* * *
Ouch. My legs were insanely tired as I pedalled my bike to the pool the next day after school. Lara and I were about to teach our second swimming lesson of the term. My little brats were waiting for me in lane two. They splashed me as I got in.
'Can Lara teach us again this week? She's more fun than you,' they teased. What little nervous respect they'd had for me last week had clearly disappeared. I punished them with a gruelling first set. I looked over at Lara and was pleased to see that her kids had lost their shyness too. They were bombarding Lara with questions about her love life.
A blur of splashing, bubbles, and flailing arms went past, and soon it was time for the last lesson of the day. I glanced over at the clock by the bleachers, hoping that the lesson would go by quickly. I'd been soaking for so long I was starting to look like a sultana.
A lone, forlorn figure caught my eye.
It was Alan, sitting in the bleachers. He must come here every week. His boggly blue eyes were downcast, and his angelic face looked despondent. I felt a surge of pity for him. I couldn't even imagine losing both a mum and a brother, especially so close together. At least he'd managed not to drown this week. I watched as a lifeguard approached him.
'Hey buddy. How're you doing today? You had us scared last week,' I heard faintly, before—Splash!—I was distracted by the oversized ten-year-old who had cannonballed into my lane, ready for his lesson.
Splash! Splash!
Two more oversized lumps arrived for their lesson.
'Guys, I told you last week. No bombing!' I scolded them.
Alan was still sitting alone when I'd finally dismissed my last students. A chance to talk to him without seeming like a stalker—this was too good an opportunity to miss.
Alan didn't even raise his gaze as I approached. He was slowly shovelling food from a plastic container into his mouth. The step-monster must have packed his lunch for once. I decided to keep it simple.
'Hi,' I sat down next to him. 'Do you remember me?'
Alan slowly turned his head and stared vacantly at my face. After a few seconds, a faint flicker of recognition registered in his eyes. Somewhere, deep down in his consciousness, he was listening, and he remembered me.
I was soon overcome by an unnatural feeling of nausea. My head felt heavy and my stomach lurched. I was going to be sick all over Alan! Instinctively, I leaned forward and cradled my head in my hands.
Out of nowhere, a voice inside my head cut through the nausea.
'I remember. Please help.'
It was unmistakably Alan.
I was totally freaked out. Alan was sitting right next to me. What was his voice doing in my head?
At least, I would have been freaked out if I hadn't felt so cripplingly sick.
'How did you do that?' I demanded angrily.
Alan was staring vacantly at his food again. He didn't answer me. My words didn't even seem to register on his face.
'Why are you talking in my head?' I demanded again, a little shrilly. I must have sounded like a crazy woman.
Once again, Alan showed no sign he'd heard me. He was either a world master at the silent treatment, or couldn't hear me.
I grabbed his arm.
'Alan!'
At my touch, Alan flinched.
'I'm … not … what … feel … sick…' he muttered.
He couldn't even complete a sentence. I was pretty sure he wasn't faking it. That is, until he reached for another mouthful of his food.
Now this, I'm sorry to say, really got on my nerves. Here I was, wet and tired, I'd wasted countless hours over the past week trying to work out what was wrong with him, and all he could do was ignore me and eat.
'Give that to me!' I snatched the container of food out of his hands angrily. 'Don't you know it's rude to ignore people!'
Unfortunately, I'd overestimated the strength of Alan's grip on the container. Food flew from the plastic box, covering my lap and most of the empty seat next to me.
'Now look what you've done,' I muttered, as I started to pick soggy pieces of food from my still wet legs. I felt slightly guilty that I'd ruined his lunch. Although, maybe he should be happy about that, judging from the muck that was on my legs. It looked disgusting: soggy lettuce leaves, pieces of carrot that still had dirt in the skin, slices of tomato that I swear were rotten. And then there was the weird white, pasty powder that coated everything.
I gasped.
White powder on his food?
Then it hit me. The last time Alan's voice had been inside my head, he'd been drowning. He had been on the brink of death. Maybe Alan was in danger now. The weird white powder that he was eating might be poison! Chris was right. Alan was being drugged.
'Alan, who made this for you?' I demanded.
He still wasn't listening to me. In fact, his face had gone a nasty shade of grey.
Suddenly, the nausea washed over me again. Simultaneously, Alan's head slumped down into my lap. Not a good place to be, considering the layer of muck in it—not to mention the strong urge to chunder that I was currently experiencing.
A voice in my head interrupted my thoughts.
'Help me,' it pleaded.
My head felt like it was going to explode. I willed myself to focus.
'Who made this for you?' I repeated my question, but this time in my head. I was breaking out into a cold sweat now. I was going to pass out. I didn't know how much longer I could stand this.
'Sharelle,' the voice replied. He could hear me! I was right. His stepmum had made the food.
I felt invigorated by his response. Finally, I was getting to him.
'Alan, listen to me very carefully,' I willed. 'Can you hear me?' I trembled, as another wave of nausea washed over me.
'Yes,' the mental voice glimmered faintly.
'I think you're being poisoned. Don't eat anything Sharelle gives you. I'm going to try to help you, but you can't eat anything she gives you. Do you understand?'
A few seconds passed, then the voice returned to my head.
'Okay,' it replied, this time even more faintly. The nausea was going now. Alan was going to be okay. I could feel it. He wasn't going to die tonight. So long as he didn't eat any more of the tainted salad, that is.
But it wasn't just the nausea that was disappearing. I could feel my connection to Alan diminishing too. I had to get through to him, while he could still hear.
'Alan, I'm going to give you my phone number. Don't eat anything Sharelle gives you. Call me if you need help. Do you understand?' I felt almost normal again, and I could barely feel Alan's presence in my mind. He definitely wasn't going to die. At least, not this afternoon. I just hoped he could still hear me.
'Ye—,' the voice disappeared.
I felt Alan's head lifting from my lap. I opened my eyes.
Alan's mobile phone was poking out of his pocket. I pulled it out.
'I'm putting my number in your phone under Fiona, and I've called myself so that I have a copy of your phone number too. Call me, if you need anything.'
Alan had gone back into blank-stare mode. I hoped that something had got through to him. He couldn't just keep making me feel like a feverish zombie and popping into my head every time I needed to talk to him. It was a very inefficient and painful way to communicate. I saved my number in his phone and returned it to his pocket.
I felt powerless. I was totally convinced that his stepmum was poisoning him, but there was nothing I could do. I had no evidence, and the police were hardly likely to listen to a sixteen-year-old girl. My ability to see ghosts was totally useless because, in the world of the living, I was just a powerless, invisible teenager. I didn't even know why Chris and Ella had bothered to come to me for help. As ghosts, they could probably do a better job of watching over Alan's food supply than I could. I would have to warn them to keep an eye on him while I worked out what to do next.
'ALAN! Get here now, you useless boy!'
I looked up to see what could only be Sharelle. A s
kinny woman in sky-high stilettos and a tight mini-skirt tottered abruptly across the wet concrete. Her masses of artificially red curly hair bounced as she strutted. Her face would have been pretty if it weren't for the layers of make-up and the nasty scowl plastered across it. It felt so wrong to be letting Alan go home with her; but there was nothing I could do. I briefly considered telling Sharelle that I knew what she was up to, and that I was going to stop her, but a confrontation would just tip Sharelle off and she'd hasten her efforts to kill Alan.
Glaring at me suspiciously, Sharelle grabbed Alan with one arm, his bag with the other, and dragged him away.
'I tell you every week to wait outside. Do you take pleasure in annoying me?' I could hear the beginning of a rant that was going to make my mum look like a pushover.
I sighed.
I wished there was some way I could protect Alan.