Read The Memory Game for Free Online Page A

now.  I catch up and walk at her side.  She keeps staring
straight ahead as she goes. 
    ‘I know you can
hear me,’ I say.  I try to grab her arm but my hand goes clean through.
 She doesn’t even shiver and she carries on walking without looking at me,
so I suppose she didn’t feel a thing. My heart feels like someone just ripped
it from my dead chest.  No touching, not even Bethany Willis.
    ‘Please… Bethany…
just tell me that I’m right, that you can see me…’
    She doesn’t look
at me and doesn’t reply.
    ‘Come on, Bethany. 
Tell me you can see me and I’ll get off your case. I just want to know, that’s
all.’
    She finally
stops and looks me straight in the eye. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone?’ Her
eyes are shining, like she has tears in them.
    ‘I… I’m sorry…’
I stammer. ‘I’m lonely.’ This admission surprises even me.  Bored, I
thought, but I never realised that maybe I was confusing boredom with
loneliness.  Now that I’ve said it, I know it’s true. Seeing everyone else
getting on with their normal everyday lives – curry and snogging and messing around in assembly – and me on the outside, no one even knowing I’m
there; it hurts more than anything ever hurt when I was alive.  If there
is a hell, I think maybe this is it.  ‘I just don’t know what to do,’ I
say. 
    She glances up
and down the lane again before she speaks. ‘Are you real, though?’
    I shrug. ‘I
don’t even know myself, if I’m honest.  This dying business doesn’t seem
to come with a manual.’
    Her eyes widen.
‘So you know you’re dead?  And it definitely is you?’
    ‘Yeah, I think
so,’ I say. How can I even know what I am anymore?  Sometimes I wonder
myself if I’m actually still alive and just going loopy.  
    She reaches a
shaking hand out to me and moves it slowly through my chest then she steps back
and catches her breath, staring at me, her blue eyes round with something that
doesn’t look like fear now.
    ‘Have you seen
dead people before?’ I ask.
    She shakes her
head. ‘Not like this.’
    ‘What does that
mean?’
    ‘Sometimes I
see, like, the leftovers of people. I know there’s someone there but it’s more of
a feeling, a space in reality that they’re filling. They never talk to
me.  But you look real; you’re just standing there in front of me.’
    I think about
this for a moment. ‘Are you a medium?’
    ‘No.  I
don’t think so.’
    I frown. ‘So you
can’t tell me what’s happening to me?’
    She shakes her
head again in disbelief. ‘How would I know that?’
    ‘I just
wondered… as you can see me and hear me and nobody else can.’ 
    ‘Are you sad
about it?’ she asks.
    ‘Not that so
much… I’m confused.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m not sure if
there’s something you have to do to go where all the other dead people
are.’  I feel a bit stupid now but I say it anyway. ‘I was hoping you
would be able to tell me. I thought you might be a medium.’
    She doesn’t
laugh at me, like I thought she would.  ‘Sorry, but I’m not. There’s a
woman in the village who is.’
    ‘Raven?’
    ‘Yeah.’  
    ‘I know about
her.  I went to see her first, just after I died, but she can’t see me or
hear me.  I think she’s a fake.’
    ‘I thought about
going to her to talk to my mum.’
    She takes me by
surprise for a moment. ‘Oh, I forgot your mum was dead.’
    She shrugs. ‘It
was last year.  I’m used to it now.’
    I don’t know
what to say, so I don’t say anything at all.
    ‘Do you see other dead people?’ she asks. ‘Your dad is dead, isn’t he? Now that you’re
dead have you seen him?’
    She remembers
that my dad is dead, even though I forgot about her mum. ‘I haven’t seen any
other dead people at all. There’s just me,’ I tell
her.
    ‘But there’s
loads of dead people, thousands, millions.  How come?’
    ‘I don’t know,’
I say, looking down at her boots.  They’re still