Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (9 page)

A couple of minutes later
my mom drives her car up the parking lot.

“What happened?”
mom asks when I get in the car.

“Mom
… please,” I say.

“Well
, excuse me. I’m just asking.”

I stare out the window at Billy’s.
It was such a fun night, but it turned into a disaster. I don’t understand any of it.
Was Damian really kissing me in my room? Is he capable of becoming a ghost? No, that’s insane.

Maybe I based my
delusion on Damian’s looks, after I saw him on his motorcycle at his house. Maybe I fantasized about him during my hallucinations because I’m attracted to him, even the way he kisses. And that handwriting of his looks just like the one used in my diary.
How can the two look so much alike?

Although I must say, there are a lot of people that have crude handwriting, especially
guys. I was only able to get a quick glance at what he was writing, so I couldn’t check it out. Maybe I came to my conclusions too soon. Everything could just be a deception. My brain could be seeing what it wants to see.

“Mom.”

“Yes?”

“That night, when that
guy brought me home after the party, do you remember it?”

“Of course I do. As if I wou
ld forget something like that.”

“Did you
… write in my diary?” I look at her face, to catch her in the act of a potential lie.

“No, what are you talking about? Someone wrote in your diary?” I don’t spot anything.
Her eyes widen, but she’s not shaking. Normally she would shake, so she must be telling the truth.

“Well, there’s something written in it
, and it’s not my handwriting.” I sigh. “Could the guy who brought me home have done it?” My mom doesn’t even know I just had a date with that same guy.

“I was there the whole time he was in your room, so that’s not possible.” She drives
out of the parking lot. “Maybe you did it yourself, when you were hallucinating.”

Maybe. But I can’t see myself writing like that
, and it’s kind of a strange coincidence that he has the exact same handwriting. But how did he do it, if my mom was with him the entire time? She couldn’t have missed it, and I know she speaks the truth.

But if it wasn’t him, then who did?

***

The next day I
’m almost too scared to go to school, but I force myself to go anyway. Damian Hayes follows the same class schedule as me, and he’s sitting next to me, so I’m going to have to face him sometime. Looking at him, I can’t believe I just left him standing at Billy’s, but I got so confused after our kiss. I can’t imagine I conjured a kiss in my hallucinations that matched a real kiss. I need to talk to him.

Damian turns his head to me and squints,
but then his eyes widen. His walk stiffens and he sits down at the table. His eyes gaze into mine, and I can feel my heart beating in my throat. Then he turns his head toward the window and stares outside.  His foot taps on the floor. During the rest of the class he doesn’t turn his head around anymore, not even to watch the teacher.

Why is Damian being so cold to me?

I remember seeing the fear in his eyes yesterday, when I realized he was the blue ghost in my hallucination.
Is he just angry at me for walking away during our date?

I want to know what’s going on. I have to talk to him. Maybe he’ll answer my questions. It’s worth a shot, but I can’t say anything during class, because the teacher might send me out
, and I don’t want anyone listening in on our conversation.

The pencil between my fingers goes back and forth furiously.
How is this all possible? Could I really have imagined Damian’s kissing mannerisms during my delusions? Should I just ask him?

According to that article it
is quite possible that I hallucinate about kissing, but I want to know if it was all real. I have to take this chance.

I bite my lip and look at the clock above the door. It’s almost time to go. Tick, tock, tick, tock. It’s moving so slow
ly. I can’t wait, but on the other hand I want to avoid it all. My heart is thumping.

Am I really doing this? I have to know, I just have to do it.

Three, two, one. It’s time. The bell rings. It’s time to confront him.

I swallow and breathe in before I stand up, but Damian
sprints away quickly as if he has somewhere to go. I throw my stuff into my bag and dash after him, leaving Lillian and Emma behind, determined to talk to him today.

A
gitated, Damian strides through the hallway and bumps into others and even pushes a few people aside. I haven’t seen him this anxious before. Damian dashes into an abandoned hall. I wonder what he’s going to do there.

I’m having trouble keeping up, so
I start running. Suddenly he stops and turns around. I gasp for air as I almost smash into him, but I manage to come to a halt right at his feet. We stare into each other’s eyes.

“
Who … what are you?” I ask. It’s the first question that comes to mind.

He doesn’t answer and
only grimaces. Then he tries to tread past me, but I block his way. I know I’m asking a bizarre question, but that’s not a good reason to be so cold. Yesterday he kissed me, and now he wants to get away from me as fast as possible.

He sighs. His lip
curls upward, but he seems reluctant to talk. “You know who I am. Now move,” he answers.

“Why are you acting like this? Yesterday
—”

“Yesterday was nothing. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “What? Why? I thought you liked me and we had a good time together.”

“You
left,” he says. His eyes jolt around the area, like he’s trying to avoid mine.

“Sorry, I
—”

Damian interrupts me. “I shouldn’t have asked you out. Just forget about it.” He tries to
walk past me, but I still close off the hall.

“Go away
,” he says, his teeth clenched.

My face
turns red. I’m boiling on the inside. “No, I want to know why … why did I recognize your kiss?”

He sneers
. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tries the other side, but I grab his sleeve.

Why is he reacting like this? It’s like I suddenly don’t matter to him anymor
e.

“You
wrote in my diary.” I have to swallow and keep myself from hitting him. “You said you didn’t when I asked you, but you did. I know it was you. Did you kiss me before, in my room, as a blue ghost?” It’s out before I realize it. Am I accusing him of the impossible? Something totally illogical? Yes. Even though it’s absurd, I can’t take my mind off it. The kiss was exactly the same, and that’s only possible if Damian really is … a ghost.

The look in
his eyes changes from annoyed to infuriated; I can almost see the fire burning in them. With his hand on my shoulder he pushes me against the wall. He’s strong, and my shoulder hurts, but I don’t move a muscle. I won’t show him I’m in pain.

“Keep me out of this,” he says with his teeth barely apart.

“What? Why? Let me go.”

His forehead leans against mine
, and for a second we don’t say anything. His bluntness almost makes me cry, but I won’t give him that pleasure. His teeth are grating against each other. I bite my lip. Then Damian lets me go and storms out of the building.

For a moment I stand
against the wall, silent. It’s cold against my back. A tear runs down my cheek. Goosebumps are all over my body. I wonder if that’s because of the cold wall or Damian.

Astonished
, I stare at the exit through which he vanished. He was so enraged and it hurt me, because I was the cause of it.

Now I understand what Joey meant when he said Damian wasn’t good for me. This isn’t the Damian I kissed at Billy’s
. This one seems like a different person. A person with an aversion for people who ask him the wrong questions.

What’s
he going to do now? Tell someone about what I did? I’ve been so stupid. I wish I’d never said anything, because I’m not even sure it was really him to begin with. I have no proof, only my memories from a hallucination. Although the diary contains that note. Maybe I can use that.

Lillian and Emma come
toward me.

“Why did yo
u follow Damian?” Lillian asks.

I could tell them the truth. Damian might be a ghost. But it’s ridiculous
; nobody would believe me. I also just went on a date with him, so they might think I was a total weirdo if I said that.

“Oh, I just wanted to thank him,” I say, while forcing a smile.
I hate lying. “We had a nice date.”

“I just saw him
sprint out of the hallway. He looked pissed off. What did you say to him?” Emma asks.

“Oh, nothing. He said he had to go.” I shrug.

“Well, that’s kind of odd. What did you do on your date?” Their curiosity is beginning to get on my nerves.

“Nothing,
it’s nothing. Just let it be, please,” I say annoyed.

“O
kay … well, next class is starting soon, so we’d better get going,” Lillian says as she rolls her eyes at me.

We walk
toward the next classroom where we have Biology, somewhere on the first floor.

“You see that stupid girl over there?” Lillian points at a girl that
just walked into her classroom. “This morning she called me emo.” Lillian slams shut an open locker in the hallway.

“Yeah, well your c
lothes and your hair color make people think that, Lillian,” Emma says.

“So what! I can decide f
or myself what I want to wear.”

“That’s true,” I say.

Lillian seems to brighten up. “You know what I did?” She asks me with a cheeky smile.

“What?
” I ask.

“When she told me I was
emo, I just threw my can of Coke at her.” She bursts out laughing. “It was hilarious. You should’ve seen it!”

Emma grins and the two girls bump fists together.

“That naïve floozy immediately ran to the bathroom, crying. I just laughed and laughed. She won’t say anything to me again anytime soon,” Lillian says.

Her prank makes m
e laugh a bit, even though I think she was kind of mean to the girl. She doesn’t let anyone mess around with her. Maybe I’d do the same myself if someone was bothering me about my looks. I admire her fierceness.

When we arrive at our classroom the other students are
at their seats and the teacher wants to begin. We apologize for coming a bit late. I sit down at a large table alone, because Emma and Lillian share one. Nowhere in class do I see Damian.

So he left after our brief conversation. If that was even a conversation. I don’t know if those ghost appearances are real, but Damian’s absence is suspicious nonetheless. It’s like he has
much more important stuff to do. And I intend to find out what that is.

I get my cell phone from my bag and start texting under the table.

Where are you? Why aren’t you at school? We have to talk.

I wait and wait, but it takes forever
to get a response.

There’s nothing to say.

Is that the only thing he’s going to say to me? Damian’s being so rude. I know I turned him down at Billy’s, but I was so overwhelmed by emotions that I just didn’t want to be near him. It just felt dangerous. There’s got to be a reason for all of this, and Damian’s behavior is making it worse. He’s avoiding me, ignores my questions and acts like nothing happened. But I know there’s something going on. I don’t care what he says. First he was nice to me and now he’s not, and I want to know why. There has to be a good reason.

***

The next two days Damian doesn’t come to school, and I don’t even see him anywhere around town. It’s like he suddenly ceased to exist. My hallucinations about the blue ghost have also stopped. However, I keep seeing the other ghosts.

Daily
life goes on, even if it’s not normal for me. Working at Mr. Cheng’s is kind of fun, even though the man has a bad temper. Simon Pierce makes it entertaining.

“So, are you used to your new home yet?” He places the last couple of candles on the shel
f.

“It’s okay
. I’ve had to move a lot, so I’m used to it,” I answer.

“
Well, there’s lots of fun stuff to do around here, you know. You’ll have a great time.”

“What’s there to do then?” I can’t imagine this
town having anything interesting.

“Well, we have a movie theatre and a river.” He
clears his throat. I get the feeling he knows it’s not a lot.