Haunted by Jay Mirano (the reading list book txt) 📕

sense. I can talk to you and people will just assume I'm talking to a dead relative or something."
   I shoot him a skeptical look. "Why can't we just go to your house?"
   "Mom doesn't like it when I, y'know... Bring people like you home."
   I roll my eyes. "So you're Mom's in on it too, great."
   "Yeah, it's pretty obvious there's something wrong with your kid when he starts talking to thin air."
   "Fine. Graveyard it is. But don't think I wasn't lying about that Poltergeist threat if you try to pull something in there."
   Mason starts walking along the path again, laughing to himself. "You couldn't pull off poltergeist stunts if you tried. You can't even put your hands on a desk without having them fall through."
   Great, so he noticed that.
   Mason made his way to a large willow tree, sitting down beside it and stretching his legs along a raised root. He rested his head on his hands and cocked an eyebrow at me as I tried―and failed―to sit next to him. I resigned myself to just floating beside him, but being at this height gave me a good angle to glare at him from, so it wasn't all bad.
   "Why are you so fancy, anyway?"
   "Huh?"
   He waved in my direction. "What's up with the dress?"
   I look down at myself, realising for the first time that I was still wearing my Spring Fling dress. Huh, weird. "It's what I died in? Surely you heard about the girl that got hit by a car as she left the dance last week."
   "First of all, I don't go to dances. Second of all, I don't listen to idle, highschool gossip. Third of all, you don't have to wear what you died in, you know."
   I try to hide my shock, but I'm sure my eyes bulged a little. "How? I don't have a very expansive ghost wardrobe."
   "Being on the spirtual plane is a helluva lot diffferent to being on the physical plane. You're going to have to forget a lot of what you learned about reality being human."
   "Excuse me? Stop with the mystic mumbo-jumbo and speak English, will you."
   "I mean, a lot of what you'll do now―since you're a spirit―will be controlled by your mind, rather than by your body."
   "Okay... So what has that got to do with me changing clothes?"
   "Simple. Just picture what you want to wear and it'll happen."
   "That sounds way too easy."
   He gave me a crooked half-smile. "Just try it."
   I close my eyes, picturing my favorite vintage Levi's and baggy Nirvana tee. Okay, so not the most glamorous outfit in the world, but if I was going to be dead I was going to wear what I wanted to.
   "There you go, not so bad now, was it?"
   I look down, marvelling at my new jeans-clad legs. I envision a pair of Converse sneakers and my new look is complete. "Thanks, I guess," I say, trying to suppress a smile and failing.
   "It was hard to take you seriously when you were insulting me in a fancy dress," he said, his half-smile blooming into a full grin. I never noticed he had dimples before.
   "You know, I never realised how much I missed just talking to people," I said, wringing my hands in my lap. "It's pretty lonely and boring being dead."
   "Well, yeah. You're not actually meant to be here, you know. You're supposed to cross over when you die, but for whatever reason you didn't. I guess that's where I come in."
   "Cross over? Like to Heaven or something?"
   "I'm not 100% sure. All I know is that people sometimes get stuck here, and sometimes they need my help getting to the other side."
   My mind reeled. This was getting way too strange. "What if I don't want to leave? Cross over, whatever."
  "Then you probably won't. People get stuck here for heaps of reasons. Most of the time it's the old 'unfinished business' deal, but not always. That's what we have to figure out," he tapped the side of his head and smiled.
   That pesky nausea was coming back again. "I don't think I'm ready to leave."
   "You sure about that?"
   "Positive. Not now, at least. So, just as a favor to me, could we stop talking about crossing over and the other side and all that?"
   "Sure thing, Rocket."
   "Rocket?!" I couldn't help but laugh.
   "You never told me your name. I thought Rocket suits you."
   "I'm Aly," I said. "I'd shake your hand but, yeah..."
   "We'll work on that," he said, getting up and brushing the grass from his jeans. "You'd be surprised what you can do."
    "How many times have you done this?" I asked, eyeing him warily. "Helped dead people with this kind of stuff."
   He leaned against the tree trunk, crossing his arms against his chest. "I've lost count, to be honest. It's why we have to move around so often. It doesn't take people long to notice that me and my family are... Different. It makes people nervous."
   "That seems very medieval."
   "You have no idea."
   Mason squinted up into the fledgling sunlight, his moss-green eyes burning with life. Suddenly I didn't seem so scared, so overwhelmed, so daunted. Maybe I could still figure all of this out. Maybe I could still figure out a way to live.
   Falling Leaves

 

 

 

Mason shuddered against a cold breeze I couldn't feel, vigorously rubbing his hands together to replenish some semblance of warmth. He dumped his backback on the ground before making himself comfortable atop one of the gravestones. He shook his head to get the hair out of his eyes, then returned his attention to me.
   "It's too damn early to be doing this," he said, his mouth cocked to the side. "I could still be in bed right now."
   "Nah-uh, you don't get out of this agreement that easily," I said, leaning back on Mary Dolsen's grave (hers was my favorite, an elaborately carved angel perced above an orate tombstone, hands outstretched and reaching for the sky). "We meet either mornings or afternoons, and since you're abandoning me this afternoon..."
   "I wouldn't call it 'abandoning'", he grumbled, stamping his feet in the dew-slicked grass. "It's parent-teacher night."
   "A.K.A abandoning. It's not compulsory, you know."
   "It is when you're the new kid and teachers already think you're a weirdo."
   "An over-exaggeration."
   He shrugged. "Yes, because talking to a dead chick is totally normal."
   I gave him a mock glare. "So, let's go through this little deal again. I know you're an airhead and all, but try to remember the main points at least."
   "Ha ha, so funny," he said, rolling his eyes. "You've given me free reign to 'train' you so to speak, so I can learn more about―" he waved his hands at me "―your little world. In return I have to make sure this Cassie friend of yours doesn't get into any more trouble."
   "Well done! More to you than a pretty face, huh?"
   He did that half-smile at me again, a single dimple deepening in the middle of his cheek. "So what's the deal with Cassie, anyway?"
   "You saw what she did to Mitchell's face in homeroom, right? So not normal Cassie behavior."
   "Huh," he said, repositioning himself on top of the gravestone. He dangled an arm over his raised knee. "So she's meant to be a goodie-two-shoes, then?"
   "Not exactly. But she's been wanting to get into Cornell since she was old enough to talk about it, and I'm not about to let her blow her chances."
   "Doesn't she have a boyfriend who can babysit her?"
   I tried to slap his arm but my hand went right through. "It's not babysitting! Look, are you gonna hold up your end or the deal or not? I'm not going to be your guinea pig for nothing."
   "Yeah, yeah, sure. But if I get any kind of beverage thrown in my face I'm blaming you."
   "Deal!" I reached out my hand and Mason pretended to shake it. "Starting today?"
   "Mhm, starting today. Now," he looked at the clock on his phone. "Time to squeeze in some training?"
   "Whatever."
   Mason jumped down from the gravestone, a face-encompassing grin at the ready. Again, those dimples caught me off guard. "So I'm thinking this is gonna be pretty similar to the whole clothes-changing thing."
   I cocked an eyebrow at him. "What, I envision myself moving things? That sounds pretty lame."
   "Not exactly. Remember how I said a lot of what you can't do is because your mind expects that you can't? I'm saying change your mind's expectations."
   "That sounds a lot harder than what you're making out."
   He sighed. "If this is gonna work, you're gonna have to start listening to me. This isn't my first rodeo."
   I gave him my most skeptical look. "So what should I start with?"
   Mason looked around, chewing on his lip as if lost deep in thought. "Something simple, something that's not going to resist too much... Ah-ha!" He pointed at the willow tree behind him. "What about that?"
   "A tree? Yeah, I'm really going to be able to move a tree."
   "Not the tree numbskull, the leaves. Try and move some of the leaves."
   I hopped down from my perch above Mary's grave, making my way towards the willow with exaggerated slowness. I reached out towards the nearest outcropping of leaves, casting a wary glance back at Mason. He nodded, sagely, and it pissed me off. "So what now?" I said, feeling more irritated than I should have. "Do I just touch the thing or what?"
   He sighed again, louder this time. "Not like you usually do, no. Imagine yourself as a tangible being first."
   "English, please."
   "Picture yourself having substance. Picture yourself as you used to be, I guess."
    I laid my hand out flat, trying to ignore the way my palm shimmered and wavered in the air, tried to ignore how I could see righ through my own body and down at the grass below. People always say, I knew it like the back of my hand, but when it came down to it, I couldn't for the life of me remember what the back of my hand looked like. I knew I had a freckle on the back of my right hand (as a kid it had helped me rememner which hand I wrote with), and I knew that the nail on my left index finger had broken in half the day before I died. I clamped my eyes shut, willing my hands into solid reality. When I looked again, I had a vivid brown freckle standing out against the paleness of my skin, and one really weird, clear broken nail. Shrugging, I figured it was close enough. Mason was still standing behind me, arms folded across his chest, watching me with rapt fascination. I tried to convince myself I wasn't trembling―ghosts can't tremble, right?―as I moved towards the willow tree. I could barely bring myself to look as I outstretched a single finger, reached for the willow's mournful leaves... And fell straight through.
   "What the hell! It didn't work," I could feel a full-on pout coming on, and I wasn't