by Aki_kaze
“Yeah. He told me about it when he gave the plane to me. He wanted to become a pilot but he…"
“Met Mom/your mom and got to be an office worker instead.”
They both said in unison, smiling.
“So, he started collecting plane models.”
“That was so him.”
It occurred to Keith at that moment that he was not the only one losing family. Diane lost a brother, too.
“Why did he never mention you to me before? Or was I too young to remember?”
“I visited you when you were just a baby,” she said, “that was the first time, and the last. When we grow up, we are burdened with our own responsibilities. We didn’t keep in touch with each other. When I heard of him again, it was the accident.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He realized that it was the first sorry he said to her.
“Me too. Keith. Me too.” She stayed silent for a while before continuing, “That’s why I want you to pay them a visit. It’s like bidding them a proper farewell. You kids still have a chance.”
He stood there, still not wanting to give his word.
“I’ll think about it.”
That response was enough for Diane. He placed her hand on his shoulder before walking back to the cleaner.
“You better get going now.”
“Oh! Right.”
Keith’s eyes follow Diane as she left the room. He glanced at the plane model once more, trying to overcome the fear inside.
Chapter Thirteen
At My Limit?
Keith was in the classroom. The teacher’s voice was heard at times. His focus was on the notebook, his hand moving. It appeared like he was jotting down the lesson. But, in fact, he was drawing. He wasn’t good at it. So, all he did was just connecting lead lines, forming images of a house and a garden. He later realized that he was drawing his old house. It had been home since his birth, but, in a blink of an eye, it was all gone. The drawing was in black and white, but the colors were still vivid in his mind. Grey roof, cream color building, white window frame, white fence. The flowers in the garden were of various bright colors: red, yellow, white; contrasting their green leaves and the green grasses below. He used to spend as much time with his parents there as in the living room.
The sudden surge of loneliness caused him to avert his eyes to the class board. He looked at the teacher’s face and felt that something was off, but he couldn’t figure what.
The school bell rang, lunch break arrived. The sounds of chairs and desks scraping the floor echoed throughout the class. Student’s chatting was all around. Keith stood up and turned to look at the back of the class. It was his old habit. There, he saw what was not supposed to see. His eyes darted around the room. His classmate’s faces were not those in his present time. He looked at his uniform and found that it had changed. He was now wearing the one from his ex-school.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he turned to speak to that thing.
“What do you mean I’m not supposed to be here?”
He blinked, and with that his surrounding changed. He was standing in the science classroom. It was their secret place during lunch. Nobody came in, so he was free to talk to the invisible being.
He remembered well the boy who sat next to him. But this time he couldn’t view his face clearly, rather a silhouette in a very bright classroom.
“Do you like it?” It said to him. Keith found that he had a sandwich in his hand.
“I hate cucumbers,” he replied impulsively. This all had already happened in the past. He knew he was dreaming. He knew what happened next.
It changed again. And he was no longer his past self. He now become the audience, watching two students talking under a desk. One of them was him; the other, someone he thought was his true friend. He peered at the other’s face, trying to detect a hint, trying to decipher since when the other had intended to harm him. Was it that very moment when they became friends? Was it after that when the other had learned that he could be manipulated so easily?
He heard his past self’s laughter. How naive of him to trust a dead person just because they told him they had no one else. Like him. Loneliness clouded his judgement.
“Do you know how I can be freed from this?”
“No,” Keith in the past replied, “do you want to leave, Rob?”
“I’m suffering,” the spirit said.
“Is there anything I can help?”
Keith looked at his past self, his fist clenching. Why did he trust him? Why did he follow that guy?
Keith slid the window open wide. Students’ voice could be heard from below. They were having fun, something which hadn’t occurred to him for a time. Now, he was no longer the observer. Before him was that window.
“What do you want me to see?” He stood on tiptoes, trying to see what was outside the window.
The spirit was behind him, “You’re the only who can free me.”
“How…”
Not getting to finish the sentence, he was defenestrated.
“By taking up my place.”
The voice resounded in his head. Memories flooded back to him. The first day he went to greet the other. The day he followed him back home. The time Keith thought he was back to normal. They were all lies.
The pain from the fall snapped him out of his nightmare. He was panic, gasping for air. Every wound he got from the fall, despite all being healed, was etched in his memory. He tried to tell himself he was in his bedroom. That spirit could no longer hurt him. That incident was the first time he was harmed by a spirit. At that time, he was admitted to the hospital again, and his meeting with a psychiatrist became even more frequent.
When his vision adjusted to darkness, he looked around the room. Sam was nowhere to be seen. He had got used to it, that whenever he woke up, he would see the spirit there. He might rely on Sam too much, like he did to that evil ghost. But he told himself that it was different this time. Sam was not like any other spirits he had met. That brutal incident wouldn’t happen again.
The last day before the school break, the principal called a student meeting of all grades. He advised them to keep studying and to spend time wisely. He also addressed the incident, the culprit of which was not yet caught, and reiterated the penalty for those who dared repeat the same crime.
People were getting doubtful of the incident. Many used to believe it actually happened. But now they thought perhaps Keith was just making it up, that no one really did something that awful to him.
He started to question himself as well. Perhaps there was really no one there. Perhaps it was like in the dream he’d had, that it was all the school spirit’s doing. Or worse, perhaps his symptoms resurfaced; the hallucination was getting severe.
The school taught different grades. But most students must have seen one another at least once. It was impossible for a group of students to always escape everyone’s notice. And even Keith couldn’t see their faces, he recognized their voices. Still, so far, he never got to encounter any of them again.
Junior and senior high schoolers had different lunch time. So, he was surprised when he found Alice during his usual lunch break. She came to sit with him at the table where others dare not approach.
“You have no class?”
“The exam was last week. So, no class today,” she replied, “are you always eating by yourself like this?”
He shrugged, “you should go sit somewhere else.”
“Alice don’t care about them. And we’ll see if those big guys will hurt a little girl like me. Don’t get me wrong. Alice didn’t say boys bully boys is right,” she quickly added, “but thugs will be thugs. It was a sad truth we can’t change what they are.”
Keith had no comment, so he resumed his meal.
“Alice asked my friends about gangsters in this school.” Her voice became low, her face turned serious, drawing Keith’s attention, “You know, these guys love to boast about how they go bully people who can’t fight back.
But no one’s talking about that incident. No one knows who did that to you. Even John. You know him. He’s not nice but he doesn’t lie.”
“You’re saying I was imagining things.”
“No,” she quickly objected, “but I remembered what happened when you moved to my school. After the accident. You jumped off the second floor.”
“It was not me.”
“Alice knows. But others don’t. Alice told you Alice believed you. Alice was there when we played the spirit board, remember? All Alice wants to say is, is it possible that the incident, too, was their doing?”
Keith’s eyes fell on the table, no word left his mouth. He, too, doubted that. But he hadn’t done anything to them that earned him such a cruel treatment.
“I don’t know,” Keith said, “I don’t know anymore which is real, which is not.”
Alice eyed him with sympathy. She stroked his hand gently before getting up.
“At least the school break is here. Maybe you should talk to someone about it.”
Keith watched Alice walk out of the canteen. He then fell deep in his thought, asking himself if this was his limit?
Did he really need to call out for help?
Chapter Fourteen
A Summer Like No Other
It was the first day of school break, but Keith still woke up in the morning as usual. He stared blankly at the ceiling. He had been looking forward to the summer break. But when it arrived, he didn’t know what to do. He had no friend to hang out with, no special place to visit, no stuff to do to kill time.
He got up to open the window, welcoming the morning light. He looked out to view the houses in the neighborhood, similar in appearance. Sam always stood in this spot. Keith didn’t know what the other was looking at. There were but houses and streets. No park nor beautiful scenery in sight. Nothing spectacular.
He thought of the view from his old house. The house was not large but spacious enough for a family of three. His mom loved to grow flowers, so the house front was always tinted with lively spots of many colors. After school, he would play baseball with his dad, and sometimes soccer, and sometimes he would go to play with his friend in the playground.
In retrospect, he felt like those things had never happened. It seemed impossible to him now.
After getting dressed, Keith walked down to the kitchen. Diane and Hector were having coffee. His two cousins hadn’t woken up yet.
“Good morning,” he greeted.
“It’s school break. And you still got up early,” Hector said.
He smiled sheepishly. He poured milk and cereal into the bowl and took it to the living room. He heard Diane and Hector’s voices coming from the kitchen; they were talking about the visit. Keith was still undecided, so he hadn’t given Diane an answer.
It had been a long time he got to watch TV. He didn’t know what program was popular at that moment. He zapped through channels and came to halt at a movie one. He didn’t know the film that was showing though.
A laughter made him jolt. It was Sam. He was sitting next to him on the sofa. Keith looked back to the kitchen to check on the two adults. He couldn’t see them but could hear their voices vaguely.
“When will you stop showing up like this?” He spoke to Sam, voice low but firm. But the other didn’t respond, having taken an interest in the movie. The spirit probably hadn’t watched one for a long time. “Do you like movies?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t usually go to the cinema.” The spirit gave another laugh. Keith then decided not to bother him but let him enjoy the watch.
When he went to the kitchen to put away the cereal bowl, Hector and Diane were not there. He heard the watching machine noise coming from the back of the house, as well as the two adults’ voices. He understood that they were discussing family activities to do during the break.
It reminded Keith of his past summers. His mom and his dad always asked him where he wanted to go. They offered him various choices: the sea, the mountain, the forests, or even the big city. They were determined that once in year they would go on a family trip.
This summer was his first without them. No more family trip like in the past.
“You’re wasting water.”
Keith flinched. He quickly turned off the tap, his hand holding the plate he had been cleaning for minutes. Sam stood next to him, arms crossing. He said nothing more, but his look was full of questions.
“Nothing,” Keith said.
“I haven’t said anything,”
The boy shook his head. “I will go back to my room. Enjoy the movie.”
“You left the TV on. You might get scolded by your aunt.”
Keith totally forgot that the other was a ghost.
“Let me turn it off first.”
“What? No. I’m watching it.” Keith turned to Sam who gave him a nonchalant shrug. “You’re the one to get scolded. Not me.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Fine then.” He went to his bedroom. He intended to do some homework, so that he wouldn’t have to do too much by the end of the break.
He pulled off his notebook from his backpack. A flyer came off with it. It was about anti-bullying stuff. He sighed. He didn’t want to think about that day but couldn’t help it. He tried to recall even the slightest detail which could hint towards the culprit. He came up with nothing. Everything happened so fast, and he wasn’t being cautious. He remembered he walked into the restroom, and there was a sound of door opening and closing. And then everything went dark as his head was covered in a sack.
Was it possible that everything was just his mind playing tricks, that no one other than himself locked him in the storeroom?
Was he going insane?
If it was the spirit’s doing, they must have bragged about their deeds by now, like when they were alive. But he saw no one.
“Maybe you should talk to someone about it.”
Alice’s word echoed in his head. At present he had no one but Sam to talk to. Still, he did not tell the spirit everything. He believed there was no one who would confide every bit of their life in other people. He also found it ironic that all he wanted was to become normal and yet he still talked to Sam.
He knew well he needed to make friends, but it was easier said than done, and he didn’t trust anyone as much as he trusted Sam. More importantly, he didn’t know anymore how to befriend another person. What was he supposed to act around them? The accident took everything away from him. Being by himself became easier than socializing. And no one at school wanted to come near him either. There were only two types of students: the one who bullied him and those who didn’t.
Keith could only hope that the next semester would be better, or that this school break would at least make him feel better somehow.
“Is this the face of someone who has summer break?”
A voice called from behind. Keith turned back and found Sam walking towards him. He thought the spirit was still watching TV.
“Your aunt changed the channel,” he explained, “What about you? Does your homework make you feel that stressed?”
“Do I look like someone who needs help?”
“Huh? What’re you talking about?”
“Nothing.” He crumpled the flyer and threw it into the bin. He looked at the notebook and sighed.
