Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (6 page)

I extend my finger
, and for a second I hesitate, but then touch his translucent face. A shock like that of a thousand tiny needles goes over my skin and through my entire body, sparking in my toes and up my head, heating me from the inside out.

His face keeps coming closer.

Do I run? Get out of my room? Even if I wanted to, I can’t. I just can’t. I hold my breath. My heart is thumping in my throat, and I shut my eyes. No, I want to be here; I want to know more. But I’m afraid. Afraid of what he’s going to do, even if it’s just a delusion. I want to know why I feel so attracted to him.

I feel a slight tingling
in my lips and know we’re only a few centimeters apart. Warmth flows into me as his lips press against mine.

The short time our lips are entangled seems like an eternity. This is almost magnetizing. My whole body is tingling
, and I don’t want to take my lips off his. It feels like I’m able to fly, almost transcendentally. Something sears inside, making me tremble, and I wonder if I’m even on solid ground. Either way, I don’t want to stop.

If he is a mere ghost or a figment of my imagination, then how am I kissing him? How am I able to touch my hallucination
s, let alone make-out with them? What is true anymore?

With each brush of his lips, I’m zapped with
energy, tiny electric shocks. Could the blue ghost be doing this? Before I contemplate the answer, he leans back. He’s avoiding eye-contact and lunges for the wall before vanishing through it.

Why is
he leaving so fast? Does he regret what happened? What am I thinking? There is no boy, ghost, thing or whatever. It’s all my crazy imagination.

I look around with a crammed feeling inside
, but it feels nice. I’m full of energy, tension and excitement. It’s almost like being in heaven. My bedroom feels empty, like I lost something valuable, but that’s ridiculous.

How can
I lose something that was never there to begin with? This is bizarre. How can I imagine things so clearly and see them before me as if they were real? And why are the hallucinations becoming stronger?

I used to
see only brief shadows and shapes that hovered around me, but this … this ghost resembles a human. A mirage of imagination so rich that I’m starting to wonder if it really is all in my head.

Why am I so drawn to a delusion? I would never kiss someone
I didn’t know. I have to forget this, banish it from my thoughts. This isn’t real.

Then
someone knocks on my door, and I jolt up from my bed. My mom comes inside.

“Are you okay
? I heard some strange noises,” she asks and opens my window without me asking. The fresh air feels cold on my hot cheeks. I wonder if she heard me kissing.

“Yes,” I answer,
but she turns at the hesitancy in my voice. From the desk she gazes at me, and I think she realizes what’s going on.

“Well, take another
pill before you go to sleep, okay?” she says.

I sigh, but still do
what she asks. I’m too wrapped up in what just happened to be mad at her for being too concerned. As a matter of fact, I think I’m a bit euphoric.

“Well goodnight. Make sure you take your medicine tomorrow
, too. I’ll be gone for work by the time you wake up,” my mom says.

“Yeah, yeah,
don’t worry. Goodnight,” I answer. She shuffles out the door, and I turn on my laptop. I need to know if it’s normal for someone with my condition to experience these things. When I type in “hallucination” an article appears, which I click on.

Hallucinations are experiences that don’t match reality. Hallucinations can have an effect on each of the senses
. In regards to visual hallucinations, one might see things that aren’t there. With acoustic hallucinations, the patient hears things. There are also hallucinations that affect taste and smell. Then there are somatic hallucinations, where one can feel things on the skin.

So
a hallucination could affect me. That kiss could have been a hallucination. A somatic one, where I could feel something on my lips. I dig deeper into the article and find my disease: psychosis.

A psychosis is a psychiatric disorder in which the patient partially or totally loses contact with the real world. One of the symptoms is having hallucinations. Psychoses are treated with antipsychotics.

I can breathe now, knowing that my kiss with the blue ghost was my imagination. But why do I see and feel more and more of them? Don’t the antipsychotics work? What can I do about it?

***

The next morning, on the way to school, I run into Joey Mason. His car sways from left to right, and my heart jumps into my throat, biking close to the edge of the road.

He rolls down his window. “Hey, Raven.”

“Hi,” I answer.

“Nice weather today, isn’t it?”
He bends so he can see me and grimaces.

“Yeah
, it’s great.” I don’t want him to notice I’m happy, since I don’t want to invite him to talk more.

He’s quiet for a while, although the silence doesn’t last long. “I’m going to play some baseball this afternoon.” The broad smile on his face gives me shivers.

Again he’s talking about baseball. What in the world is he trying to say? Is he trying to ask me if I want to come see him play? “Cool.” I peddle faster before he has the chance to ask more questions.

He hangs his head
and doesn’t look at me anymore. I pretend not to notice.

“Hey, if you want,
I can give you a ride to school. You can put your mountain bike in the back,” he says with a wink.

“No, thank you. I like to bike in the morning,” I answer
and watch the road ahead.

When we finally reach the
town, I spot Emma and Lillian in a car, pulling alongside Joey.

“Now
, now, Joey, don’t jump on her! We don’t want her to be afraid to even go to school,” Lillian says as she winks at me. Embarrassing.

“Alright
, Goth Girl, see you later,” he says, saluting and then driving off in his old rattling car.

“I’m not a
Goth girl!” Lillian yells, but I don’t think Joey hears her.

I understand why he said it though. Lillian Watts
, with her black hair and violet highlights, wears a lot of dark clothes, and she resembles a Goth girl. But she’s got a lot of spunk and doesn’t want to be labeled.

When we
arrive at school, I lock up my mountain bike while Lillian drives her car into the parking lot. As I walk away from the bike rack, I suddenly spot something familiar from the corner of my eye. Parked next to the bike rack is a red motorcycle that looks just like the one I’ve been seeing the past few days. No doubt it belongs to the guy who brought me home on the night of the party.

Will I be seeing him today? Maybe I can thank him for his help and
beg him not to tell anyone about the state I was in. Looking at it, the motorcycle brings up memories of the ghosts that haunted me that night, his leather suit and my torn diary.

“Who
se motorcycle is that?” I ask and point at it, while Lillian and Emma walk toward me.

“Oh, I think that’s Damian Hayes’. He’s in our c
lass. Why do you want to know?”

So t
he guy who stampeded out of his own house is Damian Hayes, and he saved me that night. Is he also the one who wrote in my diary? I have to talk to him.

“Oh, well I’ve seen it before; I recognized it,” I tell the girls and smile. I try to divert their attention by saying: “Let’s go inside!”

I’m curious about Damian Hayes.
Will he keep what happened that night a secret?

The first class we have
today is English. The teacher is a woman in her thirties who’s wearing stockings up to her knees with a tight skirt and button-up shirt. While I sit at my table the classroom fills up, but the seat next to me remains empty. Damian Hayes is supposed to sit here.
Where is he?

This class is dull
, and I get bored quite fast. English is my best subject, and I finish my assignments much faster than my classmates. I’m drawing little hearts on a sheet of paper while thinking about last night. Everyone would say I was insane if I told them about my kiss with the blue ghost. That’s why it’ll be my secret.

I look
out the window, and suddenly there’s a woman in a shiny gray dress, just standing there. Smoke covers her feet. Her head is hidden under a metal construction that’s bolted tight onto her head. Wires run down the construction and into her skull. A blue substance flows through it.

My heart jumps. The woman
is staring at me.

I hold my breath. Her gaze stays
on me.

Why is she looking at me? What is this woman doing her
e? What does she want? Is this another hallucination? What is my head trying to tell me? So many questions. More and more, I’m starting to doubt if the pills work.

“Are you okay
, Raven? Do you need to go to the bathroom?” the teacher asks.

I look at her.
I realize I’ve been standing for quite some time. I don’t remember rising from my seat. Everyone’s staring at me.

I nod. When I look out o
f the window again, the woman’s gone.

The teacher takes out
her hall pass and hands it to me. I walk out of the room with my head bowed, avoiding eye-contact. Sweat drips along my spine. My legs are shaking. I have to blow off some steam.

I run through the hallway and
can barely keep my tears under control. I scamper into the bathroom, lock the door, and sit down on the toilet seat. Luckily there’s no one to hear me whimper.

What will everyone think of me
now?
They must think I’m spacing out, or that I’m on drugs or something. I just stood there like some weirdo in the middle of the classroom, staring out the window at something that wasn’t even there. At least, according to the rest of the world, because they don’t see what I see.

I just hope they won’t think I’m crazy. Maybe I can pretend I
saw a spider under my table and I jumped up because of that. Yes, that might be the most plausible thing to say. Girls are supposed to be scared of spiders, so it’s a good excuse.

I get
off the toilet and dry my eyes with a piece of toilet paper.

When I arrive at the classroom
again, the bell rings. Oh well, nothing to do about it. I guess I’ll just have to go to my next class. Lillian and Emma are standing at the door holding my bag and books.

“What happened to you?” Lillian asks. “You missed half of our English class!”

“I … saw a spider,” I whisper.

Lillian
closes in. “A spider. That’s why you were acting all strange in there?” She hands over my bag and books.

“Yes.”

She squints at me. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I say, frowning.

“Oh, okay. Well I didn’t know you had such a fear of bugs.”

“I hate those things too. They give me the creeps,” Emma says.

“I just hate them, alright? And it was under my table,” I say.

“Okay
,” Lillian says. She looks at me and shoots her hands up in the air.

“Hey, I have to go to the bathroom,” Emma says.
“All this talk about bugs is giving me the creeps.”

“I’ll go with you.” Lillian puts her arm around Emma’s. “We’ll meet you a
t the next class, Raven. See ya,” she says, while walking off with Emma.

While I wander around, looking for
my next classroom, my thoughts are haunted by the lady in the gray dress. I can concentrate better with my eyes on the floor.

Why was that woman there? And that thing she had on her head, what was that about? I have never seen any other ghost wearing such a weird, futuristic thing on h
er head.

A voice in the back of my mind keeps repeating that everything I saw was only
a hallucination, something I haven’t told Lillian and Emma. They don’t know I take medication for it.

I stop at the water
fountain in the hallway and take a drink. The coolness of the liquid clears my head. But when I turn around again, I bump into someone.

“Sorry!” I exclaim. My eyes travel up his body
toward his face. In front of me is a handsome muscular guy in jeans with a green shirt. I think he’s around sixteen years old. He has remarkable hazelnut eyes and wavy dark brown hair. He looks physically exhausted, like he hasn’t slept in days, because he has bags under his eyes.

“It’s o
kay,” he says with the most beautiful smile.

He reminds me of someone. A person I know, but
I’m unsure who. I want to get to know him. I want to know more about him. This moment can’t pass.