My first week of school had finally ended. All and all, it didn’t go too badly. After the first day people seemed to get the message that I didn’t want to talk to them. I achieved this by simply responding with one word answers and not saying anything else when someone tried to strike up a conversation with me. Unfortunately, one person didn’t seem to get the message; Ghost.
I was really hoping that she was bound to the house, that way I’d only have to put up with her at home. But, as it turns out, she can move wherever she wants. She doesn’t ever leave me alone. Whenever I turn around she’s always there, with that stupid oblivious look on her face. Other people don’t notice her of course. Occasionally people move through her and she’ll start freaking out about it.
I was surprised to find out that she wasn’t an idiot. When she first followed me into a classroom I was scared that she wouldn’t stop asking questions. That she would just point at the page and say “What does this mean?” in that annoying air-headed voice of hers, over and over again. Instead she just points out what I’ve done wrong. If I was someone who cared about my grades then I might be grateful; but I don’t so I just find it annoying. She hasn’t been wrong yet which was surprising. Turns out she’s actually a genius. She probably could’ve done well in life if she wasn’t dead.
The worst part about having her there is that I have to make sure to ignore her. I accidently responded to her on the first day and got some strange looks. So no matter how irritating she’s being I have to just ignore it. I can’t even tell her to shut up. Once I got home on Friday I collapsed on my bed. I was even more exhausted than I usually was on a Friday. This ghost might be ruining my life.
***
“So what are we doing today Ellie?” Ghost asked energetically.
“What do you mean?” I was sitting at my computer, aimlessly browsing the internet. I didn’t even get to sleep in today with her constantly trying to get my attention. I look over to her. She’s lying down on (or at least, hovering very close to) my bed, looking up at the ceiling.
She sits up quickly. “Are we doing anything today? Do we have any plans? Are we going somewhere? Oh! Oh! We could go to the mall!”
““We” aren’t doing anything. I’m gonna laze around all day. You can do whatever you want.” I turn away from her, back to my computer. She’s like a hyperactive child. She never keeps still, she won’t shut up and she always wants to do something. Why would a ghost want to go shopping in the first place?
“Aw come on,” she says in a whiny voice. “We could look at cute clothes.”
“No.”
“Alright, we could look at some ugly clothes.”
I turn round to look at her. “Why the hell do you wanna go shopping?! What would be the point?!”
She puffs out her cheek and turns away. “Well I thought we could look for other ghosts and see if they’ve ever heard of a human seeing the dead before,” she says in an annoyed tone.
I sigh. She actually has a good point, as much as I hate to admit it. “Next time, start with that point,” I say irritated, standing up.
She suddenly springs up off the bed. “Yay! This is gonna be so much fun!”
***
The mall was about as crowded as you would expect on a Saturday. I feel incredibly claustrophobic. Apparently this is what normal people do on weekends, although I’ve never quite understood why.
We arrive at the food court. There’s a circular eating area surrounded by pillars. There are lots of people, plenty of potential ghosts. I suddenly realise the problem with our plan. “So how exactly do you find a ghost?” I say turning to Ghost.
“Oh, that’s easy! Ghosts are transparent from far away. Watch!” she then proceeds to float away from me. After she gets about 10 metres away from me she starts to fade. The further away she moved, the more transparent she got, until eventually she was completely invisible. She then floats back to me, slowly becoming visible again.
“Okay, that’ll make it easier.” I’ve kind of gotten used to these ghostly qualities. Whenever she shows me a new thing that ghosts can do, I don’t get nearly as surprised as when I first met her.
I scan the area for ghosts. The eating area seems to be filled with the living. Looking over to the pillars, I notice a transparent boy about the same age as me leaning against one of the pillars and looking into the eating area.
I point to him. “Found one.”
“Oh goodie!” She lands on her feet and then runs over to the ghost. I follow after her at a slower pace.
When we arrive there, the spirit doesn’t seem to have noticed us. He’s too busy looking through the gap between the pillars.
Ghost taps him on the shoulder and he suddenly turns around, looking surprised. “Hello,” Ghost says enthusiastically, smiling.
“I-I wasn’t doing anything, I swear!” He says nervously. He seems rather flustered. He has light, blonde hair. His clothes are in good condition except from a few rips and tears. All and all, he looked normal.
“Uh, I didn’t say you were,” replies Ghost, sounding confused.
I walk over to the place where he was looking and look through the gap. There’s a group of girls having lunch. I turn to him “Were you looking at those girls?”
“What?! No! No no, I swear I wasn’t!” He starts blushing, taking a few steps back and waving his hands in front of him.
I sigh. “Come on, let’s go,” I say to Ghost, “Let’s try to find a ghost who isn’t a pervert.”
“No no! I’m not a perv-” he stops, looking confused. “Wait, did you say ghost?”
I ignore him and continue to walk off but Ghost keeps talking. “Yeah, we’re looking for ghosts.”
He smirks and sniggers. “Seriously? How old are you guys?” He asks mockingly.
I stop walking off and turn back to him. “What?” I asked confused. Seems like a weird way for a ghost to reply to people talking about ghosts.
“Hey, I mean if you guys wanna play make believe, then go ahead, don’t let me stop you.” He sniggers some more.
“You don’t have to pretend,” says Ghost, “We’re not gonna hurt you, I’m a ghost too!”
“Right, sure you are,” he says in disbelief.
“Ghost, I need to talk to you.” I grab her arm and lead her away from the pillar. After we’re a good distance away I look back at the boy. He’s almost completely transparent. I turn back to Ghost, letting go of her arm. “What’s this guy’s deal?”
She thinks on this. “I think I remember some of the other ghosts telling me that they don’t remember their deaths.”
“They don’t, how come?”
“They said that pretty much all ghosts forget their deaths to help them deal with the pain of dying.”
“So you realise that you’re dead slowly over time, I guess that makes sense.” If somebody suddenly turned into a ghost then I can’t imagine they’d take it very well. “So he hasn’t figured it out yet?”
“I guess not,” She sighs, “What should we do?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We find another ghost.”
“We can’t do that!” She says taking a step closer to me. “We can’t just leave him. We have to help him. What if one of those girls he was looking at was someone he knew, someone he was close to?!” She seems to be getting very worked up about this.
I go to take a step back, but feel the wall behind me instead. “And what if he’s just a pervert?” I don’t understand why she thinks we should help him. We don’t owe him anything and he’s certainly not going to be able to answer our questions.
“Why don’t you put a little faith in him? He might be nice.”
“I don’t put faith in people,” I say bluntly.
“Well then put faith in me, please?” She takes a few steps forward until she’s right in my face, looking up at me with pleading eyes.
“Why is it so important that we help him?” I lean back, trying to create some distance between us.
“I’ll explain it to you later.” She has quite a serious tone in her voice. I wonder what reason she could possibly have. “Could we please just help him?”
“Fine,” I don’t really have a choice in this. If I don’t agree to help him then she won’t shut up about it for at least a week. It’s a lot less painful just to go along with it. Plus I really hate it when people get so close to me; it’s disturbing.
“Great!” She moves away and I sigh in relief. “So how are we gonna do this?”
I think I have an idea. “Just play along with what I say, okay?”
“Got it!” She says enthusiastically.
We walk back over to the guy who hears our footsteps and turns round to see us. “What do you guys want?” He still sounds a little flustered.
“I, uh, I just wanted to clear some things up.” I take a couple steps closer and stand next to him. I gesture for him to turn around, away from Ghost. “See the thing is,” I say in a hushed tone, “my friend, she’s got a child’s mind, you know what I mean?”
He looks over his shoulder and I do too. Ghost is pulling a mocking face but when she sees us she suddenly changes back to her normal oblivious smile. We turn back round. “Yeah, I get ya,” he says quietly.
“Well she likes to pretend that she’s a ghost and other stuff like that, it’s pretty dumb but it keeps her happy y’know?”
“And you put up with all that, that’s pretty cool of you,” he says sounding impressed
“We’ve been friends since we were kids so I couldn’t just turn my back on her.” That was a lot easier than expected. He believed me without question. Guess it isn’t too hard to believe that Ghost is like that. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you just humour her for a bit.”
He nods, “Yeah man, that’s alright.”
“Thanks.” He’s a lot nicer than I expected. Maybe I really should put more faith in people. I expected him to just make up some excuse to get out of it, but he actually agreed to help me. I feel a little bad making up a story like that just to get him to help, but I quickly stop caring.
Usually I have a hard time talking to people, but talking to ghosts, it feels different somehow. I know that this guy won’t go embarrass me in front of people, simply because he can’t. When it comes to the living, you have to trust that they won’t stab you in the back, but with ghosts, they can’t. It makes them easy to interact with.
I take a few steps back to stand next to Ghost again. “Oh, I forgot to mention, my name’s Ellie and-” The boy starts to open his mouth, probably to make some joke or laugh but I quickly cut him off, “-don’t you dare make a joke about my name.” I stare at him with dead, lifeless eyes, which is just how I usually look and he quickly closes his mouth.
“As I was saying, this is Ghost,” I gesture to the girl staring blankly into space. I knock her on the back of the head to get her attention.
She instantly returns to Earth. “I-It’s nice to meet you,” she says clumsily.
He looks a little surprised at her name but then remembers how she’s insane. “Yeah, you too. I’m Jacob by the way.”
“So what were you looking at?” says Ghost walking over to the gap in the pillows and poking her head through it.
“Oh, um,” he starts blushing and rubs the back of his head, “The red-head at that table.”
“Ooh, she’s cute,” says Ghost looking back round at us, “Is she a friend of yours?”
“Sort of. We were best friends when we kids but,” he pauses for a moment, “We’ve kinda drifted apart.”
“Aw, that’s sad.”
I’ve never seen Ghost interact with anyone besides me. She seems to be getting on with him quite well. I guess it makes sense that she’s good with other people, seeing as how she’s always so positive.
My curiosity gets the better of me and I walk over to the gap, taking a look for myself. There’s a girl with red hair sitting with some other girls. I recognise them as being from my school. I think they might also be in the same class as me but I didn’t pay enough attention to be able to tell.
A few moments later I hear a deep voice from behind me. “Hey, you, got ya eye out already?”
I look around and there’s a tall muscular guy in a tank top. I instantly tense up. I’m sure I recognise this guy from my class. “Oh, what? No, I was just-”
“Hey hey, it’s alright man. You’re one of the new kids right?” He walks over to where I was looking. “You’ve got a good eye, they’re pretty hot.”
I look over to Ghost and she looks annoyed. I’m not sure if it was because he’s implying that I had an eye for out for one of them, or because of what he said. Jacob seems to have clammed up. It suddenly dawns on me that if Jacob is the around the same age as I am and died recently, then he probably went to my school. I think I remember overhearing someone talking about someone who died. I guess it must have been Jacob. I wonder if he had a problem with this guy when he was still alive.
“I didn’t think any of the new kids would have their eyes out already, especially an emo.”
“Emo?” I don’t know why I sound surprised. I mean, I do have dark hair and dress in all black with a look of indifference on my face. Nevertheless, I still feel kind of insulted.
“They’re all single dude so you could basically have your pick, but I’m pretty sure they’re out of your league,” he says patting me on the shoulder. It amazes me how this guy can be so friendly and such an asshole at the same time. “Oh, I’d avoid that red haired one though, she’s kinda a bitch. Anyway, I’ll see ya around.” He starts to walk off.
“Hey! Don’t talk about her like that!” Jacob suddenly explodes with anger at what he said. Unsurprisingly he just keeps walking off. I look over to Ghost. She has a worried look on her face. We both know what’s about to happen.
“Hey! I’m talking to you asshole!” He starts to run over to him. The muscular guy continues to ignore him. “Hey!” He reaches out to grab him and his hand goes right through him. He stops where he was, hand still out.
I suddenly feel something touch my left hand. When I look down, I see that Ghost has grabbed my hand. She’s looking down, hair covering most of her face so I can’t quite see her expression. What I can see is the tears rolling down her face.
I’m a little shocked. I’ve never seen her this torn up before. I can’t imagine what it must be like. The moment you realise you’re dead. Ghost must have had a similar experience.
I squeeze her hand. I’ve never comforted anyone before so I’m not sure what I should do, but I get the feeling I should just remain silent. I suddenly regret wishing that Ghost would leave. Ever since she arrived I’ve been nothing but mean to her. I don’t know what I’m feeling for her, but I know that I don’t want her to go and that I don’t want her to be sad.
Jacob looks back at us, face distraught, shaking. Ghost tightens her grip on my hand. I lock eyes with him. He’s figured out what’s going on. Why we talked to him, and why we called him a ghost. He suddenly runs off in the opposite direction to us. We watch him disappear round a corner.
“Come on, let’s go,” I say letting go of Ghost’s hand and walking off, away from where Jacob ran.
Ghost dries her eyes on her arm. “Where are we going?” She asks quietly.
“Home.”
***
We walk along the pavement, silent. We haven’t said a word to each other since we left the mall. Ghost walks a few steps behind me.
She suddenly stops. “Ellie?” She says, breaking the silence.
“Yeah,” I reply, stopping to turn round at her.
“I-It’s about Jacob?” She says shakily.
“What about him?”
“The reason I wanted to talk to him,” she pauses for a moment. “When someone dies, they either become a ghost, or, if they’re bad, their soul is destroyed. Then, when a ghost is able to let go of their past life, they move on, to be reincarnated. When I saw that he was looking at a girl, I knew that that was what he needed to let go of. I wanted to help him, so that he could move on, and stop being a ghost.”
“Why did it matter to you if he moved on or not?” I ask curiously. I think I’ve already figured it out.
“Because I…” she trails off and then looks away. “Because I can’t.”
My suspicions were confirmed. She can’t remember anything about her life, so of course she can’t move on. She wants to be able to solve the mystery of what she is. She wants to know who she is, who she was, so she can’t move on. This isn’t something that she can let go of.
“That’s why, when I met you, I was so happy. I could only talk to other ghosts and after a couple of days they would, y’know…” She trails off a bit at the end. She must be referring to them moving on. “I’ve had to be like this for so long, without having any real friends. Until you.” She looks up at me, smiling brightly.
Her smile brings me so much relief. She’s always smiling, all the time, so when she stopped, I got really worried about her. “Ghost, how long have you been like this?” I say closing the gap between us.
“17 years. 17 whole stupid years in this dumb dress, with no friends,” she says bitterly
I slowly pull her into a hug and she starts to hug me back. I never realised how important I was to her. “You’re my first friend too.”
We stand there in each other’s arms for a few minutes. She’s been so lonely for so long, but unlike me, she wanted a friend. She doesn’t want to be alone. I guess I don’t want to either. I’ve never wanted a friend before, probably because other people have been nothing but cruel to me. Except her. I want to spend time with her. I want to have fun with her. I guess this is what it’s like having a friend.
We separate from the hug and I smile at her. It’s the first time I’ve smiled in a long time.
She smiles back at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile before.”
I blush slightly. “Come on, let’s go home. We can go find Jacob tomorrow, to make sure he’s okay.” We start to walk off together, side by side. I feel her grab my hand, holding it in hers. It must look really stupid to anyone who walks past us, but I don’t care.
ns 15.158.61.4da2
