Haunted

Did it sound right, that I wanted to punch every guy that stared at her? Even the male teachers would stair after her. They would look away only for a few seconds, when I would put my arm around her shoulders, but they would look again. It was wrong on so many levels. She was my friend-okay dead friend-but damn it, she was still my friend and if she wasn’t dead....then what? Should I ask her out? She not a ghost right now, so if she stayed like this, could we go out?

No, she dead. A ghost of a girl, with something to do. That is all that it is. So why can't I like her a little more right now? Because my heart will be broken at the end of this? Because, she will cross over and I'll never see her again?

Alice looks up at me, as the last bell goes off. "You can stop guarding me now," she tells me, as we stop by our lockers.

"Was I make you feel uncomfortable?" I ask, feeling a little nervous.

She shakes her head, as she throws her books she doesn't need in the locker and locks it. "It's not that, it's just what my ex use to do," she tells me.

I feel my spin snap, just hearing the ex part. I don't need to hear his name. "Maybe he was just protecting you or telling everyone, that you were hands off and that you were his?" Why was I sticking up for her ex? The guy I've never met. So why, was it like pins and needles under my skin, just thinking of who he was?

We head to the parking lot, as about everyone else does. "Actually no, it was something totally different," she tells me.

"What?" no she has me hanging on by a hook like a fish.

She gives me a weak smile. "You mind driving us somewhere and I'll tell you,"

"Where?" I ask, as I open the outside door for her.

"My grave," she whispers oh so softly.

***

Holly crap, we were really here. We were in a graveyard. Did this count as a date? No, not possible. We get out of my car and she leads the, way weaving around headstones. My body becomes alert, bells go off in my head, telling me that we aren't alone. Souls were here and if I kept the wall up, like I did to Alice sometimes, I should be fine.

She finally stops at a headstone, with an outline of flowers on the headstone and her name, along with her year of birth and birthday, then the day she died. With words scribbled at the bottom saying, she is loved and an angle with wings, gauding everyone.

She sits down, in front of fresh flowers, that could have been delivered just today. "Erik wasn't really my boyfriend at the get go," she tells me, then pats the ground next to her, so I sit down. "It was more of a joke, his friends put him up to it. Some girl had just broken up with him, his friends thought, that if he started dating a day after the fact, that it would be a slap to the face to her. I bumped into him, walking out of the girl bathroom and that's when the plan started," she puts her elbows on her knees and leans forward, as if trying to go into the past, to live it all over again. "I had heard, that they broke up. But not in a million years, did I think he would "date" me. Within a few days, word spread that he had a new girl and of course his ex heard about it and was flipping out, just to find out who I was. She corned me in the girl bathroom, called me all sort of names and told me, that he had raped her and that's why she broke it off." she puts her finger in the soft ground and just moves it around, making no picture at all, just lines with twists and turns. "I asked him about it, after the fact. Course he asked first, what happened to my eye," she looks up at me, with a crooked smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. "The bitch punched me in the eye, just cause I said I didn’t believe her," she then looks back down to the ground. "After awhile, he told me that his friends had been messing around, telling him to find someone fast, to get back at his ex. Well he got me and since then, we had been glowed to the hip for the most part."

She takes in a deep breath, closes her eyes and slowly lets it out, but I still see a tear roll down her face. "A month or so had passed and we were happy. Well his ex wasn't of course. She was so pissed, that he didn't go back to her and grovel. Well she took her anger out on me,"

She so quiet for so long, I can’t stop from asking the question. I just have to know what happened. "So what happened?"

"She tried to blow up my car,"

"What?!" I yell.

She shakes her head, then looks at me right in the eye. "She was smart with science, so she figured, if my car blew up there would be no evidence. Well, I had just unlocked my car, and something must had happened, cause I was several feet away and when the locks popped up, my car just exploded."

"We-We're you hurt?" I choke back.

She shakes her head again. "Nothing to bad, just some burns that went away." she goes on with the main point of her past. "Anyways, they found out that it was her that did it and Erik was so pissed, that he wanted me to put a restraining order against her. Well what would had that done? She would still go to our school? Plus she got locked up. She was eighteen at the time and I was sixteen at the time."

"Any idea what happened to her? She could killed you and your family," I say, trying to help with the great mystery.

She shakes her head. "If it was her, her beef would had been with me. Not my hole family. It would had been just me, if she was planning on killing anyone." she looks back at the headstone. "That would had been the better about going it. Then my family would still be alive," she whispers.

"Then we would had never met," I point out.

She shakes her head, but she doesn't look at me, it's as if she is reliving her death all over again. "The person that killed us, I can remember the person body build. It wasn't a woman. The build was to big, it was a man. If it had been Erik ex, she would want to scorn me, as I did her. But her method is killing." she tells me.

I'm about to say something, until my phone goes off. I pull out my phone and pick it up. "Hey dad, what's up?"

"There is a guy here, he's wanting to look around in the house. He use to date the young girl that lived in the house. We said he could, but your mother, sister and I are heading out to go shopping. Can you get home and let him in? He said he wouldn't take long. Just make sure he doesn't take anything," he says.

"Yeah sure," I hang up and look at Alice, as she just stairs at the headstone blankly. "You okay?" placing my hand on her shoulder, she jolts up on her feet, grabs the flowers and throws them. "What did you do for that?" I ask amazed of how well her throwing arm is.

She balls up her fists. "When I was looking at the flowers, I seen someone put them there. They knew what happened to me. I think, it was the killer, here to see if I was still in the ground." she starts walking to the car. "Let's go, if he is still around here, then he might live in town," she tells me.

Scrambling to my feet, I run after her. "We have to head home, some guy is at the house, wanting to look around." I tell her catching up.

"Who?" she asks getting in the car first.

Getting in with her, I start up the car. "You're ex," my throat closes up, just at the thought of that guy around the house and possible wanting to look in her old room. There is still a lot of stuff of her's in that room. Would I have time to hide it?

She takes off the bracelet. "Let's go," she says softly.