He placed the piece on the cardboard. “There,” he said and smiled like he had finished the whole eight thousand pieces.
I couldn’t help smiling. “Only seven thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine to go,” I said.
He didn’t seem to mind my reluctance. He just kept going and soon some of Juliet’s face had grown out of the pieces. I kept pulling my arm but the more I did, the more it seemed to be stuck. I was really getting tired of this situation, but didn’t know what to do. So I stared at Jason who was eagerly building the puzzle on the floor in front of me. Now I saw him searching for a piece of Romeo’s hat. As his fingers went through the pile of pieces I saw the red hat with the green feather. Jason didn’t seem to have seen it and just kept looking.
“There,” I said and pointed with my free hand. “His hat. It was right there on your right.”
Jason searched and picked out the piece. Then he looked at me with a smile.
“That’s the one I was missing. Thanks,” he said, placing Romeo’s hat and completing the head.
I couldn’t help being fascinated by his passion for this puzzle and soon I was just as much into it as he was. I looked for the pieces and directed him to them and in the next couple of hours we made big progress. And I actually had fun. It became like a small competition between us: who could be the first to find a piece we knew where to put. And as it turned out I was quite good at this. Several hours must have passed without us noticing it, when I felt Jason was staring at me intensely. I looked up and met his eyes. For the first time since I became a spirit I felt warm inside.
“What?” I asked.
“Look at you.”
“What about me?”
“You are sitting down here. On the floor. With me.”
I was speechless. My hand wasn’t stuck any longer and I hadn’t even noticed. I realized I was sitting on the floor next to Jason putting the pieces on the cardboard. I had been so caught up in this puzzle, I had forgotten everything around me. Including the fact that I had to go back.
“Wow,” I mumbled.
“I know.”
“Your mom was really right. This is the perfect distraction.”
Jason smiled. Then there was a sound outside the bathroom. Someone was coming up the stairs. Jason froze. Suddenly I saw a strange fear in his eyes. He got up on his feet and shut the door, then he locked it. He looked at me with panic.
“It’s my step-dad. He woke up. You’d better go now!” He kind of yelled and whispered at the same time.
“Okay,” I said and approached the mirror. I heard the door handle turn, then heavy knocking.
“Jason! Are you in there, you little rat?”
“Go!” Jason whispered and signaled that I needed to hurry.
“Who is in there with you? You better not have someone in the house without my knowledge.”
“I don’t,” I heard Jason say, almost crying. “I was just talking to myself … in the mirror.”
The hammering on the door got worse and all of a sudden I didn’t feel like leaving Jason here with that man.
“Jason! Open this door immediately or I swear I will make you regret it,” his step-dad yelled.
Jason shivered. He looked even more frightened than when he saw me for the first time. His whole body trembled while the hammering intensified.
I looked at him and felt an ache in my heart. Then I floated toward him and took his hand. I squeezed it as hard as I could until I knew he felt it.
“I will be back one day to build the rest of the puzzle, I promise,” I said. As I did Jason’s step-dad started kicking the door and now it cracked open.
“Jason!” I heard him roar before I went through the mirror.
Back in the cellar again, I found Abhik sitting asleep on the floor. He had been the only one to wait for me.
I stood for a long time just breathing heavily. I stared into the empty mirror as if I expected to see what was happening in that bathroom after I left. But there was nothing to see. I closed my eyes and thought about Jason. I really wished that I could have helped him in some way.
Chapter 10
During the next couple of weeks I thought a lot about Jason. I felt horrible for not knowing how things ended with his step-dad and if he was all right or not. Several times I thought about going down to the cellar again alone to go through the mirror. But I didn’t even know if the mirror would bring me back to the same place. And I really was afraid to get caught if I tried again.
I tried my best to keep my distance from Portia and her pack. Since they left me that night I didn’t care much for them. Instead I was hanging out with Mick in the kitchen during most of my free time while my mind was thinking of Jason and that angry step-dad. Jason had been so nice to me and I had a horrible feeling that he was in trouble.
I hadn’t told Mick about my night visit in the human house. One day we were sitting in the kitchen and he asked, “What’s on your mind lately? You have been so distant.”
I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
He didn’t believe me. “I think it is something. It certainly doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
I stared at him. “Is it possible for us to be friends with humans?” I asked.
He nodded. “Well in theory, yes, but it is highly unlikely. I don’t think it has ever happened before. Plus you need to remember that they can’t know all that we know. So you would have to keep quiet about a lot of things.”
“If they are in trouble, can we help them?”
“Sure we do that all the time. You know, we watch over our loved ones. Sometimes we even try to help them make the right decisions.”
“But can we help people who are not our family?”
He nodded again. “Yeah, sure…” Then he stopped and looked at me. “We can, but you can’t. You are still a student, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I sighed.
“Have you been messing with humans?”
I was a terrible liar even when I had been alive so I just didn’t answer him. Instead I used an old trick: to avoid answering a question, you divert the conversation by asking another question.
“So when do we get to help the humans? How long do we have to be at this school?”
“About three years. You have a lot of things to learn. But you won’t graduate if your teachers and Salathiel don’t think you are ready for what comes next. You don’t fail at this school; you just get to take the classes again. … You didn’t answer my question. Have you been outside the Academy’s premises?”
“No.”
I felt like I blushed. It wasn’t all a lie; I mean we sort of stayed at the school. We just left through a mirror, but we didn’t exactly leave the Academy, so I didn’t feel like I lied. Not so much, that is.
He looked at me suspiciously. “Good. Because you will get in really serious trouble if you do.”
I nodded. I knew that. “So what does come next?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said the teachers and Salathiel have to decide if a student is ready for what comes next. But what is it exactly?”
“I can’t tell you that. You will see it for yourself soon enough,” he said with a small smile.
As time went by the more I worried about Jason. What if his step-dad had done something horrible to him after I left? That purple bruise on his head, could his step-dad have given it to him? Was that why he didn’t want to talk about it?
In class I didn’t listen anymore and when Abhik or Mick talked to me I answered in short sentences, not really thinking about what I was saying. I was really worried. I hated the fact that Jason could be in trouble because of me.
Then one night I had enough. I had been awake several nights in a row and, remembering what Mick said about not really needing sleep, I got out of bed and found my way down to the cellar again.
The mirror was still there, beautiful and bright although there was no light in the room. I approached it, taking in a couple of deep breaths and pr
eparing myself for the fact that I might end up somewhere completely else.
I put both my palms on the mirror and pressed myself through, this time with no resistance and not much exhaustion. I had gotten much better at this. Maybe it was the fact that I had my mind somewhere else, maybe I just really wanted to go through, but I landed on the same bathroom floor in Jason’s house. I immediately recognized the white tiles.
I opened the broken and repaired bathroom door and stuck my head out in the hall. The house seemed quiet.
Everyone must be asleep, I thought.
I found Jason’s door and opened it, trying to make as little noise as possibly. There he was, sound asleep in his bed. I approached him and blew some air carefully in his hair. Then he opened his eyes and smiled at me. I froze for a second. His face was badly beaten up. His one arm sticking out under the t-shirt was filled with bruises as well.
“I knew you would come back,” he said and sat up. “I have been waiting for you every night, checking the bathroom.”
“What happened to your face?”
“Nothing. I was in a fight.” He got up from his bed and started looking for his pants on the floor.
“With your step-dad?”
He stopped the search.
“Well … If you really have to know, then yes.” He looked at me and saw my concern. Then he sighed. “Listen. Don’t worry about it,” he said with an awkward smile. “It was nothing. I’ll be fine.”
I had embarrassed him, I could tell by the look on his face. He didn’t like to appear weak in front of me.
“So how have you been?” he asked. He found his jeans and began to put them on.
“Busy with school, I guess,” I lied. I didn’t want him to know that I had been worried about him day and night. I looked out the window. It was another beautiful and clear starry night.
“Good. Busy is good. That keeps your mind of things.”
“It sure does,” I said and smiled. As I turned my head my eyes caught something on the floor. It was our puzzle, all the pieces in one big pile, the cardboard ripped into small pieces.
“What happened to our puzzle?” I said.
He looked at it as well. “We might have to start over,” he laughed, a little embarrassed. “I tried to collect all the pieces, but I’m not sure I got them all.”
I sighed. “Let me guess, your step-dad?”
Jason nodded. “After you left he went kind of crazy and started throwing things around in the bathroom. He was sure I was hiding someone and he searched the whole house. What an idiot.”
“Was that when he did that to you?” I grabbed his arm and turned it so I better could see all the bruises. Jason pulled his arm away.
“Nah. That was another time. He just smacked me around for awhile. It was nothing, really.”
I looked at him like I definitely didn’t believe him. Being smacked around could never be nothing. It wasn’t until now that I remembered that time passed faster on earth so what had been only weeks for me had been months for him.
“Really. It’s nothing. I’m tough, you know. I can handle it.”
He was tough and that was a good thing. He was a big guy, tall and muscular, and that was a good thing too. But he didn’t seem like the fighting type. My guess was that he would never fight back.
“Just be careful, okay?”
He smiled and approached me. He put a shirt over his head and pulled it on. It was tight on his body and made him look strong.
“I’m a big boy,” he said with that boyish smile of his.
I visited Jason every night after that. It became a habit and something I would look forward to all day in school. We began working on the puzzle again and it came along nicely, but slowly, since we spent most of our time talking about everything and nothing. About his dreams for his future, about the universe, about school and his friends, and I would even sometimes grumble about Portia and her pack.
I couldn’t quite figure out if I wanted to see him so badly because I wanted to keep an eye on him in order to protect him or if it was because I was falling for him, but I enjoyed the nightly visits and after a couple of weeks we became really close friends. Naturally I couldn’t tell him much about my life, since I still didn’t remember much about my life on earth. I had to keep most of my life at the Academy secret, so we mostly spoke about him. But after some time it became harder and harder to avoid all of his many questions. He kept asking what it was like and I tried hard not to make it sound great. I didn’t want him to wish he were dead.
“But you can fly! That must be so awesome,” he said one day when we were staring at the stars from the window in his room. “You can go anywhere you want in the world. You could even visit the stars!”
“Well I don’t know about the stars, but yes, I can fly anywhere I want to,” I said, trying not to seem to enthusiastic. But that was, in fact, one of the things I really loved about being a spirit.
“And the going through doors and mirrors and stuff, that is so cool.”
“I guess it is,” I said. “But it also means you have no physical body.”
He looked at me with big eyes. “No body. Just think of it. My step-dad could hit me all he wanted to but never hurt me.”
I smiled and looked into his soft brown eyes. They were so deep, like I could disappear in them. They were really puppy eyes, but at the same time he had that bad-boy look on his face. Like he was about to get me into deep trouble soon. Like he would devour me. How he managed to have both things going for him, I had no idea. But it worked. If I had had any physical legs they would have been swept away from under me just by his look.
“Tell me, what is it like to fly? Come on, please tell me. Pleease?”
I sighed. His white smile and brown eyes were softening me. I reached out my hand toward him. “Take my hand.”
He grabbed for it but went straight through a couple of times. Then I turned my hand so the palm was facing up and told him to place his flat on top of mine. He looked at me as he did and suddenly I felt the warmth from his hand in mine. Then I folded my fingers into his and held on tight. I had been practicing and was getting better at holding onto things. My heart was racing and I had never felt this alive.
I opened the window and pulled his hand closer. Then I floated out the window, into thin air while he stayed at the windowsill still holding my hand. He looked at me a little scared but still smiling.
“Come on,” I said with a big smile. “Take my other hand, and I will show you what it is like.”
“You mean …?”
I nodded.
“Come on. Just take a step out.”
I had gotten better at flying lately, and though I had never tried to fly with a human before, I knew I could do it.
“Are you sure about this?” He asked a little concerned.
“Just trust me.”
Jason’s eyes looked at the ground beneath him. He knew he would hurt himself badly if he hit the ground from there.
“Okay,” he said.
He grabbed my other hand and closed his eyes. Then he took a step toward me, falling a little downwards before I could pull him up. The falling caused him to shriek and open his eyes but I managed to pull him close to me and turn him around so I could hold my arms around his back. Then with all my strength I soared into the air.
Jason screamed ecstatically when we rose high above the house and he looked down at the small trees and cars beneath us.
It was so quiet up there in the air. No human noise and no lights. The stars shone brighter than ever in the black sky above us, and we both felt like we could just reach out and touch them.
“This is amazing,” he whispered as we floated through a small cloud. He reached his hand out and tried to touch it.
“Your earthly body goes right through it, but when you are a spirit you can actually touch it and play with clouds. Sometimes we surf on them,” I said.
“So is it true that Angels jump on the clouds?”
“I can?
??t speak for Angels, but we spirits do. It’s kind of neat.”
“I bet it is,” he said pensively.
“Do you want to try something fun?” I asked.
He smiled and nodded.
“Hold on,” I said.
Two seconds later I turned our heads toward the ground and we started falling in the direction of Jason’s house.
He screamed, “Stop, stop, you are killing us! We’ll hit the house!”
Then just a second before we would have hit the house, I turned around and soared again holding on to him tight.
Jason burst into a huge laugh. When we were back high in the air again he yelled while still laughing. “That was the wildest roller-coaster ride I have ever had.”
I suddenly felt uncomfortable realizing how close our bodies were. Strangely enough, I felt his body and the warmth coming from it. It was a tickling feeling and it was so strong and powerful that I was almost shaking. The smell of his hair, the feeling of him so close to me was intoxicating.
While I was still holding on to him, he managed to turn around and we were now face to face.
“You sure know how to distract a guy from his problems,” he said.
I smiled shyly and tried to avoid his eyes. I really liked being this close to him. It felt nice. But I was afraid to like it too much. I didn’t want to put anything into our relationship that he didn’t want too. I had to realize that I was dead, that I had no physical body, and how could an earthly boy ever fall for that?
But I was so wrong. A moment later Jason grabbed my chin and turned my head toward his. He had a serious look on his face. Gently he placed his fingers on my cheek and touched it slowly, careful not to go through. He was so gentle I felt like I was made of paper, that he was afraid I might break.
Then he kissed me. His lips felt soft and gentle on mine.
The stars seemed to dance above us. Later I realized we were in fact spinning around in the air. I felt such an incredible warmth running through my spirit body, a feeling I thought I was not capable of having. My heart felt like it would jump right out of my chest. When the kiss was over I was so confused that I accidentally let go of him.