Seeking Souls

6: Tracks

I could feel it, the cold steel against the back of my neck as I looked up at the blue sky above me. The summer air filled my lungs with life and enjoyment, the warmth of the sun adding to my good mood. “Des.” I heard her whispering my name, I wanted to look over at her but I knew how this dream ended. “Desmond, please look at me.” I closed my eyes, turning my head in her direction and slowly opening them. Kara was looking into my eyes, into my soul for fucks sake. “It’s okay.” She whispered, reaching out to hold my hand. I could see it now, the train coming in the distance to complete our fate. “Don’t be afraid.” She was shouting now, the sound of the train escalating and occupying the empty spaces of my mind. “It’s going to be okay!” She shouted as loud as she could, the more I heard her say those words, the more I believed that she was saying it to herself and not to me. The fear in her eyes from not seeing the train coming, and the fear she saw in my eyes because I could see the train coming.

       “Kara!” I screamed just as the train was a mere arms length away, my eyes opening to the fear pushing its way into my heart. I rolled over, looking at the clock. Three in the morning, three hours until I was supposed to get up. “Fuck it.” I whispered, shutting the alarm off and sitting up in my bed. I looked out my bedroom window, the lights from the street lamps illuminated my room enough for me to see where I was walking. I sat down at my laptop, a cheap piece of shit that my parents had gotten for me for my last birthday. I turned it on and waited for the thing to load up, feeling choked up when I saw the main background image. It was a collage of photo’s from last school year, the majority of them being of Kara and I. My eyes were fixated on one photo in particular, the two of us were standing outside of her house; she was on my back, shoving her hands in my face as I was about to die of laughter. I took in a deep breath, remembering that day clearly.

One Year Ago

       “Kara.” I whispered, standing over her sleeping body with a dark smile on my face. A while back before that day Kara and her parents agreed to give me a spare key to their house. They figured that since I was over at their house for the majority of my life that I should have my own key. So I let myself in and walked up to her bedroom, opening the door to see her laying down completely knocked out. We still had a couple of weeks until school started back up so I suppose it wasn’t a bad idea to sleep in on a nice summer Saturday. I got down on one knee and got really close to her face, making a really weird face and breathing heavily onto her. She wrinkled her nose and opened her eyes and once she saw the face I was making she screamed and smacked me in the head.

       I laughed and fell back onto the floor; looking up at her shocked face and seeing it turn to pure anger when she saw me. “I’m going to kill you.” I got up to my feet, petting her on the head. That was her threat whenever I had done something stupid, at first I believed it, but after realizing it was empty, I just started to ignore it.

       “You wouldn’t even try.” I smiled at her, walking over to her window and opening up the curtain, allowing the sunlight to dilate her pupils. She covered her eyes groaning and flopping herself back into her bed, shoving the blanket over her face.

       “Leave me alone, it’s Saturday.” I smiled and walked to the foot of her bed, grabbing the blanket tight. “Don’t even think about it Desmond.”

       “Too late.” I yanked the blanket off of her, her hair poofing up from the electricity of the covers. She glared at me while I stood there with a nice grin on my face. “Come on, let’s go get some sunshine.”

Present Day

       The chatter of the lunch room bothered me, not the noise, but what they were talking about. “Here he comes, sh.” That’s the basic thing that I heard as I made my way to an empty table in the back. It was like I was some freak now, the boy who lost his best friend and punched her ex boyfriend in the face.

       I sat down and looked down at the tray of food that I had brought with me; a chicken patty, a bottle of water, and a bag of baked Cheetos. I took a slow breath, popping open the water and taking small sips of it. “She said you get the same thing all the time.” The muscles in my arm tightened up at the sound of her voice. I turned around, seeing Madison standing there and wishing that it was someone, anyone else. She sat down next to me and looked down at the food. “It’s hard for you to believe me,” She started whispering, avoiding eye contact with me. “I understand that, but I need you to at least humor me. Please.” I bit my tongue, wanting to get up and leave but some part of me just wanted to stay and listen, to believe that maybe she could see Kara, that Kara was still here in some way. I nodded, trying desperately to keep my cool. “I can see her Desmond, she can talk to me and I can talk back. Her spirit is stuck here and she wants to pass on to the afterlife.”

       “Why…why do you think she’s stuck?” I wasn’t sure if I was asking just to humor her or because I really was starting to believe her.

       “It might be because she wasn’t able to do something that she really wanted to do in this life. Something that apparently you can help her with.” She looked across the table and I followed her gaze, my mind laughing at itself for actually thinking that she was sitting across from me in her regular seat. “She said she saw you today, looking at your laptop, and the pictures on it. She wants to know what you were thinking about.”

       I kept my eyes on the empty chair across from me. “What I’m always thinking about these days I guess. Her, the memory of her. Specifically, the day we took that picture outside of her house.”

       “Tell me about it?” I looked over at Madison, smiling a bit and going back to my memories to that day. I would play along, for now at least.

One Year Ago

       “I would like to think it’s possible, you know?” Kara and I sat on the steps in her backyard, shoulder to shoulder, looking at the grass. “To create a whole world just for yourself and actually, physically be able to go into that world.” I nodded to her random thought and yawned a bit. “Don’t tell me you’re tired after you just viciously woke me up!” I laughed and got up to my feet, stretching my arms out.

       All of a sudden I felt a weight push against me as Kara jumped onto my back, locking her legs around my waist and holding onto me with one arm. I stumbled around her backyard for a moment before she slipped out a small black point and shoot camera and pointed it at us. “Smile big you tired asshole.” I started laughing at her insult, just as the flash went off. It captured that moment of happiness forever, a moment I would do anything to get back.