Ghost Busted

Last Days with The Living

The last week of my life was mostly rainy. We had a front come through, it made the air cool, crisp, and moist. You could feel the dampness of the lawn every time you went out into the yard, and it was hard not to slip on the wooden patio. My little sister Bethany found it hard to resist splashing in every puddle, making mud pies, and all sorts of things from the wet ground. I had to get onto her several times last week to stop trekking dirt into the house since nearly every day she would come home with her clothes drenched, and shoes full of mud. I can't blame Bethany.  My parents would tell me I was just as playful and energetic as she was, if not more. If I was seven years old, I would have loved to splash around and make muddy messes with her. Who wouldn't?  

I miss those days. Days where I splashed in the rain, rode my tricycle around town pretending that I owned it, and wasn't troubled about anything specific. Of course, I'm still young and will forever be young. I've heard people tell my family how tragic it is that I had died so young, but I haven't thought of it that way. I guess it is tragic that I had to die before I could learn to drive, have a boyfriend, go to a university, and get married, perhaps have children, if I wanted children. But at the time,  and even today, I wonder if I would have done all those things, I never wanted a stereotypical life. If anything, I was just trying to get a quality education so that I could run away from all things practical. So that I could have a unique story and legacy like no other. I wasn't going to live my whole life being basic. Even now, I wouldn't want that. I wanted to travel, I wanted to have an interesting career, though I didn't have to slightest clue what that career would be.

But since I'm now deceased, and I can't go back to alter that, let me get back on topic. One thing in particular that I noticed during my final days, was that Oliver Jackson wasn't giving me much trouble. He scarcely said anything to me that last week, and I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. I had my suspicions as to why he wasn't talking, but I, for the most part, ignored them. I was starting to believe he had finally realized talking trash, and attempting to start fights with me wasn't going to work, and he had most likely found someone who was a little more entertaining to bother. On the other hand, it was more likely that he would go back to being an asshole and telling slanderous lies, by next week. Of course, by next week, I was dead.

There were two boys who sat behind me in math class, and they would always say the weirdest things. Some of their little chats I  had the privilege to overhear were downright sickening. But they were kind when I would talk to them, and I never felt as if their conversations were directed at me. They never made an attempt to engage me in any of their dirty talks, which is good because I definitely didn't want to be a part of them. That is, until my final week, every day they would ask me questions like, "Do you know a place where we could get some embryos?", "Do you know The Muffin Man?" I said "No." "Do you know how he died?" But the eeriest, most disturbing question they asked me was on the day of my death, Friday morning.  I was out by the gym, not that I ever used the gym, it was just the place where I would talk with my friend Kaitlyn, Kaitlyn and I were good friends, we were never best friends, but we spent a decent amount of time together, and we were always happy to see each other. But anyway, those same two boys who had never talked to me out of math class, walked up to me, and one of them asked if I knew what was happening tonight, I couldn't think of anything that was supposed to happen, so I told him I didn't know. The other boy went on to ask if I knew what happened one hundred years ago, that made this week so unlucky. I said "No. Why are you asking me?" They never answered my question, one of the boys simply said "That's a shame. Such a shame."  and the other boy told me to "Stay safe."

I had zoned out, which wasn't very unusual for me, and when my mind had woken up again, Kaitlyn was saying "Earth to Bella! We're gonna be late!" We had one minute to get to our first class, which was at the other end of the school. We got there as fast as we could, but we were late. That was the first and the last time I was late to that class. But I had been late for other classes several times before so the significance this might have had didn't register. The rest of the day at school went just as normal. That afternoon, Bethany came home early, I found that out when she rushed to open the door, and for being half my size, gave me a great big monster hug. Everything else that went on from that moment until I went to bed, went just the same as it always had. One thing we were pleased to see was that the rain had stopped, for the first time in a week. I went to bed having almost forgotten what happened on the morning of that fateful day, and when my Dad peeked through the doorway to say goodnight, that was the last time anyone would ever see me alive.