The girl lives.

The sky is white. The air is black.

Stars cover the ground.

Everything burns, her skin, her eyes, her nose and throat.

She coughs, coughs and coughs and coughs, she swallows, she coughs.

A broad gust of wind slices through the air.

She breathes.

Precious. Fleeting.

The girl lives.

The music was garbled and washed out in this room. The real celebration continued upstairs. Perhaps they had already gone ahead and commenced a game of truth or dare. It didn't sound like a bad idea. At least, not to them.

Len didn't know why they put a clock in the den, but he knew it was a cruel reason of fate, not what anyone said.

It was such an angry sound, the second hand rattling, boring a hole into his mind.

He glimpsed at the moon, a sliver of white in the sky. Powdery clouds locked the stars away. He could swear - if it weren't for the damn chirp of that clock - that an owl might be hooting out there, rustling it's wings with discomfort. An omen.

Because such things were far from good. Things as in this room, this special power. This girl.

Not that he was extremely worried. He didn't know her, and as far as he knew she didn't pose a threat. She was surprisingly small for someone her age. So petite that she could pass for a thirteen year old. But she was certainly older than him! He didn't ask her, he only knew it was true. Something wise whispered in the depths of her cool green eyes. She carried herself like a lady of substance, her spine rod-straight, her white dress clean, lacy, without a single wrinkle. She had her legs tucked carefully beneath her.

If he had to say something about her was childish, it was her hairstyle. Tight, neat twintails, the kind a mother does for her daughter before the first day of school.

He wondered what led her to this house. She could have actually come here for a good reason, but she struck him as so odd that he couldn't imagine that she was well acquainted with any of his friends. The party wasn't invite only, strictly speaking. Only if some unknown were to wander in, Rinto would redirect them with a gruff pair of hands and a gravelly shout.

Rinto was tough like that.

Len wasn't.

When he swallowed, his throat felt sticky and gummy. He scratched the back of his neck, trailing his eyes across the black tv screen. There was a duller, lesser reflection of the night sky.

He didn't sense much from her except for the eerie lack of emotion. She was more polite than most he'd ever met.

Less urgency. More grace.

But then, that was a very bad sign. If she didn't talk, she would just be sitting in his home for no good reason.

That would drive him insane, the mystery and the slight fear that all unknown things evoke.

He continued scratching at his neck, the stray golden locks from his ponytail bugging him a little. She night have followed one of the guests here. It was really awful to think that any of his friends had created a ghost. They were lively, friendly, crude and creative. They were kids. How had they possibly contributed to this girl's untimely death?

She wasn't like the ghost in his staircase - a fading shadow, someone who had been pushed long ago and still whispered about it. She looked flesh and blood, minus her ethereal glow. Fresh off the deathbed. New.

He couldn't pick the most scary thing about her. Was it her age, her proximity, her calm? Hell, was it the worldly emerald gaze that refused to touch him?

In the back of his mind, he realized all of his staring might be rude. If she was as present on this plane as he was, perhaps she saw him staring clearly, and she was made nervous about it.

He averted his eyes. "Killing them for this," he muttered, however in inappropriate. "Killing them for making this one." Even though, deep inside, he couldn't imagine that they had made her. He doubted.

"Are you here for someone...?" He whispered, inclining his head.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

"Are you lost?"

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Bad sign. Okay, not bad, like, Amityville bad. But I can't just let her watch Late Night News with my mom forever, can I? She's gotta make like a banana and

"Hello." Len launched himself from his seat on the sofa. Her delicate lips had moved, and an airy whisper had flown from them; "Hello."

Progress. "H-hi," he returned, and then he winced, "h-hello."

She repeated herself once more, her eyes tilting upward. Her lashes flickered out of the way and he saw her glazed green eyes once more. "Hello."

"Y-yeah, hello."

"Help."

"Okay," he said quickly, leaping to his opportunity.

"Hello," she added. "Is anyone there?"

"Yes," he assured her. She made eye contact, but she seemed so far away. She was somewhere else, looking deep into the distance.

"Help me."

"Okay," he told her, "what do you need help with?" He gestured forward, showing her his palms. He shifted from foot to foot, his entire body throbbing with an elevated pulse.

"I'm hurt," she said slowly. A twinkle blazed her eyes. Then she seemed to flash silver, just for a moment. A color more pure than the dim sky.

"Hurt?" His brow crumpled. Poor girl, poor thing. She didn't know, and she was so new, and so young.

There wasn't any blood on her, though...? Accidents were more apparent than this.

"Please help," she said, her tone still smooth as a pond. Her tranquility chilled him.

"Help you how?"

"Mommy," she said.

"Daddy," she said.

"Help," she said.

"How?" He demanded, restraining himself. The excitement in his veins was rushing to his head. He could see the clean edge of every shape in the dark. The volume of his voice bubbled a bit. Good thing he could hold back his noise better than he could hold back his body. His reactions were more physical than anything.

He was just too good at getting out of people's way.

"It's so cold, it hurts," she murmured. Her silhouette shimmered, so brilliant, so white. He stepped back again.

He couldn't swallow anymore. He felt like he had been stuffed full of cotton. And the way he spoke, ejecting air, was no better than a wheeze, "what hurts? Where are you?"

"YO, LEN. WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK?"

At this point, yes, as he fell over the coffee table, Len did allow himself to shriek. He had an exceptionally high voice for some boy. One would assume that his voice started cracking once he turned fourteen, but alas, it was just his steady scream that brutally stabbed his brother's ears.

Rinto clapped his hands over said ears. "Dude, chill! Rin brought the cake upstairs!" His slim blue eyes were squeezed in agony. In other, less silly circumstances, he would look poignant. If he were a ghost, that pain would be sealed on him for eternity and Len would feel really bad.

With no less composure than before, Len scrambled off of his back. He shook his head. He rubbed his throat and glanced back at the girl -

- the empty space where the girl had been.

"You came out of nowhere," Len decided to say, "so you startled me."

"You look like you saw a g..." at this point, Rinto, the elder of the two, bit his tongue to conceal his ironic choice of words.

Len struggled a bit more, blinking hard. "You're really loud."

Rinto tugged at his white beanie and knelt beside his sibling. "And here I was, thinking it was Stair-Bro again…?"

"Stair-Bro is stuck to the stairs…she was new."

Rinto jerked. He was tough, immediately on edge, ready to defend even though he didn't know what he would be put up against. He was too quick to take up an adult role as protector, although they were the same age. "She? Is she dangerous? Where is she?"

"No, no. No - you scared me. I just kind of saw her...she's not that old at all."

"What the - come on, are you that scared?" Rinto scoffed, or he laughed. His brow was pressed with nervousness. He brushed a tear off of his brother's cheek. "Don't be like that, man, people die every day. Don't act like you killed her. Same shit, different toilet. Let's go eat cake."

Len whimpered. He felt like they were six years old again. "I'm not scared. We've got seven already. I'm not scared to see her." His cheeks were beginning to get red-hot. This is stupid. Of course it's normal. People die. People die every day.

"There's nothing wrong with being scared. It's banana-chocolate-chip, by the way. Don't you want any? Rin spent forever on it." His stronger hand wrapped around Len's skinny bicep. There was a tinge of desperation in the force that he used.