Finding Beauty

[24] - Chapter Twenty-Four

Opening the main entrance doors, I wasn’t exactly ecstatic to see what was going to happen. Scott spotted us together at Starbucks and I already knew that Austen and Kale were annoyed with the both of us; Austen didn’t call me a fool for nothing. Taking a deep breath, I told myself to just keep my head held high and ignore them. However, I already knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.

Walking inside of the building, I crossed over to my locker and just as I was about to open it, I heard punches, screams, and kicks. Swirling around, I noticed that Austen and Kale were both beating up Dean. Gasping, I dropped my backpack on the floor and ran straight to the scene.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked furiously. But, Austen and Kale were too fixated on ruining Dean’s body to answer.

“McKenzie…just leave,” Dean warned softly as he struggled to stop them from hitting him. Ignoring him, I blinked back tears as I saw what they were doing to him. Austen was kicking him in the stomach and Kale was punching his face. Angrily, I stepped in between them careful not to step on Dean.

“I said stop!” I exclaimed angrily as I tried to push them away from him. “Leave him—

I cut myself as I realized Scott was just standing there watching the whole thing and I tossed him a crazy look, was he serious? Suddenly, I felt pain my stomach and I turned back to see that Kale had punched me when he was trying to punch Dean. “McKenzie!”

I wasn’t sure if it was Kale or Dean who had called out my name for I was too shocked to fully pay attention. I put my arm around my stomach and tumbled backwards slamming my head into my locker. The next thing I knew everything went black:

I fluttered open my eyes to see myself in the hallways of the school, I picked myself up and stood up. Looking around, I saw no one in the hallways and I gasped in curiosity. What was happening? “Dean, where are you?”

“He’s not here,” A voice replied and it was coming from behind me. I suddenly felt shivers fall through my spine, but it was strange. It didn’t feel like it was coming from fear, it felt like it was coming from anger.

Turning around, I walked furiously towards my insecurity ghost and crossed my arms. “What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do anything,” My insecurity ghost responded with an evil laugh. “Kale and Austen did all the dirty work.”

 Once I realized she was right, I immediately changed the subject. “You know, I’m almost close to figuring out why you came here and how to get you right out of my life. The ‘human’ you created is going to be found out real soon.”

My insecurity ghost’s eyes suddenly glowed red and what did next was shocking: she screamed. It wasn’t a usual scream; it was high pitched, bloodshot, and furious. It was so frightening that I fell to my feet in fear.

My insecurity ghost sat on top of me causing my skin to turn pale as hers since her skin was so cold. Gripping my shirt she told me, “Things are only going to get worse, you know. You think you got it all figured out but you don’t.”

Pushing her off I retorted, “Nonsense, you just want to taunt me. You want to confuse me so I could give in but that’s never going to happen!”

Suddenly, she was furious and as soon as I stood up, she ran through me. My body felt so pale and so cold that I couldn’t move. She tried to tell me that I was stupid, that I was ugly, and that I should give in while I had the chance, but strangely it didn’t bother me anymore. Even though my body was refusing to move, I refused to let her win.