I Was A Teenage Poltergeist -- 1st Place winner with 'Dance With Me' by eerehu. 

~~

It's not being unseen that gets me.

It's the silence.

There is sound, but it's simply noise, something that dresses the background of this half-life I lead. It drifts to me through a veil, a film separating me from the incessant chattering of the students around me.

I pull a chair to the head of the table as a boy passes behind me in the cafeteria, as if he'd been the one to brush it aside. I'm not much for showy stunts. There's a certain art in treachery, if only you use it right. And the timing is where it counts.

The girl with those black-ink curls throws her head back and laughs like it's the end of the world.

And there.

The corner of my mouth turns up.

Timing.

With a flick of my fingers, I pull napkins out from under plates, from atop tables, from lunch trays, from hands. They follow the path of the wind from open windows. Nothing all that grand. Simply baffling to the living.

It's chaotic. Paper in the wind. Students on their feet attempting to tame the flyaway napkins. I turn in a circle, smiling to myself, reveling in this giddy little spurt of joy I've made.

But then, there in that moment, a melody finds its way to me.

Frowning, I turn toward the music as if I could see it as the warning bell sounds.

The tune is sad, faint at first, then louder as I approach. It's not only the beauty of it that draws me in, but the clarity. I hear it as though I am alive again.

A violin.

I follow the sound to a room of mirrors. There stands a dark-haired boy, eyes closed. He wears the dimmest of smiles as he plays.

The school rushes by, burying all the empty silences in untamed ruckus and seeping chatter.

Yet here is this boy, untouched by the madness.

Then, a piano joins in, and it's clearer, even, than the violin.

Passing through the door, I find a second boy in a pink-tinted gold sweater at the piano, his song effortless, but when I look to the mirrors lining the wall, he is not there.

You're dead too, I realize.

He looks at me, then, with a pair of marble-grey eyes.

Glancing once to the standing boy, he quiets his song on the piano. He offers me a smile, relieved and full of sorrow.

Then his form grows faint, glowing against the mirrored room, and he simply fades away without so much as a word.

The taller boy pauses for just a split hair of a second, eyes still closed, like he knows something is wrong.

His song grows slower.

Sadder.

Lonelier.

An unspoken loss.

"Lovely," I breathe.

He turns to me, eyes wide.

I still. He heard?

But he simply looks at me. Then to the empty seat at the piano. Then to the blank mirror behind me.

When his marble-grey eyes, the eyes of the boy at the piano, fall back on me, all he says is, "You're not him."

"The boy in the rose-gold sweater?"

His gaze is piercing. "You saw him."

"Yes."

"He's gone now, isn't he?" But it's not really a question. He looks away and tentatively picks up his violin. "He's my brother. He . . . comes back to me when I play."

But we both know that this time he won't.

Brother.

I turn to leave as he begins to play again. I can't bring myself to sit in on a moment once meant for family.

But as I walk through the door, he speaks quietly. "No. Stay."

I turn back to him, my surprise taking me by surprise. "I'm not your brother."

He doesn't stop playing. "You'll do."

So I stay.

At every performance, at every practice, I stay with him. I swing my legs where I sit on the piano. Tap my fingers against the wood. Sway with his music.

Something about it pulls my life into death to join me.

"You are a dancer," he comments one day.

"Yes," I reply, tapping my fingers against the piano as if I could feel it. "I was."

He closes his eyes. "Just because you aren't dancing right now doesn't make you any less of a dancer."

"I'm dead," I say dryly.

He plays on. "Why should that mean you can't dance?"

"There's no one left to dance for."

He doesn't answer. He just hums with his music, that little smile tickling the corner of his mouth.

And he doesn't ask of it again.

Over the days and weeks and months and years, I stay by his side as he plays, watching him grow.

Watching him reach the top.

He is never open with me, nor with anyone else for that matter, but he leaves behind little snippets of his life every now and again. How he prefers rivers to oceans. How he gardens to pass empty days. How he grew up with his violin at his side. How his brother was a piano prodigy.

How he died.

He mentions it only once.

And I don't ask of it again.

It comes as no surprise when the invitations start flooding his mailbox. He picks the most elegant of stages, the ones meant for his brother.

London. Tokyo. San Francisco. Beijing. Dubai. Kuala Lumpur. Taipei. Paris.

And tonight is his first show.

New York.

It'd be a lie to say I'm unworried. He's pushed through the years with determination, his shield and his violin a weapon.

But what now?

He reads my thoughts like a book. He grips my shoulders lightly, kissing my cheeks. And I can almost feel it. Almost.

Then he pulls back with a small smile, those grey-marble eyes sad. "Don't worry, darling. I'll be fine."

And I know he will be.

He turns and strides away, shedding his coat for a lighter one, his footsteps leaving behind pieces of him like ink and tears on a page.

The backstage staff drift about him, harried as they always are at the start of a show, scrambling and wild, but his path remains true. He walks through the madness, as if it can't touch him.

He steps into the spotlight. I trail behind him, sitting atop the empty piano onstage. He doesn't so much as spare me a glance, and neither does anyone else.

Of course they don't.

He stands there for a moment, so still, a glass statue, cold and wanting. I've no life in my lungs, but the audience holds its breath for me.

And he begins to play.

It's something hopeful, something sad, leaving the air dripping with the melted words that music has, the words that have no need to be spoken.

There is something about it that puts cold streaks across my bones.

Something that makes me imagine that feeling of grit beneath my feet on a clean floor. I slide off the piano and I can almost feel those little grains speckling the nerves on my feet, his music drawing back all those memories of touch I thought I'd long forgotten.

He sways ever so slightly, as much a part of the music as he is the artist.

And I find myself wishing to dance once more.

It's a small step at first, so tentative. It's been so long since I last danced, but his violin leads me along.

As if he knows, his eyes open, just barely, small crescents against the light as he plays on. He sees me standing there and offers the faintest of smiles.

Go on, it seems to say. Dance with me.

He closes his eyes, but that smile remains.

A grin spreads across my face.

And I dance.

There's no one to see me, not even him with his closed eyes and shadowed thoughts.

But I dance just the same.

It was never about them.

His music slows, rising and falling like the last of a storm. I find myself spinning in front of him. Then the song ends and I dance to a stop, my back to the crowd, facing him.

He opens his eyes and smiles, lowering the violin.

The crowd is silent at my back.

"Goodbye," he breathes.

It takes me a moment to understand, to see the faint light beneath my skin, each speck a memory that I've dragged with me into death, everything I couldn't bear to leave behind.

I look up at him in wonder, but find him looking through me.

He can no longer see me.

Memory by memory, my life drifts from my grasp.

There is nothing left for me here.

"Goodbye," I whisper.

As if he hears my words, he smiles, a flimsy little thing.

Then the cheers rise, loud and roaring.

He laughs for the roses that fall around him, his eyes shine for the spotlight, he bows for the crowd that loves him so.

But that smile, I know, is for me.

~~