"So… Hayden, how have you been since we last saw each other?"
Her voice was gentle, rehearsed... too polished to be real. Like she was reading from a script she'd recited a hundred times before. Jessi, "Just Jessi," she'd told me the first time we met, all smiles and soft edges, sat across from me in her usual chair, the one with the worn arms and pale upholstery that looked like it belonged in a hotel lobby.
She was dressed like always: tidy, professional, clipboard balanced on her lap, legs crossed at the knee. The pen in her hand was already clicking rhythmically. Tick, tick, tick.
"Eh… fine, I guess…" I muttered, eyes fixed on a spot on the floor just to the left of her shoe. I didn't dare look her in the eye. If I did, she might see something. Something I didn't want to explain.
Every Monday, like clockwork, my parents dropped me off at the bland brick building that housed her office. They didn't say much anymore. Not since the first year of these sessions. They just said it was important, that it was for my health, because of what happened when I was eight.
Because of her.
I scratched at the side of my thumb where the skin had started to peel again. I didn't even notice the sting until a tiny streak of red bloomed under my nail. I wiped it on my jeans.
Jessi's pen clicked once more.
"Have you been taking your medication like we discussed?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in that sceptical-but-concerned therapist way.
I hesitated. For just a second. Long enough.
No.
But I didn't say that.
"Yeah, I have," I lied, keeping my eyes trained on the tile as I shifted in the chair. The marble beneath my feet reflected a ghostly outline of myself, all blurry and stretched. I looked like a smudge on the surface of reality.
Jessi sighed and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her tone softening.
"Hayden, you know this is a safe place. You can talk to me about anything. You don't have to-"
"You think I'm crazy, don't you?" I interrupted, my voice barely above a whisper. I didn't look at her. I stared at the reflection on the floor again, but not of myself this time.
There she was.
A tall, slender figure, impossible and unreal in the fluorescent light. Her skin was the colour of melting ice, pale blue and smooth like polished stone. She stood silently behind Jessi, her arms crossed behind her back, and her lips curled in that calm, eerie smile she always wore. Her eyes, black, bottomless, watched me like they always did.
She never blinked.
Jessi shifted in her seat, her expression softening.
"No, I don't think that, Hayden. I think you've been through a lot, and I just want to make sure you're okay." She reached a hand out toward me, hesitating first, then slowly moving to place it on my shoulder.
I pulled away before she could touch me.
"That's bullshit," I snapped, standing up so quickly my chair scraped against the floor. "Everyone thinks I'm insane."
I glanced behind her. The figure didn't move, didn't flinch. She stood tall, poised like a sentry. The black suit she wore made her skin stand out even more starkly, and her hair, raven-dark, was pulled into a bun so tight it looked painful.
She should have looked terrifying. Demonic, even. And yet, her smile was... soft. Almost motherly.
That made it worse somehow.
"Hayden, please-" Jessi started, but I didn't let her finish.
"I'm going home."
I walked out without another word, ignoring her voice calling faintly after me. The waiting room was empty, the receptionist on a call and not paying attention. I pushed the door open into the cool afternoon air and stepped outside, letting it slam behind me.
As soon as I cleared the doorway, I sighed, dragging a hand through my hair. My heartbeat was still pounding in my ears.
"You know…" I muttered, turning to my right without surprise, "You don't have to follow me everywhere."
She was already there, just like always. Leaning against the crumbling brick wall of the clinic, a cigarette perched between two long, pale fingers. The smoke curled lazily around her head, glowing faintly in the afternoon light.
"Queen's orders," she said simply, her voice a soft, lilting echo. There was amusement there, barely hidden behind her words.
I watched as she took a drag from the cigarette and exhaled slowly, the smoke drifting like fog over the sidewalk.
A young couple walked by, laughing as they passed, completely oblivious to the ten-foot-tall woman standing beside me like a silent guardian. To them, she wasn't there. She never was. No one else ever saw her. Just me.
Just the crazy kid.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and started walking.
She didn't follow right away, but I knew she would.
She always did.
~~~
Paxton and Zach were acting like absolute dumbasses again.
It was lunchtime at the bay behind the science block, our usual hangout spot, a patch of grass shaded by gum trees and just far enough from the teachers' line of sight that we could get away with anything. The school had dubbed it the "quiet zone." Clearly, they hadn't met Zach.
He had his speaker out again, blasting some obnoxious remix with bass that shook the dirt. Paxton was halfway through a meat pie and throwing bits of pastry at Zach, who ducked, retaliated with a half-melted chocolate frog, and then howled laughing when it hit Paxton square in the chest. They were loud, careless, laughing at nothing and everything, talking trash about a kid in maths class who farted during silent reading, arguing about who would survive longer in a zombie apocalypse.
It was chaotic. Immature. Normal.
I sat a little apart from them, leaning against the back of my school bag, pretending I wasn't with them even though we always ate together. A Tupperware container of carrot sticks rested beside me, mostly untouched. In my lap sat a thick paperback I'd borrowed from the school library that morning: Beyond the Veil: Afterlife Theories and Spirit Phenomena.
The title sounded dramatic, maybe even fake, but it had chapters about cultures around the world and how they interpret death. I wasn't looking for answers exactly... just hoping something in there might click. Maybe give what I saw a name. A reason.
The page I was on talked about "liminal spirits", entities caught between worlds, neither dead nor fully gone. Some people saw them. Most didn't. The book called it a gift. I called it a curse.
As I read, I felt it again. The shift. The air around me cooled slightly, like the sunlight was filtering through a pane of glass. I didn't need to look up; I already knew someone was there.
Still, I glanced to my right.
There he was. A ghostly figure, faint and colourless, stood next to me like a student sharing my book. His head tilted slightly, his mouth moving silently as if reading the same paragraph I was. He was maybe seventeen, hard to tell, really, with a faded school uniform and dried blood around his temple. He looked peaceful. Calm.
He didn't know I could see him.
They never did.
And then, he noticed. His eyes, once glazed and blank, snapped into focus. He looked straight at me. For a heartbeat, we just stared at each other.
Then his expression twisted, not in anger, but in something close to shock, like I wasn't supposed to exist in his world. Like I'd broken the rules. His eyes widened, hollow and black-rimmed, and before I could breathe, he vanished. Snuffed out like a candle.
Gone.
Just like always.
And it still got to me. Even now.
Those… those were the reasons. The real reasons.
Why I broke down. Why I screamed and cried so hard, I lost my voice.
When I was eight, she appeared.
The others stayed where they died. They drifted, trapped in loops or places they used to know. But her? She didn't follow the rules.
She followed me.
She was there when I woke up. There, when I walked to school, she hovered near the swings when I had visitation with Mira. She stood in the hallway at night, a blur of moonlight and shadow. Always watching. Always silent.
The first time I saw her, I screamed so hard I couldn't stop. I remember collapsing in the kitchen, crying and kicking, yelling for my parents to make her go away. But they didn't see anything. No one ever did. Not then. Not now.
Eventually, I stopped fighting it. Stopped reacting.
Now I just... ignore them.
Or at least, I try to.
"Hellooooo, earth to Hayden!"
A hand waved in front of my face, and I flinched hard, my whole body jerking back like I'd just been slapped. Paxton stood over me, grinning like an idiot.
"Could you not?" I snapped, the words sharp even as I tried to reel them back. My voice dropped to a mumble. "I don't like people being that close to me…"
Zach laughed, not cruelly, just unaware. "Dude, you looked like you were having an out-of-body experience or something."
"Probably was," Paxton joked, dropping back onto the grass and popping another chip into his mouth. "What were you even thinking about? You were just... staring at nothing."
I shrugged, closing the book and sliding it back into my bag like it didn't matter.
"Just thinking," I said. Quiet. Casual. Safe. I grabbed a carrot stick from my lunchbox and crunched into it, trying to anchor myself with something simple, something real.
Because if I said what I was thinking about, about ghosts, and death, and the woman who followed me through my entire life, they'd laugh. Or worse… they'd believe me.
And that was something I wasn't ready for.
Not yet.