Beyond (Afterlife book 1) (11 page)

“
Please don’t,” I said, knowing
that in the end it was Salathiel who made the decision whether a
student was ready to graduate or not. It was a few years from now
but a remark in my files could give him reason to doubt, and then I
could risk having to spend another year in school. I certainly
didn’t want that to happen.

“
I will try to be attentive. I
just didn’t hear the question. I did study.”

But there was no mercy. Mrs. Ohayashi had
made up her mind.

“
Get out of this class,
immediately,” she said, pointing at the wooden door.

I got up reluctantly and walked toward the
door. Portia and Acacia whispered when I passed them. Nigel stared
at me with big eyes as if he was expecting to be the next to go.
Abhik smiled encouragingly, while the chubby Cornwell twins had a
constant smirk upon their faces.

I opened the door, and as I did, Mrs.
Ohayashi spoke behind me.

“
Consider this a warning.
Go to your dormitory and stay there the rest of the day. Next time
I will send you to Salathiel. Be certain of that.”

I nodded and closed the door.

I knew I had to get my act together if I
wanted to graduate from the Academy. But I just couldn’t stop
thinking about Jason. I longed to be with him, but at the same time
I was concerned about what was going to happen to him. I was afraid
that his step-dad would hurt him again. Or even afraid that Jason
might fight him back and end up in deep trouble. Jason had told me
earlier that the only way he could ever see himself fighting his
step-dad was if he would hurt his mom. Then he would kill him, he
had said. That scared me. What if Jason ended up ruining his own
life? What if he did something like that and ended up spending the
rest of his life in jail? That would just destroy him.

I felt a strong urge to protect him but I
didn’t know how. I went to my room. Luckily, Mick came to visit
me.

“
What’s going on?” He asked when
he saw my long face. I sat on my bed staring out the
window.

We gave each other a hug. He sat down next
to me on the bed.

“
You haven’t been down in
my kitchen lately. I thought I would check in on you and see if you
were okay.”

I forced a smile.

“
Well, now I know you are not
okay,” he said. “That wasn’t even remotely a real
smile.”

“
I just have a lot on my mind.
And I was thrown out of my Transitions class today.”

“
Why?”

“
I wasn’t paying attention
when Mrs. Ohayashi asked me a question and then she threw me out.
Threatening to talk to Salathiel about me.”

Mick nodded.

“
I can understand why that
would make you sad,” he said.

I looked at him.
I’m not sad,
I thought. Actually
I had butterflies in my stomach, but I was worried. Not about
myself, but about Jason. Something inside of me told me he was
heading for trouble.

“
Do you think it is
possible for spirits to fall in love?” I asked.

Mick looked at me a little confused but then
he smiled.

“
Sure. It happens all the
time. Life really isn’t that different in the Afterlife than it was
before you died. Some things are very different, but we still move
on in our lives, caring about each others, making new friends,
falling in love. Spirits are perfectly capable of feeling the same
emotions as humans.”

I smiled.

“
Now tell me, Meghan, have
you fallen in love?” He asked me in a kind of weird way as if he
was hoping I would say no. Or was it that he was hoping I would say
I was in love with him?

“
I don’t know,” I said.
And that was really the truth. I felt something for Jason but was
it love?

“
You will know,” he said.
“Eventually. Just take it slowly.”

“
Do you think it is
possible for a spirit to fall in love with a human?” I asked. I
regretted the question as soon as it had left my lips.

Mick’s expression changed completely. He
got up from the bed and walked to the window. It was pouring rain
outside. He looked out the window for awhile before he spoke. It
made me really uncomfortable. Then he looked at me with serious
eyes.

“
I knew it! You have to
stop seeing him,” he said. “If you don’t I will have to report
you.”

I got up from the bed feeling a huge anger
rise inside of me.

“
You can’t do that! I
thought you were my friend.”

He sighed. “I am. I am saying this because
I want to protect you.”

“
Protect me? From
what?”

He took a step toward me. “From hurting
yourself. From hurting that human you are visiting through the
mirror in the cellar!”

I froze. How did he know that? “What?” I
said. ”Have you been following me?”

“
Of course I have. What do you
want me to do when you tell me you have made a human friend? I know
how dangerous it can be to have feelings for humans. I have been
here for nearly a hundred years, remember?”

“
And I have only been here six
months, got that, thank you. But I am not a child, I am perfectly
capable of making my own choices and decisions.”

Mick walked toward me and grabbed my
arm.

“
Are you? Do you have any
idea what you are doing?”

“
Let go of me,” I yelled, and
tried to pull my arm out of his grip. I stared at him intensely
until he let me go.

“
I can’t deal with this,”
he said and started backing up.

“
Then leave.”

He stared at me and I felt a pinch in my
heart. Then he turned around and a second later he was gone. I
threw myself on the bed. I was so angry at him for acting like
this. Who did he think he was acting jealous all of a sudden?

Later that same day I went to the hall to
get some dinner, but I was not going to eat it with the rest of the
school. Not tonight. I just wanted to grab something and bring it
to the room. I couldn’t handle seeing Mick again. Not now. And I
definitely didn’t care much about seeing Portia or the other girls.
I was way too devastated by Mick’s attack on me to handle them
right now. All I wanted was for time to pass so I could go and
visit Jason again. I wanted to get away from everything and it
could only go too slow. I even considered skipping dinner, but even
though Mick had told me we didn’t really need food, I felt
incredibly hungry. I wasn’t even sure I believed any of what he had
told me anymore. Maybe I just wanted food because I was mad, I
don’t know.

When I stepped into to Hornam Hall I
immediately regretted going there. All those people made me
uncomfortable. All that chatting and talking and laughing. I really
didn’t need that right now. So I bowed my head trying to shut the
world out and go through the hall unnoticed. I had my eyes fixed on
my seat and my plate at the table where the food would emerge in a
few seconds.

Abhik waved and approached me.

“
Oh no,” I mumbled. This
was exactly what I was trying to avoid.

“
Are you okay?” he
asked.

“
Why do people keep asking me
that?” I said a little too harshly.

“
Sorry. I was only trying
to be nice.” Abhik turned around and walked away.

“
I didn’t mean to …” I
tried to say, but he didn’t hear me. What was happening to me? Was
I going to lose all of my friends in one day?

I sighed and sat at my chair, waiting for
the food. As I did, my eyes caught those of an elderly lady sitting
at the table in the middle of the hall. She sat next to Salathiel
and Rahmiel. I couldn’t get my eyes of her. I felt my heart beating
fast. I knew her from somewhere. But where?

Now Salathiel rose from his chair and
everybody was quiet.

“
Let us welcome our new
students here at the Academy,” he said.

New students? That meant that the people
sitting at that table had just recently died. That old woman had
just died.

It was as if everything inside of me froze
at once. I suddenly remembered where I had seen that lady before.
And I suddenly remembered where I had seen Jason before. I started
to breathe heavily, trying to calm down my racing heart.

“
The book,” I
mumbled.

Nigel who was sitting next to me stared at
me like I had gone mad.

“
What?” he said.

I looked at him and shook my head.

“
Nothing. I … I have to go,” I
said and got up from my chair. As I did the food arrived at my
plate. Luckily it was sandwiches, wrapped to go. It was true that
whatever emerged would be what I wanted the most right at this
moment. So I grabbed them both in one hand and stormed out of the
hall. I flew as fast as I could down the hallway and followed a
ladder leading up, but it ended in a blind alley. I floated
downwards again and found a new hallway, leading to a smaller one
filled with mirrors in which I had no reflection. Then I looked
around me and realized I was lost. I cursed myself for not yet
being able to walk through thick brick walls.

I flew down the hallway of mirrors and
ended up in a small chamber that looked like a giant library. Books
lined the shelves from top to bottom. Nice leather chairs invited
one to sit read the books. It was all very calm and quiet and I was
amazed that I hadn’t been in this chamber before. But again the
castle was extremely big.

In the chamber I found one of the moving
bells, and I thought about ringing it for a second but then changed
my mind. What if someone would ask me where I was going? I wouldn’t
know how to answer that.

Suddenly I felt a motion from behind
me.

“
Who is there?” I said as
I turned around.

I looked down. The thinking chair stood in
front of me. It moved a bit sideways from one side to the other as
if it was shy and wanted to play with me. Then I remembered what
Rahmiel had told me. I petted it on the seat and tickled it
underneath. It seemed to be almost dancing as I did that. When I
thought it was enough, I gently sat down on it. I tried hard to
think of the room with the book and hoped the chair was getting
where I wanted to go. I really needed to look at that book
again.

The chair must have gotten the message
because all of a sudden it started moving. It crabbed sideways down
a hallway so fast that I had to hold on to its arms in order to not
fly off. It took a sharp turn and my body slipped out of the seat,
but I still managed to hold on to it and it dragged me further down
into a dark passage. It ran though a door and, as it stopped, I
flew off and landed in the room with the big book.

I smiled and petted the chair.

“
Thank you,” I
said.

I sighed and looked at the book with the
“meant-to-be” pictures. I really wanted this to not be the
truth.

“
Tell me I am wrong,” I mumbled
as I approached it. It was already open on a page. I had seen that
picture before. It was that woman in the hospital, dying on the
operating table. Now her picture was the first one in the
book.

Does that mean she is next to
die?
I asked
myself.

I took in a deep breath and exhaled before I
flipped a couple of pages. I closed my eyes, wishing this was not
going to be true. I had a horrible feeling in my stomach.

I turned another page and found the one
with the young man. He was still lying on the floor in a pool of
blood. A man was bent over him and was repeatedly beating him with
a baseball bat. I felt tears in my eyes and my hands were
shaking.

It was Jason.

I immediately recognized his shirt. It was
the same gray one that he had worn when we had been flying … and
kissing. And even though he was curled up on the floor and I
couldn’t see his face, I just knew in my heart that it was him. And
the man with the baseball bat was his step-dad.

Chapter
12

I flew to my room and threw
myself on my bed crying. I just couldn’t bear it. Knowing he was
about to die and that it was going to be in that cruel way was
horrible. How was I supposed to keep a secret like that? How was I
supposed to face him without telling him what I knew?
Of course I could
stop visiting him, I thought. But I really loved seeing him and
spending time with him. I wasn’t sure I would be able to just let
him go. And was I supposed to just let him be beaten to death like
that without interfering? How could I? Some tiny part of me was
happy that he would soon come to the Academy and then we could be
together all the time, but that was a very selfish part of me. And
would he even be able to remember me, if he did?

The part of me that really loved Jason
wanted me to stop it—to interfere and save him from the beating,
save him from his step-dad.

But how could I do that? It was in the
book, in the “meant-to-be” pictures. I couldn’t change his destiny.
Not without anyone noticing it, that was for sure. They would
surely figure it out when he didn’t die and didn’t get on the
boat.

So what was I supposed to do? Just lie on my
bed and wait for him to come here? Just pretend I didn’t know?