Chapter 6 

Clover pries her tired eyes open, and there's two dark blue ones staring back at her.

“Good Morning” the ghost smiles brightly, Clover feels her icey breath on her face “how did you sleep?”

Without responding Clover sits up looking around the room, next to her Chris is curled up. Very awkwardly Clover crawls over her friend to get out of the day bed, and then heads downstairs. The house smells like freshly brewed coffee and bacon. The girl's mom looks away from the stove and smiles.

“Good Morning” she says brightly.

Clover responds shyly “good morning.”

“There’s coffee in the pot if you’d like some, and I’m making eggs!” She sings.

Clover takes her coffee and sits in the living room with a very tired looking Taylor.

“Did you sleep well?” Clover asks.

“Eh,” Taylor shrugs, and they leave it at that.

After a not so eventful morning with a ghost complaining about how she misses the taste of coffee and listing through her favorite flavors of creamers, while Clover does her best to pretend she’s not there She leaves before the sisters. Chris was still asleep and Taylor had offered her a ride to the school but Clover decided to take the bus, and told her friend she’d meet up with them later. 

No one's ideal day starts off with physics…or dead people. 

The ghost stares ahead at the droning teacher and the girl she was now haunting. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” The brunette makes a point to not look at her, but she sees her hand tick. The ghost gets up closer to her, and shouts into the girl's ear “This is so boring!”

Clover bites the inside of her cheek to keep from yelling back, because of course she knows it’s boring! She doesn't need someone shouting in her ear about it! She looks down at her notebook and writes down what the teacher had written on the board.

“You know you can’t ignore me forever…” The ghost leans her elbows on her desk… sort of. She can’t actually lean on anything but she can float effortlessly “sooner or later you’ll have to accept that, you might as well do it now.”

Nothing, no response from the girl.

“I saw your collection of spicy books in your closet, you wanna talk about those?”

That has Clover turning to look at her with furrowed brows looking more confused. 

Ghost smirks “tell me about them! I think I read a bunch of those when I was alive but I can’t name any of them.”

“CLOVER!” 

Clover looks at the teacher, a few others in the room glanced her way.

“Sorry what?” she asks.

“I haven't received your assignment yet,” he says.

“...Assignment…”

“The essay” the teacher clarifies.

“The essay” she repeats and thinks about how she had planned to do it the other night “I…”

“If you need an extension see me later, my office will be open for a few hours today” and he looks back down at his laptop.

The ghost chuckles “Ooohhh you’re in trouble.”

Clover grips the paper in her hands, and takes a deep breath. ‘Don’t answer her, do not even look at her’  every time she talks to that damn ghost something bad or embarrassing happens. She wasn’t going to look at her again, if she pretended she wasn’t there long enough she’ll just go away, she’ll have to get bored eventually right?

The ghost ranted on and on about the text messages she was reading on a girls phone… across the room “holy shit this is getting intense, apparently Julian is cheating on Gabrielle with someone named Jenny!” 

‘Just zone her out’ she repeats over and over in her head. She bawled her rage into a fist.

“OH MY GOD! JENNYS PREGNANT!”

It was like having a soap opera playing in her own head while no one else could hear it. She could barely listen to the teacher at all! Finally after the annoying 2 hours Clover stomps out of class.

The ghost floats with her through the hall “That was a wild ride, when's the next time you have Physics class?! I need to catch up on her texts.”

“If you like her texts so much go follow her around!” she grits out.

“Follow her?!” The ghost gasps, putting a hand on her heart. “I’m not some weirdo stalker, people need privacy, that’d just be rude.”

Clover stops dead in her tracks, and glares up at Ghost.

A guy from her class walks past lookin… concerned. Clover’s reminded once again no one can see this really annoying girl that's right next to her, and she’s standing in the hall looking at nothing but air! She starts walking again, putting her ear buds in and looking at the ground.

The ear buds don’t fully block her out, but they help some “Why you walkin so fast?” 

Clover doesn’t know why she’d care, when she could so effortlessly float after her.

“You know that’s not how to make new friends,” Ghost starts “In fact it’s kind of coming off as mean.”

Clover purses her lips. Shooting Ghost a dark look from the corner of her eye. She walks in the library.

She finds her normal table where she has been meeting up with Taylor and Chris. She throws her bag in one of the wooden chairs when someone puts a hand on her shoulder, she jumps. 

The hand is warm, and not the ghosts. She looks up at a tall guy with ruffled hair and weirdly nice cheekbones. Oh… he said something.

“What?” Clover asks again, even taking out one of the earbuds.

“You’re being really loud, your loud stomping, the librarian asked me to tell you to be a bit more respectful of the others here.”

Her face heats up “right, sorry” she squeaks out.

He smiles and walks away. Clover takes a deep breath and debates leaving, then she gets a text. She reads it.

Chris - ‘I FOUND SOMETHING COOL!’

And absolutely nothing elaborating what it could be.

Clover - ‘what?’

While she waits for her friends she sits down and takes her laptop out. Keeping herself from looking around. She wouldn’t be surprised if people were staring at her after all that. She needed to get that essay done and email it to her teacher! 

“You should have done that sooner, it’s never good to leave things till last second” Ghost says. Sitting in the chair next to her like a living person.

Clover clenches her fists and bites her tongue before she starts yelling in the library “Please go away,” she says through gritted teeth, bashing at the keys on her laptop.

Ghost frowns “nope” crosses her arms and leans back in the chair next to Clover.

One of the two finds themselves rubbing their eyes and face, holding back screams of frustration. 

Suddenly the chair Ghost is pretending to sit in is pulled back and Chris sits inside the ghost.

“Hey Clover.”

Clover stares at her friend with the also surprised Ghost girl sticking out of her shoulder.

Chris shivers “why’s it so cold in here?”

A sweatshirt gets dropped on her head as Taylor walks past and to the chair on the other side of Clover. 

“Stop leaving that in my car, it smells” Taylor says.

Chris smells the sweater, squinting at it, shrugging and proceeding to put it on. 

Ghost sniffs as well, having a much different reaction to the sweatshirt in question. She floats out of Chris taking her spot in the fourth chair across from Clover. 

“Clover look!” Chris takes a crumpled up yellow paper out of her pocket.

“What?” Chris shoves the paper in her face, Clover reads over the wrinkled paper “a Talent contest?”

“A talent contest! We should enter!”

Clover laughs “nooo”

“Aww why not?” Ghost and Chris both say.

“I don't… do crowds.”

“But we could go up there together and sing!” Chris says.

Clover shakes her head no “NOPE!”

“But-”

“I told you,” Taylor starts, “she wouldn’t want to do it.”

“It’ll be fun,” Chris defends.

“It’s going to be so embarrassing,” Taylor says.

Clover nods “so freaking embarrassing.”

Chris looks between them, then abruptly stands up throwing her messenger bag back around her shoulders “why are you two like this?”

“Like what?” Clover asks.

“You two” She points making Clover flinch “are always ganging up on me, telling me nooo that’s silly, or that doesn’t make sense, I swear I’m the only one here that knows how to have fun, you’re both such sticks in the mud” 

“No, we're just thinking realistically,” Taylor says.

Chris scowls, then grabs her bag and walks out.

Taylor and her look at eachother, confused.

“Um…” Taylor doesn’t know what to say, she’s never really seen Chris upset like that “I should go make sure she’s okay …I’ll see you later Clover” and she goes after her sister.

“What the hell clover” the ghost starts.

She looks at the ghost with disbelief.

“Why would you upset Chris like that?”

“What?”

“You just laughed at her like that, why would you do that?” 

“I didn’t mean anything by it” She defends herself “I just didn’t want to enter.”

The ghost once again crosses her arms “You didn’t need to make her feel shitty about wanting to enter.”

“Why the hell are you even talking to me?” Clover spats.

“Becauuuuse you’re the only one who can see me? The whip chose yoooou? So here I am?” Ghosts sarcastic tone has Clover’s eye twitching. 

Clover quickly packs away her laptop and practically runs back to the dorms.

Outside the humidity is still heavy with the end of summer heat. Clover doesn’t bother taking her sweatshirt off. 

“Back to the dorm already? I thought you needed to finish your essay and go see your teacher” Ghost says.

Clover doesn’t look at her. 

“Oh my god! Ignore me or talk to me! PICK ONE!” she groans “you’re so annooooying.”

“I picked that one! I’ll be annoying.”

“Annoyings a shitty personality” Ghost mutters “I thought you were going to be cool, you literally fought a kraken but you're so” she balls her fists “UGH!” 

Clover stomps across the grass, anything to push her faster to the dorm. She needed to do this right now!! She couldn’t stand another second of this Ghost! She needed her gone! 

“What are you so mad about?” The ghost crosses her arms and they go into the elevator together. 

Clover thinks for a second that it’s a bad idea to go into the small confined space with a ghost, but also… she didn’t think she’d do anything. She trusted it that much. But nonetheless, she watched the ghost floating there the entire time. She looked more annoyed than anything.

Finally the elevator dings on the second floor and she moves past the people getting on, the ghost floats through them, leaving shivers and goosebumps wherever she goes. Her dorm is… cleaner than the morning she left it. Not a single sign of glitter…. But it did smell like sewers and seaweed. She slams the door shut, she didn’t think too hard about the other people in the building that might have heard it. She goes right for the drawer that she shoved that whip into.

“What are you doing with that?” The ghost asks, not liking the sinister smile on Clover's face.

Clover pulls it out, the mess of shirts coming out with it “You and it, are going to the big racoon that lives behind the school” 

“Noooo we’re not!” 

“Yup!”

“Don't you dare!” 

“And what are you going to do about it?” Clover smirks, and then walks through the freezing cold spirit.

“STOP!” The ghost yells, reaching out to Clover right as she touches the door knob.

There’s a flash of light and Clovers once again in the blue and white spandex suit with glitter falling all around her. 

The ghost blinks, looking from her hand to the wide eyed look on Clover's face “... I’m going to do that incase you were wondering!” 

Clover looks down at ehr clothes and the floors, and back up at Ghost. She has a massive white tooth grin on her face, looking down at the now red head girl. 

“I Still think your outfit looks great.”

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!”