A high school senior, who goes by the name Amelia Hartman, realizes that she will never be the same again. She was a normal girl, who enjoyed the company of her two friends, Alayne and Tom. Even though she's not wanting to make anymore friends, the...
IT'S LONELY not being able to talk to anyone. It's even lonelier when people aren't roaming the halls. The silence of the school without it's student's is eerily quiet. I'm not the only one here if I'm being honest. There are more of us. The others tend to hide or stay away from me. Most of them are older than I am. Teachers most likely. There's one man who keeps to himself in the library. He wanders around aimlessly, poking at the books on the shelves and trying to stack stray papers occasionally. It doesn't matter that the man tries. He's not strong enough. The papers float away from him and land on the floor, mocking him. He must have been the librarian. An old librarian. The clothes that he wore reminded me of the clothes that were worn in the sixties. His glasses were worn on the bridge of his nose and the suspenders he had on were tight to his shoulders. The dude gave me the creeps sometimes. His eyes were almost black, and his hair was mostly gone. The only hair that he had was on his face, trimmed neatly and whiter than snow.
I don't want to be around them. The spirits that do talk, only talk about their death. One of them can pull the skin of his neck open. He said that he had died from a student who tried slitting his neck open with one of the lab scalpels. Tried. She did, man. The mark that's left there speaks for it. My neck has bruises from when I died. I didn't lie when I told Amelia that I couldn't remember falling. It must have been quick, I thought. I sat there a few hours after she had walked away trying to remember as much as I could, but it never came back to me. The only thing I remember is the panic that I felt when I had tripped. If I felt any pain, then it must have been a fleeting moment.
Amelia.
She would've been my type when I was alive. She had the greenest eyes I've ever seen. Her hair was a shiny brown that fell to the middle of her back. Mia had been pretty but if I'm being honest, she looked nothing like Amelia. Amelia is shorter, with a longer torso. She was slim and had the perfect figure. I could have loved her. She was strong. I could tell just from looking at her. When I had asked her to find Jaime, I could see her wariness. I don't blame her. Three guys had taken my brother from our home. The home that I grew up in. Jaime. The name sounded foreign to me after not remembering it for so long.
When Amelia had told me his name, a lot of memories seemed to unlock. His name brought back everything. I remembered the time that we had gone to the zoo. Jaime had been standing at the lion cages pointing and sporting the biggest smile I had ever seen. He had been seven years-old at the time. He was only thirteen years-old when I had passed away. He was going to start high school at the same school that his brother had died. That was what I thought about from time to time. How did he feel having to walk up and down the steps that those classmates had found me at the bottom of?
It was a year until I had seen Jaime again. That year had been the toughest. I didn't understand why I was still stuck here? I realized that I had died when the student's that had found me couldn't hear me or see me. The other spirits had called it the in-between. That everyone who was stuck in the in-between, were there for a reason. Nobody understood what their reason was. But, I think I found mine.
Jaime had grown a lot. He was almost a foot taller than I had been at that age. I spotted him when he had walked through the entrance of the school. He looks miserable, I had thought. He was always a happy kid, but you could tell that my death had taken a toll on him. I tried talking to him that first day. I yelled until my voice began to crack. He only seemed to look right through me. A lot of my energy was spent by the time I had finished screaming. I couldn't take it. After a while, I just watched over him. I watched him become a star football player and top of his class. I watched him joking and laughing with his friends. I even watched him have his first kiss up against his locker. It was a proud moment. The girl looked at him like he was the best thing she had ever seen, and he had looked so happy in that moment that my heart soared. I got to watch my baby brother grow up. Only, he never realized that. When he had graduated in the auditorium, it was the realest moment for me. He was a grown man. He would be leaving me. I can't say that I wanted him to stay there. I wanted him to go to college, marry his high school sweetheart, have kids, and grow old. The only thing that had hurt me the most is that I wouldn't be able to experience that part of his life.
Amelia had to find him. She must save him.
I don't know how she's going to do it. I don't understand how I have a part in this. Maybe part of me had stuck around to make sure my brother was okay. It had come as a shock when Amelia had told me about the kidnapping. My brother had always been the type of person who seemed so strong. But up against three grown men? I wouldn't have even stood a chance.
There had to be a reason that this happened. I wouldn't think that my brother had gotten into some trouble or a deal that he couldn't get out of. He hadn't been that type of person when he was going to school. Unless he changed within the year after he graduated. I started to think that if I had been there, if I had been alive, I would have been able to stop it. I would have been able to stop the kind of trouble he may have been getting into. If I hadn't, then I at least could have been there to help him fight. If we went down fighting, then all would have been fine with me.
I passed the library on my way to the gym. The creepy guy was in there. He was sitting at one of the long tables and attempting to turn the pages of one of the books. When he couldn't get it open, he got mad and accomplished pushing it off the table and onto the floor. He stood up and started mumbling aggressively. His hand gestures made me flinch. He obviously isn't enjoying being dead either.
Walking away, I started humming a tune that I don't remember the name of. I miss the students. It was almost like a television show watching them. It reminded me of the old sappy high school movies, except it was more real. The bad words weren't bleeped out and the love between students wasn't as dramatic. I would never admit it, but I kind of miss watching sappy television shows. I took it for granted when I was alive. Jaime and I had made fun of all of them. He was old enough to know that life wasn't really like that. Amelia seemed to realize that too, after finding out she could see me. The reality of it had it me hard. I feel like I may have ruined her life unintentionally. It wasn't her responsibility. She hadn't even known me when I was alive.
Thinking of her gave me hope. It's a small chance that she would find Jaime. I knew that. If I was alive, I would have went looking for him myself. He didn't deserve this. Whoever took him decided that he was worth taking. But, what would they want with an eighteen-year-old boy? Amelia didn't deserve this either, but she was the only one that could see me. She was the only one that could reassure me.
After tomorrow, I would get to see Amelia again. She would have to come back with good news. I feel like if she didn't, there wouldn't be any more hope left.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I wanted to add a chapter with Alex's point of few since he's going to be a major character and who gets to see inside the life of a ghost? Don't forget to vote and leave me feedback!
