The ring dropped on the floor, rolling down the empty stretch of hallway before stopping. I sighed and walked over to it, picking up the tiny ring. Twiddling it between my fingertips, I admired the intricacy of the simple twist ties braided together to form a circle, the place where it was joined bulkier than the rest of it.
     I slipped the ring onto the index finger of my left hand. Not my ring finger, as it was not a wedding ring, but one of friendship. Not my right hand, as the wire and paper toy made it difficult to write.
     Picking up my backpack, I walked down the abandoned locker bay, my footsteps echoing clearly. I brushed my black hair from my face, adjusting my glasses and straightening my kilt. Why people thought all-girls’ schools should wear preppy uniforms was beyond me. Wasn’t the whole idea of being a human to be unique? Different? Un-conforming?
     I shook my head and smiled slightly as I opened the door to the school library. Too bad philosophy wasn’t offered to grade teners. I’d have to wait a couple years.
     ‘What’s new, Tahlia?’ a girl called from across the bustling library. Usual Monday morning rush hour.
     ‘Not much,’ I called back to the blonde-haired girl, grinning. ‘How’s life treating you?’
     ‘Horribly,’ she complained dramatically. I laughed. ‘I swear my physics teacher hates me.’
     ‘Aw, what has she done now?’ I asked, coming up to my friend. Gabby was in grade twelve, an age difference of nearly three years. And yet we were best friends. I chuckled. Such a strange group my friends made! Kids from all grades were welcome. And cliques. The only ones not welcome were the preppies. We would’ve welcomed them gladly if they would accept the fact that nobody was perfect, especially not them, and had a right to be different. Alas, harmony was not to be attained. They accosted us at lunch times when we met and harassed some of our younger and weaker members. It was then that bigger, older people like myself had to step in and stop the war.
     ‘…and then she – ’ Gabby stopped and waved her hand in front of my face. ‘Ksh! Earth to Tal, come in Tal. This is Earth speaking. Over. Ksh!’
     I grinned at my friend as I focused on her properly. She took off my glasses and looked at them carefully.
     ‘I think you need a new prescription,’ she said seriously as I tried to snatch them back. I could only see coloured blurs without them. I practically depended on my glasses. ‘You keep staring at nothing.’
     ‘Sorry, Gab,’ I apologized, finally managing to reach my glasses and replace them on my eyes. ‘Just thinking.’
     She raised her eyebrow, giving her a very dramatic look. I laughed.
     ‘What planet were you on this time?’ she asked me sceptically. ‘Mars?’
     ‘Nah,’ I told her, picking up my French books as the bell rang. ‘Somewhere around Pluto.’
     With a bark of laughter, she grabbed her physics work and raced to her classroom as I shook my head and walked into the French room.
                                                                  ***
     I sat in the stairway, sighing heavily. Things seemed so… overwhelming lately. Schoolwork, the preppies had cracked down harder on a pair of twins that had recently joined our group, strained friendships, yada yada yada…
     I groaned and put my head in my hands. And I thought Mondays were supposed to be stress-free. I laughed quietly, to myself. Life looked so simple from a distance, and it was so complex when you were living it yourself. Why didn’t people get that?
     Sighing again, I picked up my backpack. I’d have to have a word with Jen, the leader of the preppies, and the head mastermind on the particular group pestering the Dust, my collection of outcasts and loners. Or just people who needed a group to hang with, Everyone just sort of floated in and out. Like dust. Thus, the name came to be. The Dust.
     I smiled when I remembered how that name had come about. Philosophy was a big topic in the Dust, and it came up practically everyday. And with the eleven or so usuals plus Gabby and I, the ringleaders, and the addition of five or six ‘flotsam’, we got a pretty good banter going most of the time. Even airheads like the preppies couldn’t pass up such an opportunity at times, and they became part of the Dust as much as the rest of us.
     A noise. My ears pricked up, and I strained to hear it properly. A tiny little ‘click!’ went off in my head, and I could suddenly hear much better. Now attuned to the sound, I closed my eyes, blocking any distractions from my mind. I listened carefully for all the sounds in the stairwell; the muffled laughter of the math class outside the stairs, the small ‘drip!’ of the school’s leaky water system, and the low whistle of cold autumn wind coming through the closed door, causing the stairway to be freezing. And the slow, slightly echoing footsteps of someone coming down the stairs behind me.
     I froze. Almost everyone in the school knew me from the Dust, and all the people I knew wouldn’t sneak up behind me. Except Jen.
     ‘Jen, I know you’re there, why don – ’ I was cut off as Jen ran the few stairs left and pushed me hard. I opened my eyes in shock as I pitched headfirst down the stairs. My glasses flew off, clattering down the stairs and smashing on the cold stone below. I turned around as my head cracked solidly against the metal handrail, and I watched a white blur run off before everything swirled and went dark, my head hitting the stone tile at the bottom of the stairs.
                                                                  ***
     ‘Oh, cripes,’ a voice whispered. I recognized Gabby’s distinctive phrase. My head was pounding, and my entire body felt frozen.
     ‘Does this mean that the Dust is out today?’ a squeaky voice asked Gabby. Our newest member, Lisa. The skinny, brown-haired kid had lots of ideas, she just tended to not let anyone else talk. I heard a light smack. ‘Ow! Did you have to do that?’
     ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have if you were a little more sensitive,’ Gabby snapped. I felt her shake me slightly. ‘Tal. Tal, you alright? Can you hear me?’
     ‘Mm,’ I mumbled. Gabby gave out a whoop of triumph, and she helped me to sit up properly. I opened my eyes, and pain flashed through my head. I groaned.
     ‘Sounds like you whacked your head pretty damn hard,’ Gabby commented, handing me my cracked glasses. I placed them on my head, and everything came into spiderwebby focus. I smiled slightly. ‘You fell down the stairs?’
     I nodded, but the throbbing in my head made me wince, so I stopped. She turned my head gently so that I was staring at her blue yes.
     ‘Let’s see if you have a conc – ’ she stopped abruptly, and sat there, looking from one of my eyes to the other.
     ‘What?’ I laughed. ‘Do I look like a crazy person?’
     ‘Go to the bathroom,’ she told me slowly, still staring. ‘And look in the mirror.’
     ‘Gabrielle, wh – ’
     ‘GO!’
     I glanced at her, bewildered, but I stood and walked to the girl’s washroom, going slowly because my glasses turned the world into some sort of giant kaleidoscope. Stepping into the green bathroom, I glanced at the mirror. And stared.
     One eyes was green, a sort of foresty colour like normal. The other eye, my left eye, was the colour of light mint.
                                                                  ***
     I wore my sunglasses for my science class before lunch. I found it difficult to concentrate on the elements of the periodic table when so much was running through my head. Not to mention the pounding of the bump.
     I glanced around the room. Jen was in my science class, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. Where was she? Was she gone to try and conceal her guilt? But why try and conceal what I already knew? I had even called her by her name in the stairway.
     ‘Alright, everyone,’ Mr. V called, trying to our attention and failing miserably. I looked up in an attempt to show that I was listening. ‘Everyone get a partner for the lab.’
     Now was my chance. Under the pretence of looking for a suitable lab partner, I walked over to the preppy clique, all of whom were squabbling over who went with who. Without Jen, there were five of them.
     ‘Hey, Margaret,’ I called. She looked up, her glossy brown curls bobbing with the movement. ‘I’ll be your lab partner.’
     She looked me up and down, her brown eyes critical, confused as to why a chemistry genius like me would want to partner up with a vacant bimbo like her. She shrugged and walked back to my seat with me. While she went and got goggles, I set up the Bunsen burner. Margaret came back, and placed the goggles on her face. One advantage to glasses; I never had to wear those stupid green goggles that made everyone look like bugs from another galaxy.
     Lighting a match, I waited patiently as she turned on the gas. I touched the fire to the gas, and a flame blossomed from the tip of the Bunsen burner.
     ‘You have the magnesium?’ she asked. I nodded, attaching an end of the skinny metal strip to the tongs.
     ‘Remember not to look right at it,’ I reminded her, getting ready to begin the experiment. ‘Where’s Jen?’
     ‘She’s sick today,’ Margaret told me, watching the magnesium. ‘She was hurling all weekend.’
     ‘My stomach lurched. Then who…?
     ‘Hey, Tahlia, watch it!’ Margaret yelped as I placed the strip into the blue flame. The magnesium caught fire instantly, and bright white light came off of it like a star. I stared at it, awed. My eyes felt fine, and the light didn’t hurt them. My sunglasses must have a stronger prescription that I thought. Looking deep into the hypnotic light, I saw something more. Pictures flashed through my mind. A match being struck, the fire suddenly exploding, blasting through the room.
     I looked up sharply, my senses prickling. I heard everything, saw everything. Anne was arguing with her partner.
     ‘Give me the matches,’ Anne said exasperatedly, snatching the box from her bewildered friend. ‘Geez. Look. It’s not that hard to light a match!’
      She struck the match. Every part of my body went into high gear. The gas had been whistling through the tap for the past five minutes. I could smell it. And they were lighting a match!
     ‘Anne, no!’ I screamed, running at her. The flame ate the match head and suddenly exploded as it hit the gas in the air. I grabbed Anne around her middle and knocked her to the ground as the fire shot over our heads, looking hungrily for more food. My sunglasses skittered away from me, and I saw a wicked face gnash its teeth at me nastily before my teacher, finally getting over his shock, grabbed the fire extinguisher and blew out the flames.
     I coughed in the thick white fog that followed, and I rolled Anne over. She was still breathing, and I saw that her hand was badly burned, charred black and the skin bubbling and sizzling.
     I felt sick. I wanted to run and never stop, to keep going until my heart burst and my lungs gave out, just get away. Get away from that grinning face in the fire, the hungry way it had looked at Anne and me. No more.
     I grabbed my sunglasses and ran out of the room, shedding my lab coat and out into the hallway, bolting through the locker room and outside into the crisp, fresh air, my lungs burning from the smoke and the gas. I took several deep breaths, tears coursing down my cheeks. Taking one final breath, I wiped the tears off onto my sleeve, cleaned my glasses, and went back to face Mr. V and my classmates, my heart pounding and thoughts roiling.
                                                                  ***
     ‘I’m just saying…’
     ‘It was lucky she was there, that’s all,’
     ‘Oh yeah? What if it was Fate?’
     ‘Then what?’
     ‘It doesn’t change what happened,’
     ‘No, but it could alter the future…’
     The Dust was buzzing with thoughts and plausible explanations for my small adventure in my science class. I ate my lunch quietly, and apart from the rest of the group.
     Someone was out to get me. That was for sure. Everyone agreed on that at least. But whether it was pure coincidence or paranormal influence that I had been in two difficult predicaments in the same day, the same morning was a different issue altogether. And apparently a good enough excuse for a philosophical argument in the chill November air.
     ‘Tal? What do you think?’ Maggie asked, her voice cutting through the chatter of about twenty girls. The Dust had swelled its ranks this particular lunch hour when news of my heroic rescue in science traveled through the school. For a moment, I silently cursed the fact that in such a small school, gossip lines stretched quickly. The buzz stopped as everyone looked to me. I fixed my sunglasses.
     ‘I think I want to eat my tuna sandwich in peace,’ I growled softly. Maggie shrugged, and the chatter started up again, and I took a bite out of my sandwich. This was one day that I really didn’t want to talk philosophically and ‘what ifs?’. I wanted to sit this one out. It was too personal, it seemed.
     Sighing heavily, I sipped my milk. Thinking made me thirsty.
     Why was this ‘ghost’ after me? Or the people around me? Thinking back I realized when I had been pushed, I wanted to talk to Jen about haunting the Dust. My pulse quickened as I searched my memory banks. And Anne… I thought hard, trying to find a connection, any reason for that face in the flames that wanted Anne. It suddenly clicked. Anne was one of the flotsams that came back time and time again to the Dust.
     I quickly glanced around at the faces of the Dust as I felt myself go cold. One smiling face missing, anybody at all… my heart stopped.
     ‘Where’s Gabby?’
                                                                  ***
     I ran up the stairs, panting hard and my sunglasses bobbing up and down on my nose. I had to find Gabby. Gabrielle was a leader of the Dust with me; therefore a target to whatever this paranormal thing was that was apparently attacking our members. Why though? It made no sense. Why the Dust? We never did anything to anyone except offer them friendship and a philosophical discussion now and again about anything.
     My blood ran cold. Philosophy. Was that it? But why? Because we thought intellectually? Or just questioned everything?
     My feet skidded to a halt. The creek. Gabby loved the creek behind our school. Turning sharply, I darted outside, racing down the sloping hill, the wind almost pushing me backwards. I tripped and fell, tumbling down the grassy slope, my sunglasses flying off and snapping in two.
     With now-blurry vision, I ran to the creek, pushing branches aside and ignoring the thorns that tore at my kilt and scratched my running legs. I heard a splash and a muffled yell.
     ‘Hang on!’ I shrieked. ‘I’m coming!’
     ‘Tahlia!’ Gabby yelped, and I heard her cry out. ‘Stay away, Tal!’
     ‘Gabrielle!’ I shouted, finally reaching the creek, tripping on a tree root and landing on my knees in the mud. I stood quickly, looking every which way for her. I turned and staggered back, a scream dying in my throat as my head started to spin. Gabby, my best friend, facedown in the creek, her head lying against a rock, red colouring the water.
     I found my voice and screamed, trying to get my legs to move, to run away, to just get away from this false reality. It had to be a nightmare, it just had to be! A cackle filled the woods, and I turned to see if anything was following me. I saw a blur of movement, and I tripped over a tree root, smashing my head against a tree as I fell, the cold laughter filling my thoughts.
                                                                  ***
     The paper had labeled Gabrielle’s death a suicide, and I was just unlucky enough to come across her. But I knew better. My eyes saw what the police hadn’t. I knew Gabby like nobody ever had. And I knew what lurked in that forest, the creature that haunted my nightmares.
     Anne was still in the hospital, the trauma of the Bunsen burner incident throwing her into a coma, one that she hadn’t yet woken from. The inner members of the Dust, eleven plus myself now, had a few weird things happen to them, though nothing as violent or terrifying as Gabby’s death. I had warned the Dust, and whenever I had my weird visions, I told the people concerned, and the avoided disaster most of the time.
     The Dust became a members-only thing unfortunately, which grieved some of the irregular flotsam. But now that we knew this – thing – was only after the Dust, we had to keep it that way. Just the twelve of us. We had claimed a spot near the creek for our lunchtime chats, ones that were occasionally punctuated by that cruel laughter, the voice I had heard at Gabby’s death. Nobody came near us. They said Gabby’s ghost haunted the place. If only.
     I had been branded by real ghosts; one eye dark green, the other like mint. I could see them sometimes, and I had my strangely accurate dreams. But it didn’t stop me from living life as I normally do. I had to, wanted to.
     For Gabrielle.