Ruth

Age: 7

Adira skulked in her room, glaring at her open textbook without actually reading it. Ruth sighed. "You know sweetie, you're gonna have to do your homework eventually."

The little girl huffed angrily. "I'm not gonna have to use this in my life when I become famous." She crossed her arms and looked away as Ruth sat on the floor across from her.

"Adira, everyone needs to know about the water cycle." Ruth reached over to turn the pages to the right section, but Adira snatched it up.

"I'm not going to school anymore," she announced matter-of-factly. "School is for ordinary people and you always tell me I'm extraordinary, therefore I don't have to go to school." She turned on her heel and stuffed her textbook into her backpack. As she did, her plastic trophy crashed to the floor. Adira jumped and whirled around. "Ruth? Did you do that?"

She shivered. It was cold. The little girl rubbed her arms in an attempt  to get blood circulating through her extremities, leaving her science textbook on the floor, forgotten.

Ruth looked equally puzzled. "I didn't move, I-"

"Ruth?" The old woman was frozen in place like a movie set on pause, not blinking, not breathing, not doing anything. Adira felt a strong gust of wind tousle the hair on the back of her head, accompanied shortly by a dull thud. Afraid to turn around but also afraid not to, she pivoted slowly and saw the metal camel her father had bought when her he'd gotten back from Afghanistan embedded in the wall. It was easily heavy enough to kill her. A book shot out of her bookcase and hurtled toward her.

Adira screamed and barely dodged it before another book came rocketing in her direction, followed by another and another until to room was a tornado of pages and covers.  She was batting books away from her desperately,  but there were so many that she was was being battered by the vicious onslaught of hardcovers. "RUTH!" she screamed. The corner of a cover hit her in the eye and she cried out. "Ruth help me, please!"

The old woman was still frozen, but her lips were moving slightly, whispering something unintelligible, but from what Adira heard, it didn't sound like English.

She was sobbing now, curled up into a ball as books pounded into her relentlessly, leaving her bloody and bruised. She screamed as loud as she could, but a book smacked the back of her head and she banged her face against the ground with a sharp pain in her mouth. She tasted blood.

Suddenly the tornado stilled. The floating pages and books hovered eerily, motionless. Ruth unfroze.

She walked into the center of the tornado and whispered, "Go."

Adira scrambled to a wall and pressed herself against it as hard as she could, trying (and failing) to ignore the searing pain that was prominent everywhere in her body. She saw Ruth's lips moving again, but whatever she was saying was too quiet to hear. The old woman contorted her fingers into an odd position and spat another peculiar foreign word, and all of the books fell to the floor.

The realization of what had just happened began to sink in, and Adira started to hyperventilate. "What just-I-can't," she choked on the questions she desperately wanted to ask but Ruth looked calmly in the eyes and said, "It'll be okay, Adira."

When she said that, the little girl steadied her breathing, closed her eyes, and counted to seven.

When she opened them again she asked in a much calmer voice," What did you just do, Ruth?"

The older woman brushed Adira's hair back from her face and said with a sigh,"I guess I can't really avoid this conversation anymore." She made a vague gesture and the door opened. Adira gaped, open-mouthed.

"Wha-how-"

"I'm about to explain sweetie." Ruth smiled to herself at Adira's expression. "Come with me."

She led a bewildered Adira to her parents' room (which was vacant, since they'd gone out for the evening) and opened her mother's closet with another vague gesture. The old woman muttered a few foreign words and an old photo album flew from the depths of the closet, brushing past a bright red petticoat.

Adira was beginning to fell less confusion and more awe as she saw what Ruth was doing. As if opening doors without touching them wasn't cool enough, she'd saved Adira's life by doing... well something, and she was about to explain to her how. The little girl would've been trembling with curiosity if it hadn't hurt so much.

Ruth had one outstretched hand, the photo album floating just above it. She crossed two fingers and whispered something and the album fluttered open to a certain page. She held up the book to an awe-filled Adira (who was also slightly in shock).

Bemused, the little girl squinted at the old black and white photo, not understanding. "What does this have to do with how you saved me?"

"Look closer."

"Hey that woman in on the right kinda looks like you!" Adira grinned.
Suddenly her smile faded and she looked from the album to Ruth's face. "Wait, that doesn't make any sense, why are you-" She gasped. "That is you, isn't it?"

Ruth nodded gravely.

Adira gingerly took the photo album and pulled out the picture. She flipped it over and read the date on the back. "But this was taken in 1987!" She looked at the picture again. "But you haven't aged a day since then, how are you still alive?"

"Ever wonder why no one else seems to see me Adira, but they always seem to feel when I'm around?"

"No, but what does that have to do with-"

"Well," the old woman took a deep breath," people have always had sort of a sixth sense when it comes to the dead."