The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) (8 page)

“So what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with God in Heaven or something like that?”

“Well I sort of am. We do have Angels at the school … but you see I need to go through this training at the Academy to learn stuff. … It’s kind of complicated.”

“Have you seen God?”

“Not yet. But I hope to one day.”

“What is Heaven like?”

“I have no idea, honestly … But the school is great. And being a spirit is really cool.”

“Are you an Angel?”

“No, that I am not. They are kind of special … I think, that is, see I don’t really know that much …”

“But you are good, right? You are not like an evil spirit haunting houses and stuff, right?”

“Well, no, not in theory… Not normally. But … you see… we kind of did something to your living room that wasn’t under the category of being nice, so … It’s really very complicated.”

He looked at me even more suspiciously now.

“You don’t seem to know much about anything, do you?”

“Well I am new…”

“Why don’t you just go back to where your friends went?”

“Well, I’m kind of stuck in this gateway … and I can’t seem to go either back or forth. So …”

I felt so incredibly embarrassed. It was like nothing I had ever gone through before. Seriously. It was worse than the time I realized I had walked around at school all day with toilet paper sticking out of my pants, or the time when I finally got the courage to approach this guy I had liked for a long time and I accidentally spit on him while I was talking.

“So you are stuck here.” He said with a smile, like he found it incredibly funny, which of course I didn’t.

“Yeah, that is kind of a problem …”

“Why?”

“We’re not supposed to show ourselves to humans before we graduate from the Academy. I’ll get in big trouble if they find out.”

He looked at me. “Can’t spirits make themselves invisible?”

I sighed. “Yes, they can.”

“So why didn’t you just make yourself invisible when you saw me?”

“Well … the thing is… we haven’t quite gotten to that part yet. That’s not until next semester.”

The boy burst into laughter.

“You’re funny,” he said.

“Yeah well, I might be,” I said. There was a pause between us. Then I said, “Listen, I’m sorry about the mess downstairs in your living room.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess my step-dad is sleeping down there on the couch anyway. He usually does when he’s drunk. So my mom will probably think he did it and clean it all up before he wakes up. I’m sure it will be fine,” he said.

Another awkward silence followed.

“How did you get that purple mark?” I asked and pointed at his forehead with my free hand.

He felt the big purple bump. “Oh this?” he asked and seemed all of a sudden a little embarrassed, like he didn’t want to talk to me about it. “It is nothing. I just fell down the stairs.”

“Oh, okay.” I thought it was a strange answer.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

“I have to get out of this mess,” I said and looked at my arm. I still couldn’t move it either way.

“Can I help?”

“That’s kind of you, but I am afraid not. See, the problem is all in my mind. I have a hard time believing that I can actually go through things yet. Once I get it and stop overthinking it, I will no longer have this problem.”

The boy’s face lit up.

“Maybe I
can
help you,” he said.

I looked at him quite surprised.

“How?”

“Well, my mother always says to me that I overthink everything. That I worry too much about things I shouldn’t. And when I do, she always tries to distract me with something else.”

I had to admit that sounded like a good plan.

“Okay,” I said. “Can you distract me then?”

He smiled and put a hand through his sand-colored hair.

“Sure. Give me a second,” he turned around and started walking but then stopped. He looked at me again.

“By the way, my name is Jason,” he said.

“I’m Meghan.”

He was only gone for a few seconds but that was enough time for me to worry that someone else in the house would wake up and find me here. Also I had started wondering what my friends were doing on the other side of the mirror. They had gotten awfully quiet and since they had tried to pull my hand, they didn’t seem to have tried anything else. Knowing them, I guessed they had run and left me here.

“I found the perfect distraction,” I heard Jason’s voice say. He had come back to the bathroom and was holding something in his hands. He showed me what it was.

“You have got to be kidding!” I said. “A puzzle?”

He smiled again. I was about to burst into laughter. I hadn’t made a puzzle since I was a kid. At first I thought he was trying to make me laugh, but little by little I realized that he was serious.

“It is not any kind of puzzle; it has eight thousand pieces. Believe me, it will work,” he said and took off the top of the box. Then he tipped out the many pieces on the white bathroom tiles. Then he took a big piece of cardboard and placed it next to the pieces.

“We’ll make it on the cardboard. I always do,” he said and looked up at me with anticipation in his brown eyes.

“What? I can’t even reach them. I am stuck, remember?”

“You can tell me which ones to pick and where to put them.”

I sighed. This had to be by far the stupidest thing anyone had ever suggested to me. He turned the top of the box and showed me the picture. It was very beautiful—a woman and a man kissing in the window of her bedroom.   

“It’s Romeo and Juliet,” I said. “The eternal story of two who can never have each other.”

Jason looked at the box. “I guess you’re right. My mom gave it to me. It’s good for me to have something to do, she says. So I won’t think too much.”

“What do you worry about?”

He gave me a curled smile.

“Nothing … and everything, I guess.”

I sighed. “Listen. This will take forever to make, and I really have to get back soon.”

I didn’t want to break Jason’s heart, but a puzzle wasn’t really me and especially not now, when I was this stressed out and in kind of a panicky mode.

He looked up at me while showing me a corner piece. “I found the first one,” he said and looked at the picture on the box. “It looks like this goes in the right upper corner.”

He placed the piece on the cardboard. “There,” he said and smiled like he had finished the whole eight thousand pieces.

I couldn’t help smiling. “Only seven thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine to go,” I said.

He didn’t seem to mind my reluctance. He just kept going and soon some of Juliet’s face had grown out of the pieces. I kept pulling my arm but the more I did, the more it seemed to be stuck. I was really getting tired of this situation, but didn’t know what to do. So I stared at Jason who was eagerly building the puzzle on the floor in front of me. Now I saw him searching for a piece of Romeo’s hat. As his fingers went through the pile of pieces I saw the red hat with the green feather. Jason didn’t seem to have seen it and just kept looking.

“There,” I said and pointed with my free hand. “His hat. It was right there on your right.”

Jason searched and picked out the piece. Then he looked at me with a smile.

“That’s the one I was missing. Thanks,” he said, placing Romeo’s hat and completing the head.

I couldn’t help being fascinated by his passion for this puzzle and soon I was just as much into it as he was. I looked for the pieces and directed him to them and in the next couple of hours we made big progress. And I actually had fun. It became like a small competition between us: who could be the first to find a piece we knew where to put. And as it turned out I was quite good at this. Several hours must have passed without us noticing it, when I felt Jason was staring at me intensely. I looked up and met his eyes. For the first time since I became a spirit I felt warm inside.

“What?” I asked.

“Look at you.”

“What about me?”

“You are sitting down here. On the floor. With me.”

I was speechless. My hand wasn’t stuck any longer and I hadn’t even noticed. I realized I was sitting on the floor next to Jason putting the pieces on the cardboard. I had been so caught up in this puzzle, I had forgotten everything around me. Including the fact that I had to go back.

“Wow,” I mumbled.

“I know.”

“Your mom was really right. This is the perfect distraction.”

Jason smiled. Then there was a sound outside the bathroom. Someone was coming up the stairs. Jason froze. Suddenly I saw a strange fear in his eyes. He got up on his feet and shut the door, then he locked it. He looked at me with panic.

“It’s my step-dad. He woke up. You’d better go now!” He kind of yelled and whispered at the same time.

“Okay,” I said and approached the mirror. I heard the door handle turn, then heavy knocking.

“Jason! Are you in there, you little rat?”

“Go!” Jason whispered and signaled that I needed to hurry.

“Who is in there with you? You better not have someone in the house without my knowledge.”

“I don’t,” I heard Jason say, almost crying. “I was just talking to myself … in the mirror.”

The hammering on the door got worse and all of a sudden I didn’t feel like leaving Jason here with that man.

“Jason! Open this door immediately or I swear I will make you regret it,” his step-dad yelled.

Jason shivered. He looked even more frightened than when he saw me for the first time. His whole body trembled while the hammering intensified.

I looked at him and felt an ache in my heart. Then I floated toward him and took his hand. I squeezed it as hard as I could until I knew he felt it.

“I will be back one day to build the rest of the puzzle, I promise,” I said. As I did Jason’s step-dad started kicking the door and now it cracked open.

“Jason!” I heard him roar before I went through the mirror.

Back in the cellar again, I found Abhik sitting asleep on the floor. He had been the only one to wait for me.

I stood for a long time  just breathing heavily. I stared into the empty mirror as if I  expected to see what was happening in that bathroom after I left. But there was nothing to see. I closed my eyes and thought about Jason. I really wished that I could have helped him in some way.

C
HAPTER 10

D
URING THE NEXT COUPLE
of weeks I thought a lot about Jason. I felt horrible for not knowing how things ended with his step-dad and if he was all right or not. Several times I thought about going down to the cellar again alone to go through the mirror. But I didn’t even know if the mirror would bring me back to the same place. And I really was afraid to get caught if I tried again.

I tried my best to keep my distance from Portia and her pack. Since they left me that night I didn’t care much for them. Instead I was hanging out with Mick in the kitchen during most of my free time while my mind was thinking of Jason and that angry step-dad. Jason had been so nice to me and I had a horrible feeling that he was in trouble. 

I hadn’t told Mick about my night visit in the human house. One day we were sitting in the kitchen and he asked, “What’s on your mind lately? You have been so distant.”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

He didn’t believe me. “I think it is something. It certainly doesn’t look like nothing to me.”

I stared at him. “Is it possible for us to be friends with humans?” I asked.

He nodded. “Well in theory, yes, but it is highly unlikely. I don’t think it has ever happened before. Plus you need to remember that they can’t know all that we know. So you would have to keep quiet about a lot of things.”

“If they are in trouble, can we help them?”

“Sure we do that all the time. You know, we watch over our loved ones. Sometimes we even try to help them make the right decisions.”

“But can we help people who are not our family?”

He nodded again. “Yeah, sure…” Then he stopped and looked at me. “We can, but
you
can’t. You are still a student, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” I sighed.

“Have you been messing with humans?”

I was a terrible liar even when I had been alive so I just didn’t answer him. Instead I used an old trick: to avoid answering a question, you divert the conversation by asking another question.

“So when do we get to help the humans? How long do we have to be at this school?”

“About three years. You have a lot of things to learn. But you won’t graduate if your teachers and Salathiel don’t think you are ready for what comes next. You don’t fail at this school; you just get to take the classes again. … You didn’t answer my question. Have you been outside the Academy’s premises?”

“No.”

I felt like I blushed. It wasn’t all a lie; I mean we sort of stayed at the school. We just left through a mirror, but we didn’t exactly leave the Academy, so I didn’t feel like I lied. Not so much, that is.

He looked at me suspiciously. “Good. Because you will get in really serious trouble if you do.”

I nodded. I knew that. “So what does come next?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said the teachers and Salathiel have to decide if a student is ready for what comes next. But what is it exactly?”

“I can’t tell you that. You will see it for yourself soon enough,” he said with a small smile.

As time went by the more I worried about Jason. What if his step-dad had done something horrible to him after I left? That purple bruise on his head, could his step-dad have given it to him? Was that why he didn’t want to talk about it?

In class I didn’t listen anymore and when Abhik or Mick talked to me I answered in short sentences, not really thinking about what I was saying. I was really worried. I hated the fact that Jason could be in trouble because of me.

Then one night I had enough. I had been awake several nights in a row and, remembering what Mick said about not really needing sleep, I got out of bed and found my way down to the cellar again.