Trapped in School (Watty Awards 2012 Nominee)

Chapter Sixteen: Creeper- Ghost Girl

“Heads!” I yelled. The coin flipped through the air like an acrobat and landed with a clink on the kitchen floor. I leaned foreword, but Lucas scooped up the coin in a flash.

“Oi! What are you doing?” I said. Lucas smirked, tucking the coin back in his pocket.

“It was heads, the couch’s all yours,” he said, parading off into the kitchen. “By the way, I like the use of British slang.” I smiled at this. Earlier we had discussed my “wandering accent syndrome” in which every time I listened to someone else speak in another accent, I tended to pick up on it. Lucas yanked open the fridge as I leaned against the counter, watching him as he pulled out a Coke.

“Caffeine before bed?” I said with an eyebrow raised “Didn’t your mother teach you anything?” Lucas popped open the Coke, taking a swing before looking at me with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“This is my way of brushing my teeth before bed,” he said playfully. Then he glanced down at his socked feet and shrugged “Besides, I don’t have a mother.” Before I could respond, he was pacing across the room, suddenly interested in the television. I followed him.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I muttered. Good going Nat! I picked at the frays on my t-shirt, silently berating myself for being so ignorant.

“Don’t be. Seriously, it’s nothing,” Lucas said, not meeting my eyes. I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off. “She left when I was ten, it’s not a big deal.”

We were silent for a while. After hopping from foot to foot anxiously, I got up the courage to walk across the room and flip off the light. The room was filled with an eerie blue light radiating off the television. Lucas strode towards the pile of emergency blankets set up in front of the TV and I plopped down on the couch.

“Do you want the TV on?” Lucas asked at last, breaking the barrier of silence.

“Uh, not really,” I said. Without another word Lucas grabbed the remote off the table, turning off the television and plunging the room into darkness.

I sighed. Curling up on my side, I wiggled my shoulders in an attempt to find a somewhat comfortable position on the lumpy couch. After a few minutes I fell into a sort of half-sleep. This, my friends, is not a good thing, because my “half-sleeps” end up being quite cracktastic.

First my train of thought flew off the tracks, sounding a little something like this:

Uh, this couch hurts. I mean, the school wastes enough money as it is (like why the hell do we need iPads anyways?), why didn’t they use some of that money to buy the teachers a decent couch? I’m pretty sure I’m not the first to sleep on here! I really want to sleep. Come on body, sleep! Sleep. Hey that’s a weird word. Sleeeeeeep. It sounds like sheep. Maybe that’s why people count sleep to sheep. I mean, sheep to sleep. Haha sheeeeeeep. I wonder if Lucas is asleep. I wonder if he likes sheep! I should ask him! Oh wait, no, then he’ll kill me. With a spoon. A rusty spoon.

After that I began hallucinating.

It started as the wisp of a dream in which I found a hula hoop underneath the couch. I carefully stepped over Lucas, suddenly quite excited I would get the chance to hula hoop. But a cold force ripped the toy from my hands and I whined in protest. I laid back on the couch, hearing a female voice laughing from the kitchen. At this point, I opened my eyes for real and saw a woman standing at the foot of the couch. She had long black hair that went past her face and wore a bloody dress. I blinked and she was gone.

“LUCAS!” I screamed. My heart thudding in my chest and I lurched up, breath hitching as I spun around to slap a sleeping Lucas. He groaned.

“Wha?” he mumbled sleeping.

“What, Lucas, not ‘wha.’ And anyways, there was a bloody ghost! Right there, at the edge of my--”

“Bullshit. You were just dreaming Nat, go back to bed,” he said.

Right. Sure. Like I could sleep.

“Lucas,” I whined. I took to poking him, leaning over the couch to prod his arm until he slapped me away. He sat up, giving me a groggy glare that probably wouldn’t scare a kindergartener, much less a determined post-nightmare Natalie.

“What? What do you want me to do? Its not like I’m a Ghost Buster and I can just suck the thing up in a vacuum,” he said.

Oh. Yeah, that was a good point.

After a moment of contemplation, I got the most stupid idea I had ever come up with. It landed somewhere between “Hey, let’s listen to Lucas” and “Maybe I should jump off the roof.” Reaching into the dark, I grabbed Lucas’s arm, pulling him towards me.

“Could you come up here? With me?” I asked. Yuck. My voice sounded so undeniably girly. But honestly, at that point I would have welcomed Snape himself to come share this couch if it meant Creeper-Ghost Girl would leave me alone.

With a sigh, Lucas crawled up onto the couch, pushing me aside and squeezing in behind me. I let out another girly noise--a squeak.

“What are you doing?” I asked. After scooting around a little bit, Lucas stilled, only to sling an arm around my waist. He pulled me closer to him as a blush spread up my face, invisible in the darkness but warm on my face.

“Go to sleep,” he commanded, not answering my question.

That night, I ended up having the exact same nightmare somewhere around two in the morning. But when I woke to find Creeper-Ghost Girl hovering above me, I didn’t feel as scared, because Lucas was right there, his strong arms wrapped around me.

A/N-- So, first of all, a huge apology for the late update again. There was a surprise dance rehersal yesterday and it killed me. Fun fact of the day, Natalie's "half dream" dialouge and the whole ghost hallucination both happened to me in real life. Except I didn't have Lucas there to protect me, instead I ran down the stairs and woke up my sister who proceeded to beat me with a pillow until I left and went to sleep on the couch. Yay for reality! Anyways, remember to vote, thanks!

<3 <3