The Ghost of the Lake

Chapter 24

Her pale cold hands are on his shoulders. Her face is, as always, pale as if it has never seen a day of daylight. Her mouth is twisted into a frown. Her eyes are full of emptiness. One thing I've never noticed is that what should be the white part of her eye, the sclera, and her iris are all black as the night and her pupil is as white as freshly fallen snow. That scares me the most.

"Uhhh...," I begin. Her eyes follow every muscle I move. It seems as if Reu is not feeling a thing. "R-r-reu...ar-r-re y-y-you r-ready to g-go?" I ask stuttering.

Reu looks up from his papers finally acknowledging me. He looks surprised. "Yeah I'm ready. How long have you been standing there?" he asks me. "And did you just stutter? I thought you had gotten over it last year?"

Stuttering had been a big problem for me for like two thirds of my life. I had finally started to speak fluently last year. Over the last few months, I have noticed that I repeated some sounds.

I shake my head yes. "I th-thought I had-d," I reply. The ghost was still staring at me with an intense feeling.

"Does it only happen when you are nervous? I have heard that thats what happens to some people." His teaching skills kicking in.

"No I d-don't think s-so." The ghost doesn't let go of Reu's shoulders. She keeps holding on tightly.

"Well I hope you are able to control it. It could ruin your future career."

I shrug. My eyes stay glued onto the ghost. She lets go of Rue and walks towards me. I wonder if Rue sees the petrified look on my face.

"Ye-yeah I h-hop-pe so t-too," I reply looking into the face of the ghost.

He smiles. "Well we should be going," he says.

I nod. He walks towards the door and opens it. I stay focused on the ghost. I hear Rue clear his throat and the ghost disappears. I turn around and see that Rue is looking at me with a concerned look on his face.

"Are you ok, Opal?"

I nod again, and walk towards him.

"Are you sure? Now that I notice, you look kind of pale."

"I'm f-fine. L-lets go g-get J-j-jackson a-nd M-may and l-leave," I say forcibly. I hate how I stutter. I used to get teased for that.

I exit the room and walk down the stairs. Rue follows me. We reach the end of the stairs. He goes into the living room where Nelly is still watching her show. I go into the kitchen and out the back door.

I open the garage and look around. Reu has done a great job of fixing it up. It is big enough to fit two cars and a small vehicle, like the four-wheeler.

Rue comes out with Jackson and May. I open the side door of the car. He helps Jackson settle into the back of the car. May joins him. I get into the passenger seat. Rue gets out the keys and starts the engine.

He puts the car in reverse and pulls out of the garage. Just as the garage door was closing, I see a shadow on the wall. Rue seemed to see it too because he furrowed his eyebrows.

"Why that look of bafflement on your face," I ask him.

"Huh? Oh I thought I had seen something on the wall," he replies.

I shrug nonchalantly. "I guess it was just your imagination," I say. Then I lower my head in shame. If I had told Rue that I had seen a shadow on the wall, he would've passed it on as pure imagination. "Or maybe there was something. Maybe something like a shadow," I say trying to make up for the last statement.

***

Once we arrived, the day was breezy. It didn't look like it would rain, but you can never tell with the weather.

We got out of the car and entered the ice-cream shop. Jackson got to the counter first, somehow. He started to order a medium cone with the weirdest mixture even I had ever seen. He usually tries to be better than me in almost everything. That comes with a price though. All those mixtures won't taste good together.

He gets his cone and then May starts to order. She gets a simple mixture of chocolate with strawberry. Rue just gets a medium cone with butter pecan. I get another one of my crazy mixtures consisting of cookie dough, lime, vanilla, and mint.

Rue drives us to the park. There we finish our ice-cream cones.

"That ice-cream really is good," Rue says with a smile.

"Yeah I told you," May replies.

I just nod. I check the time on the watch that was given to me by my Aunt last Christmas. It was 4:48.

The watch was interchangeable: a watch that can practically be taken apart and mix it up in all types of combinations. The ring around the watch that had initially come with it was white. The straps were also white, but since its interchangeable, you can take the straps and ring off and put different types of colors on it.

I had gotten very attached to the watch. The colors it was recently wearing were a green ring and black straps. Green and black are my two favorite colors.

"Don't you think we should get going?" I ask Rue.

He looks at his own watch. "Yeah I think its about time we should have kept going," He replies.

We walk back towards the car. Rue, May, and Jackson start talking about something.

I zone out for a while; not caring if they spoke to me. Its like I'm there, but not all there. Then I stop walking. I started to feel lightheaded. Then it felt like a dream. Everything starts going black. First around my peripheral vision, then it closed in.

The last thing I see before blacking out is the worried look on Rue's face.