Caffeine and Magix

Whoo! I went a little over! That was a fun challenge and now I have another project in my pile lol. Remember to tag yours Caffeine Challenge so I can find it!

Here’s mine below:

First line: You talk to the dead fairly regularly. Lately, you’ve gotten the distinct impression that the dead wish you’d just shut up.

You talk to the dead fairly regularly. Lately, you’ve gotten the distinct impression that the dead wish you’d just shut up.

“You’d think they’d at least tell me,” you mutter, hunching your shoulders. The walk to school is usually filled with the spirits of the recently departed, all wishing you a good day. Mrs. Romero, for example, hangs out at the intersection of George and Seventh, but not today. Today it’s just Mr. Romero, Mrs. Romero’s still living husband. He’s pruning the hedges where he buried Mrs. Romero seven years ago.

“Good morning, Antonia,” Mr. Romero says, waving with the garden shears. He tips the straw hat on his head to you. “School today?”

“Like every day,” you say, trying to sound cheerful. You don’t like talking to Mr. Romero. Usually you tip off the police about murderers, but Mrs. Romero had insisted you leave her husband alone until he got to see their grandchildren born. You think the dead are often too kind.

You keep walking, eyes scanning the street for any of your undead friends. Ghost friends? Ghostly acquaintances?

“What are we?” you ask the air. No one responds.

You make it to your high school without having encountered a single spirit. You frown at the principal’s office, the usual haunt of Former Principal Ferrera, the stern, vaguely malevolent spirit that makes the PA system screech. He’s absent, just like he has been for the last three days.

You head into math, hands clenched around the straps of your backpack, with your head down.

“‘Sup, Jennifer Love Hewitt,” Jean Paul says as you drop into the seat next to him. He pauses as if waiting for you to respond. When you don’t, he sighs. “Ghost Whisperer? She plays a medium? Ring any bells?”

Normally you’d be all up for bantering with Jean Paul. You’re not quite friends, but he’s by far the nicest person at school. In the mood you’re in, that’s even sadder than usual.

“Am I annoying?” you ask him, staring at the whiteboard. There’s a very faint outline of a penis, leftover from when Kavi, the most popular girl in the grade, tried to impress Tevin, the most popular boy in the grade. You hadn’t found it nearly as funny as the rest of the class. Then again, the rest of the class hadn’t been able to see Mrs. Ng, the former math teacher, screeching out her lungs at the “classroom defacement.” You drop your head onto your desk. “Wait, don’t answer that.”

Jean Paul’s mouth snaps shut with an audible click. “Dude, what’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” you say, turning your head so you can watch for Mr. Indermill’s entrance. He hates walking into a chatting class and is known to keep more than a few students during lunch for interrupting his lesson. “Just…what does it mean if someone’s avoiding you?”

Jean Paul raises an eyebrow. “They could just be buys, Antonia. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you.”

This, surprisingly, does not make you feel better. And by surprisingly, you mean unsurprisingly. Jean Paul isn’t your friend for a reason.

“Good morning class,” an unknown man says, striding into the classroom. He’s dressed much less formally than any teacher you’ve ever seen at this school in a graphic tee, jeans and a sports jacket. His skin is the same color as his hair, the exact same shade of brown, and his eyes stand out by being just a little darker. Overall, he gives the appearance of a college student or maybe a mature senior. “I’m your substitute, Mr. Flowers. Mr. Indermill had to call out sick.”

The class murmurs for a moment. Mr. Indermill never calls out sick. There’s a rumor that he once passed out in class. When he woke up, he refused to get checked out and kept right on teaching.

“Is…is he dying?” Kavi asks, raising her hand belatedly.

Mr. Flowers laughs much too brightly. “No! Just a cold. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure that he’ll be back in no time. Now! I have to confess that I don’t have his lesson plans, due to the sudden nature of his illness. Could someone tell me what you’ve all been working on? How about…” He consults the seating chart. “Antonia?”

You start at your name, unused to being called on. Even the teachers at this school tend to ignore your existence. “Um, derivatives. We were supposed to start a unit on derivatives.”

Mr. Flowers’ eyebrows fly up. “Wow, that’s pretty advanced! I’m sorry to say that I don’t have much, uh, experience with derivatives.” He shuffles a few papers on the podium in front of him and frowns. “And I can’t seem to find the teacher’s copy of the textbook…you know what? Why don’t I give you guys today off, hmm? I’m sure Mr. Indermill won’t mind.”

You are very certain that he will mind. By the uncertain looks the class is exchanging, they’re pretty sure as well.

“I know,” Mr. Flowers says, clapping his hands. “Let’s play a little game! It’s nearly Halloween, let’s make it a scary game.”

Your brow furrows. The way that Mr. Flowers said that almost seems…fake? And it’s not nearly Halloween at all, Halloween being a month away. Moreover, is there such a thing as a Halloween game?

“Here’s how it will go,” Mr. Flowers says. He walks around the podium so he can stand in front of the class, hands in his pockets and an easy grin on his lips. “I’m thinking of a number between seven and thirty-eight! Whoever can guess that number moves onto the next round! We’ll keep going until we have a winner.”

“What do we win?” Jean Paul asks, leaning forward in his seat.

“How is that a scary game?” you ask, brow furrowing further.

“How about I’ll treat the winner to whatever they want in the cafeteria?” Mr. Flowers asks. He takes his hands out of his pockets and crosses his arms, his smile a little strained as he pointedly ignores your question. “Alright, I have my number! Who wants to go first?”

“Me,” Jean Paul says confidently. He rubs his hands together and brings them to his temple. “Alright, I guess that it’s–”

“Wait,” Yvonne says from the back of the room. You turn to see that she’s turned away from her sketch pad for once. “If he guesses and gets it wrong, doesn’t that mean the rest of us have a better chance?”

Mr. Flowers snaps his fingers. “Right! That’s great math. Good awareness of odds. Alright then, all of you come up. We’ll write down our guesses and reveal them at the same time. Come on, come on, don’t be shy.”

You stay seated as the rest of the class surrounds the podium. You’d just get pushed out of the way anyway and you don’t mind ‘guessing’ last. You already know what number Mr. Flowers is thinking of. It’s part of your gifts though it’s hardly useful since it’s not exactly like telepathy. You just know it. You know a lot of things.

Just like you know that there is at least one ghost who seems to have forgotten to avoid you like the plague.

Your head snaps to the door just as Paloma the Nurse floats by. She’d been the nurse at your school fifty years ago. She still bears marks from when the building caved in on her head during the infamous earthquake. The trauma still makes her a little more addled than most, a little more prone to the incomprehensible speak most ghosts her age use.

Still, you haven’t seen her for the last few days either and you are sick of it.

“Excuse me,” you say, raising your hand. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh,” Mr. Flowers says from inside the circle of students. He’s a good foot taller than all of them except Jean Paul who’s only a few inches shorter. “Well, um, why don’t you guess before you go?” He thrusts out a notepad to you and winks. “I won’t show anyone else!”

You are so distracted by Paloma that you just write down the number, no hesitation. It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re sure someone else will have guessed the same. You thrust the pad of paper back to him and nearly run out the door.

Paloma is halfway down the hall, ambling from one wall to the other in a sort of soft-shoe routine. She’s wearing the corduroy skirt that was popular during her time though her hair has fallen out of the bun a woman her age normally wore. To be fair, some of her brains fell out too when she died.

“Paloma!” you hiss, jogging up to her. You scan the hall and are glad to see that it’s empty. You hate it when people see you talking to yourself. It makes you look like a complete freak. “Wait up!”

Paloma’s ghostly form spins slowly, the vaguely vacant look on her face a welcome sight. She smiles at you hazily. “Hello. What can I do for you today?”

“You can tell me why everyone’s avoiding me,” you say, crossing your arms. Your lips thin as she continues to look over your head at something in the far distance. “Hey! Why are you guys avoiding me?”

Paloma hums softly, one ragged nail coming up to tap her chin. “That sounds serious. How would you describe your pain level?”

You exhale through your teeth, frustrated. Paloma’s one of those spirits that gets stuck in the routines she established in life. She thinks you’re a patient. “Pretty severe, Paloma. You guys didn’t have to scatter to get rid of me, you know. I can take a hint.”

Paloma’s thick eyebrows lower. “Get rid of you? Why would we…?” She trails off as her eyes struggle to gain focus. “We don’t want…” Her eyes clear and she shakes her head. She looks down at you. “Oh, Antonia, good morning! It’s been a–” She breaks off abruptly, eyes going wide. “Oh, no, no, no, Antonia. I’m not supposed to– you’re not supposed to– oh dear.”

“What?” you ask, tired of not understanding. When she turns, motions jerky, you dart through her, willing to deal with the icy feeling her incorporeal form gives you, to get ahead of her. “What are you not supposed to do?”

Paloma stops, wringing her hands. “Oh! I’m sorry, Antonia, but I’m not supposed to talk to you! Or be seen by you or tell you that I’m not supposed to talk to you or–”

“I get the idea,” you interrupt, holding out a hand. “But why? Can’t you at least tell me that before you disappear again?”

“It’s not forever,” Paloma says, face softening as she takes in the pain in your voice. She reaches out and runs an icy hand over your hair. “It’s just until they leave.”

“They?” you ask, dropping your arms back to your sides. “Who are they?”

“We don’t want to lose you, see,” Paloma continues, still stroking your hair. “Things have been so much better since you came. Why Jesus moved on just last week and he’s been around for years and–”

“I don’t want to leave either,” you say and it’s true. This is the first town you’ve lived in where you’ve made friends, even if they are ghosts. “But who are they?”

“They’re looking for you,” Paloma tells you. Anger tints her aura a faint red. “ We can’t let them find you, but they know how! They can sense these things. Or they have tests. Jordan didn’t tell me which…”

“Jordan,” you say. You should have known. The man is so controlling for a ghost, always telling you who to exorcise or who to ignore. “Of course.” You shake your head. “But I still don’t know who they are. Why are they looking for me?”

“To take you,” Paloma whispers. She looks up and down the hall. “We can’t let them take you. But we can’t stop them if they find you so we–” Her eyes widen. “We disappeared so you wouldn’t see us. So they wouldn’t see you seeing us. Oh no, no, no, no.” She begins to fade, still shaking her head.

“Paloma!” You reach out for her though you know it won’t do any good. “But who are they? If you tell me I can avoid them–” She disappears entirely, leaving you alone in the hallway.

You drop your hands, staring at the spot she was. So the ghosts are avoiding you, but not because you’re annoying. It’s because there’s someone looking for you, someone they say they can’t stop.

It suddenly occurs to you that ghosts can’t stop the living.

Chills run up your back. You’ve been hounded by ghosts before, of course you have. But people? People generally leave you alone. The thought of someone living out there looking for you is scary.

You shuffle back to class, deep in thought. Paloma said that “they” would have tests. Maybe one to see if you can see ghosts or something. That’s fine though, now that you know, you just won’t react. You’ll wait for Jordan to reappear and tell you what this is all about.

Satisfied with your plan, you push open the classroom door.

“Oh come on!”

“That’s not even fair–”

“Let’s do it again! I want to–”

Jean Paul turns and faux-pouts when he sees you. “Antonia! You won the game.” He faux-scowls. “By cheating.”

“I didn’t cheat,” you say, uncomfortable with all the eyes on you. “I just guessed a number.”

“Yes,” Mr. Flowers says. There’s something in his voice, something like excitement. “Though I’m afraid I cheated a bit as well.”

“You did,” Kavi says petulantly. There’s a chorus of agreement.

You take a step back. Mr. Flowers is looking at you intensely. You feel your unease mounting. “I-I just guessed a number,” you say again.

Mr. Flowers turns the notepad around. On it, written in your handwriting, is your number.

“Yes,” Mr. Flowers repeats. “But I said a number between seven and thirty-eight.” He turns flips to the next page on the notepad. “And yet we both still have the same number.”

Eighty-Seven.

“So,” Mr. Flowers continues, his smile seeming more predatory than before. “I believe I owe you a cafeteria treat, hmmm?”

You swallow heavily and debate running.