CHAPTER THREE

When I reach the grey cement school that I have to attend, I slow my pace and keep my head down. People crowd around me but never get too close. It's like there's an invisible force field ensuring that they stay at least a metre away. In a way, I'm glad that I don't have to put up with the pushing and shoving, but my thankfulness of having space to move does not outweigh the pang of hurt that sits in the pit of my stomach.

I'm about to reach the school entrance when someone rushes past me, completely ignoring the invisible barrier. The moment I feel their arm brush up against mine, I recoil instinctively, but the damage has already been done.

The person curses as they come to a stop in front of me, turning around.  A boy with sandy blonde hair and tanned skin sends a half-shocked, half-pissed off look in my direction. I know his type; a popular jerk who thinks he can get away with anything, even making my life hell.

I mumble the first thing that comes to my mind. "Sorry, I didn't mean to. I can’t help it, it’s just…” I fade out, knowing that I can’t just say that it’s my disease and not me – that I can’t control it. Somehow, everyone has got it into their minds that I do this on purpose, and when I try to defend myself, it just makes things worse. I focus my eyes on the floor but I can’t help a look up every now and then at the slowly forming red patch on his arm.

He stares at his arm in shock, rubbing it again and again with his other hand. I know how it happened; my skin is cold to the touch, so cold that it burns.

His words make me want to shrink into a corner. "You freak! What the hell did you do that for?"

"I...I didn't mean to," I repeat, taking small steps backwards. A few passers-by have stopped to stare, but others just rush past me without even glancing in my direction.

“Bullshit!" he says, before grabbing hold of my shirt and pushing me to the ground.

The concrete grazes my palms and elbows as I try to stop the fall and I wince. I land hard on my butt and stare up at him in fear as he looms over me.

"I reckon it's time you got up and left, don't you think? Haven't you done enough to us?" He spits.

No one stops to help me up. Even if he had started strangling me in the middle of a crowd, I would still be ignored. All I can do is watch with pained eyes as he stalks off, headed for the school entrance, while I lie in a heap on the damp concrete ground.

-:-:-:-:-

At lunch I sit under a tree on the lawn, leaning on its damp bark. It's raining lightly, but the tree protects me from most of the drops. I stretch my legs out in front of me, the grass tickling my ankles when the wind blows.

No one sits on the lawn except me. They're all huddled under the shelter or in the gym so that they can keep warm and stay dry. The few that can actually see me send worried glances in my direction, as if they’re afraid I might approach them.

I laugh softly in spite of myself. I can only imagine what I must look like: a ghostly pale girl, sitting alone in the rain on a freezing day, wearing nothing but a sleeveless t-shirt, a skirt and some shoes. No wonder they cower in fear when I gaze in their direction – I must look psychotic.

I packed myself some food this morning which I am reluctant to eat, despite my growling stomach. I know that refusing to eat won't do anything to help me, but it feels like it will. Otherwise I feel like I'm doing nothing, just sitting around on my ass waiting for a miracle – for the cold to just disappear.

It’s then that, out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of shimmering white. I look to the right and spot it, half hidden behind a tree. At first I pass it off as nothing – it's probably just a vehicles head-lights – but then it moves in front of the tree and hovers a few inches above the ground, pulsing with a shimmering light, so blindingly white it hurts to look at it. It remains for a moment longer, sitting idly in its spot before vanishing in a cloud of soft white smoke which trails lazily up towards the sky.

The sight doesn’t bother me; I’ve seen it all before, sometimes amongst a crowd of unknowing people, or through a hazy window. I almost always ignore it, even though it can be a bit distracting at times. I tried telling the doctors about it and they said it’s just a side-effect of my disease: hallucinations.

I sometimes wonder if they make this stuff up as they go.

“You saw that too didn’t you?” asks a voice behind me, making me jump. Startled, I flip around to see a pale teenage boy. “Spirits,” he continues, seemingly annoyed, “always popping up at the most unexpected times. They’re really distracting, aren’t they?”

I can’t do anything but stare at him with wide eyes. His brown hair is a wet mess and his dark brown eyes look light with held-back laughter.

“Spirits?” I parrot.

The boy looks at me like I’m the crazy one. “Well, yeah, what did you think they were?”

"I…" I don’t know what to say. The lights have always been something that only I can see and no one else. I’ve always thought that I was hallucinating, that these flickering orbs of white were just a figment of my crazed imagination. Obviously I, and all the doctors who act so sure of themselves, were wrong.

I look up again at the boy, at his nearly black eyes that search for an answer in me, in the same way I search for my own answer in him. I’ve never really had someone come and speak to me directly without punching me in the gut with stinging words – other than my parents that is. And now that I’m in this situation, where a reply is required to a genuine question, I’m lost for words. It’s like my mouth has gone numb and no matter how hard my brain tries to get it to move, to form letters and shapes – words – it won’t respond.

Eventually, I guess, the boy gets sick of waiting for an answer. “You’re Melissa, aren’t you?”

I somehow manage a nod.

“I read about you in the paper. You’re famous, you know?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

He extends his hand out to me. “Caden,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you.” I look at his hand with suspicion, not really sure what to do. After a couple of seconds, he seems to sense my hesitation and so he withdraws his arm.

“Look, you don’t have you speak to me if you don’t want to, but I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m new here, this is my first day.”

“And you came to me?” I ask disbelievingly, even though that’s not what I really want to ask. Really, I want to ask: Why aren’t you afraid of me? and What do you mean by Spirits?

He shrugs. “You look pretty ordinary to me.”

I nearly laugh.

After a short silence, he says, “I suppose I’ll see you around.” He takes a few steps back, eyes on mine, smiles, then turns around and heads off.

I know I should say something, but I don’t. I just sit under the tree and watch as he leaves, feeling more lost than I ever have.

In History, when I take my usual seat in the back corner, I spot the new boy – Caden – standing in front of the teacher’s desk. My eyes flick nervously to the desk beside me, and I pray that someone will sit there before he gets the chance. Of course, no one does – that seat is always vacant, probably because of me – and before I know it, Caden is slipping into the chair, dumping his stuff on the ground by the side of the desk.

I pretend like I haven’t noticed him, focusing intently on a week-old drawing of a flower on my textbook. He doesn’t say anything, and when class starts, I feel relieved.

Halfway through the lesson, when I’m certain that I’ve avoided conversation with him, he leans over and taps the edge of my desk. My eyes flick to his fingers before looking back at the teacher who’s halfway through a speech about Ancient Rome.

He taps again, and I turn to look at him. “What?” I whisper in irritation.

He nods in the direction of the window. “Look.”

I frown, and gaze over at the large windows on the left side of the room. At first, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be looking at, but then I see it: an orb of shimmering white light, floating on the roof of a car.

I face Caden again and ask, “So you can see them?”

He nods. “Unfortunately.”

“How? The doctors…they told me that they were hallucinations.”

Caden laughs softly. “Your doctors have no idea what they’re talking about. Those–” he nods at the orb of light, which is still sitting idly above the car “–are Spirits, not hallucinations.”

“How do you know?” I ask. “Maybe we’re both delusional.”

He shakes his head. “Trust me. Neither of us are imagining them. They’re real.”

I feel shaken by his words. Ghosts, spirits – they don’t exist. I’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural and I’m not about to start to now.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

“Melissa,” the teacher calls from the front of the room. “There is to be no talking in my class. The same goes for you, too.” Her gaze flicks over to Caden next to me. “I know you’re new, but that isn’t an excuse to disregard school rules. Understood?”

He nods, and when the teacher looks at me, I nod too. Satisfied, she resumes talking.  Neither I nor Caden attempt any further conversation, and we sit in silence for the rest of the class.