Welcome to YOU IN REAL LIFE! This story of teen romance, mystery, and a most unconventional ghost, which I began writing almost two years ago, is very dear to me. I have removed this story from Paid Stories, so it is now free in its entirety!

You, lovely reader, have so many wonderful stories to choose from here on Wattpad, and the fact that you've decided to check out this one is an honor I don't take lightly. Thank you for joining me on this journey. I will be interacting with readers of YIRL as much as I can, so don't hesitate to leave me a comment or two—or a dozen! Enjoy the story!

Chapter 1

I'd already curled myself into the fetal position by the time the ghost opened my bedroom door. Most reasonable people would say a draft did this rather than a paranormal being, but not me. I wasn't most people or particularly reasonable, especially when sobbing my way through a panic attack.

I tucked my knees closer to my chest so that my feet were as far from the haunted door as possible. It was only a matter of time now before the ghost sought revenge for its untimely death by claiming my innocent, fragile life. I spent my remaining moments on Earth practicing the grounding techniques my therapist taught me.

Name three things you can feel, Mazie.

The grooves in the wooden floor below my palms, the cardboard box against my neck, sheer terror.

Name three things you can smell.

Paint, mold, fear.

Name three things you can see.

Boxes, an open doorway, a transparent boy standing in my room, facing the window.

I blinked, tears cascading down my cheeks, and the spirit was gone.

Holy shit, this was really happening. Reasonable people and their drafts be damned!

I studied the space between the edge of the door and the entry to the hallway, then the spot where Ghost Boy had appeared. The voices of my parents and the movers they'd hired echoed up the staircase from the living room below.

My heart thumped against my ribcage. Fear pressed against the walls, filling all the empty spaces. This space wasn't empty, though. I wasn't alone here. The door opening on its own and Ghost Boy blinking in and out of existence heralded the first sign of the apocalypse and everyone I loved would be turned into zombies by nightfall. I moved my jaw, cleared my throat, and spoke. "Stay away from me, Ghost Boy."

Bracing my elbow on a box, I forced myself to stand. My legs shook beneath me, but I refused to stay crouched on the ground with a creature from the beyond lurking near. I had to get out of there, or my heart would implode.

I made it one step into the hallway before the door slammed behind me.

Never have I moved as fast as I did then. If I lived through the day, I'd award myself a medal for making it down the stairs without breaking my neck.

Safely on the ground floor with other people present, I set my mind on its loop cycle to try to make sense of what had just occurred. My brain loved doing this. Sometimes it created happy loops meant to sooth me, like stories I'd make up as I fell asleep. More often, though, the loops were less pleasant, like when I'd wake up at three in the morning thinking about how I was going to have to start my life over in a new high school in a new town. Those loops usually included me falling flat on my face in the cafeteria in full view of the entire student body.

This loop wasn't a fantasy or an imagined nightmare. It was a series of events—memories which when put together and played again and again, would hopefully make me see reason.

It began with me standing in front of a house the lovely shade of vomit yellow.

"We'll paint it." My mother handed me a box marked "Mazie's room" and patted me on the back, urging me away from the moving truck at the end of the driveway. I followed the moss-covered walkway towards the house's slouching porch. Moss was the triumphant lifeform here. It had won the war against everything else, animate or inanimate. The trees, the roof, the grates of the porch's railing, the porch itself, the air—everything was coated with it. A niggling in my throat forced me to cough but I doubt it cleared out all the spores taking root in my lungs. If I stood outside for any length of time, moss was sure to win the battle against me too.

"I've already called someone about the moss. Don't worry, Mazie, we'll have this place spruced up in no time. Before you know it, it will start to feel like home."

I didn't say anything because I wasn't currently speaking to her or to my father, which later would also be the reason I wouldn't immediately share with them the fact that I'd experienced a visitation from the other side. For their part, they were currently pretending my silence was fine with them and not taking it as a sign that their only offspring was a selfish, stubborn child.

Birds twittered cheerfully in nearby trees. This was just another pleasant summer morning to them rather than what I'd coined it as: Mazie's personal doomsday. As I played back this part of the loop, I realized how insightful this thought had been.

Pat yourself on the back, Mazie. You are going to die.

The inside of the house seemed to be moss-free, but the good news ended there. The buying power of Becca and Carlo Rivera secured us a ninety-year-old "sold as is" craftsman that hadn't seen a new appliance or major renovation since mom and dad were my age. Within its puke moss walls, the nineteen eighties dominated, sporting faux wood-paneled hallways and orange countertops not quite retro enough to be cool. The powder room appeared to have been salvaged from a condemned motel whose glory days had been the year before never.

The sellers sprung for cheap carpet to create a presentable appearance, but that was about the only thing in the house younger than me. While my parents brought in more boxes and directed the two local guys they'd hired to help with the bigger items, I wandered up to the second floor. I already knew the layout of the house, having been given the virtual tour by my parents' realtor. Two bedrooms lay to the left, and what would be my parents' bedroom was on the right along with the larger of the house's bathrooms.

I opened the first door on my left. It was the smallest of all the bedrooms, but I'd chosen it because it was farthest away from my parents' room. Large windows were cut into pale blue walls. It felt almost cheerful, pre-ghost.

I pushed my box into a corner to join its identical brothers and sisters, then slid down next to it, head between my knees. This was the moment I stopped fighting the anxiety that had been slapping me around since the moment I stepped onto the property. Instead, I let it in. It would win anyways. It always did.

Fifteen minutes—that's the time I'd allotted myself to be a complete mess. Normally, this was the point where I'd text my best friend, Chelsea, for some one-on-one "talk me off the ledge" time. Unfortunately, I had a dead battery and a missing charger. Pride prevented me from breaking my talking strike to ask my parents if they knew where it was.

My heart thudded like a rabbit being chased by a starving coyote. Rubbing my clammy palms on the hem of my shorts, I kept my head tucked low, tracing a grain of wood as it circled around a knot in the floorboard under my legs.

Breath deep, Mazie.

A tingling sensation raced up and down my arms like centipedes had decided to live under the surface of my skin. My thoughts spun: moving to a new home in a new town. New school. New moss particles very likely taking over my body, about to turn me into a terrifying moss creature.

Then the haunting began.

The door opening could have been caused by a draft. The loop said otherwise, but memory was proven by science to be unreliable. Maybe a draft had pushed the door open and maybe the ghost was a hallucination brought on by terror. Four out of five reasonable people would buy this scenario.

The loop ended with me running for the stairs. Time on the microwave: two thirty-eight pm.

Now nearing five, I'd been bringing boxes in, ignoring all the adults around me as my mind cycled around and around.

No more. Two hours into the haunting and I'd finally managed to convince myself it was all in my head.

In a pile next to the stairs sat a dozen boxes slated for my room. I'd stacked them there to avoid reentering that space for as long as possible. But I was ready now. What happened to me could only be as real as what my mind had tricked me into believing. Fear was my only ghost and I was the only one haunting my baby blue room.

Grabbing the lightest box in the stack, I trooped up the stairs, hair on my arms raised.

Bracing the box on my hip, I opened the door. The room seemed as I'd left it: airy, half filled with my unpacked belongings. I walked to the window, placing the box on the floor beneath it and took in the view over the front of the house towards treetops and rooftops and a peekaboo view of the sparkling bay in the distance. Not a bad view, not a bad room. I could live with this.

"I don't know what's happening."

My breath caught. I whipped around to see who'd spoken those words only to discover the same empty room I'd just walked through.

I don't know what's happening.

"Yeah, that makes two of us, Ghost Boy."