Standing on that cliff, all she could see were the ash grey clouds and the darks crashing waters below her. As the storm clouds were rolling in, she thought she heard something else too. Though it started out very faint, the sound got greater and greater. There was a look of horror on her face as the shrieks of men became clear. She covered her ears and closed her eyes, trying to block out the sounds of men attempting to escape the dark void around them. And then, as if it had just disappeared, it became silent. She opened her eyes and looked around, and saw something that made her blood run cold. There, not so far away, was the body of her father, sinking away into the void that would become his grave. She tried to turn away but lost her balance and fell into the dark sea below her.
I bolt upright in my bed, sweat beaded on my forehead. I look around and realize that it was all just a dream. I turn to my nightstand and grab the half full bottle of pills, anti-depressants, the doctor prescribed to me a month after they declared my father dead. He was lost at sea.
From downstairs I hear my mother shouting up to me, “Grace, get ready for school. You need to leave in 45.” Ugh. I hate school. I have two friends, Jake and Emily. Emily is a year older, and Jake doesn’t have any classes with me. All the popular girls are constantly making fun of me, but I don’t care. I just wanna see my friends.
I get dressed in my old sweatshirt and jeans along with my beat up Chuck-Taylors. I stand in front of the mirror, combing out my long black hair. When it’s all combed out, I throw it in a messy ponytail. I admire myself in the mirror; long jet black hair, blue eyes the color of ice, my baggy sweatshirt covering my thin torso and arms, and my “one size too big” jeans hiding my long, stick thin legs. Perfect.
I grab my cell and text Emily and Jake via group message:
Me: Hey guys.
Jake: Hi.
Emily: What’s up.
Me: Meet me at the trail in 20.
Emily: Cool. Ok.
Jake: See you guys there.
The trails are a series of dirt paths in our woods, where we always meet up. It’s in a large wooded area that we found on the way to school. We usually skip school and hang there.
I walk down the stairs and sit at the table with my usual: dry wheat toast. My mom is in the kitchen fixing herself a bowl of Raisin Bran.
“How did you sleep?” she asks. She’s concerned about my sleeping, since I used to wake up screaming.
“It was fine,” I lie. I feel it would be better for her if she knew I was doing okay. I finish my toast and hurry out the door with a quiet goodbye to my mother.
I walk down the cracked and abandoned sidewalk. I’m glad I wore a sweatshirt because it’s a little cold. As I walk, I notice all the red, orange, and yellow leaves flutter through the morning sunlight. Wet grass covers my shoes from the morning dew. In the horizon, streaks of pink and orange paint themselves across the pale blue sky.
When I arrive at the woods, I notice that about half of the leaves that are usually on the trees, are on the ground in a thin colorful layer. The remaining leaves are slowly changing from a bright green to a pale form of red or orange. I trudge through the woods. It takes a little while before we get to our usual meeting spot on the trails.
After about ten minutes of continuous walking, I finally arrive to the rather large rock that we all discovered two years ago. The sunlight shines through the trees in a beautiful heavenly way. As I get closer to the rock, I see something metallic reflecting off of the sunlight.
“What the heck is that,” I mumble to myself.
“What the heck is what,” says a voice behind me. I jump about 3 feet before I turn around. When I finally do turn around I see Jake standing there. I blush because, oh, I just can’t help it. He’s just so cute. I’ve had a crush on him for about a year now, but I never had the courage to tell anyone. Not even Emily, and she’s one of the most trustworthy people I know.
Anyway, it probably doesn’t matter. I bet a lot of girls are in love with his chocolate brown hair that hangs slightly in his face. Or the intense green-blue eyes; it’s like looking at a crystal clear pond. Not to mention his great posture, he’s about 5’9. And he’s like, the best guy friend ever.
“Oh, I don’t know what it is yet, I just found it,” I say shyly.
“Well, it looks like a metal box. I wonder what it is. I also wonder where Emily is,” he replies as I’m picking up the metal box. I turn it over and see it has buttons, like a remote. And that’s when I hear the footsteps.
Quickly I throw the remote under a pile of leaves just in time to see Emily walk up. No wonder Jake was asking about her. She is flawless. Her straight, pale orange hair pulled back into a braid that runs almost the whole length of her back. And her eyes are a leaf green color with gold streaks running through them. They are perfect. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jake had a crush on her instead of me.
“Hey guys,” she says to us,” uh, Grace, is something wrong?” I guess I had this look on my face that triggered worry. I’m not going to tell her about the whole Jake problem.
“Um, everything’s fine, Emily,” I reply quickly,” Anyway look what I found.” I pull the remote out from the pile of leaves,” I think it’s a remote”, I make sure to note.
“We should keep it,” Jake says as I examine it more thoroughly,” It might belong to somebody.” I want to tell him that if somebody really wanted it they wouldn’t have thrown it in the woods but I decided against it.
“What happens if you push the button,” Emily asks me.
“Uh, that’s a great question,” I reply,” I don’t know.” She grabs the remote and examines it. Then she pushes a button and things become weird. There’s a giant flash of light about five feet away.
“Come on guys,” Emily says to us, and with that she steps into the flash of light.
“Well this should be fun,” Jake says sounding annoyed and we step into the light too.
The first thing that I think when my eyes open again was that I blacked out and got taken somewhere. But, I saw my friends and I know somethings up.
“Oh God guys, what’d we get into this time”, I say while standing up.
“Well, when I pushed that button, it seems like it took us somewhere. But, I don’t know where we are”, Emily says calmly. I looked around. This place is beautiful. We were on a fairly large hill, covered in thick, green grass. It was night time and the stars were intensely bright. I look over at Jake and I smile. He looks mysterious in the dim starlight (not in a bad way though) as he gazes up as if he’s were trying to figure out a problem.
“Jake, what’s the matter”, I ask sounding a little too concerned. I am honestly a little scared something was really wrong.
“These stars,” he starts,” despite their beauty it’s all wrong. It’s like I’m looking at the stars through a mirror.” He’s looking towards me when he face turned paper white. “Look”, he says seriously quiet. I turn, and what I see is horrifying. At the bottom of this huge hill, is a small town with a lot of people roaming around. But the worst part is the fact that all of them were a transparent white color, with various wounds such as bullet holes, missing limbs, etc.
Emily, being the bravest of the group says, “Well let’s go down there and figure this thing out.” I want to refuse but Jake quickly agrees and they start to walk down the steep hill. On my way down, I almost fall about a thousand times, but Jake and Emily were doing just fine. When we finally get to the bottom, I realize that the town is much bigger than it looked on the hill.
We make our way throughout the city, buildings in ruins, but the ghost people don’t seem to mind. In the distant part of the city, I see a large skyscraper with little to no damage. All around us is cracked asphalt. There are large pieces missing from the road, but there aren’t any cars anyway.
The ghosts don’t seem to notice us, which is good, but when I turn around I see one ghost staring right at me. She slowly approaches us, and I notice something strangely familiar about her.  I can tell Emily thinks something is familiar about her too. She floats up to us when I finally got it. The hairs on the back of my neck shoot up. That ghost was me. She still has my black hair, but clumps of it are missing so it is uneven. She has bruises all over face and arms, including one on her eye. You can clearly see the cuts running all over her body. But the scariest thing is the purple and red irritation around her neck. I am shocked.
Suddenly, she takes the remote out of my hand and runs. The three of us chase after her, but out of the blue, she disappears into the wind. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get back. I am devastated.
“Guys, why’d you stop? We have to keep chasing after her,” Emily yells. I look at her with such annoyance, only to see a face full of tears and sorrow.
“She’s gone, don’t you see”, Jake snaps. His voice catches a little when he says that.
“She’s right there looking at us,” Emily says now crying. I turn around. Standing there, about fifty feet away, is the dead me, staring at us as if she was waiting for us to chase her.
“Guys, I think she wants us to follow her,” I say slowly. And with that, we slowly step towards her. Yet again, she disappears. My heart dropped. But Emily keeps walking in that direction.
“I see something up here, guys,” Emily says confidently,” I think it’s a cave.” So, we run straight it, and when we get there we realize she was right. We step inside and what we see is amazing. There are rows of rust colored cave spikes lining the ceiling. There are rocks of all different sizes covering the ground. There is also a large pool of clear water followed by a ginormous waterfall.
“I-It’s beautiful,” I stutter. It really is. I look over to Jake and see his eyes, glowing with excitement. I turn away and blush. I sat on a rock and saw something at my feet. “Guys, look what I found,” I almost yell.
Emily takes one look at it and says, “I think it’s a map.” I open it up and see a blueprint. A blueprint for a remote.
“No,” I whisper, “It’s a blueprint for the remote, Emily.” I gather up the paper and tell them that we need go find the remote. We walk out and see dead me running toward us. She hands us the remote and motions for us to run. She points to the skyscraper we saw earlier. Emily and Jake start to run for the building, but I stop them.
“Wait,” I say and turn to dead me,” before we go I want to know what happened to me.” The ghost looks at me with such a sadness that I start to feel bad. The ghost turns, facing an open area of land. The stars are gone out of the sky and in its place are storm clouds. The wind is blowing really hard. Trees are thrashing in the wind and it’s booming with thunder. Finally, the ghost turns around.
“You couldn’t handle the pain,” she says,” after your father was declared dead, you stopped caring. The girls at school beat you up. You went home and cried. You couldn’t take it anymore, you grabbed the rope and, well you know,” she explains, pointing at her neck.
“II-I don’t understand, I mean, im still here,” I say, “ and I was on the anti-depressants.” I am crying. I’m so confused.
“I’m not really sure about that,” she replies,” the government here just gave me the profile on you saying that was how you died.” The government here is giving out profiles on the people here? That is not okay for me. I turn to the building and right then, there is a huge burst lightening. I’m blinded for a second but when my vision focuses, two normal men in business suits walk out of the skyscraper.
“Go,” I say to my friends. I sprint as fast as I could, but Emily still gets in front of me. She throws open the door and I run in and up the stairs. Jake gets in front of me and Emily in the back. We get to the top of the stairs and pull down the door to the roof. When I climb up the ladder, I run to the edge and stop. I guess I stop so suddenly that Emily wasn’t expecting it and she runs in to me. I flip over the ledge and fall to my death.
As I fall, I am screaming at the top of my lungs. I pull the remote out of my pocket and push the button. A flash of light drowns me, and then I black out.
When I awaken, I am in Jake’s arms. We are back in our woods.
“Hey,” he says smiling. Emily is sitting next to him. I don’t realize that he is holding my hand. I look down and I blush as he whispers, “I’m glad you’re awake.” He kisses my cheek ever so slightly and helped me up. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a while,” he says,” I’ve had a huge crush on you for a while, and I wanted to know if you’ll go out with me.”
I smile, a huge smile. I haven’t smiled like this in forever. “Yes,” I reply. We both smile and he comes up and kisses me. I’m shocked for a second but I’m okay with it. He pulls back and smiles.
I turn around and pull the remote out of my pocket. I throw it as hard as I could, deeper into the woods. And with that, we walked home. Jake and I hand in hand, Grace walking next to us, smiling. We walk out of the woods, ready to go home.