The Ghostly Grammar Boy

by Sandra Thompson

CHAPTER ONE

  I don't know why Ella chose today to follow me. School camp was hardly a glamour zone. And for someone who didn't sleep, eat, or have any human needs, she really liked her creature comforts.

  Ella's transparent face glistened in the dim light of the camp hall where she had materialised between my boyfriend and me. We were sitting on the floor in a group with our closest friends. I had just been moving in for a handhold with Jason when she'd appeared. I was sure it wasn't a coincidence. Being a ghost gave her a really unfair advantage for catching me in embarrassing situations.

  My hand was frozen awkwardly in the air, halfway to Jason. I slowly retracted it, hoping that he wouldn't notice my strange behaviour. One day I would tell him my secret, but not now. We'd been dating for only a few weeks. There was no way I could tell him that I'd been seeing ghosts ever since my twin sister had passed away at age two.

  Ella laughed.

  'You guys should get a room.'

  I gave her my best death-stare. She always chose to tease me in front of my friends, knowing that I couldn't retaliate without looking like I was talking to myself. Ella giggled then purposefully narrowed her dark brown eyes, returning my glare. Her straight, dark brown hair framed her mischievous face. It is extremely distracting to be mimicked by a translucent person who looks identical to you in every way.

  'What's going on here anyway? Shouldn't you guys be doing something?' Ella asked, looking around the hall at the year ten students sitting in scattered groups on the floor.

  It was a good question. As part of a rigorous week-long schedule of enforced character-building activities, the whole of Canberra High School's year ten class had been relocated to a bushland sport and rec centre an hour outside of Canberra. We had been looking forward to some parent-free time to hang out with our friends, but were rapidly becoming exhausted from the relentless physical activities and kitchen cleaning roster. Of course our exhaustion had nothing to do with the fact that we'd stayed up all night gossiping and eating junk food in our cabins.

  Today was day two and, following a questionable breakfast, we'd been marshalled into the hall thirty minutes ago to get into groups for our next activity. So far the teachers had been ignoring us.

  I shrugged as subtly as I could in answer and looked around at the teachers to see if I could work out what was happening. Instead of patrolling for teenaged trouble like they usually did, they were huddled together in a corner. Mrs Stratton was dabbing her eyes with a hanky while Mrs Murphy patted her on the back…

  Mrs Stratton was crying!

  Startled, I sat up straighter. On second glance, the other teachers looked frazzled too. Mrs Weaver was wiping her spider-veined face with her hands, and Mr Wentworth was biting his lip and staring hard at the floor. Mr Cunningham was tugging on his grey beard and blinking his eyes rapidly.

  I nudged Jason frantically in the arm and pointed towards the huddle of teachers. Jason turned to look at them. A moment later, his eyebrows shot upwards in surprise.

  The rumble of chatter in the hall began to descend into silence as one by one the students noticed the teachers' strange behaviour and alerted their friends. Soon the hall was uncannily quiet as everyone stared at the teachers. The teachers, noticing the sudden attention, huddled closer and whispered frantically to each other. Finally Mrs Murphy broke away from the group and walked to the front of the hall.

  'Students, as you may have noticed, we're running a bit behind schedule today.' Her voice wavered slightly. She took a deep swallow before continuing. 'We were supposed to start our outdoor activities thirty minutes ago. However, there's been an incident and school camp is now cancelled. Your parents have been asked to come and pick you up.'

  There was a loud rush of noise as the students in the hall comprehended the information. Mrs Murphy clapped her hands loudly to restore order.

  'Quiet, please! The police will be joining us shortly and they may want to interview some of you. We can't give you any more information right now, except to say that this is extremely serious and we ask that you demonstrate your maturity by waiting here patiently.'

  As Mrs Murphy finished speaking, the cacophony of voices rose again. Many of the students had flushed faces and were smiling and laughing with their friends, postulating about how many days off school we'd get, and inventing humorous anecdotes about what the incident could be. However, a familiar feeling of dread filled my gut. Most of the other students were blissfully unimaginative about the sorts of horrible things that could strike us in life, having never been touched by death. My daily dealings with members of the departed made me a lot more wary. I'd also felt horribly ill last night—like I always do when someone in my vicinity is close to passing over. It was an unappreciated side effect of my gift.

  If something had happened at school camp, at least one of the students must know about it. I looked around the hall at the flushed faces. The geeky boys group was sitting closest to us. They had immediately taken advantage of the teachers' distracted attention and discretely pulled out various forbidden electronic gadgets and begun playing with them.

  Strangely, Dennis, the king of the geeks, was the only one who wasn't absorbed in the digital world. His thick, dark brown hair stood out strikingly against his pale face, which was even more pasty than usual. His darkly lashed brown eyes were downcast. I could see his chest moving quickly up and down as he took short, shallow breaths. He was terrified. He had to know something about the situation.

  Before I could talk to him, I felt a ghostly hand on my leg. I shivered. Ghosts can't usually touch people but I am a special case. To me they feel like real, but deathly cold people. Ella's eyes were wide and her former cheeky grin had disappeared.

  'What's happened?' she asked. 'And where is John today?'

  The uneasiness in my stomach gave a sudden lurch. I had been so distracted with school camp and Ella's appearance that I hadn't noticed my usual ghostly follower was missing. I hadn't seen John since yesterday afternoon.

  John was a year-twelve boy from Lyneham High School who had become a ghost after passing away a few weeks ago. He also happened to be Ella's ex-boyfriend, although their relationship had only lasted one week.

  At first when Ella had introduced him to me, I'll admit, I'd been slightly jealous. John was undeniably handsome with an athletic build, sandy-coloured hair, and blue eyes. My jealousy had quickly disappeared when I realised that there was one very big problem with John.

  He was vacant. And I don't mean just a little bit slow or a dreamy sort of guy. I mean he was really empty. He just seemed to float aimlessly around with nothing to do or say, as if he didn't have a spirit. To make matters worse, he'd been following me around constantly since the first moment we'd met. It was really creepy, not to mention quite annoying. I understand that occasionally it can be difficult to distinguish between identical twins, but the fact that Ella was translucent and floaty should have helped. There was no excuse for his behaviour.

  So naturally Ella had dumped him. If there's one thing you shouldn't do, it's give a twin an identity crisis. It hadn't stopped John from following me constantly ever since, though, until now. Surely it couldn't be a coincidence that John had decided to quit stalking me at the same time that something terrible had happened at school camp.

  I was just trying to figure out how to communicate this to Ella without speaking, when I realised that she wasn't looking at me anymore. Her mouth had dropped open in shock and she was staring wordlessly towards the popular group.

  The popular group in our year is led by Carly Taylor and her crony Hannah Farmer. I had strangely mixed feelings of resentment, yet solidarity thinking about those two. I'd never really liked them—irritated by their dominant rule over our grade and the cruel way they treated people they deemed below them in the social hierarchy. Carly and Hannah hadn't particularly liked me either. But we'd mostly managed to keep out of each other's way for the past three years.

  Then, a few weeks ago, I'd been unfortunate enough to fly
onto their radar when Shane, an attractive (and conceited) guy from Canberra Grammar School had started chasing me. Carly and Hannah had made it their business to teach me that I'd crossed the line into their territory and needed to be punished.

  It would have saved them a lot of trouble if they'd known that I had no interest in Shane. I had been talking to him only because I suspected he was a murderer. And Shane was only interested in me because we both shared the ability to see ghosts. Shane, Carly, and I had ended up locked in a burning basement at the mercy of a deranged ghost called Chris. It had been necessary for survival to tell Carly about our secret power to see ghosts. Despite her reluctance to believe there could possibly be anything special about me, the strange events that transpired that day eventually convinced her beyond a doubt that I was telling the truth.

  So now, Carly, the most popular and meanest girl in the school was one of the few people in the world who knew my deepest secret. I wasn't sure if it was because my supernatural power scared her or because her near-death experience had changed her outlook on life, but to the surprise of my friends, Carly was being civil to me these days. For the first time in the history of high school, Carly acknowledged my presence and even occasionally sat with me in class. Now that I'd gotten to know her, I was begrudgingly starting to think that I'd been too quick to write her off as a superficial bully. Don't get me wrong, she was still a non-inclusive social mastermind but, occasionally, when she wasn't hanging out with her accomplice Hannah, she could be nice.

  For example when I'd confessed to Carly that I'd been having strange nightmares ever since the fire, Carly had actually been sympathetic. I'd told her that for the past few weeks I'd been having disturbingly realistic dreams about Shane's childhood, as if I was reliving it. The old Carly would have spread it around the school and by lunchtime convinced everyone that I was crazy. Instead, Carly had confessed that she'd been feeling really unsettled since the fire too. She'd pointed out that it was natural that I was having strange dreams about Shane, since he was one of the only other people who can see ghosts. It felt good to finally be able to confide in someone who wasn't dead.

  My eyes scanned the group for Carly and Hannah. They didn't seem to be there; but the whole of year ten was supposed to be in the hall. I didn't know where they could be.

  Suddenly I felt my stomach hurl. I knew exactly why the teachers were crying, and what Ella had been looking at, and it was horrifying…

  I'd been right that Carly was missing but I'd been wrong about Hannah. Hannah was there. She was sitting amongst her friends. I hadn't noticed her at first because … she was completely see-through. I could see the floorboards shimmering under her jean-clad legs. Her black singlet top was translucent.

  She was a ghost.

  Hannah was forever frozen in the clothes that she'd been wearing last night at dinner. Hannah was dead.

  She'd died at school camp.

  Further information about The Deadly School Camp can be found online: https://sandrathompsonauthor.blogspot.jp/

  About the Author

  Sandra grew up in Sydney, Australia as a black-haired girl with two blonde sisters. She was not adopted, despite what they told her. She first discovered her passion for writing in primary school when she was forced to write a short story for a school assignment. She was surprised to discover that she really enjoyed it and began to read and write avidly.

  After graduating from university in Sydney, Sandra began working as a full-time statistician. Her days were filled with number crunching, whilst her evenings were filled with Fiona's exciting supernatural adventures as she wrote the first book of the Dusk Duo series, The Ghostly Grammar Boy.

  Sandra now lives in Tokyo, Japan where she is continuing to work as a daytime statistician and a nighttime author. She is currently working on book two of the Dusk Duo series, The Deadly School Camp.

  'Hai!' Sandra also speaks some Japanese and is learning a lot about Japanese culture by making lots of mistakes. She writes about her experiences on her blog and is also working on a romantic suspense novel set in Tokyo called The Sakura Vacancy.

  Sandra really appreciates the support of her readers. You can find her online at https://sandrathompsonauthor.blogspot.jp/