Forty-One After Midnight (Completed)

Chapter Seventeen

It was Tuesday morning now. Laney was up before me for once. I was glad because I was still not enjoying the bird alarm every morning. This time though, she woke me up instead.

"Why are you up so early?" I asked her.

She shrugged.

"Just felt like an early start on the day I guess."

We got dressed and took care of all of our other morning duties as normal. Instead of going to class separately though, Laney waited for me to get done and we walked there together.

"I expected a bunch of rich snobs when I first came here. I'm not going to lie," I said as we walked.

Laney laughed.

"Well, most kids here are. I won't lie either. I guess I'm one of them."

"But you admit to that now?"

"I guess. I mean, I pushed this ghost, past life thing in the past for so long believing that they were all dead and that we couldn't fix it anyway. Now that I'm actually looking into it, I feel bad for the kids and the way they were treated. I guess I almost feel like me being snobby to other kids isn't really any better. I'm mean to them and they do nothing to deserve it."

I put my hand on her shoulder.

"You can change that though. We all can. I'm not going to say I'm a perfect angel either. I give my parents a hard time every time we move. I understand my dad has to for his job, but that never stopped me from being a little brat about it." I thought for a moment. "Some kids came here never to see their parents again. I'm going back to mine. I get a second chance."

I could feel my eyes getting watery. I wasn't going to cry though. I didn't get all emotional like that. Laney noticed anyway. She put her arm around my shoulder and hugged me. I guess she knew what I wanted to say, that those kids never got a second chance, and she understood. We all did. Now we needed to make the best of it and do what we knew was right, so that they wouldn't have to suffer any longer.

Mrs. Reeves was back to teaching. For the most part she seemed herself. She was a little jumpy, but that was reasonable. After class was over I walked up to her desk and stood waiting until everyone else left the room.

"So, how did you get down there?" I asked as soon as the room was empty.

She looked up and me and leaned back in her chair.

"He made me walk down there. Literally."

"Are you saying he can just... walk into people and take over?"

"He's a lot stronger than the others," she said. "He has the ability to do things that they can't. He can lift things, open things, move stuff around. It's like he's a normal person almost, except he's dead."

"I'm assuming we should be afraid of him then?"

"I would be. I'd also be careful. I know he's capable of a lot, and I wouldn't want him to catch on to what we're doing."

I left feeling a little scared. I thought about what Mrs. Reeves had said as I walked down to the café with Laney and Kyle.

Laney was okay with me sitting at a different table now. Her and Mark would have joined us, but that sudden change would have led people to be just a little too curious, and we didn't want that. She did like walking down there together though, that part wasn't going to change. Well, other than Kyle. He was actually allowed to walk with us. He just had to go his separate ways when we entered the Café.