Chapter 1

Life has a funny way of passing you by when you don't pay too much attention to it.

That's how I used to be...

lost in my own head, and not so much the reality around me.

But last summer... things had changed.

I had never been much good at making friends... keeping friends was even harder for me.

But then I met her... I met Marnie...

And she changed my world entirely.

Before her, my eyes would always dash to the ground, afraid to look others in the eyes. My own eyes were a rare colour for a Japanese girl. Well, mostly Japanese... my grandmother had been white.

Blonde hair, blue eyes.

Marnie... I had gotten her eyes and people always noticed. Which used to make me even more self-conscious. But these days, I was brave.

I had to be... because the summer from last year had changed me... I had met my best friend, my grandmother when she had been the same age as me.

And she just changed my world completely.

Marnie has a way of doing that to a person.

I was back in my home city now, and I just stared out the window silently as I watched the leaves blow about in the wind.

My 'mother', my 'foster mother', to me these days felt like a true mum. She had always treated me like her daughter... and for a long while I had believed her actions to just be an act.

Because she had been given money from the government to help support me... and she never told me this.

Until last summer... and immediately in my heart, I knew I had forgiven her.

Thanks to Marnie.

The ghost, the spirit of my grandmother, when she had been my age...

My age now as I was becoming a teenager. And life was going to change for me again soon.

I could just feel it.

I knew it in my heart.

~x~

As I walked around the city park the next day, the sky a bit dreary and the trees' leaves beginning to fall off because Autumn was coming... I saw her, a girl... looking at me from the distance.

She had slightly lighter skin than me, and her eyes were a warm brown.

But she, herself, was anything BUT welcoming.

I just stared at her as she was down the end of my footpath, and I smiled nervously as I approached, about to pass her out when she said to me.

"Anna..."

I froze, glancing a shy look her way. But when I went to see her, I tensed up in fear.

The girl, you see... she was gone.

I blinked my blue eyes a few times, puzzled at this, before I heard a rip in the clouds as lightning tore across in the distance, lighting the whole sky with a sudden bright flash... and I quickly looked about for a place to hide under cover.

I saw it fast.

A little gazebo up a bit of a slope in the distance.

I ran to it with little to no thought. As I ran, rain began to lash down and I took off my jumper, throwing it over my head as I made a dash for it.

When I reached under the small open-air building, I watched as the rain filled the gutters with muddy streams of water, and I was breathing heavily in shock at this.

My chest was hurting badly, and I stuffed my hand into my pants pocket, pulling out my inhaler. I took in one deep puff of it, before closing my eyes in pain as my chest tried to settle the wheezing.

You see, I have asthma.

I've had it all my life.

The sky was filled with grey heavy clouds, and I looked at them slowly as they showered the rain like it was the end of the world.

I only stood there, panting, till I saw that girl again at the edge of the park. Where the path met the gate, its metal door swinging from side to side...

And it was then, I knew who this girl was, in my heart...

Her face... those eyes...

It wasn't Marnie... but someone else of real importance.

Someone who had left me when I had been so young...

"Mum..."

I said this word with a weak tongue, looking at her as she looked back at me. I slowly closed my eyes as tears swelled in the corners of them, and when I braved myself to open them again, she...

She was gone.

It was then I realized I was the only one left in the park, so I pulled out my mobile to see the time, and my eyes widened in surprise when I realized I should've been home an hour ago.

My other 'mother' would be worried sick about me, so when the rain finally died down in another twenty minutes, I hit the ground in a quick walk and aimed my direction right back to my house.

As I came in the door, my mother ran over to me instantly, hugging me suddenly as she said, while she pulled away.

"Anna! Where were you?! I was so worried!"

"Just... walking..." I told her barely and the expression on her face slowly contorted to a face of worry and fear.

"Where...?" She begged.

"The park..." I said back weakly and again her expression began to change right before my eyes as she seemed to settle down at that answer.

"I'm just happy you're home safe." She finally said after seeming to delegate what in her head to say.

I smiled then, awkwardly as I nodded with barely any movement.

"Yeah..." I said to her, I hated seeing her fret, "Me too."

She smiled a relieved smile, and hugged me then, before standing up straight once more and leaving me be now.

"Mum...?" I said then as she was about to leave but stopped when I called for her. She looked back over my way, and asked gently.

"What, dear?"

"Is it..." I began, but I stopped when I heard the rest of the words come out of my mouth, "Is it weird... to see people..?"

"Huh?" She replied back, looking at me confused and at that second the thunder outside pounded across the whole room, the whole city.

"Nothing..." I said on quickly, smiling awkwardly as I shrugged my shoulders, acting like I had forgotten what I was to say just then.

To see people... I thought to myself sadly, people... who are dead?

I knew it wasn't normal... and I had thought seeing Marnie from the past was a one-off experience.

Being in her home as the party from long ago had commenced and I was literally surrounded by ghosts... people no longer there.

People who were DEAD.

"Come, sit down,"

I jerked then, coming back to the time and place I currently was present in.

I looked at my foster mother and smiled uncomfortably as I came and just sat by myself on an armchair in the living room.

My blue eyes stared ahead, still thinking quietly in my head of what I had seen today.

My real mother... my blood family...

Her name... Emily...

But why had I seen her? Why was she there, in the park..?

I wanted to know the reason. The answers to these questions.

I slowly pulled out my phone and went on the internet to get those answers.

I typed in her name, and I was quickly led to the obituaries from many years ago... where there was a picture of her, all grown up...

But the young girl I had seen today was only my age...

Only my age...

I read her funeral piece on the site, and it spoke of where she had rested before her laying in the tomb.

And not only that... but her home.

Her home address.

And in that second I realized something urgent!

She, as a child, had lived with Marnie...

And her body had been there, back at her childhood home, where her mother had resided for a few more years that had come.

Not only that, I began to realize that THIS PLACE, this home she had been placed in for two days... I knew... it was also MY original home...

Before I had memories, consciousness.

Before Marnie had died too.

I saved the address on my phone almost instantly, and I shut off my mobile fast when my foster mother came in, holding a tray of china cups and a teapot.

"Would you like something to drink, dear..?"

"I-" I began, but could hear the heavy rain pound on the window at the side of the wall. So many thoughts were pulsing through my head... but I couldn't tell her where I needed to be.

Needed to go.

Back home to my dead family... and why?

Because if I could see Emily today, then I knew that was a message from her... her spirit, her soul... she wanted to see me, just as Marnie did.

And why?

Maybe to say she was sorry she left me in this world alone? Maybe say she was sorry how she left Marnie, her mother... left us all.

"Anna?" My 'mother' asked me again, my eyes glazed as I stared ahead into nothingness, my mind just full of questions and thoughts.

"I'll just have a small cup, please." I said at last.

She smiled gently at me as she poured the black tea into my cup.

I drank it down slowly, before turning my head again and looking at the blustery weather that was causing havoc outside.

"Climate change, yeah?" I said, more so to myself, but I was trying to make a bit of small talk.

"Yeah..." My mother responded, nodding her head and as she turned on the TV to see the news, I turned my eyes back to my phone, turning it on again to see how far away my first home was from here...

And it was then I saw, it was only ten minutes away from the city park...

My heart sped up its beating, my veins thudding with excitement but also fear.

I would go there tomorrow, before school.

No one would notice me missing... at least, not for the first hour...

I was determined, no, I was eager to meet her again, and get answers, but most importantly...

To get to know her.

As I had known Marnie...

Oh! How I missed Marnie so much... the moments I spent with her were more than just dreams.

They HAD been real... they had to have been...

When I had left the seaside town, I HAD seen her wave to me from her old mansion in the distance. She WAS real... she had been alive once...

She was my grandmother, my best friend...

My only friend at the time.

But I had grown more confident in the months that had passed. I could talk to people now.

That small talk I had been practising? It was helping... it was making me brave.

Making me appear confident. And sometimes, you gotta fake it till you make it.

I closed my eyes again as the storm thundered on outside.

~x~

Soon I found myself lying on my back in bed... thinking of what I was going to do tomorrow...

Go there, go to a home I could not even remember anymore...

But what I would see when I got there, something so different to anything I'd seen before...

Not just the past, not just Emily or Marnie either...

No, for the first time, I was going to have visions... see beyond what was there.

And this would scare me, would frighten me dearly.

But I didn't know that yet, as I lay in my bed... the house silent beside the remaining wind that blew through the trees, whistling.

"I'm coming, Marnie..."

I said this to myself, trying to be brave... because I knew the real reason I wanted to go back to that house from the past.

Marnie.

Not Emily...

Marnie... my best friend...

I would see her once again.

My eyes closed... a soft smile on my face.

Once again...