When I woke up the next morning, I rolled over and peered at my alarm clock. It read 6:15am, and I groaned. I wasn't ready to start at my new school. I felt nervous, and like I wanted to throw up. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I listened to the steady flow of traffic outside, supposedly normal even at this early in the morning. I could smell coffee and I finally threw my quilt off of me and stood up.
I didn't like any of the clothes that I owned that morning, and after throwing a shirt across the room and nearly screaming in exasperation, I pursed my lips determinedly. If the kids at this school were going to like me or hate me, they'd do it on my terms. Putting my hair into a pony tail, I threw on a pair of faded blue jeans that I rolled into cuffs at the bottoms, my Adicts tee-shirt, my Grip-fast boots, and my jean vest decorated with band patches and pins.
I had a cabby hat not unlike the one that the ghost boy had been wearing when he appeared that I pulled onto my head as I galloped down the stairs towards the kitchen. I nearly stopped cold when I realized that it all hadn't been a weird dream. Dropping into a chair at the table, I shot my eyes around the kitchen half-expecting the ghost to appear out of thin air.
When he didn't, I accepted a mug of coffee and a bagel from my mother with muttered thanks. My mother was wearing a business suit, with her hair swept up in some nice looking twist. She had gotten a job at an advertisement agency which is how we ended up moving to NYC. My father and mother had been divorced ever since I was five, and he had moved to Maine when I was ten. I rarely saw him before, so moving even further away didn't break my heart.
"Are you nervous?"
"Nope," I lied, sipping at my coffee. My mother shot me a look and bit daintily into a forkful of watermelon. She ate fruit twice a day and a small dinner, constantly trying to maintain her 'girlish figure'. I rolled my eyes and would have looked away if the boy ghost hadn't materialized right behind her in the kitchen, mimicking her movements with exaggerated gestures. My eyes must have widened in horror, for my mother ran off to the bathroom after shouting at me what the matter was, and 'did you see a gray hair?'
It took all my willpower not to throw my bagel at the boy who lounged against the side of the table. Today he was solid enough to appear almost real, his skin even had some color to it, and I could see that his eyes were blue and his hair blonde. He did still appear luminous and had an unnatural glow that surrounded him. I irritably picked at my bagel and tried to ignore him, but he started to amuse himself by shifting my coffee cup across the table every time I leaned forward to grab it. After the fifth time, I shot him a murderous look.
"Do you have to keep doing that?" The boy-ghost smirked at me.
"No."
"Then would ya stop?"
"No."
I rose and silently flung the mug of coffee into the sink and chucked my half-eaten bagel into the trash. The ghost winked at me and disappeared while I seethed inside. Something this dead shouldn't be this annoying. Maybe he was a poltergeist.
My mother returned from the bathroom frowning, and snapped at me to get outside and ready to go to school. We caught a cab which my mother informed me that would be the one and only time we did that, I would have to either walk or take the subway the rest of the year. When she dropped me off at the small private school St. Margaret's that I would be attending, my jaw dropped. Luckily for me it was an alternative style school, which meant no uniforms. But it was very small and the kids were getting out of highly expensive cars.
I passed by one girl who was complaining about having to borrow fifty dollars from her little sister because she had bought a two hundred dollar purse over the weekend. I rolled my eyes and tried to breathe deep.
"It only gets worse y'know." I looked over to where a girl stood nearby, her blood-red hair short and spiked in every which-way. She had a nose ring and was smoking a cigarette. She wore a dark blue denim jacket, Capri pants, creepers and a black and red striped t-shirt. A boy with a shaggy mop of black hair smirked as he lounged against the building, arms crossed.
He had amazingly blue eyes and wore a wind-breaker with baggy pants and a white belt. He had powder blue Saucony sneakers and I raised my eyebrows at the pair of them. The girl stuck out a hand with chipped fingernail polish on her nails and I shook it.
"I'm Meredith and this is Tony. Welcome to Hell, I mean Saint Margaret's." I felt goose bumps ripple up my arms and without glancing next to me, knew that Spot had appeared. A cool breeze that I could only assume was the equivalent of what a ghost's breath would feel like went past my cheek and I knew he was standing right alongside me.
"I like them already. Boy you sure are in for it going to a hoity-toity place like this." I resisted the urge to snap something back at him, I needed to make friends not drive them away in droves by thinking I was mental. Gritting my teeth I ignored him.
"I'm Lilly, and is this place really that bad?" Tony took a drag off of Meredith's cigarette and inclined his head thoughtfully as he exhaled. She snorted and shook her head, her long, dangly earrings tinkling playfully.
"Nah I guess not, if you steer clear of the zombies. We'll introduce you to the fun kids. Where are you from?" I updated the two on my history briefly as we made our way inside once a bell rang. At some point Spot got bored with me and disappeared.
Instead of having home room, since the school was so small, (there were only some two hundred odd kids) they had a huge assembly first thing in the morning, where everyone was required to sign in either as they entered the room or left it. If you didn't sign in, then you were counted as absent and they called your parents. Meredith and Tony sat in the back with five other kids, all dressed alternatively with brightly colored hair or facial piercings.
"Mac, Heather, Will, Seanna, and Ryan this is Lilly." The other kids raised hands or nodded at me. We settled in as the head master began speaking from a podium. I was eerily reminded of "Harry Potter" as all the teachers were sitting in chairs on the stage flanking him. I snorted to myself and zoned out the speech.
At the end of the assembly, after Meredith had perused my schedule and announced that I had first block class with her, she and Tony herded me towards the classroom where I met the one teacher that I would come to respect and ultimately rely on to help me keep my sanity while I was at St. Margaret's.
Ms. Riley, the art teacher, was a young woman with long hair as black as mine. Her eyes were large and brown, but they were anything but calm or spacey as most art teacher's I had had were. She radiated a sort of nervous energy that kept me charged, and seemed to off-balance some of the other kids. She was always pacing, and critiquing work that kids had done. I think she liked me because instead of getting upset or angry when she said something about my work, I explained why I had done what I had done and let her know flat out that art was about different opinions and perceptions.
The school day was cut up into four blocks that were two hours long, with an hour lunch in the middle. My first day really didn't go as horribly as I had expected it to; I had met up with a really cool group of kids who saved me from the 'new kid' syndrome. As a matter of fact, the next couple of days went by with no incidents whatsoever. I didn't even see Spot Conlon for those days and I had started to hope that his appearance in my apartment had only been temporary until he showed up on a Saturday morning.
I woke up to muttered curses and small objects flying across the room to hit the adjacent wall. I tried to ignore it until a pencil streaked from my desk and embedded itself an inch below one of my posters. Sitting up, I brushed a handful of my hair out of my face and glared at the ghost, who was floating cross-legged next to my bed.
"It's about time you woke up," he smirked at me. I merely ducked as he made one of my pillows fly past my head. Snarling, I swung at him with the other, and he laughed as it went right through him. Lounging on his stomach, he cocked his head at me.
"You look awful first thing in the morning."
"You look awful all the time," I shot back to which he raised an eyebrow at me and snorted.
"I'm dead, what's your excuse?"
"What do you want, Conlon?"
"I'm bored."
"Don't you have other ghosts or people to bother?" A shadow crossed his lean face and he floated away from me, turning himself to look out the window, so that his back was to me. This wasn't one of his better days, I could see through him to the outside, where the pearly gray light of dawn was hitting the rooftops.
"I'm lonely." I was confused, and I didn't respond. When he didn't hear me say anything, he brought himself back to my bedside, and hovered next to me.
"You can't visit anybody else can you? You're stuck with whoever lives in this building; you can only talk to me or my mom." The sudden realization hit me and it must have been true for his eyes glowed angrily, a bright, almost neon blue. When he vanished this time, I half expected him to show up again and chew me out, or at least toss more of my stuff around, but he didn't do any of that.
When he did come back, it was hours later, while I was lying on my floor, sketching madly with a charcoal pencil. I knew he was there; I felt the chilly air and got the impression that someone was watching me.
"That's nice," he merely said, his voice rougher than usual. If he had been alive, he would have had monstrous circles under his eyes, for the shadows on his face were more pronounced when I looked at him finally.
"You don't look so hot," I ventured softly. He just looked at me, saying nothing until I cleared my throat and went back to my art. This time, when he spoke, I dropped my pencil and closed my eyes for right then and there; I knew that something big was going to happen.
"Listen Lilly….I need your help…."
Shout Outs
Splashey – Thanks, I hope it is interesting, hah. NYC is a pretty cool place to visit, I don't know if I could live there. I hope you keep reading, thanks for the review!
CiCi – Hah, hey now I like the name of it so far.
NadaZimri – an eternal guilt trip, only fitting for Spotty. I have no idea how I come up with these plots, they just sort of come to me. Glad you're reading it! :D
Et-spiritus-sancti—Yay! You guys rock so much for reading my stories, and cheering me on. I'm glad you both like it and are interested in the story line. I hope you keep enjoying it!!
Okay guys, the Casting Call. I will only accept people's profiles who have read and reviewed both of the chapters to this story. Hey I know, I'm a horrible, horrible person. So get readin' and reviewin'. Anyway once that is done, this is what I need…
Name:
Nickname:
Personality:
Description (what does your character look like/wear be specific and detailed):
Been in trouble with the law?
Quirks/What makes you human and not just some made up character:
History(Family/your own):
Strengths/Weakness':
Which boy would you have if you could? (Spot is taken and I will only pair up people who I feel belong with their choice based on their profile…I TOLD you I was horrible)
Job(Do you sell papers, work at Medda's, shine people's shoes, or have an alternate profession i.e. sitting on your tucchus)?
