The Ghost In My Bedroom - By Heather Jones Page 0,26

he really is upset with me about yesterday.

We went and played mini golf. As per usual, Alex kicked both our asses. At least I came in way under Ling who pretty much maxed out on every hole. Thankfully Alex took me right home after that so I didn't have to endure much of them making out. It wasn't too late and Natalie was out in the kitchen dishing out ice cream.

"I'll have some too thanks!" I exclaimed sitting at the table.

"I didn't offer," she smirked, but grabbed me a dish anyway. She sat down at the table with the two bowls.

"So how's it going? I never see you anymore."

"Oh you know. Work, work, work all the time."

"I see you are still sleeping with the lights on," I whispered like it was a really well guarded secret that no one else knew about, even though I had often overheard my parents discussing the Natalie situation.

She stirred her ice cream before she softly spoke. "I don't want to scare you, but I really did see something upstairs that one time. Every now and then, I just get the creeps, like someone is there, watching. Do you ever feel like that?"

"Sometimes," I whispered back. "But I don't think it's bad. I think it's just curious. Think about it. If you were a spirit trapped in our house, wouldn't you want to reach out and communicate with someone?"

"You think there's a spirit trapped in our house?" she said wide eyed.

"No, I'm just hypothesizing. Besides, I lived upstairs all by myself while you were away at school this year and I wasn't afraid. Nothing tried to scare me." Which was all technically true.

"I don't like it, I don't want to think about it anymore. It gives me the creeps just talking about it."

I looked across the table at Ryan who had joined us in mid conversation and shrugged.

Lamentably, she noticed his presence. "Brrr, do you feel that? There's a cool breeze tonight, good sleeping weather."

"Yeah, you could feel the wind stirring up while we were out golfing." I said thinking quick trying to cover-up for Ryan's presence and the subsequent drop in temperature.

"So how is work going?"

"It's tolerable, except for all the pain in the ass customers. Mostly I'm just cutting fabric and stocking shelves so I don't have to deal with them too much."

"I always thought working on cash registers was the worst job, people complaining that something rang up the wrong price, I have a coupon for this but I didn't read the fine print that I can't combine it with the already on sale price so I can't use my coupon but can you make an exception for me just this one time since I'm such a cheap bastard?"

"Hey, have you been spying on me?"

"Nope, it's like that everywhere in retail."

"Oh, sweet. Gives me hope for the future."

Ryan looked entirely too bored with our conversation, I didn't care; I hardly ever spent time with Natalie anymore. Just to irritate Ryan I suggested we play a game.

"Scrabble?"

"Sure, I'll go get it."

Ryan rolled his eyes and banged his head on the table as I turned to get up. He just loved family game time.

I came back with the board and sat down next to Ryan, he might not like spending time with my family but he hardly ever left me alone, so he could just deal. Besides, he was kind of good at it.

We picked our tiles and lucky Natalie got to go first. I swear she cheated, but I was determined to beat her just once before I died. Right now our tally was about 1,347 to 0.

I managed to pick up all consonants. Shit. I had the worst luck picking letters. Ryan looked over my shoulder and laughed at me. Not only did she get double points for going first, she got an extra fifty because she used all 7 tiles.

"How the hell did you manage that?" I stammered as she tallied up her score. I managed to place a pathetic CAT on her word since I had no vowels in my hand. Ryan appeared thoroughly entertained as the game progressed this way, and I went down in flames with a final score of 325 to 127.

I helped to put the board away, said good night to Natalie and headed upstairs to bed with Ryan on my heels. "I thought you were never going to come upstairs," he whined.

"Get off it. What's the hurry anyway? I hardly ever see Natalie anymore. By