The City of Dying Embers

Chapter 3

This guy is completely crazy, I thought. Either that or this is some kind of stupid joke. Does he honestly think I'm that stupid?

"You're not making sense."

"Hey, I'd love to talk but I have something to do. See ya around."

And with that he walked off. I would have shouter "Wait!" but there didn't seem to be any point, he looked busy. So I decided to go home. As soon as I walked into the house, my mom came over to me.

"Where have you been? You're usually here by six-thirty!" she said, the relief showing on her face.

"Mom, that was only ten minutes ago." I replied, rolling my eyes.

"I was worried, I saw Shane walk by earlier and you weren't with him. What happened?"

I didn't have time to think of a reason. I certainly wasn't going to tell her the real one. She definetly wouldn't approve of me walking home alone in the dark.

"Mom, I'm fine okay? But I have to go and do my homework."

Then I rushed up the stairs before she got the chance to ask any more questions that I didn't want to answer. Once I arrived in my room, my cell phone rang. I checked the caller ID, it was Shane.

"Hi again Shane!"

"Hey Rosalie, I just wanted to make sure you got home okay."

"Yeah I'm fine" I said for the second time in the last sixty seconds "didn't get eaten by any monsters on the way home."

"Wow really?!" he said with mock surprise "you were lucky. You would've been helpless, without me there to protect you."

"I'm quite capable of defending myself." I said indignantly. This was quite true, I'd taken up karate at the age of eight. Though I'd stopped a couple of years ago, I was still quite able to throw a decent kick.

"Okay! Calm down." he laughed

"You'd better be careful the next time you call me helpless" I said, faking anger "Don't you have homework to do?"

"Uh...Yeah, I was kinda hoping you'd help me with that one....?" he questioned.

"I told you you should have done it before." I teased.

"Please?"

"Well duh. That's what friends are for."

I didn't tell him anything about that guy I saw when he left. It was just too wierd, especially on the phone. I'd probably tell him tomorrow.

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I was in maths class, when suddenly someone came and sat in the chair next to me and started looking at what I was writing. When I saw who it was, I whispered

"What the hell are you doing here?"

It was that idiot I'd seen yesterday.

"Keeping you company." he said matter of factly.

"You know, someone's going to notice and ..."

"no one's going to notice, I told you yesterday." he said, cutting me off "only you can see me ... Well, in this world anyway."

Then as if to prove his point, he got up, stood on the table gave the one behind me the finger. To my surprise, the boy just continued pretending to listen to the professor. He didn't even bat an eyelid.

This was insane.

He sat down again and looked for my reaction. I was about to open my mouth to say something when I realized that to everyone else, I looked like I was talking to myself. Maybe I was, maybe I'd gone crazy. But no, when he touched my shoulder last night, it felt real enough. He must of noticed that when he said

"Okay, yeah...we'd better talk somewhere else later before someone thinks you're crazy and calls an ambulance."

He got up and left, jumping out the open window.

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Hello :-) I tried to write a longer chapter today, to make up for the really short ones before but I don't have very much time to write. Anyway, I'll upload again soon, see you.