"If you tell me the Wi-Fi password, I can help you with that."

"Guest00," Owen says absently, irritably tapping his pencil on the lab bench top as he tries to figure out where his stupid brain went wrong again. This is the third time he's tried to extract this stupid plasmid from this stupid bacteria. What could he possibly—

Wait.

The girl pays him no mind, tapping away at the phone in her hand as he stares at her. He watches as she suddenly cackles happily. She kisses her phone and coos. "Finally! Sweet, sweet Wi-Fi. Oh, how I've missed you..."

Owen knows for a fact he was alone in the school. He made sure of it; everyone else went home hours ago. Even Ms. Perren, the substitute science teacher that let him stay in her room, took off at some point.

He watches, numb, as the girl stares determinedly at his lab book. A small gust of wind blows it a few pages backwards, and she cocks her head to read the blue chicken scratch.

Owen can see through her; he can see the bookshelves on the other side of the room, can even read their titles if he squints hard enough.

As the girl begins to mutter to herself, Owen reflects. He pulled an all-nighter last night, didn't he? That could be it, but... It's only 6:00. Fatigue-induced hallucinations can't possibly have started yet. The bleach containers are all closed, and the headache forming slowly behind his eyes is proof that he's not asleep.

But... he has to be hallucinating, right? There's no other explanation for her translucence, or for the soft light emanating from her form, or for the floating.

Maybe he should lay off of the coffee for a bit.

_____

Owen scrolls down the fifth page of search results halfheartedly. There's no record of any missing or dead person that matched the girl's description. No record that he can find, at least. He's never looked up a dead girl before. For all he knows, a quick web search is not something that he should be doing. It also might help if he had her full name.

He huffs and lets his head fall backwards onto his chair, glaring at his bedroom ceiling. As nonchalant as the girl acted, she seemed… lost. They'd talked more, after she initially spoke to him; after gushing about the Wi-Fi for a bit, she seemed surprised that he could see her. She skirted around questions about who she was when she was alive, or the circumstances of her death. Owen supposes she may just not want to talk about it because it brings back bad memories. That's understandable. His real guess, though?

She doesn't remember.

Ugh. He wants to know, but he can afford to take a break, can't he? Before he goes nuts trying to figure out Emily. With that thought, he idly rolls his head towards his window. The night sky is cloudy; the moon looks like a glowing smear effusing through them. Faint cicada chirps sound in the distance, and a random car plods lazily past his window. That old Taiwanese couple from next door is out on their porch again, like they have been almost every night since he moved here last month. The woman has her head resting gently on her husband's shoulder, and they're exchanging quiet words while swinging slowly on their porch chair.

Hmm. Maybe he shouldn't be researching online... Maybe he should be asking around town. He sees old people gossiping out in front of the old bowling alley all the time. One of them might remember something, right? He should head down there at some point.

_____

"Owen."

Owen blearily raises his head from the cocoon of comforting darkness he's made with his jacket. Harris is looking at him in obvious concern. Owen glances at the clock; class doesn't start for another thirty minutes.

"How much sleep did you get last night, dude?"

"Not a lot," Owen responds, which isn't quite a lie. The moments when he dozed off for a few minutes at a time while working on his biology lab totally counted, not to mention when he passed out on the bus this morning.

"I thought you said you would try to stop staying up like this."

"I tried." Owen lets his head fall back onto his jacket. His voice is muffled as he says, "It was important, I promise."

"Getting a decent amount of sleep is more important. Always."

Should he tell Harris about Emily? Hmm... Maybe he should hold off a bit. There's still a chance that Emily is a stress-induced hallucination. There has been a lot going on this week for him, after all. The array of colored tabs on his calendar app can attest to that.

Owen grumbles something vaguely in Harris' direction. Harris chuckles quietly in response. "God, you're just like— um. Just like..."

Harris trails off, a note of confusion in his voice. Owen decides he's too tired to figure out that little mystery, so he doesn't ask.

_____

Because Owen is apparently both an insomniac and a masochist, he stays after school again the next day.

Emily knows her way around the school, even more so than Owen does. She stays mostly around the science classrooms because it's her favorite subject, but she also takes a journey down to the art room every once in a while. No one has ever seen her before, she tells him, and she's not quite used to being able to talk to someone again.

Lucky Owen. Granted, Emily is pretty cool. He's pretty convinced she's not a hallucination at this point; he just doesn't have enough imagination to pull her off. That being said... what makes him, of all people, able to see her? Does he know something that someone else doesn't? Or was he just the random mortal selected by some cosmic deity to help her out? Either way, he's invested at this point. He may be incredibly tired, but he's gone for longer on less sleep and turned out fine.

"Do you know why you're here, Emily?" he asks her.

She shrugs, reclining in the air next the lab bench and scratching idly at something vaguely resembling a scar on her wrist. "I dunno. I feel like... I'm supposed to be doing something."

"That's pretty vague," Owen says unhelpfully.

"Thanks, I had no idea," she snarks in response.

"...you know, part of me is still convinced you're some sort of complicated hallucination."

"Hmm. That's fair, I guess. Most people don't believe in ghosts."

_____

"We should go bowling again this weekend," Owen suggests to Harris in first period one day, a week after meeting Emily.

Harris raises his eyebrows, putting a hand to his heart as if in scandalized shock. "Are you... making plans? Recreational plans? Un-school-related plans? Man, you must be running on less sleep than I thought. Wow."

"Shut up. We haven't gone in a while, and..." I need to interrogate some old folks. "...I dunno, maybe I do need a break."

Harris stares. Owen stares back, slightly nervous. If anyone can see through him, it's definitely Harris. They've only known each other for about a month, but Owen can no longer imagine them not being friends.

Harris finally just shakes his head. "In all seriousness... you never admit you need a break unless you've, like, mega-overworked yourself. Whatever you're planning, stop it. Sleep is more important."

"Sure."

"Seriously. Whatever you've been staying after to work on for the past week? Stop it, just for now. Go straight home and sleep."

_____

Owen does not go straight home and sleep, of course. He stays after school, once again, to talk to the ghost girl haunting the science lab (and to get some extra lab work done while he's there).

"Can you give me anything that could help me find something from when you were alive?"

Emily shrugs. The motion appears a bit odd, as she is currently floating upside down. Her hoodie has slid up a couple inches on her body, revealing more marks on her skin. Scars. Owen wonders if they have anything to do with her death.

After some silence, she says quietly, "I was looking for something. Maybe someone."

Owen sits up. That's the most useful information he's gotten in a while. "Really?"

"Yeah. It was... important. Like, life or death important." She shrugs again, her gaze distant. "I guess I died."

She looks so sad. Despite not normally being one to initiate physical contact, Owen really kinda wants to give her a hug. He can't, though. She can't physically touch anything. She would just go right through him.

The motion of her shrugging had shifted her hoodie a little more; her scars catch his eye again. There's a trio of lines running vertically along her side, disappearing into her hoodie and in her waistband. There's also a vaguely familiar round one that sort of resembles a cigarette burn, as well as various other little scratches that criss-cross over themselves on her skin

"Do you, by any chance, remember anything about your scars?" he asks, even though he knows it's a long shot.

"Scars?"

"On your stomach," he says, gesturing, before realizing it's pretty weird to have been staring at her stomach. "I mean, not like I was trying to stare or be creepy or anything, I swear. I just kinda noticed them? I've seen them on your wrists, too, when your hoodie rides up..."

Owen trails off when he realizes she isn't listening. She's flipped herself upright in the air and pulled up her hoodie and shirt a couple more inches, staring at her side. There are more little marks here and there, minor scratches. The three marks from earlier curve around towards her back. There's also a lopsided smear of raised skin; she'd been burned very badly at one point.

"Oh," she says quietly. "Huh. Weird."