Tara Banks clicked her pen furiously as she stared at her paper. Where was the nucleus embedded in the male sperm?

She sighed as she stared at the diagram. Fishy little devil.

She was about to circle option a, the tail when she heard a tutting noise and an immense cold envelope her.

She froze.

After a few minutes when no other sound followed she deemed it her imagination and slowly, she moved her pen to circle the tail.

There was the tutting noise again.

Scrunching her eyebrows she moved her pen to circle the head.

No tutting noise.

Tara narrowed her eyes at the question as she circled the option with more force than required.

The cold was sending waves off on her right, only growing closer.

Tara had heard the worst tales of this place. From the wedges and noogies to the Alastair murder to his presumed haunting.

And she had to assume the worst, she wouldn't be Tara if she didn't.

Gritting her teeth and suppressing a shiver from the cold, she passed it off as her imagination, again and moved on to the next question.

What are the modes of asexual reproduction?

Her eyes glazed. There were modes? Multiple?

She just went to circle option c, since it seemed the safest but this time, she heard a hoarse whisper.

Not a creepy hoarse whisper; a strangely sensual hoarse whisper with a very prominent English accent.

"Did you not study at all, love?" A cool wind fanned her ear, making her shudder. "The answers a, budding, binary fission, fragmentation, vegetative propagation and sporogenesis."

Her pencil snapped in her hand as she whipped her head back.

No amount of coffee could prepare Tara for what she saw.

Behind her was the seemingly solid; bluish figure of a cute boy. Around seventeen with messy brown hair, forest-green eyes and a cocky grin.

The same boy in the mantel picture hung over the school fireplace.

She must've stared at him for a long time because the students around her began to give her strange looks.

The ghost only grinned wider.

She smiled back awkwardly at him and turned back to her test, her eyes blown wide as she stared at it.

A ghost was behind her. A ghost was behind her basically calling her stupid.

"Now, how are you going to write with that, love?" the ghost cooed.

"You, uh, you're Alastair. Alastair Ly...Lysen." She whispered

A few students in the room turned to face her, eyeing her like she was crazy.

"I'm touched you know me."

Maybe she was going crazy.

"Answer's b, darling."

But at least her crazy was giving her answers.

Shakily, she fished another pencil out of her pouch and circled option b.

She shook her head and stared at her next question. She couldn't even read it.

The ghost of Alastair behind her sighed.

"Honestly, even I studied reproduction in plants and animals. It's a, the urethra."

She said nothing and made a shaky circle over a.

She felt the cold creep closer and she shivered, her fingers gripping the pencil harder, turning the tips white.

Tara must have been hallucinating. No other explanation leaving... That.

But also, she knew that hallucinations are made up in the mind - her mind. And she knew nothing about biology.

"Hm... That's called a test tube baby if memory serves. So option c, seventy-five per cent successful."

The Ghost of Alastair kept telling her answers and she kept jotting them down. Only when the test was over did he start to talk about anything else.

"You're Tara, I believe. I've seen you around."

She said nothing, only letting out a panicked scream in her head as the ghost said her name.

"Oh come on, I'm not that bad, I gave you the answers didn't I?"

She jumped out of her seat, practically threw the paper at the teacher and sprinted out of the door.

She only stopped when she was at the school garden, panting and heaving, she took a few looks around, there was no Alastair.

She was about to do a little happy dance then but was saved from the embarrassment by Alastair himself.

"I'm dead sweetheart, I can run for miles without breaking a sweat." Said his voice directly above her.

Tara let out a startled yelp and fell to the floor as she stared straight up at Alastair as he hung like a bat in the air, messy hair flowing as if in water.

He looked oddly beautiful, like a mermaid.

"I - um... Are you real?"

"That hurts my feelings. I may be dead but I'm still feel things." He floated down and laid down beside her.

"I'm sorry?" She tensed as his bicep went through her arm. A snowy cold dusted over her, making her teeth clatter.

"You really should be more sensitive."

"I'm sorry."

"Hmm."

"You're... erm, uh, dead-I mean-"

The ghost chuckled, the rays of the sun passing through his ghostly layers, making him glow.

"You're lucky I'm not easily offended. If I were like my pals, I'd have tried you on and taken you for a spin myself if I wanted to already. Your body seems nice."

"Thank you?"

"You're welcome."

Silence ensued.

Loud, awkward silence.

After a while, Tara couldn't bear just sitting there, cock-eyed and probably looking half as crazy as she felt at that moment making her blurt out, "How did you die?"

Alastair let out a dry laugh. "You must be very nice at dates."

Tara pouted.

"Well, like I've tried to tell your idiot friends, I got murdered. But they all assume they're going mental of course, much like you are now."

She ignored his last comment and asked, "Who killed you then?"

Alastair looked deep into her eyes as if his soul could see into hers - where all her secrets, everything she was and had been was naked in front of him. Every single one and he devoured each one with meticulous glee.

"My best mate."

Pity softened her face.

"Don't look at me like that." His voice was like a whip as a different sharper cold jabbed at her. Icy.

The swings on the trees began to rock with exceptional force, frost coated the grass.

"I'm sorry!" She shrieked, kicking away from Alastair. Her heart hammering away in her chest like a drum, eyes frantically flied about.

The frost didn't resend as the ghostly apparition of Alastair pursed his lips.

"You're scared of me too."

"No, I'm not." Tara lied. Quite pathetically too, her voice trembled more than a leaf in the wind.

Alastair glared at her, getting up off the grass in a graceful - weightless motion.

Which she supposed he was.

"I used to get a kick out of this at first. When I was new to this." He mused as circled her. She couldn't move, but she suspected Alastair wasn't the cause of it. Well, in a sense.

"But then," He stopped when he was right in front of her, turning his head to peer down at her. She didn't know if he was floating or if he was that tall. "It got annoying. People screaming all the time; 'The name of Christ compels you demon, return to thy realm and leave us in peace!' Was one of their absolute favourites."

His eyes blazed even though it got colder and colder, her fingers were like chunks of ice that could fall off at the slightest touch. "A few even pissed themselves."

"So I stopped for a while," He chuckled. "Just walked the halls aimlessly. Showing myself to no one. Absolutely no one. But then I saw you struggling on that test and I just couldn't resist."

He frowned. "I'd seen you before, watched you - And you seemed so fearless to me. So unbothered. I thought you would be different."

Tara wanted to say she was different. But was she? There was still a very good chance she was insane, God knows her teachers called her that but - what if, on the off-chance that she was not?

She wasn't a very firm believer of the supernatural, but she did admit that she thought that there was more to life than chemicals and biology.

It was or it wasn't. No other dangling odds or anything like that to help her make a decision.

So she looked at the bluish figure in front of her. Hoped she didn't sound too mousey and said, "How do i even know you're here, how am I supposed to believe you - just like that?"

Alastair's ghost glared at her so hard that she could really almost believe he was there.

And then he disappeared before her eyes.

"Alastair?" She whisper-shouted.

She called out his name a few times and even looked around the school for a bit, she whispered his name and looked back into her classroom, praying no one saw her lurking about.

But he was just gone.

Like a ghost.

She went to her locker just as the bell rang signalling the next period. She quickly took her bag out of her locker as students began to swarm out of their classrooms.

She hurried out of the school as she walked over to the back and climbed over the old oak tree behind the school.

Just as she was about to jump off and leave she mumbled,

"Thanks for the answers."