onyx: poltergeist

four

CELINE

"Hey Cel darling? Your phone is ringing," I heard my mother call out from the kitchen, helping to fetch the phone that I accidentally left behind on the counter. I shrugged; it's probably Jayda again, planning on how we meet outside the faculty lest we get lost on the way to class. You could say we were practically inseparable.

"Who's it from Mom?" I asked in return, cramming down another mouthful of a smoked salmon sandwich into my mouth ungracefully. The clock was ticking and I had to get out and run to school, if only I didn't devote so much time to fix up the wings of my liquid eyeliner.

"Mr Lambert," she replied sternly, "you might want to pick it up, your teacher is calling."

I almost choked on my sandwich. He must have had important news, either something really good or really bad, if he ever had to call to tell me. He knows very surely that I had been Jayda's best friend for at least two years and counting, so something should have happened to her to the extent he had to ring me up. But what could have even happened overnight to her? She was perfectly fine texting me about class before bed.

I reached out and took the phone from her hand, swiping to answer what looked like an urgent call. "Hello?" I mumbled, half chewing my breakfast, half garbling my words.

"Celine? It's me," Mr Lambert's voice rung out loud and clear in my head.

"Uh yeah, I know it's you Mr Lambert, because it sounds like you," I furrowed my brows. This conversation was practically going nowhere.

"Celine wait, I know it sounds like the most unbelievable thing that ever happened this year or even this century, but I'm actually Jayda," he continued, "something happened last night in my sleep so now I've switched bodies with him."

I almost choked on the same mouthful of food, this time from amusement. "Ah, so that's why Jayda fancies you so much," I laughed, "you do have an innate ability in making lame jokes."

"Swallow your food Cel," he snapped on the other end. I froze. Never in my entire life has Mr Lambert ever addressed me by my nickname; most of the times he would simply call me Celine or even Ms Gilbert for when he's upset. The fact that he called me Cel was just an entirely new concept whatsoever.

"Wait, what's going on?" I probed in suspicion, "You don't sound like yourself lately Mr Lambert, are you feeling okay?"

He heaved a deep sigh on the other end of the line. "Trust me Cel, it's Jayda," he continued, slightly exasperatedly, "I think there's something wrong with the necklace lately."

Okay, I think I'm starting to get convinced that it was really Jayda I'm talking to, and maybe the body switching part too, because Mr Lambert had always kept his home address a secret from the class, and I'm pretty sure Jayda wasn't that bad of a stalker to pop by at his house at around seven in the morning. Still it was quite unnatural for me to call Jayda as she is when she was stuck in his body, and taking up his deep, masculine voice.

"Celine, remember when you said that the dust in the pendant swirled?" Mr Lam-, I mean Jayda, went on, "It really does, I'm sorry I doubted you for so long."

"Nah, no problem Jay," I smiled, "but how does it even swirl when it's stuck within the gem itself?"

"No one knows," she sighed again, "that's when the problem comes in. First you get this onyx pendant necklace which has dust swirling within it unnaturally and practically defying the impossible, and then you end up waking up in your favourite teacher's body."

I shook my head slowly. "Do you think the pendant is-" I began, but abruptly getting cut off on the other end.

"Haunted, exactly," Jayda immediately finished my sentence, "If not how would this kind of sorcery even take place? The dust in the pendant itself looks a lot like ash anyways. Whose ash it is? I have no idea, but this isn't right at all."

I guess great minds really do think alike. This was definitely the Jayda I knew and recognised.

"But then again Celine," she continued, a slight tremor in her, or Mr Lambert's voice, "now that I'm stuck in Mr Lambert's body, where is Mr Lambert?"

"Most probably in yours, I'm not sure," I sighed in return, "only he's able to tell."

~

ADAM

Okay, this was the strangest scenario I've ever gotten myself into. Stuck in my student's body after some freak accident in my sleep last night. Who was I even supposed to tell about this? I couldn't tell the year head or Mr Jackson, both of them wouldn't even believe me anyways. Besides, Jayda probably doesn't have both their numbers on her phone.

Don't panic Adam, I continuously reassured myself. Think about who Jayda would call to talk about this discovery; you're trapped in her body now, so it's best to think and see things from her perspective.

Only one name surfaced in my head. Celine.

I hastily finished brushing my, um, Jayda's teeth, and dashed out of the bathroom, spotting her phone resting on the bedside table and bending over to pick it up. I quickly swiped past the lock screen, not bothering less about her lax security measures and dived straight into her contacts.

I scrolled all the way down to C and immediately hammered down on the contact saved under Celine, holding up the phone to my ear and waiting for the line on the end to click. Not long after I was responded with a 'hello?' by Celine on the other side.

"Celine, I know this is going to be pretty weird, but it's Mr Lambert here," I greeted. I have a feeling that this wasn't going to work out.

"Yeah, I know that," she let out a soft laugh, "Jayda just called me on your phone."

I took a step back in shock. "She hacked into my phone?" I asked in disbelief.

"Apparently," I could picture Celine shrugging on the other end, "but it's an emergency anyways; she's stuck in your body and you're stuck in hers."

Oh, so that's where Jayda went, or at least that's where her soul went, trapped in my body.

"How can something like this even happen?" I fired away another question. I still had no idea what had happened last night that led me to this.

"Jayda said it was her necklace," she replied, "she said that there was something that looked like ash that swirled inside the pendant, so it might be haunted, or cursed."

"Okay, hold on," I told Celine to stay on the line while I bent down to pick up a small box resting on the table. I opened it to find the necklace and its onyx pendant resting inside, but strange enough there was nothing moving within the stone itself, just specks of fine grey dust sticking themselves onto the surface.

"There's nothing swirling inside the pendant Celine," I updated her, holding up the pendant and flipping it around to check for myself.

"It only swirls at times Mr Lambert," she explained, "Jayda thought the same way on the last day of school when I saw it swirl but saw it swirl herself just last night."

"Oh, I see. Thanks and I'll see you in class later Celine," I nodded slowly, catching a glimpse of the alarm on the table. Fifteen minutes had already passed since I rolled out of bed while stuck in Jayda's body, which meant one thing for sure; I was starting to run late. The line on the other end clicked and I slid the phone back onto the table, taking wide strides over to the wardrobe and picking out a few pieces that I felt looked great on Jayda before swiftly sidestepping into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.