I saw my first ghost the night of my seventh birthday.

I can't remember much before and the years after are a little blurry around the edges, but that night-it would remain forever burned into my memory. My dad had thrown this huge birthday bash-one of the perks of being an only child-and invited everyone he knew. They'd been filing out the door, content with the huge smile breaking through the chocolate frosting smeared across the bottom half of my face as I sat in my kingdom of gifts. Dad had stepped outside to ensure nobody accidently nicked his Range Rover, and I'd looked toward the ugly beige wrap around sofa my father had bought months prior. There sat my eighty-nine year old grandmother, the same Nan who I distinctly remember my father sitting me down and explaining wouldn't be able to make it as her health was declining rapidly. But there she sat in her red sweater with white accents along the collar. Her pearl necklace and earrings matching. She smiled when she saw me, her cheeks as rosy as always, but something was different.

She didn't speak nor did she smell just the faintest of the butterscotch candies as she usually did. I had hopped to my feet and went to join her on the sofa, grinning up at her.

"Daddy said you weren't coming." I'd said, but she had looked surprised by the notation. Looking back, I'm sure she was more shocked I was conversating with her. That I could see her there. Because the second my father walked back into the house, letting in a waft of cold, brisk air that nipped at my cheeks, he strode right to where I sat on the couch and threw himself on to my grandmother. Only she didn't scream or try and shove him off, instead she reached out and touched a hand to Dad's shoulder with the saddest smile I'd ever seen, then dissipated into air like the steam that would always spurt from her old tea kettle. "No! No, Gran!"

Dad, who had been the midst of raking his chocolate stained fingers through his blonde hair, looked to me with the same expression that his own elderly mother had been wearing only moments before. Then the light in his eyes was snuffed out and he slouched forward, resting a hand on my knee. "Ophie, sweetheart, gran passed away earlier this evening. I was going to wait until tomorrow to tell you. I didn't want to ruin your big day."

It'd taken two months and watching The Sixth Sense for the reality to set in.

I saw dead people too.

Unfortunately for me, as soon as I came to the startling, albeit a bit crazy, realization, my childhood slipped right through my fingertips. Because though Gran had been the first ghost I saw, she definitely wasn't the last. For months following our quiet, tranquil interaction, I was visited by various ghosts, many like my grandmother; elderly grandparents or parents that wanted no more than to tell them they loved them one more time before they moved on. I found out then, at seven, that people would believe anything while grieving. Close to every loved one I approached with my ghost acquaintance of the day truly believed the words that left my mouth. Words that if had been spoken to me, I would have laughed off and called bull.

I would have been okay with my strange ability if it had ended there. Acting as some human guide to help old people reconcile and close lose ends with their loved ones in order to move on. But it didn't, of course. Because the older I got, the more gruesome the ghosts that approached me grew. Sure I still got a lot of old folk and children that just wanted to be able to talk to their families through me. However, with them came murder and suicide victims; entire bodies disfigured, bullet holes through the head, missing limbs. Those were the ones that hurt, both mentally and physically. Because not only did they come to me for guidance, but once they finished their business on Earth, they quite literally stepped into me, or perhaps through me, and went wherever it was that we go after death. When they did this I got a glimpse into their lives, and for those victims, I felt all the pain, hurt, and anger for weeks after.

Of course nobody outside of my best friend knew of my secret life, not even my widowed father who would have given anything to speak to his dead wife, my mother. My analytical, engineer father would laugh in my face the same way I'd feared all my peers would if they got word of what I could do. Or maybe he'd stick me in a mental institution with hopes there drugs would fix me. Because that's how my father was; there had to be an answer for everything.

"Yo, I'm sorry, Fai." Kingston's voice tugged at something inside me and suddenly I was back in our high school auditorium facing him, the red solo cup in his hand tipped in my direction. "It's his loss."

I didn't need the reminder I'd been ghosted, but Kingston was as blunt as he was extroverted. He had a heart, somewhere under all the gold plated chains, N.W.A shirts, and sarcastic retorts, was a sweet, kind, seventeen year old mixed kid trying to make it in a world he didn't quite fit into. Sure at school he was the chill wannabe DJ and basketball player, but at home, he was the quiet half-white kid that his father's side of the family wanted nothing to do with. His mother, like mine, had died when he was eight-it had been how we met, her wanting to tell him she loved him one last time-and his father all but kicked King to the curb after her passing.

"Kill me now." King groaned, throwing his head back. It took me a few seconds of confused eye roaming for me to realize what he was talking about. Or more specifically, who. Oliver St. James and his entourage had paraded through the doors and with their appearance, the quiet chatter in the auditorium raised a few decibels. As if, with them, they brought the real party that had yet to be started.

Catching my friend's dark hand in my own, I felt nose crinkle. My skin looked so pasty, so ashen and white-like that of the ghosts I encountered every night. I really needed some sun.

"Pass me that cup, will you." I pried his fingers from the cup and downed the reminisce of it. There was no way I would be able to remain composed sober. "Damn, King, what the hell did you put in that?"

He cracked a smile, but someone calling from the stage drew his attention away. "That's my cue. Save me a dance, yeah?"

"Sure." I mumbled with a dramatic sigh. He snickered before disappearing in a crowd of people on his way to his stand behind the DJ equipment. He'd been booking the smallest of gigs to try and gain recognition, Homecoming being his biggest. He'd warned me to be weary of his teammate, Marcus, and that he was a womanizer. I hadn't listened, as usual, thus me standing at the punch table alone.

That was when I felt them. I'd learned over the last few years, that when a ghost entered a room, that it dropped a few degrees and every single hair on my body stood up. It was a kind of like a Spidey sense, only much more gruesome.

Dropping the emptied red solo cup into the trash to my left, my eyes sized up the room once more, but it was so dark in here it was hard to see anything more than the outline of everyone. Peeling myself away from my perch, I started for the door, knowing if there was, in fact, an otherworldly being in the room, they'd follow me. I was what they were here for, not any of my classmates. As soon as I stepped out into the dimly lit hallway, a shadow shot across the row of red lockers opposite me, but when I whirled around to catch my new ghost friend, there was nothing but silver and red streamers cascading down from the ceiling over my head.

*

With no choice but to catch a ride home with my father on his usual route back to the house, I was relieved to break out of the car. I'd been on edge since the ghost incident a couple hours ago and trying to make small talk with my father was agonizing. I loved him with all my heart and he tried his hardest to be the best parent he could, but it was as if the moment I hit puberty, the bond we'd shared for the first twelve years of my life was severed. Suddenly our interactions were no more than a few words shared as we passed one another in the hallways.

I opened my window as wide as possible upon stepping into my room. I may as well just invite the spirit in. I hated the anticipation and definitely needed to help it before it drove me insane with all its ghosty actions. That was another thing I'd come to learn; some ghosts didn't know they were dead. They would walk on in masses of people and try to conversate, but nobody would respond and they'd start to freak out. Only a dozen or so of the ghosts I'd encountered were like this, and it had been devastating watching their expressions change once they understood what I was saying.

"Goodnight, Ophie." Dad poked his head into my room at a quarter to eleven, his hand grasping the door knob, ready to shut it behind him.

I hated the nickname, but he was the exception. He was the only person in my life that was allowed to use it.

"Night, Dad."

He nodded and shut the door behind him. I waited until the hall light dimmed and his footsteps retreated to crawl under my covers and stare at the open window. Hopefully I'd get lucky and have myself a Casper and not another malevolent spirit. Those took a toll on me mentally.

They almost always wanted to play sick, warped mind games and drive me to the verge of insanity before they allowed me to help.

Sometime during my struggle I must have dozed off, because I was stirred awake by the sound of rustling. It wasn't anything new; ghosts didn't care whether or not I got my beauty sleep. But the millisecond I looked forward, at the foot of my bed, all sleepiness dissipated. Because it was just a random ghost lounged on top of my black comforter as usual, but a face a recognized. One I'd had the opportunity to get a decent look at as he and his gorgeous girlfriend Macey Wright had brushed right passed me so they were standing dead center in the middle of the dance floor. So every pair of eyes had to be on them.

"Oliver?" I retracted my legs so they were against my chest, my right hand snatching the movie case from beside my phone on my nightstand. "What the hell are you doing in my room?"

The boy shifted slowly, but it wasn't until a minute after I'd sent the movie sailing through the air that realization struck me like a bolt of lightning. It was confirmed when The Others went right through his broad shoulders and hit the ground a few feet away, his body fading in and out.

Oliver St. James, golden boy and most popular boy in school, the same guy I'd seen only hour prior was dead.