"Help me!" a voice from another world echoed. I reached out my hand, grasping towards the person in need. An infinity stood between us. It would not be long before even the voice would disappear into the silence. My eyes felt heavy in the presence of all this darkness. The darkness was stifling; eventually, I lost the ability to move. I racked my head, trying to remember how I got here. My left side of my head throbbed violently. In trying to recall the past, I realized the importance of that voice. That person.

I screamed out, trying to make my static body advance towards the voice who in desperation called out to me, and yet my body remained frozen. I knew at this instance that the voice was the reason why I was here, and the reason why I was me. The spiritual bond shared between us could not be easily dissolved. As the voice disappeared into the emptiness, I realized that this was not the end— no for me there was no such thing as a true end. We would meet again, starting at a new beginning.

***

The worst noise in the world is the sound of the radar iPhone alarm waking you up in the morning. I rolled out of bed, stretching my hand out over my dresser to turn the phone alarm off. As my half-open eyes glanced at my phone screen, I realized that this was the last alarm I set. In other words, I was running late.

I sped run my morning routine, washing up, brushing my teeth and hair, and applying deodorant, at Olympic speeds. For clothing, I snatched a pair of pants and shirt nearest to the closet door. Grey jogging pants and a black t-shirt with the Pokémon logo? Guess it will do. I nearly dropped my glasses container as I darted towards the stair, fully donning my spectacles by the time I reached the ground floor.

I had no time for a decent breakfast. I grabbed an apple from the fruit basket my dad always maintained and dashed towards the door to the garage.

"Running late?" I heard my dad say from somewhere in the kitchen.

"I'll be fine," I responded as I opened the garage door.

"Better hurry," Apple said. “I would have thought that a morning bird would at least be ready for school in the morning."

"I guess I slept a bit more than usual," I responded. "Bye guys!"

"Good luck Xavier!"

"Don't fail Xavey!"

Driving to school today felt even worse than usual. I usually never left home late, and I feared the amount of traffic I would face. Since I usually left early, I grew accustomed to a moderate level of traffic; now, I will most likely be in a driving deadlock during lunchtime. Surprisingly though, traffic was rather thin, even less than usual. I saw zero ghosts too, which was strange given that ghosts were a dime a dozen near the cemetery I always passed when going to school. Looks like I might make it to school early. Oh boy, school.

Midterms were coming up and if they were as hard as the past few quizzes I had, I knew I was a goner. As I turned right into the school's driveway, I wondered to myself how many all-nighters I would have to pull. The thought of staying up late made me nauseous. I parked my car, a white Subaru Forester, into the student parking lot. As I exited the car, a middle-aged man with a goatee approached me. He wore a leather trench coat and white sunglasses. In his right hand, he held a mid-sized blue walking cane that he twirled in the air like a yo-yo.

"Spare change, boss?" the ghost asked, lifting his sunglasses so I could see his black, pupilless eyes. I shook my head.

"Sorry Terry," I replied. "I'm a bit low on cash and time at the moment."

"You ain't got nothing man," Terry responded, giving me a questioning look.

"I know you always have a little something on ya when you come to school. Come on, at least check your wallet if you're gonna pretend you have nothing. "

"No seriously, Terry. I don't have much today."

“Anything will do, boss. Like even a penny right now would be splendid. I know you got at least a penny on ya, right? You ain't that poor."

"Fine," I sighed, bringing my wallet out of my pocket, looking past the twenty-dollar bills saved for lunch money, and brought out three quarters.

"Here," I said, throwing the coins at Terry's chest. The coins phased into his body and disappeared before encountering the ground.

"Thank you, boss," Terry said.

"Hey, if you don't mind me asking. How many more coins do you need before you disappear? I've been doing this since the start of freshman year."

"Trying to get rid of me or something, boss. Don't worry? I need plenty more dough before I ascend."

"So, am I going to keep doing this for the rest of the school year?"

"I would hope so, boss. I mean, that's why you're called the boss, right? You're helping me out with my little money problem, right? As we agreed, all I need is a couple of coins from your wallet every three weeks or so. Nothing big."

"Easy for you to say."

"You'd be surprised how hard it is for a dead man to talk, boss. But hey, I greatly appreciate it. Sure beats the way I had to do it in the past. Much messier back then."

"Well, I guess that's it for today," I said, not having the want or time to hear more of Terry's past ghost hijinks. "See ya, Terry."

"Hey, boss." the ghost responded, eyeing his surroundings. "Maybe you should act a bit more carefully around me." He pointed to a couple of girls staring at me. When they noticed I saw them, they turned their faces, chuckling to each other.

"Don't worry about it. I told those I could at the school that it's acting practice when I talk to you."

"Are you even in theatre, boss?"

"I told them I was an aspiring actor or something."

"Kind of strange, boss, but if it's fine by you." He paused as if trying to remember something.

"And besides that," he said, his face turning more serious. "Things have been getting kind of strange in the spiritual world. I know it's kind of hard for you to tell, given that you're still fleshy, but something strange is going on. Normally, these types of things would have no impact on you living folks, but since you can see ghosts...I thought I might as well warn ya."

"Warn me about what?"

"Be careful in isolated places. Try not to be so friendly with all these ghosts around here. They're not all as kind and pleasant-sounding as I am, you hear."

"I could imagine."

"That's all." Terry said, pushing his sunglasses up as he turned away from me.

"Ah, thank you, Terry. That's surprisingly caring for you."

"I am very carrying actually, especially for you, boss. Anyhow, don't worry about it too much, alright. You got schoolwork to attend to, right?"

"Don't remind me. I can't stand this semester."

"Study hard, boss. Remember it's 54-40 or fight, not 15-40."

I walked out of the parking lot and into the class building. I felt unsure about how to take what Terry told me. It wasn't the first time he warned me of some strange happenings in the spirit world, and yet that face he made was the most serious I had seen him in a while. Whatever is going on though must be pretty big in the ghost world. I guess I should take his advice and be more careful when talking to other ghosts. Maybe do some background research on ghosten.com? I wasn't too worried though. It's not like I was some sort of higher spiritual being. I’m just a human teenager.

Wilson Academy was quite large for a high school: a five-floor building with lower chambers on the left and right sides for clubs and sports teams. Each floor belonged to an individual subject: sciences, math, history, literature, and language. Recently, the student council decided to decorate each floor to better fit with the subjects taught there. As you can imagine, Room 1 Math was full of formulas and theorems on the walls and Room 4 English was a quote minefield.

I used to enjoy school. In elementary school, I was considered one of the smart kids due to having an above-average reading speed and performing well on those multiplication table quizzes. In middle school, my status as one of the smart kids started to disappear as I became more interested in sports, playing on my middle school's basketball team. I kept up with my academics though and managed to perform well for my class. But then, as I entered the ninth grade, I moved to Wilson Academy, a school geared towards college preparation, and well...my grades kind of fell to the waist side.

Wilson Academy was hell. Course work was brutal with enough homework assignments to fill the Mariana Trench. The professors ranged from kind and helpful to brutal and condescending. They also had favorites: the high-performing, A+ students might as well have been a different species compared to the rest of us. Those like me who performed below the curve, the underachievers you could say, were virtually subhuman. I believe that some of the professors wanted us to drop out of school in order to keep their standardized test scores as high as possible.

I might suck at school, but I am not a quitter. I have been at Wilson Academy for two years now and was not planning to quit yet. Sure, I hated Calculus, and I was one bad grade away from failing Chemistry, but I'll manage if I get my act together. That's why I decided to sign up for the tutoring program.

The school's tutoring program is rather simple. You sign up online by selecting your grade and the type of classes you were struggling in. You were then assigned a tutor, someone who received an A in the class beforehand, to mentor you through the coursework. I always hated asking people for help when it came to school. I liked working by myself, so it felt awkward having to rely on someone else. But I had no choice. Like Apple said, being held back in a course my junior year would not be good. It sucked to be desperate.

My first class was Chemistry, my second-least favorite class. I seated myself in the second-row chair at the far left. To my surprise, there were only two other kids in the class. I glanced at the clock located at the front of the room. No way, it was 7:30 am. I somehow managed to arrive thirty minutes early to class. A few minutes after I sat down a scrawny pale kid with curly reddish hair and wide glasses came up to me. His name was Oliver, my best and only friend at school. We first met during student orientation and grew close to each other over a shared hatred of the school's professors. For some strange reason, both Oliver and I seemed destined to be in at least two of the same classes per semester. We even became good studying buddies though none of us were that smart.

"You ready for midterms, bro?" Oliver asked.

"You're kidding me right. Remember how I did on the last quiz?"

Oliver chuckled. "We did pretty bad. I do not know how I should study for this one man. Stoichiometry hits different this time."

Kids started flooding into the room, a sign that class was about to begin.

"Anyway, best of luck," Oliver said, taking the seat right of mine. He took out his notes, likely trying to recall any of the information we learned from last class. The bell rang. A minute after that, a blonde woman with a lab coat entered the room. Dr. Shelly—my second-least favorite professor.

"Notes out," Dr. Shelly proclaimed before going into one of the most boring lectures I have heard so far.

After class ended, I met up with Oliver as we walked together up the stairs towards the third floor for our history classes.

" Do you want to play Smash after school today?" Oliver asked.

"Not today, unfortunately. I have tutoring today."

"So, you're going to tutoring? That's rather responsible of you."

"Not like I have much of a choice. I don't want to fail a class my junior year."

"Same. I guess I should sign up for tutoring too."

"Aren't you doing pretty well this year, though?"

"Suppose so, but I guess it can't hurt. Anyhow, do you know what tutor you were assigned?"

"My tutor," I said, scratching the top of my head as I did a control-F in my memories for the name I saw when I signed up for the program.

"Gigi something or whatever, I think."

"Gigi Amokachi," Oliver remarked. "I heard she's a genius—top 10% of our class in all. Guess you're good then."

"I hope so."

We exited the stairs and entered the two-door passage into the third floor.

"Well guess I'll see you at lunch. Have fun in Abraham's class."

"You're funny."

After finishing class on a surprise integral quiz that I was not ready for, I desired nothing less than to go to my tutoring session. I stood outside the tutoring room, my back against the wall wondering if it was best to leave for today with the excuse that I was sick. And yet, the quiz was also a perfect example of why I needed that tutoring. If I'm going to survive this semester...no this year, I'm going to need help. Better now than never.

The bell rang for the end of classes. Almost immediately after, the door to the tutoring room opened. A couple of other students, none of whom I recognized, flooded in. I followed.

The layout of the room reminded me of a museum. Historical paintings—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and others— along with black and white photos of important American figures such as Frederick Douglass were scattered across the walls. Long tables were lined across the corners of the room like artifact exhibits, each with a blue paper banner above designating the name of a particular class subject. Behind each of the tables, sitting in wooden class seats, were students, I assume the tutors, either looking at their phones, writing something on a sheet of paper on top of the table, or staring at the swarm of students surrounding the area. In front of each student stood a name template. Besides the tables, the room was filled with black glass desks that remained in a loose orbit around each of the tables. These desks contained pencils, erasers, pens, and calculators strewn haphazardly across the surface that reminded me of some of my late-night cram study sessions.

“Come sign-up for your tutoring session,” I heard a female voice say. It was Ms. Harvey, the American History professor who recently came back from maternity leave. “After you complete the sign up form, go to the table whose subject you signed up for and find your tutor. Make sure you keep your bookbags on the back wall”

In the middle of the room stood a circular plastic table with blue and black pens and a couple of sign-up sheets. Students surrounded the table signing up for their time slots. I waited a bit for the crowd of people to diminish before I approached the table, writing my name, the time, and my tutor’s name. I then went to the Calculus table. There was one student already talking to the calculus tutors. Before long, one of the tutors took him aside to the unmanned tables. Now it was my turn.

I approached the tutors.

“Who do you have?” one of the tutors, a blond girl with dimples, asked

“Gigi,” I responded.

“That would be me,” a tall girl said, holding her name tag up to her chest so that I could see it. I gasped.

She was beyond captivating. Flawless dark chocolate skin and a stunning figure, reminiscent of a Renaissance statue. Her luscious inky hair was tied back in a long-braided pony-tale. Her eyes, my goodness. It was as if they were burning a hole right through me. Amber eyes: I didn't even know human eyes came in that color. Looking at them was like staring at the sun, and I did not need a stronger prescription. Instead, I looked a little lower. She sported a blue and white striped denim jacket over a white t-shirt. Her long thin legs were embellished by black culottes. She wore slate blue shoes, which complimented her jacket. I was never one for fashion, but she knew what she was doing.

"Are you Xavier Wright?" Gigi asked.

"Ye...yeah, that's me," I replied.

"Good,” she said, standing up from her chair, holding a purple class folder in her left hand.. She pointed to an empty desk left of the calculus table with her right. “Please follow me over there.” I followed. She sat down on one of the chairs, opening her purple folder on the desk before grabbing one of the many pens scattered around. “Sorry, but I need to do a little paperwork before we can start properly. Give me a minute.”

"Of course," I replied, landing on the seat on the opposite side of Gigi. Looking at her as she had her head down, writing only confirmed my initial assessment. This girl was out of this world. She had mesmerizing long, curly eyelashes, a perfect jawline, and plump lips that put fashion models to shame. She smelled like vanilla, a nice, sweet aroma that permeated the musky air of the room. Even features normally considered unattractive she managed to make shine: the small cut on her left cheek, her big forehead, the dark circles around her eyes. If I am a 5, she is a 500. Not to mention, she was one of the smartest kids in the school, according to Oliver. Having both beauty and brains is not fair; I had neither. We lived in different worlds despite being in the same grade.

Gigi looked up from her writing. “Sorry for that Xavier. Are you ready for the tutoring session to begin?" Her fiery amber eyes looking right into my brown eyes.

"Definitely." I felt nervous having such an attractive girl looking at me like this. I wasn't sure if I was overly nervous or not, but it seemed that Gigi was observing me like a rat in a lab experiment.

"Hey, before we begin," Gigi said, still gazing at me intently. A bead of sweat trickled down my face.

"Do I know you?"