Free Manifest by Artist Arthur Page A

hands over both ears and close my eyes. Counting to ten, I open them again and say in a voice as calmly as I can muster, “I am not running and I am not doing this right now. So I’d like for all of you, living and dead, to leave me alone!”
    As I turn and walk away I hear Sasha’s last comment.
    “She needs to take a chill pill.”
    No, what I need is another life, one where I’m not going insane and kids with marks and spirits with attitude aren’t giving me grief.

ten
    So my day has been officially shot. I’d say to hell, but I’m not sure this sort of thing goes on down there.
    Supernatural powers.
    Supposed to help a ghost.
    What kind of foolishness is this? And why do I seem to be dropped right in the middle of it?
    Concentrating in any of my classes is out of the question; all my notes consist of idle lines and questions that don’t relate to any of the subjects. Questions that I know nobody has the answers to. At lunchtime I go to the library. Yeah, Ricky would say running again. This time I call it hiding. I don’t want to see Sasha and Jake, don’t want to be near those weirdos. So I sit way in the back, pull the hood of my jacket up over my head and lie down on the desk. I try to put it all out of my mind. But that is pointless because when I close my eyes, I see them—Sasha and Jake—with their marks that look just like mine. I see us, all three of us standing together, looking as if we have a purpose, a reason for being born.
    Then I see darkness. I see Ricky and all those dead bodies from my dream the other night, complete with the black smoke that threatened to choke me and the woman on thebeach in the white dress who I can still hear crying. My breathing speeds up.
    I can talk to spirits. I can see them and hear them. Can I help them?
    Do I even want to?
    Just so you know, he wasn’t the kind of kid everybody said he was. Ricky, I mean.
    I jump up so fast I almost fall off the chair. Looking around quickly to make sure nobody had seen me, I try to right myself and adjust the hood on my head. I stuck my earbuds in hoping that all the outside noise would be drowned out. I didn’t want to hear the school bells, the kids moving about, the normalcy around my chaotic state.
    Yet I heard her loud and clear. I look to my left and there she is, sitting her translucent butt on the edge of the desk beside me, her legs crossed, arms folded over her chest.
    It is Trina, Ricky’s girlfriend.
    “Go away,” I whisper, checking around the room to make sure nobody is close enough to hear or see me, talking to myself.
    Nope. Since I know you can hear and see me I’m not going away.
    “I don’t have time for this crap,” I say, turning my head away from her.
    Don’t be such a whiner. Ricky needs your help. And even though I couldn’t care less about your spoiled, stuck-up ass, I’m here to ask you to do what you can for him.
    “You’re his girlfriend, why don’t you help him?” I snap, then feel really stupid being jealous of a spirit.
    She’s a cute ghost, though, with her curly black hair and copper highlights. I asked Janet about getting my hair dyed last year. Of course she told me I was being too grown and brushed me off. Hence, my hair is still the same dark brown as it was when I was born.
    She kind of chuckles. Believe me, if I could I would.Ricky was always there for me. Always helping me out of a jam. I should have listened to him, should have taken his warnings seriously.
    “I’m sure you gave him enough when you could.”
    She’s on the other side of me now, so I can see her. She’s leaning against a bookshelf, her hands behind her back. Her jeans are, like, skintight with a huge silver-buckled belt—that must be for decoration only because those pants are definitely not falling down—around her waist. Her shirt is tight, too, hugging her chest so that it puffs up in honey-toned mounds over the collar of her shirt. She looks hot. That’s probably why she was Ricky’s