"Anna..." Ryan said gently, bringing his hand and touching the side of her head. "Anna..."
"Yes?" She asked, biting the inside of her cheek and keeping her nervous hands behind her back. She didn't want him to see how nervous she really was. The way his hands felt touching her face...they were so soft...so warm...
The feeling of his hand on her face made everything else in the world disappear. The cemetery they were standing in became nothing more than a backdrop to what she could see. She couldn't register the tombstones, the dry leaves fluttering around in the wind, or the crunch of the dead grass underneath her shoe. Nothing else existed. It was just her...and him...together...
"Anna..." Her attention flickered back to where she was. She couldn't drift off like that again; if she did she might accidentally say something she didn't mean to. She felt his hand on her waist, and it set off a wild explosion in her stomach. Her chest was hurting; something she assumed was the same as her heart rapidly pounding. She didn't have organs, so she didn't know for sure. But she could feel the pain, the sweet...sweet pain.
He helped her stand on her tip-toes, and he leaned in close to her face. With her hand tightly wrapping around the shoulder of his shirt, she closed her eyes and waited for his lips to brush against her's, waiting for the flood of painfully sweet emotions to flood through her bones and make her feel like she never had before.
He was so close...just a short breath away. One more inch...one more moment...one more--
"Anna!"
Her eyes popped open, and she quickly took in her surroundings. No, she wasn't with Ryan in the cemetery. She was in Dr. Finklestein's lab sitting at a table with a heavy textbook opened to a page about microbiology and a half-written on half-doodled on notebook sitting in front of her, a small spot on it soaked in drool.
Dr. Finklestein was in front of the table, arms crossed, looking agitated that she'd fallen asleep during class again. Because he was the smartest man in town, Jack had asked the doctor to be Anna's private tutor. While he whole-heartedly accepted the chance to teach his granddaughter to be a genius like himself, it was starting to be more of a pain than he'd originally thought. Her mind tended to float away during his lectures, and she was starting to fall asleep in class more and more.
"Yes?" She squeaked weakly, part of her trying to remain aware of what he was saying while the other part was hoping to god she didn't say anything about Ryan. When he didn't bring it up, she could only assume she hadn't said anything.
"You fell asleep again, now get to work on your homework. I'm giving you a test tomorrow and if you keep falling asleep I might just quiz you today." and that threat alone was enough to get Anna back to work on her science notes. The last thing she wanted was to be tested, especially in science where she was struggling the most. Next to math, of course.
But no matter how hard she tried to concentrate, she couldn't help thinking back to her dream. That hadn't been the first time she had it, and it hadn't been the first time she caught herself unable to think of anything else but Ryan. Every time she looked at the pumpkin head butterfly she caught the day she met him, she couldn't help but remember little features about him that she hadn't noticed while she was around him, but seemed magnified when she wasn't.
When Dr. Finklestein told Anna she could go home, she passed Erika near the fountain. Erika was the witches' niece, and she had been living with them ever since her father died of some weird sickness a year before. Erika and Anna weren't really friends, they very rarely ever spoke. But she didn't know why. Erika wasn't vain, she didn't act like she knew everything, she wasn't anything really. Sometimes Anna caught herself wondering if Erika was stupid, because she hardly spoke at all and when she did it was in such a tiny, mouse-like voice that she could barely hear her. But then she felt bad, knowing it was wrong to think someone was stupid just because they were shy.
The weird thing about Erika though, was the fact that she was actually two years older than Anna. At nineteen, Erika had that tiny, almost nerdy stature of an awkward fifteen or sixteen year old. In fact, she was Anna's size, if not a few inches shorter.
Maybe I'll talk to her someday, Anna said to herself on that particular day.
No one else seems to. I guess I feel bad for her.
"Hi Erika," Anna caught herself saying as the two passed. Erika stopped in her tracks and looked at Anna, surprised that she'd spoken to her at all.
"Hi," She said back in a tiny, squeaky voice.
The two kept walking in separate directions, neither of them saying anything past that small hello. Anna went back home and abandoned her school work so she could go to the cemetery. She grabbed her denim bag and her book before she hurried out the door, wanting to leave before her dad got back and caught her trying to go out without finishing her school work first. That was the rule, but Anna planned on breaking yet another rule that night. So what was one more?
She hurried out to the cemetery, and then went looking for the tomb she'd gone in last time. As much as the idea of going back into that dark, scary tomb terrified her, her want to see Ryan again was stronger. It didn't even occur to her that she had no idea where to look once she was in the mortal world.
But that didn't stop her from going. She came out the other side of the tomb into the exact same cemetery that she'd come to last time, and part of her hoped to hear Ryan being beat up again. Not because she liked saving him or because part of her thought it was funny when that bigger guy peed his pants, but so she'd have some idea of where to look.
She went back to the spot where she'd found him the first time. Just as a place to start. She kept herself secret from the other humans walking by. None of them would be as natural about being around a skeleton as Ryan was. She hadn't helped them, they didn't need her help, and they would run screaming if they saw her.
"Looking for someone?" A voice said from behind her. Anna screamed, whipped around, and fell to the ground all in one clumsy action. When she came to her senses, she saw Ryan standing with a skeptical look on his face. His swollen and bruised nose had what looked like a band-aid over it, and the lenses of his glasses were fixed. She could see tiny black stitches on his lip, but despite all that she still thought he was cute.
"How long have you been following me?" She gasped, putting a hand over where her heart would've been.
"Since you left the cemetery."
"Then why didn't you say anything?"
He smiled sheepishly. "I wanted to scare you."
She began to calm down, and when she did she felt herself smile and heard herself start laughing. He'd scared the hell out of her, but all she could do was laugh about it. Soon, he started laughing too, and before long they were on the ground laughing together.
But Ryan started to stop laughing and stood up from the ground. He gave her his hand, offering to help her up too. "Come on, we can't stay here forever."
"Where are we anyway?" Anna laughed, taking his hand and letting him lift her up. Her dream had been right, by the way. His hands were soft and warm. A part of her mind broke away from the other just to notice that one tiny fact.
"We're behind the school. Drama club should be letting out soon, which means we better get going. Unless you think you can pull off telling them you're part of a Halloween show." She smiled and shook her head.
"Nah, lets go." and he led her away from the school and back to the cemetery, where he knew they would be the safest. No one in that town ever went to the cemetery unless someone they knew had died and needed to be buried. As far as he knew, there was no one that fit that criteria.
"What brings you back here anyway?" Ryan asked as they walked, keeping his hands in the pockets of his black jacket.
Anna bit her lower lip. What was she supposed to say? She didn't want to admit that she'd wanted to see him again so she snuck back to the human world to follow him like some sort of stalker. So, she simply said,
"I don't know."
They walked in silence until they got back to the cemetery and, just like Ryan expected, no one else was there.
"I see...um...your glasses are fixed." Anna tried, realizing how stupid she must've sounded right after she said it. He nodded with a pleasant smile on his face.
"Yeah, I had to get them fixed before I went back to school. I'm pretty near-sighted."
She nodded, wrapping her arms around her waist. She stayed that way until they found a fence to stand beside, where Ryan decided to say something else. "So what’s your story? How'd you die?"
She looked at him, puzzled. "I didn't die. I was born like this."
"Okay, how are you born a skeleton?"
She smiled a little. "I think that’s a talk you need to have with your parents." and it made him laugh. "Nah, I know what you mean. My dad is a skeleton, and I guess I inherited it from him."
"And your mom?"
"I'm not sure what I got from her, honestly. I don't have red hair, and, well, can't possibly be eye color." and that little joke made him laugh again. She smiled as she looked at him; he was so cute when he laughed.
The two stood together beside the fence, just talking. It was nice to talk to someone who didn't know she was the pumpkin princess of Halloween town. He could disagree with her and not worry about her daddy getting mad about it, even though that never even happened to anyone else. She liked being treated like a normal person. But the thing she liked the most was having someone to talk to.
Soon, Anna had to admit to herself that it was time to go back. She wanted to stay longer, she wanted to keep talking to Ryan and asking him questions and looking at his beautiful face. But she knew her dad would hit the roof if she was late, especially since she hadn't said anything about going out in the first place.
"I gotta go," She said, trying to hide the unhappiness in her voice. "I've got homework to do, and no one knows I'm out here."
"Okay," Ryan said. "Will you be coming back again or is this the last time?"
She tried not to blush. "I don't know. I guess I can come back again if I had a reason to." it sounded witty in her head, but when she said it, it sounded awful.
"So tomorrow then?" He suggested. "We can meet right here. I mean, if you're coming back. Same time?"
"Tomorrow it is then," She said, biting on her tongue right after to keep herself from smiling too wide. He nodded and gave her a pat on the shoulder.
"In that case, I'll see you tomorrow,” and Anna had to accept the reality that she had to leave Ryan to go back home. The two went their separate ways, Anna managing to make it back home before anyone missed her. She spent that night trying to do her homework, but her mind would always go out the big window in her bedroom, wishing to go back to the human world and spend a little more time with Ryan. She smiled at herself when she realized how much she was thinking of him.
"Great," she said to herself. "Now I'm a stalker." and she laughed.
