I was eighteen when I died. Sure, I wasn’t happy about it but fate has an unusual way of catching up to you if you have a lucky streak going for too long. I had been lucky the three years before my death, two of my lifetime goals had been achieved, although one of them my parents weren’t exactly happy about. I watched over my family from where my soul had landed in heaven; watching as those I knew and loved grew up. I especially watched my daughter, who was one year old when I departed earth. I could have become a poltergeist and haunted the woman who killed me for the rest of her days, but that was not me. I was neither cruel nor evil, not in the way Esmerelda had been when she hung me from the highest branch in the tallest tree in the forest behind her house. I do not hate her for what she did to me. Esemerlda was a senior when I was in year eight and had stayed on to be the guidance counsellor. She had been in love with me, a wretched, horrible curse when I was not a lesbian and helplessly in love with my boyfriend, Bailey, whose eyes were a deep-sea green and his hair jet black, unruly yet silky at the same time. I could remember back to when I had first spoken to him, unaware that Esmerelda had been watching our awkward exchange.

**********

“French next!” Steph’s eyes lit up as she reached into her locker and extracted her textbook. She had a crush on the French teacher; he looked like the twenty-five year old version of Nick Jonas. I didn’t get her obsession with older men. Rolling my eyes at her, I pulled a bobby pin out of my hair and began picking the lock on my locker. I could never remember the code and I didn’t carry bolt cutters around with me so I made do with the resources I had, a.k.a. a bobby pin.
“Courtney, why don’t you just ask the office for your code?” Steph asked, leaning against her locker with her books clutched to her chest, watching me struggle with the lock.
“Because I don’t want to,” I said, brushing a curl that I hated out my eyes. Yes, I knew that women paid hundreds of dollars for hair like mine. Yes, I would do anything to rid myself of the ringlets that were a product of two recessive genes from my parents. It was ironic that I would get curly hair while my younger sister would get straight hair; I envied her luscious locks, tantalizingly platinum blond and never messy. My hair was a mousy brown, my eyes were chocolate and my nose was just the perfect size for my heart shaped face. I didn’t date, more to the fact that no one dated me, but I could catch a guy if I wanted to. I’d probably damage their mental health; my personality was so unique in its own way. I loved to read and write, I loved animals and I loved my animal husbandry classes, working with the livestock and crops. But I also loved sports, not that I took any gym classes, wanting to focus more on my writing. I’d played softball for a little while at primary school but had stopped when I started high school. At the moment, I was in year ten, beginning a new chapter, my goal this year to get a book published. I shook myself from my thoughts and poked my tongue out in concentration, jiggling the bobby pin about.
“I’m going to class,” Steph sighed, clearly not want to wait for me any longer.
“Fine,” I grumbled, still fighting with that blasted lock. “Save me a seat okay?”
Steph nodded and turned, her heels clicking as she headed down the hall. After a few more moments of poking, prodding, jiggling, wiggling and even a few insults, the lock finally gave way and my locker door swung open and all my books fell out.
“C***,” I said, bending down to pick them up.
“Want a hand?”
I looked up into his eyes, the very boy I had harboured a crush on since the day I started here at this very boring institution of learning. Even though my heart was running laps, I smiled and kept my cool.
“Thanks,” I said.
The Bailey Falkner helped me gather the mess and shove it back into my locker, my skin tingling as his hand brushed mine for a split-second.
“What class have you got now?” he asked, reaching up for a textbook.
“French,” I said, watching as his muscled arm grabbed the four-hundred and fifty page textbook down from the top shelf. Bailey handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said again. I slammed my locker shut and locked it again, dreading the next fight that I would have with it in seventy minutes. I started to walk down the hall in the same direction Steph had when someone grabbed my arm. Bailey swung me around to face him, the electricity from his touch shooting through me so powerfully that I felt overwhelmed.
“I’ve been watching you since you came here,” Bailey said. I stared at him.
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said. Bailey opened his mouth to say something else but footsteps cut him off, I looked over his shoulder and saw, with horror, the principal walking towards us.
“No loitering in the hallway!” she barked. “Get to class.”
I gave Bailey an apologetic smile before quickly slipping inside my French classroom. Stephanie, bless her annoying soul, had picked a seat right up at the front of the classroom, all the better to see the Nick Jonas look alike; better for me to get busted while trying to get in unnoticed.
“You’re late Courtney,” he said crisply as I slid into the seat beside Steph.
“Sorry Mr Jonas – I mean, Godfrey,” I said, opening my textbook. Tucked inside the front cover, was a folded sheet of paper. I unfolded it and began to read. It was a quote from Chris Brown and Jordin Sparks’ No Air.

‘If I should die before I wake,
Its ‘cos you took my breath away’

Bailey

*********