He's in the chair next to me."

I wished everyone would just leave me alone. When anyone asked me how I was doing, I always replied I was getting some peace and recovery. I got the classic response—"If there is anything I can do just let me know!" which everyone knows is just an empty line to tell a grieving party that you care. No one actually needs anything, and no one is going to do anything about it. It is such a stupid thing to say. Thankfully my friends understood and tried to treat me normally.

I jumped when something brushed my hair, and I turned around to see my mother's concerned face.

"Sky? Are you all right?"

"Yeah."

My younger brother and sister came out of the school building behind us. My mother was carrying most of the stuff—the blue information folder and packet we got for orientation, including a map of the campus and my assigned dorm. There were too many buildings at this place for me to keep track of. Some were academic and others were residences, and according to the snobby brochure, it said Applewhite Preparatory Boarding School would "plant the seeds of success into young, barren minds." My mom fell for it, thinking it would be the best thing for me, and packed me up to go barely after my thirteenth birthday. Just like that, my next life was already set out for me.