by Gareth Otton
Lizzie laughed scornfully.
“You know, Stella. I’ve always been a fan of a quote I heard on a TV show called Justified. If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole. If you seriously think the whole world is out to get you, then maybe you should look in the mirror and ask, are you the asshole?”
Without waiting for an answer, she stormed away, leaving Stella alone with nothing but pent up fury and nowhere to release it. Exhausted, furious and surrounded by enemies, Stella could do nothing but watch as Lizzie walked away.
9
Friday, 18th November 2016
15:25
“Did you hear that William asked out Tamara after lunch? Why the hell would he think he had a shot with her?”
Jen adopted a horrified expression at Amanda’s statement, but wasn’t sure why William didn’t have a shot. He wasn’t ugly, had plenty of friends, was good at sports, wasn’t nerdy… Jen didn’t get it. But as they walked up the drive towards the gate at the edge of the school, she said nothing. While she didn’t hate William, she didn’t care enough to risk standing out.
“Shut up. What was he thinking?” Katie replied like it was the most shocking news of the year. It was all Jen could do to keep from shaking her head.
Things had been good recently. People stopped tiptoeing around her like she was something strange, and her fame had found her a place in the popular clique. However, sometimes it was hard to care about mundane things like who asked out who after lunch. After living through the dragon attack on Cardiff, Proxying for insane ghosts, and losing the ability to walk, such problems felt insignificant.
“I don’t understand. What’s wrong with William?” Faye asked in a whisper. She was shy and didn’t talk much, but of them all, Jen liked her most. Away from the other girls, Faye would relax and was the most genuine of the three.
“You didn’t hear?” Amanda asked, stopping because how could she possibly walk when she was so scandalised? “Barry Fletcher told Max Warner who told me that last week Sally Foster saw William hanging out with a ghost in the library,” Amanda said in a single breath. “He’s actually friends with them.”
“Urgh… that’s disgusting,” Katie blurted, while Faye shot a nervous glance Jen’s way. Amanda noticed.
“No offence, Jen. I know you’re friends with that Tony guy, but you had to live with him so it’s different for you.”
Jen didn’t know how to react. She didn’t understand the hatred for ghosts.
“What was it like living with him?” Katie asked. “Did he do weird stuff?”
Jen laughed. “Tony? Oh yeah, all the time.”
Katie’s eyes widened and she glanced at Amanda, who looked scandalised.
“Like what?” Amanda whispered.
“The same thing any boy our age would do if they were invisible and could walk through walls. He’s a serious creep at times, but it’s not weird how you’re thinking. Mostly, ghosts aren’t much different from us.”
“You said they can go invisible and walk through walls,” Amanda pointed out.
“They’re also like, dead and stuff,” Katie added. “That’s gross.”
“And they go mad and eat you, just like those ones at the shelter. You were lucky you left before Tony went crazy.”
“They don’t all go mad,” Jen said. “Charles was a ghost for two-hundred years and he never went mad.”
“Who’s Charles?” Faye asked, looking interested despite the expressions on Katie and Amanda’s faces.
“He was dad’s oldest ghost. They’d been together since dad was nine.”
“Urgh. That’s so creepy,” Amanda said, disgusted.
Jen’s eye twitched. For the first time she felt anger building. However, she was saved from expressing it when Katie gasped.
“Oh my god, here’s that creepy brother of yours,” she said, nodding toward the end of the drive. “He’s with that slut ghost who follows him around.”
Jen looked up and a range of emotions struck at once when she recognised Tony and Amber. Her already building anger spiked at Katie calling Amber a slut. She wasn’t sure what she felt at Tony being called her brother, and an embarrassed blush raced over her cheeks when she realised Tony had to be waiting for her.
“I better go see what he wants,” Jen said, trying to separate from her friends so she could deal with Tony alone. “I’ll see you on Monday.”
“Wait, you don’t have to run off just because he shows up,” Katie said. “We know it’s not your fault. We’ll go with you.”
“Yeah, we can tell the creep to stop bothering us,” Amanda added.
“He’s not a creep,” Jen protested.
“You just said he was a creep,” Amanda pointed out.
“Sorry. I just… It’s complicated,” Jen said, embarrassed. “Just let me deal with him alone.”
“Are you okay?” Faye asked.
“I’ll be fine. I promise. See you later.”
She hurried away from her friends, keeping an eye on them until she was confident they weren’t following her. Then she headed for Tony and along the way her embarrassment turned to anger.
“Hey Jen. How was school?” Tony asked jovially, his voice carrying to the ears of her friends. Jen’s eyes narrowed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Smile slipping at her tone, Tony said, “Oh, I see we’ve got bitchy Jen today. What the hell is your problem?”
“You are my problem. How many times have I said not to meet me outside school?”
“About as many times as I’ve told you I don’t care what those bitches think and you shouldn’t either,” Tony said, nodding to Jen’s friends who stopped walking so they could watch.
“They’re not bitches,” she hissed.
“Maybe not that Faye girl, but the other two are gigantic—”
“That’s enough, Tony,” Amber said, taking Tony’s arm and pulling him away. The change in Tony was instantaneous. He went from full-blown tantrum to calm and silent. He was still annoyed, this was Tony after all, but he wasn’t in danger of losing it anymore.
“We’re sorry, Jen. We didn’t mean to embarrass you, but we need your help.”
Amber apologised with her smile as much as her words and despite herself, Jen’s anger slipped away.
“It’s the other ghosts, isn’t it? You want me to intervene.”
“Would that be so hard?” Tony asked, proving that even Amber could only do so much. “The other kids are making their lives hell.”
“Then go to a teacher.”
“Go to a teacher,” Tony mocked in a high-pitched imitation of her voice.
“Tony,” Amber snapped, smacking his arm.
Tony winced, looking embarrassed, but it didn’t last.
“Seriously, Jen. What the hell is a teacher going to do? They hate the ghosts as much as the other kids do.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” Jen snapped. “If a teacher won’t help, how am I supposed to.”
“Get the bullies to back off.”
Jen laughed bitterly. “Oh, is that all? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Blast them into a thousand pieces. Take them to Dream and leave them there. Dreamwalk them to the bottom of a volcano. Or, and maybe you should start with this, you could try talking to them,” Tony said. “They’re your friends after all.”
Jen’s mouth hung open as she shot a glance at her friends who were still watching.
“Not them. Though Amanda and Katie toe the line sometimes,” Tony said. “I’m talking about Robert and his pals. You know, your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jen hissed, again glancing back over her shoulder to make sure Tony’s words hadn’t travelled.
“But you wish he was,” Tony said, compounding her embarrassment. “That’s why you won’t do anything. He’s making their lives hell. He’s a little arsehole and his—”
“He’s not,”
Jen snapped.
“Just because you fancy him doesn’t mean—”
“Jen. I’m sure he’s a nice guy who’s caught up in the wrong thing because hating ghosts is popular and he feels pressured to act,” Amber interrupted. “Ignore Tony. We don’t think he’s an arsehole, but he is bullying the kids. Please, just talk to him. The kids are struggling enough as some of them have been ghosts since before the Merging and are finding it hard to stay here. The last thing they need is to be bullied.”
Instant guilt struck Jen, and she looked away. Those poor kids wouldn’t be fighting madness if she Proxied for them. However, the mere thought of it was enough to make her panic hard enough that she nearly lost her grip on Dream and her legs wobbled like they might collapse.
“I can’t help,” Jen tried. “I don’t know Robert or his friends that well, they won’t listen.”
“You know him well enough to invite him to your birthday party,” Tony said, referring to the party that never happened. “You know him well enough to make lovey-dovey faces every time you see him. You know him well enough to—”
In his anger, Tony grew louder and there was no doubt that her friends heard that. The embarrassment this time was impossible to bear and without thinking Jen shoved Tony. She might have pulled over a touch of Dream because Tony went flying twenty feet.
Gasps echoed from behind her as her friends, other students, and parents waiting outside the school were stunned at what she did. It only added to Jen’s embarrassment and tears welled in her eyes.
“I hate you, Tony,” she hissed before fleeing to the one place she felt safe.
The road, the chain-link fence, the playing field and the school in the background were replaced with white and pink walls and a familiar soft bed that she threw herself onto. She had been kept from this place for months, but this was her second visit in a week. If anyone found out they’d be furious, but right now, burning with embarrassment, Jen didn’t care.
She was home, she was safe, and more importantly, she no longer had to put on a brave face for her friends. She could finally let it all out.
She heard a pop that told her Hawk had found her. She wasn’t surprised. She stopped him coming to school because the teachers didn’t like that, but he knew when she finished and always found her no matter where she was.
As soon as he appeared she hugged him like he was a giant teddy-bear and sobbed into his fur.
◆◆◆
“I can’t do it,” Jen huffed, slumping into her seat, arms crossed. A less charitable person might call it sulking.
Dr Burman, sat next to her on the visitor side of his desk, laughed, which only made Jen scowl harder.
“You’re taking this too personally, Jennifer. I never expected you to succeed on the first try.”
“Jen,” she snapped. “And it’s a pinprick, it should be easy to heal.”
Were the pinprick on her, it wouldn’t be a problem. However, the doctor wanted to see if she could heal other people and had pricked his own finger. As the small drop of blood welled up on the tip, Jen tried to picture it healing in the same way she did with her own injuries, but she couldn’t make the image form.
When she healed herself, she could picture the way her skin should look, how it would feel, and could pour Dream into that image to make it real. With the doctor that image was never clear enough to hold Dream, and all she got for her efforts was a headache.
“It’s important not to get disheartened and to learn from our failure,” Dr Burman said. “So what can we learn from this experiment, Jennifer?”
“We can learn that you can’t remember how to say my name. It’s Jen, not Jennifer.”
Again Dr Burman laughed, not at all put off by her attitude.
“Alright, Jen. What did we learn?”
“That I can’t do it.”
“Why couldn’t you do it?”
He didn’t seem bothered by her failure. His dark eyes sparkled with amusement and he wore a kind smile that created deep crows lines in the corners of his eyes.
“I couldn’t make the image clear enough to hold Dream,” she admitted.
“Okay, that’s good to know.”
“Why?” Jen asked, not finding that information helpful in the slightest.
“Because if we can narrow down the problem, we can find the right solution. Not being able to picture what to do shows me we still have more to learn, but doesn’t tell me it’s impossible. If you said you did everything right and the magic just didn’t work, then I’d worry. But we can work with this.”
“It’s not magic. It’s Dream.”
“It feels like magic. What were you picturing when you tried to heal me?”
“I do what I always do. I imagined your finger being uninjured again.”
“So what was different about this time to when you do it yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Jen answered. When it was obvious Dr Burman expected more, she forced herself to concentrate. “I could imagine what I wanted your finger to look like, but I couldn’t feel it.”
“Feel it? Like to touch with your fingers, or some inner sense.”
“Neither,” Jen said. “I mean that… well… I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“Just try the best you can. This isn’t a test. We’re just two friends having a discussion. Now, what do you mean by feel it?”
Jen chewed on her lip as her eyes wandered around Dr Burman’s office, absorbing the certificates on the wall and the perfectly aligned items on his desk. All the while she thought about how to explain it, but didn’t get the answer until she focused on the sensation of her lip caught between her teeth. Finally, she knew what to say.
“Hold your hand out in front of you and stretch your fingers as far apart as they will go. You feel that stretchy feeling?”
“You mean the tension in my muscles?”
“Kind of… But does it also feel like your skin is being pulled tight?”
“Maybe,” the doctor said, holding his hand out in front of his face and repeatedly spreading and closing his fingers.
“I build a feeling like that into the image. When there’s a tear in my skin, I feel like it should be tighter and I use that.”
“Interesting, so it’s not just a visual image, but also sensation. Why don’t you try again, but this time, whenever you can’t find the right sensation to heal me, substitute how you would feel if you were healing yourself. Does that make sense?”
“I suppose so,” Jen answered.
“How about we try it?”
Jen nodded, then looked at his finger again. His wound had stopped bleeding and she could barely see the injury, just a tiny dot amongst the deep ridges of his fingerprints. She focused on it, analysing the unbroken skin around it and trying to imagine how that might feel by focusing on her own finger. She imagined the red dot wasn’t there and created that same tension. Something was still not right. It was like looking at computer graphics that are one step shy from looking real. She couldn’t put her finger on why it looked fake, but her brain didn’t like it.
However, it was better than her previous attempts and Jen wondered if it was enough for Dream to do its thing.
The pain was like someone stabbed a needle behind her eye and swirled it around. The image shattered into a million pieces as her vision went white, and for twenty seconds she lost all sense of anything beyond that pain itself.
When it faded, she felt Dr Burman’s hands on her shoulder, holding her upright. As her eyes swam back into focus, the blurry shapes sharpened into his concerned face.
“Jen, are you back? You alright?”
She gritted her teeth and nodded, fighting down the last of her pain.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I tried something stupid. I knew the image wasn’t right and I tried to pull over Dream anyway.”
He asked a series of questions about what the pain felt like, how she felt, and even shone a light in her eyes.
“Jen, I don�
�t want you ever risking that again.”
“What do you mean? It was just a Dream headache, the pain doesn’t last.”
“Maybe not, but for about twenty seconds I thought you were having a stroke. I’m still tempted to send for scans. You should never ever ignore those symptoms, even if the pain passes and you feel fine. That’s your body telling you there’s something wrong.”
“It’s just the backlash of Dream failing,” Jen insisted. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Normally I would defer to you and your father on supernatural issues, but I need you to listen. Do not do something that will cause that ever again. It’s too dangerous.”
“But it takes trial and error to figure out what I can pull over from Dream. There’s no user manual and if I try to do too much or the wrong thing, then that can happen. It always goes away though.”
“That doesn’t matter. Pain is our body sending us a warning. The more intense the pain, the more severe the warning. If that pain shuts your body down for twenty seconds, you should pay attention.” He stared at her a little longer and then came to a decision. “In fact, I can’t risk it. I’m going to send you for some scans to make sure everything’s alright.”
“I’m fine,” Jen protested. She was about to say more when the office door exploded inward and an angry, overweight woman stormed in.
She was barely taller than Jen, so the added pounds were noticeable. She wore her dyed black hair short, which combined with her weight gave her face a masculine appearance, though her oversized chest and the width of her hips more than overrode that. Her jeans were too tight, and the knitted red jumper was too large, so she looked like a giant, colourful mushroom.
Jean Newman was normally the kind of person with an ever-present smile and a sunny disposition, but right now her face was set in a grim mask and her cheeks were as red as her jumper.
“Here you are,” she snapped. She marched to Jen’s side and only stopped one step away. Her hand flinched like she would grab Jen, but she restrained herself. “Do you know how long we’ve been looking for you?”