Read Online Beyond (Afterlife book 1) by Willow Rose - Free Book Online Page B

the
color back in his cheeks he was kind of cute-looking and about my
age as well. I noticed he had a purple mark on his forehead, like
he had been in a bad fight.
    “ Well … if you put it like
that, then yes. I am dead.”
    “ So what are you doing
here? Shouldn’t you be with God in Heaven or something like
that?”
    “ Well I sort of am. We do have
Angels at the school … but you see I need to go through this
training at the Academy to learn stuff. … It’s kind of
complicated.”
    “ Have you seen
God?”
    “ Not yet. But I hope to
one day.”
    “ What is Heaven
like?”
    “ I have no idea, honestly
… But the school is great. And being a spirit is really
cool.”
    “ Are you an
Angel?”
    “ No, that I am not. They are
kind of special … I think, that is, see I don’t really know that
much …”
    “ But you are good, right?
You are not like an evil spirit haunting houses and stuff,
right?”
    “ Well, no, not in theory… Not
normally. But … you see… we kind of did something to your living
room that wasn’t under the category of being nice, so … It’s really
very complicated.”
    He looked at me even more suspiciously
now.
    “ You don’t seem to know
much about anything, do you?”
    “ Well I am
new…”
    “ Why don’t you just go
back to where your friends went?”
    “ Well, I’m kind of stuck in this
gateway … and I can’t seem to go either back or forth. So
…”
    I felt so incredibly embarrassed. It was
like nothing I had ever gone through before. Seriously. It was
worse than the time I realized I had walked around at school all
day with toilet paper sticking out of my pants, or the time when I
finally got the courage to approach this guy I had liked for a long
time and I accidentally spit on him while I was talking.
    “ So you are stuck here.” He said
with a smile, like he found it incredibly funny, which of course I
didn’t.
    “ Yeah, that is kind of a
problem …”
    “ Why?”
    “ We’re not supposed to show
ourselves to humans before we graduate from the Academy. I’ll get
in big trouble if they find out.”
    He looked at me. “Can’t spirits make
themselves invisible?”
    I sighed. “Yes, they can.”
    “ So why didn’t you just
make yourself invisible when you saw me?”
    “ Well … the thing is… we haven’t
quite gotten to that part yet. That’s not until next
semester.”
    The boy burst into laughter.
    “ You’re funny,” he
said.
    “ Yeah well, I might be,” I said.
There was a pause between us. Then I said, “Listen, I’m sorry about
the mess downstairs in your living room.”
    He sighed. “Well, I guess my step-dad is
sleeping down there on the couch anyway. He usually does when he’s
drunk. So my mom will probably think he did it and clean it all up
before he wakes up. I’m sure it will be fine,” he said.
    Another awkward silence followed.
    “ How did you get that
purple mark?” I asked and pointed at his forehead with my free
hand.
    He felt the big purple bump. “Oh this?” he
asked and seemed all of a sudden a little embarrassed, like he
didn’t want to talk to me about it. “It is nothing. I just fell
down the stairs.”
    “ Oh, okay.” I thought it was a
strange answer.
    “ So what do we do now?” he
asked.
    “ I have to get out of this
mess,” I said and looked at my arm. I still couldn’t move it either
way.
    “ Can I help?”
    “ That’s kind of you, but I am
afraid not. See, the problem is all in my mind. I have a hard time
believing that I can actually go through things yet. Once I get it
and stop overthinking it, I will no longer have this
problem.”
    The boy’s face lit up.
    “ Maybe I can help you,” he said.
    I looked at him quite surprised.
    “ How?”
    “ Well, my mother always
says to me that I overthink everything. That I worry too much about
things I shouldn’t. And when I do, she always tries to distract me
with something else.”
    I had to admit that sounded like a good
plan.
    “ Okay,” I