By the time we arrive back at the flat, I feel like a spring chicken again. That was by far the most extreme reaction I'd had to one of those things--I assume because I had physical contact with the creep--and I was a little anxious I'd end up maimed for life. But hey, I feel fine.

Carmen's eyes were glued to me the whole walk home, and I almost had to physically restrain her from calling a cab to take us back because she was worried I would, I don't know, start foaming from the mouth or something. Once we're inside I flop myself onto one of the sofas, which is now ten times lumpier than it was at the beginning of the academic year, while Carmen stands over the kitchen island. She's still watching me carefully.

"I'm not gonna die, I promise," I joke, to which she rolls her eyes.

"Have you been to the doctors about these migraines?" she questions, half ignoring my comment.

I shrug, but follow it with a yeah because I figure that's probably the best response to give. Carmen nods, but her lip twitches slightly while her eyes narrow. I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe me, which unnerves me a bit because I'm usually quite the liar.

After pouring a glass of water, she wanders over and sits beside me on the sofa, then gestures it to me. I raise my eyebrows at her, which she challenges with a smirk and another shove of the glass in my direction. I decide to humour her, so take it from her hands, and down the water in the matter of seconds.

"You should've done a medical degree, you're on the way to curing cancer here, mate," I say with the cheesiest of grins, ensuring to make my sarcasm obvious.

"Oh, piss off." Carmen punches my side.

"Hey, screw you, I take that back," I mutter, rubbing my ribs.

"Seriously, Felix, you should get it checked out," she replies, the joking tone in her voice having disappeared completely. "Even if you have genuinely been before. It's not right."

Annabel has appeared by now, and probably for the first time ever, I actually want Carmen to be the one to leave. I say something about going to have a nap, which seems to please Carmen, and head into my bedroom. Once inside, Annabel hits me with the avalanche of questions I expected.

She asks what I saw in the vision, if what was happening was before or after my previous visions, how she saved my arse, what I saw of Dad, of Mum. Everything, really. Once answered, Annabel is quiet for a long time. So long, in fact, that by the time she speaks again, I'm lying on my bed on the edge of sleep.

"Good and bad spirits," she says, snapping me out of my doze.

"Huh?" I question, still lying down.

"The light and darkness you see in your visions. It's obvious. We're imbeciles for not realising it before."

"What, you think it was some kind of battle between good and bad dead guys?" I ask, to which Annabel nods. "That's some Harry Potter type shit. Why though?"

"That I don't know."

Annabel opens her mouth and looks like she's about to say something else, but quickly snaps it shut. Her eyebrows furrow, and her thinking face is switched on. I'm still feeling kind of hazy after my partial nap, so shut my eyes again without really thinking much about what Annabel just said. In fact, after a minute or two, I start forgetting what it was she even said. Something about dead people, I don't know.

"What if you could always do this?" she pipes up again, and this time, I sit up.

"Huh?"

Annabel rolls her eyes at me. "See spirits," she replies like I'm dumb. "We've always assumed the crash is what sparked your abilities, but what if it's your abilities that sparked the crash?"

I stare at Annabel then, for a while. No, that can't be right. People can't just be born able to do this shit, surely? Well, according to Ava they can, but we've kind of disproved the accuracy of her claims. This crap being bestowed on me after a life altering accident just seems like the obvious answer.

I shake my head. "I dunno, Annie, seems a bit far fetched, doesn't seem--"

"Felix, you see dead people, is this possibility really that hard to believe? Think about it," she says, her voice tinted with what I can make out to be either excitement or anxiety. "If your abilities were a result of the crash, how come you can see these spirits in your visions? I know these visions are technically after the crash, but I think it's obvious by now that the accident didn't just knock us all out, and bam, dead--or in your case, unconscious. Surely your abilities wouldn't have magically appeared midway through the accident, y'know? It just--"

"Yeah, but in those visions, I see things as present day me... I mean, I'll have the desire to say something, or move, or whatever, but I can't, so consciously it's me now, and present day me has this mutated ability. It's probably just that," I reason, but Annabel begins shaking her head aggressively. She's pacing around my room now.

"No, no. The only thing that's said throughout your whole vision is don't look at them. I say it to you, Mum says it to you. You can obviously see the spirits, and it's obviously something you've always been capable of because if it happened as a result of the crash, Mum and I would have no idea about what you were seeing."

Hm. She kind of has a point there. What if the things I see in my vision aren't spirits, though? This theory is based entirely around that, and they don't look like what I'm used to seeing. What else could they be though, realistically? Before our conversation can develop any further, there's a knock on my bedroom door. Begrudgingly, I lift myself off my bed to answer it. Standing there is Carmen, with a somewhat confused look on her face.

"So I was just talking to Adam--a friend of mine on your course, not sure if you know him--and you do know you have an exam in twenty minutes, right?"

Oh, shit.

I completely forgot I had two exams today, holy shit. In a mad dash, I scramble my stuff together as Carmen watches from the doorway. Bloody hell, I'm an idiot. I shove the stuff I need into my bag, probably damaging half of it. Crap, where is my student card? I search my desk but find nothing, so hastily scan the rest of my room in hope of it appearing, only for my eyes to stop in the doorway to see Ava now standing with Carmen.

"Ava said she'll drive you, don't worry," Carmen quickly explains, to which Ava shoots me a smile. "But, I mean, if you're still not feeling great, maybe give it a miss. You can apply for extenuating circumstances, or just take a resit or--"

I shake my head and wave it off. "No, it's fine--I'm fine, just literally forgot."

Carmen doesn't look convinced, while Ava hums beside her, twirling her car keys around her pinky finger. After finally locating my student card under my bed, I hurry out of the flat into Ava's car, and already know this exam is going to go badly.

Once I'm in the exam hall, I realise it's not just going to go badly, but horrifically because all I can think about is the conversation Annabel and I had before leaving. If she's right--if those things in my vision are spirits, and if I could see them regardless of the accident, I really am the reason my whole family is dead.

#

The exam goes as predicted, as does the next one. And the next one. And the one after that. I'm not even relieved once they're all over. I don't really care enough about them, to be honest. After Annabel's revelation about my visions, I don't have much interest in anything else. It's all I can think about, day in, day out. I killed them. It's that simple. If I could see spirits before the accident, I killed them. My family are dead because of what I can do.

I know things are bad because throughout the exam period, I have some days where I can't see Annabel. I become a bit of a recluse in general, really, initially blaming it on the need to focus on exams. By the time we're halfway through February though, I can't really use it as an excuse, and people are starting to notice.

One thing I can't ignore is that either my telekinetic abilities have increased, or my mood swings are messing with them completely. I've gone from struggling to nudge a pencil on a desk to sitting in bed feeling like the biggest sack of shit, when all of a sudden, my chair violently wheels across the room.

One time, I was even in the kitchen with a few flatmates, and in my mopey mood, made a cupboard door that was open slam shut. That scared them shitless, except for Ava, who just looked amused. She didn't seem to suspect anything, though. To think, I'd almost given up on the whole telekinetic thing. It's just a shame it seems to have sparked up when I couldn't give less of a shit.

I'm meant to be going to a house party at Ava's house tonight, and the only reason I agreed to it was to get my flatmates off my case. I've not socialised much outside the flat since New Year's, and I've been asked if everything is alright several times by most of them--even Tom, so I'm pretty sure they think I'm depressed or something.

It's starting to irritate me, so hopefully showing my face at this party will get them to quit it. Exam results were released today, so it's meant to be a celebratory party for that, but I've not looked at mine. Don't really want to. I can see Annabel all okay today, so I'm not planning on drinking tonight--don't want to ruin that.

Ava, Carmen, Tom and Jamie share Ava's car, while I somehow end up lumped in Katie's boyfriend's car with the infamous couple. Well, in fairness, I volunteered in the sense that the last thing I'm in the mood for right now is Tom's over excited rambling. Katie's boyfriend is blasting chart music while she takes hold of his hand that isn't on the wheel, so naturally, I assume we're going to crash any second now. At least I have some practice in that department.

Katie begins singing along to the music, and it's awful. Really goddamn awful. I still don't even know this guy's name. Midway through the drive to Ava's house, Katie throws a tantrum over her boyfriend's refusal to play a certain song, and stops speaking to him until we get there. So that's nice.

I'm so eager to escape the couple that I practically fall out of the car once we arrive, and Annabel stands beside me grinning madly at my displeasure. She's lucky; she can escape this kind of shit without question whenever she wants. As we enter Ava's house, I notice it's busier than I thought it'd be.

It's all Ava's family friends at the moment, but we've all invited a few coursemates and crap like that. Well, except for me. I couldn't be arsed to ask anyone, and don't tend to socialise with them outside uni anyway. Two of the downstairs bathrooms, the living room, the kitchen, and a second lounge area are open for party guests, so to begin with, we all awkwardly stand around the unnecessarily large kitchen while Ava greets all of her family friends. I'm already wishing I'd not come.