Hello and happy new year for all of you. I hope you had a great 2019 and will have an at least as great 2020.
I've done this twice before years ago. After I'd been bad with updating I wrote one new chapter for each and every story. Then left it until I had finished them all and updated all stories at once. I've decided to do that same thing again and hopefully that will make a change as of how much I'll be able to update more afterwards… I guess only time will show. I hope you like this chapter.
"What's up with you then Melinda?" Rick asked while we had our Friday night dinner, I, Jim, Ned and Delia. "Any new ghosts on the block?"
"Well there are the ones I always see every time I walked around the square or out on the street or really anywhere." I smirked at the tone Rick always used in his voice and continued. "There is a girl. Young girl and her name is…"
"Frankie." Ned interrupted. I had to raise an eyebrow- did he knew something I did. "I was just going to ask if you "know" her." He looked around and to all questioning looks. "She went to my school. And with a school with only a couple of thousand students news travel fast…
Someone must still have looked confused because Ned raised an eyebrow and looked around before he continued.
"I'm pretty sure a student dying would make big news at any school."
"Did you know her?" Ned shook his head. "Do you know how she died?"
"Yeah. Motorbike accident." He nodded his head backwards in the right direction. "Over at Hawthorn lane- at the edge of town you know. They've put up one of those memorials by the street where she died. Some candles, some old things and a photo of her…. They might have taken it down by now for all I know."
"Do you know where? Maybe we can go. Maybe it will give us some… answers."
I didn't know what answers I would be wishing for if I saw that memorial but maybe if I went there I would…
"Did you know her? I know you already answered but… were there rumors or anything about her that could help me talk to her… It's a small school so maybe you knew someone who knew someone…"
"I guess I couldn't help but notice her. But… I did notice she usually was alone. And I did notice her brother came to get her at his motorbike at the end of many days… She dropped her things by my feet once and that's about the only time we met and talked to each other… Then I heard of someone only passing by that her hands were flinching… that all of her was shaking… I saw her standing by her locker- she was just holding onto the locker, she was closing her eyes as if there was something bothering her… that's all I know."
While he talked Frankie had turned up behind him…
"I never thought people noticed me at those times…" She said almost whispering. "…I would have stopped doing that… she took one hand with the other and I noticed them shaking slightly. "I hated it then. I also hate it now."
I couldn't help but to hold my hands up in front of me. My hands were shaking and I couldn't help but have the feeling it had happened a million times before- her thoughts actually. The moves weren't as big as when I dropped a glass of water or a knife but those were moving one and one- this time it just wouldn't stop shaking.
Jim took my hand, I clenched slightly, then opened my hands, clenched it again and tried to draw a deep, calming breath.
"It won't help."
"No Frankie…" I sighed. "…but I think you've proved me what this means now." She nodded slightly and then disappeared while my hands went still.
"Well then. Let's go."
As Ned had eaten the last bite anyone of us would I was as impatient as only one spirit could ever make me.
The memorial was just ten minutes away with the car. But I never went in this direction so I hadn't seen it.
Rick went home but Delia and Ned came with us, not so much because of Delia- she had never been a fan of what I did even after she had to accept it were facts but Ned had wanted to come and Jim and Delia having parked the cars by the roads so we could get out Frankie turned up again. This time standing to watch her own memorial…
We all walked up to it, right on the side of the street was a framed picture, a candle, a little plastic toy in the shape of a motorbike and flowers- flowers that had laid here for a bit and were dry and brown by now, then some others that were fresher and of brighter colors. It didn't look much different from any memorial by a road that one would see from time to time…
"Come." I heard from my side. Frankie had disappeared for a second and turned up a few meters away. "Come into the forest with me. It's only a few meters…" I nodded and followed. "This is where I died."
"Wait here."
Following her right away felt Jim following me.
"Jim. Please wait here. I'll only be a minute."
He didn't exactly look happy but he went to the others and I continued…
As I walked into the trees by the forest the visions of what had happened to Frankie flashing before my eyes just as I felt it.
A steering wheel of a motorbike…
Losing control….
A shout…
And then at last coming to the great, big stone on the ground. When I laid my head on it I finally saw and felt myself being thrown head first into it so hard my neck cracked.
As I returned to here and now the others were still standing by the road. By the flowers, the photo and the teddy bears that had been put in memory of her.
In memory of one girl who would never graduate from the school Ned was talking about…
"I guess I wasn't allowed to drive for a reason." I looked up when once again, Frankie was right next to me. "A person that has Epilepsy can't drive- not a motorbike neither and some people can't even ride a regular bike… I sto… lent my brother's motorbike… I just wanted to drive it for five minutes- nothing happens in those five minutes… but it did-"
Ghosts were dead, they didn't breathe, but somehow Frankie still sighed while she crossed her arms over her chest.
"I just get this feeling that if I do this in the right way I'll be able to turn back time and change what I did. Not cause… this… Not cause my own death… not cause my family all that worry and pain… I hate them worrying and hurting but yet it was me causing it every. Single. Time."
"I don't think it's that simple… You can't turn back time but I know… I can feel that no matter what they love you. And I haven't even met you but here the most important is that you love them… And you can't back time so…"
"Don't you see? That's the problem. They should hate me. They should blame what happened on me instead of suffering in every way possible. I hate seeing them like this when I know… My brother blames himself since it was his bike. My mother blames herself- she says that maybe if she'd have just let me drive it… like in the yard or over the block or anything then I wouldn't have just used it and… then what I did I wouldn't have done…" Frankie sounded more and more given up for every word. "My dad blames himself since he says that if he wouldn't have let Christopher have that bike at all then what happened couldn't have happened. But it isn't their fault…"
Okay, I was used to people disappearing from where they were. Then turning up somewhere else, sometimes it would be somewhere I could see them. Somewhere I could only guess where they were, sometimes they were gone to really be gone…
But as soon as she had said one thing. Like now, she disappeared from where she stood to only appear behind me or on my side half a second later.
When she reappeared this time it was with a sadder expression, a more real expression than it had been before.
"It was my fault. Only my own fault. If I hadn't been so stubborn and made up my mind, I would drive that stupid bike than what is wouldn't have happened and I would still be alive."
There were always so many things that could have happened differently. After a car crash, after a plane crash, after… after…
"Is that what you want to tell them? Do you want to let them know it wasn't their fault`? Because if it is then I can help you." Frankie shook her head. "Then what is it?"
"That's the reason I'm here but I can't tell them. I know what you want to do but they won't believe you." Frankie sounded given up. "No one in my family thinks there's anything after death rather than a great, big dark…"
"So does a lot of people. I usually have a way to get through it… Maybe if you tell me one thing- something only you and they could know… Maybe just one single thing that will remind them of you?"
Frankie thought for a few seconds.
"Maybe you could come up with something while I go to talk to your family. I can be quite convincing when I have to."
"I…" Frankie hesitated, but then noticed. "I guess there's nothing else to do but giving it a try."
Random fact
Those memorials are so sad… But I guess you didn't need me to put that as a fact. Anyway…
See you next time.
Fourth chapter finished for the-update-all-of-my-stories-at-the-same-time-project. Six left.
