Chapter Text
Melanie didn't know what was going on. Everything was dark and her head felt fuzzy. She couldn’t think straight, and she couldn’t quite remember what was going on. She wasn’t in any pain, which was… surprising, for some reason. She didn’t have any idea why she would expect to be in pain.
The girl tried to remember something about what was going on, but her focus was pulled away when she tried to shift and she abruptly realized that she wasn’t on a soft surface like a bed or couch. She was laying on something hard and rough… almost like dirt or sand? Why would she be on the ground? And why wasn’t she sore from apparently sleeping on it?
In an effort to figure out what in the world was happening, Melanie pried her eyes open and immediately stilled at the sight. The sky above her was painted with stars, more than she’d ever seen from her small mountain town plagued with light pollution from nearby towns. She was briefly awed at the beautiful sight, but then quickly recalled that she should not be able to see this from where she lived, which meant that something was definitely wrong.
She quickly sat up, again vaguely surprised that she didn’t experience any pain, and gaped at her surroundings. She blinked once, then again, before sucking in a sharp breath when she realized that she wasn’t just seeing things. Melanie was in the middle of the desert, with no idea of when, why, or most importantly how she’d gotten there.
She moved to rub her eyes, vainly hoping that everything would just go back to normal, that she’d wake up or stop daydreaming or something, but then she caught sight of her hand and instantly froze. Her hands weren’t the warm brown she’d expected. Their color was… off. Muted. Like she was looking at them through a milky pane of glass. But that wasn’t the worst part. Her hands were see-through.
Melanie just sat there, staring at her transparent hands as her brain slowly started processing again. She frantically jolted to check the rest of herself, only to find the same effect applied to the rest of her. It was like someone had taken a picture of her and placed it on a white canvas before lowering the opacity. She tugged at her sleeves and tried to calm her frantic breathing, trying to come up with an explanation, any explanation for what she was looking at.
Her brain ran through a million different ideas, none of them making coherent sense. She couldn’t come up with any rational solution, no matter what she tried. When she landed on the very morbid thought that she was a ghost, though, her brain ground to a halt again. A memory was suddenly nagging her, just out of reach. The fuzzy, staticy feeling she’d noticed when she woke up was returning, and quickly. The girl furrowed her brow and tried to reach the memory that felt so important.
As she got closer to recalling, she felt more and more distant, like she was dissociating. She couldn’t bring herself to care, though. All she wanted was answers, and something in her knew that this memory had those answers, so she’d push as hard as she needed to access them.
She screwed her eyes shut, trying so hard to close that final bit of mental distance between her and her subconscious. Then, like a piece snapping into its correct place in a puzzle, she had it, and the recollection of what had transpired hit her like a freight train. She remembered what had happened now, and she desperately wished that she was imagining it. But she knew she wasn’t.
Three girls were chatting animatedly, walking down the street of a small mountain town. In the center was Melaine, her cloud of curly, frizzy, dark brown hair bouncing as she walked, a noticeable spring in her step and her dark brown eyes sparkling with joy.
On her right was a girl with a similar skin tone, slightly lighter eyes, and darker hair. Her name was Phoebe, and she walked much more evenly and her expression was calmer, her smile soft and barely noticeable to those who didn’t know her.
Finally, the girl on the left had pale skin that looked even paler in contrast to her best friends, with long, straight, and fiery red hair in even further contrast. Her kind blue eyes shone as she talked to her friends and as they spoke to her. She was named Eleanor.
All three were dressed for the slightly brisk day, wearing jackets in their favorite colors. Melanie wore an orange jacket with an open zipper and a hood, Phoebe wore a green jacket with a closed zipper and no hood, and Eleanor wore a blue pullover hoodie. They all also carried black cases, each containing a different instrument.
They were on their way to one of the public trails to find a nice spot to practice their instruments and chat, like they did every weekend. However, this weekend wouldn’t end up being like any other, no matter how much they wished it could have been after the fact.
They’d reached a crosswalk that they had used a million times before. Eleanor’s shoe came untied and she stopped briefly on the sidewalk to stoop down and fix it. Phoebe stopped next to her to wait, but Melanie kept walking, knowing that her friends would only be a moment. She had only taken a few steps into the road when it happened.
Out of seemingly nowhere, a black and purple sports car with sharp decorations came thundering down the road, very well above the speed limit. It roared past the stop sign, and Melanie only had a split second to turn and face the sudden sound.
The last thing the girl felt was unimaginable pain, and the last thing she heard were two familiar voices crying her name with more terror than she’d ever heard from them before.
Phoebe stared blankly at the ceiling of her bedroom, at least ten minutes before her alarm was due to go off. It had been almost a week, but it still didn’t feel real. It still felt as though she’d be able to reach over and text Melanie, getting a reply almost half an hour later because she'd slept through her alarm again. But she knew that wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t anymore, not since she’d…
Phoebe tried to silence that line of thinking, but tears were already streaming down her face. She turned to bury her face in her pillow so that she wouldn’t worry her parents more than they already were. She didn’t want to go to school. She hadn’t wanted to all week, but she knew that she had to. It barely mattered that it was Friday though, in fact, that almost made it worse. It was almost the weekend again, and it would never, could never be the same with one of her best friends gone. Dead.
A fresh wave of tears escaped her eyes and she was so focused on trying to quell them that she almost jumped a foot in the air when her alarm actually went off. Right, she’d forgotten to turn it off when she woke up. She normally wouldn’t forget that. Not that anything had been even remotely normal lately.
Phoebe slowly pulled herself out of bed and out of her room, making her way into the bathroom to clean herself up so that she wouldn’t get more of those sad looks from her parents. She didn’t know if she could handle it for much longer.
Once she’d gotten herself as ready as she could for school, she grabbed her clarinet case, bid her parents goodbye as she passed them in the kitchen, and walked out to the bus stop for the final time that week.
Eleanor did her best to appear as okay on the outside, or as okay as she could be considering the situation. On the inside, however, she felt as though the whole world was falling apart around her. Just under a week ago, she’d been with her two best friends in the whole world, chatting as though nothing was wrong. Then suddenly, one of them was gone and she’d never be able to come back.
She did her best to be okay, to not be someone fragile who’d have to constantly be taken care of because of this, but her hold on that mask was tenuous from the start. She’d never been good at hiding her feelings, especially from those close to her. It had barely been a week and she already felt like she was going to fall to pieces at the slightest breeze.
“Eleanor?”
The red-haired girl snapped from her spiraling and whirled around to look at Phoebe, who looked both concerned and understanding. Eleanor did her best to fix her expression, but she got the impression that she had failed miserably when Phoebe pulled her into a quick hug.
As Phoebe pulled away again, she asked, “Have you heard anything? From anyone?”
Blue eyes hesitantly met brown and the sad look easily answered that question, but she gave a verbal reply of “No…” regardless.
Eleanor had an uncle who was a police officer, but she hadn’t heard anything regarding progress on the identity of the driver. She hadn’t heard anything from Melanie’s parents, either. She worried for them, at least a little. If she’d felt this awful just losing a friend, then she didn’t want to imagine how the parents of the girl might feel.
Phoebe looked at the ground dejectedly and sighed, “I’d hoped that my sketch would help but…”
“Phoebe, I’m sure your sketch helped as much as it could, but if they can’t find any cars that match…” Eleanor tried to reassure her friend, but it ended up falling flat for both of them.
They both stared at the ground, the bus still nowhere to be seen. It would have been a welcome distraction. They stood in silence that wasn’t quite awkward for a few moments, neither really knowing what to say. Then, Phoebe looked up abruptly, an idea sparkling in her eyes.
“Eleanor… what if we looked too?”
“Excuse me, what?”
Phoebe took a step closer to her friend and said, “If we could figure out what type of car it is, you know, make and model and such, then maybe it would be easier to search for!”
Eleanor folded her arms skeptically and stated, “Phoebe, I’m sure that the police already know that much. It isn’t that hard to look up cars.”
“That’s the thing, I’m not sure that they do know!”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I didn’t recognize the logo on the car. It looked like a sharp little face. I tried looking it up, but I couldn’t find anything on it.”
“Maybe you’re… misremembering it?” Eleanor suggested hesitantly.
Phoebe gave her a dry look, and Eleanor looked down sheepishly. They were both aware of Phoebe’s photographic memory, but Eleanor was hesitant to believe that it would be so hard to find a car company with a logo like that.
Finally, Eleanor let out a slight huff and said, “If it gives you some peace of mind, I’ll help you look, but I don’t really think that a pair of high schoolers are going to do much better than the police.”
If Phoebe’s smile helped her feel just a little better for a moment, nobody had to know.
By the time Melanie had managed to mostly calm herself down, the sky had lightened and she could tell that it was almost daybreak. She took a deep, calming breath, doing her best not to think about the fact that she didn’t actually need to breathe. She couldn’t sit on the ground forever, she needed to do… something. Anything would be fine at this point.
She moved to push herself to her feet, but when she ended up floating a few inches off of the ground instead of standing with her feet on the ground, she flailed her arms as if she was falling before managing to stop herself. She let out a shaky breath and managed to lower herself in the air until her white and orange sneakers made contact with the red sand.
She looked around uncertainly, reaching up to fiddle with her hood’s drawstring. There were no significant landmarks nearby, just open desert and towering mesas. For now, she figured that she should just pick a direction and start moving. It was better than nothing.
With that, she started off, having no idea what would happen now or where her steps would lead her. She could only hope that she’d figure this all out in time. Maybe she’d be able to see her family and friends, if she could find her way there. And if she could even bring herself to return home, now that she was… gone.
The ghost shook her head, trying to clear it. She didn’t want to think of this right now, not when she had too much on her plate already. She needed to take things one step at a time, and right now, her first step was just finding signs of human life somewhere. She could figure everything else out once she’d managed that task.
Melanie definitely didn’t think about the fact that she was only temporarily distracting herself from the loss. It didn’t matter yet, and maybe if she kept telling herself that, maybe… it would finally be true.