Trigonometry, 9:30. Lit and Analysis, 10:45. Calculus, 12:00. Lunch, 1:00. Psychology, 2:00. Practice, 3:00 to 5:00. Go home. Homework, 5:30 to whenever I get it done. Eat. Go to sleep. Repeat.

I didn’t even know what to do on my days off class anymore. It was a waste of time. Like, maybe I’d go out and work on my scissor kick or something. I had heard that one of the players on the Carmel team was some prodigy when it came to keeping the ball to himself, and when given the opportunity, I like a good challenge. It was only my second season being back in America and there was a slight language barrier since I hadn’t spoken English in such a long time, but over the course of the sophomore year, I remembered most of it.

But what else was I supposed to do? Study? I had already done that the night before. I had read every book on my shelves at least twice already. Were there any projects? Exams?

Ugh, days off were so boring.

I sat down on my small couch and turned on the TV, even though I figured nothing good was going to be on. I couldn’t afford a dorm. When mom and dad came back up here, they barely had enough to get their own place. I stayed with them last year until I saved up enough money to get an apartment near the school. Compared to the forty-five minute drive when I lived at mom and dad’s house, a fifteen minute walk wasn’t too bad. Plus, I had my own space. And that was nice, I guess. I mean, it wasn’t a super nice apartment or anything. The electricity would flicker on and off sometimes, and walls and floors were kinda creaky when other people in the complex moved about. But it was livable.

I picked up the remote for the TV and flicked through the channels. Mostly shows about a bunch of idiots getting famous for no apparent reason, I thought. TV was basically like a high school drama nowadays. Hell, even the History Channel was talking about… aliens? Jesus. How high are these people? America’s IQ levels were really going down the drain.

The coffee machine buzzed as I heard the last few drops of water being pressed through the grounds. I sighed, got up, and went into the small corner kitchen in the back of my apartment. Tomorrow was going to be busy. My team decided to travel all the way out to Muncie’s field to practice. Belmont was maybe an hour and a half away without traffic, and with traffic, it could have been a three hour drive. Depends on how bad the traffic was, though. I didn’t know why Hullman decided to go all the way out there just for a practice, but whatever. It wasn’t like I had much else to do. I just had to dig up enough to pay the taxi driver.

I grabbed my faded orange mug and poured my coffee. I could feel the sugar at the bottom grind against the ceramic as I stirred it in with a small spoon. I rested my lower back against the old counter and took in a deep breath, getting both hints of the musky apartment and of a California roast. The natural lights coming through the window began to dim as the clouds began to gather and bunch up around the bright sun. A low growl came from the sky. A thunderstorm was just what I needed to lighten my mood on such a dull day. Awesome.

The room’s temperature dropped as the sunlight faded. My eyes glanced across the room to see the thermostat. It said seventy degrees, but the sudden goosebumps on my arms told me otherwise. I made my way over to it and turned the dial up to around seventy-five.

I had really grown used to the South American heat. Now anything under seventy felt like winter, and trust me, it got a lot colder than seventy in Indiana. The winter completely drained me. I felt like I needed to go into a state of hibernation for a few months every time September rolled around. It’s not like I hadn’t been in this sort of weather before; I used to live in this town. But after I turned eight, mom needed to go back to Campinas to take care of my grandfather. He was on his own, and he could barely drive himself to the doctor at that point. We stayed by his side for eleven years, until he passed away. It was hard. Mom was devastated, even though she knew it was coming. She couldn’t bear to see anything that remotely reminded her of him, and so we came back here. To Bloomington. Where the weather is just absolutely –

Thunder shook the room, and the lights flickered out.

Lovely.

The blue-tinted light of my laptop screen reflected off of my glasses as I took them off to clean them. I pulled my hair back into a short ponytail and sighed. There was nothing to do to kill the time. Every essay I had was written and posted, every assignment finished, every report researched. I would have read Little Women again, if I hadn’t already read it four times over. I put my glasses back on and sipped from my third cup of coffee. Was it really already 10:45?

The rain clicked against the glass of my windows and tapped on the roof. The clouds outside stretched across the sky in bulbs of falling drops. At this point, I was willing to throw on a hoodie and stay by the window to count them. Buying used textbooks online was fun and all, but I really wanted something better to do.

Another hit of thunder. The lights still hadn’t come on, except for in some flickers of on, and off, and then on again, then back off. The only thing really keeping me warm was the cup of coffee I had microwaved like six times. My fingers felt numbed every time I went to type on my computer. Was I getting sick or something? I would hope not. I couldn’t miss class.

Time ticked on as the clock struck 11:00. I needed to go to bed. My eyes felt groggy and I was seriously freezing my ass off. The rain couldn’t have been making it this cold. It must’ve been me. Maybe I had cold medicine somewhere that I could take. I could not get sick.

I closed my laptop and sat it on the coffee table. I left my mug there too. I’d just get it in the morning.

I went into the bathroom and let my hair down, then brushed my teeth and did all the nightly routine stuff. Making my way into my bedroom, I suddenly felt… sick. Like I was hoping I wouldn’t feel. I felt my knees get weak and my stomach churn. My first instinct was to run back to the bathroom so I didn’t puke on my floor, but it wasn’t that kind of ill. It was that feeling like… when you see someone for the first time after you hadn’t seen them in years, and you don’t know what to say or do at first so you kinda just awkwardly interact with them for a good five minutes before finally feeling comfortable. Yeah, that feeling.

I really just needed to lay down, I thought. I’d feel better in the morning. I’d go to class, go to practice, and everything would be fine. Just sleep.

My phone rang.

Really? At almost midnight?

I took my cellphone out of my sweatpants pocket and answered it.

“Oi mãe,” I spoke into the phone.

“Hello, Tobias, how you today?” She replied in a cheerful tone.

“I’m good, mom.” I chuckled to myself. She had been trying to go back to English for a year now. It wasn’t good. But she tried.

We talked for maybe ten minutes just about how our day was, and then she went to bed. I liked hearing from her. After grandpa died, her voice didn’t sing like it used to. It was like a songbird that got locked in a cage after being free its whole life. The tune died.

But after some time this year, she had sounded better. As if slowly, but surely, she was remembering the tune.

I laid down in bed, throwing the covers over myself. Jesus, was it like forty degrees in here? It’s April, come on. It can’t be this cold.

I tried to go to sleep. I couldn’t. I watched the red numbers on the clock by my bed instantly click into another shape as every minute passed by. I felt so uncomfortable, even in my own bed. The walls creaked with every gust of wind outside. I almost fell asleep at around two in the morning, but one of the pictures hanging on my wall fell down and scared me back into my uneasy, but awake state.

3:42 AM.

I wasn’t going to get any sleep.

I almost felt like I was in… what did they call it, a lucid dream? Where you know you’re dreaming, but you don’t wake up. One of those. The room felt just so unsettling, but I couldn’t get out of bed or turn away from the empty ceiling that my eyes locked onto. I didn’t know what to feel. My mind, for some reason, kept sorting through my years at elementary school that I couldn’t remember. It was too fuzzy to even make out a majority of the things that my conscious told me to, but I couldn’t stop. The room felt like it was contorting around me, and like I couldn’t breathe. A paranoia spread throughout my mind, and anxiety through my chest. I felt like someone was… with me.

“I am with you.”

The words echoed through my eardrums as my body jumped from my bed and onto the floor. A sharp pain rose through my tailbone and up my back. My eyes scanned the room back and forth and back and forth. That was not a dream. “Who the hell is here?!” My voice cracked in fear. How did anyone get in my goddamn room? I lock the doors every time I come home. I didn’t even leave to go anywhere today!

“Answer me! Who are you and what do you want?!”

“Alright, I came on too strong. I got it. I should’ve figured this was a little much. Lemme just… Gimme a second, alright?”

I could feel sweat forming on my brow as my arms began to shake out of nervousness. Although I could barely see anything in my room, something caught my eye. The picture frame that had fallen off the wall had slowly made its way back up to where it once was placed. And it stayed there. My breath became hitched in my throat with every exhale. Exhale… I could see my breath now. The opaque clouds of pale air floated in front of my face, blocking my vision even further.

What the actual hell was this?

There was a faint glow in the space around me now. A red aura had surrounded my personal space, like some sort of fog above my body. And then there were two bright, yellow eyes. Red hair. Pale blue skin. Hands. A smile.

“Uh, hi.”

I immediately got up and dashed to my bathroom, slamming the door and locking it. My chest heaved, and my eyes were still cloudy from my attempts at sleep. My head pounded from the sudden adrenaline rush.

“Okay, you can stay in there, that’s cool,” it said from behind the door, “Whatever is best for you, man. I know my social skills are a little rusty. I haven’t talked to anyone in like… years. It’s bad. But, if you could just hear me out—“

“Get out of my house!” I yelled, pressing my back up against the wall furthest from the door.

“It’s actually your apartment, but whatever.”

“What do you want from me?!” I managed to cough up some more words.

“Man, you really don’t remember me at all do you? I mean, yeah, I don’t exactly look all that similar to what I looked like ten years ago, but I thought maybe you’d kinda get the feeling.”

I paused. “Am I supposed to know you?”

“I thought maybe you would. Uh… Spencer Hale? Second grade, Ms. Victoria’s class?”

The name plucked a heartstring. I didn’t know why. “I…” I stopped again. “The name might ring a bell.”

“Really? Oh, great, good, okay,” he said, his voice now sounding more excited rather than disappointed. “Alright, well, that’s a start. Uh…I came to your eighth birthday party and I broke the piñata on the first try so no one else got to hit it.” His voice had a painful desperation about it.

“No, I don’t—“

Wait. I remembered. Everyone told him that he ruined the fun and one kid tried to take the bat from him before he went, but Spencer pushed him away.

Spencer.

“I… I remember you…” My voice trailed off into the tiles of the bathroom. There was some sort of relief that washed over me, cooling down my heated body. But the anxiety rushed back just as suddenly as it left, and I took a second to reevaluate. “Wait, then what the hell are you? You’re not human, you’re… Uh…”

“Okay, no need to sugar coat it. I’m dead. Been dead a long time. I was hoping maybe you heard about it from one of your other friends or something. I guess word didn’t spread.” There was a small chuckled followed by a sad silence.

“What… happened?” I asked quietly.

“Uh…” There was a moment of thought before he began to explain. “I don’t remember too much about it… It was kinda like… I think I fell out of one of the big trees down at Madison Park… And I went down a huge ass hill and then hit something cold… I think it was some sort of mix of drowning and a broken spine? Maybe. I don’t know. It’s kinda a blur, not to mention that it was so long ago.”

This was crazy. No, this was impossible. Ghosts were not real. The dead were dead, and that was that. They don’t come back to say hi.

“This is…”

“I know,” Spencer said, “It’s really weird. It’s been a really long time and I just so happen to be here and I saw you, but I didn’t know if it was really you so I came up here and, uh, here we are.”

I didn’t want to say anything else. I had nothing else to say.

“I have nowhere else to go, Toby,” he said, his voice starting to break, “You’re the first person I’ve been able to go to in so long. All I ask is… Maybe I could stay here? Just for a little while. I won’t bug you at all, you won’t even know I’m here. C’mon.”

“No, no, absolutely—“

“Please.”

His voice. It just sounded so... sad. I couldn't bring myself to find another 'no' to say.

A blue hand faded through the door. A golden ring reflected the ceiling light as his fingers outstretched toward me. "You won't even know I'm here. I don't even need food or sleep or the necessities. Just... Please. Ten years on your own... Does things to you." More of his arm inched through the door. "Deal?"

I couldn't do it. I couldn't turn him down. I wanted to so bad, but maybe since it was most likely a dream, I would just wake up and he'd be gone. So it didn't matter.

I walked over to the door and hesitantly grabbed his hand. He gripped my palm firmly and shook it with vigor. "God, thanks, Toby, thanks! You won't regret it."

"Uh... Tobias is fine, actually."

"Whatever."

Spencer came all the way through the door and sat on the counter by the sink, propping his lean body up on his elbows. I hadn't seen this kid in ages. I didn't even remember him. A few seconds of tense silence passed by before he spoke.

"So uh, you look good. Still into soccer?"

"Fútbol."

"So, soccer."