Work Text:
Noah Sanders, age 15, looked around the halls of Ald-Apple high. Frustrated, he sighed as students pushed around and quite literally,
through
him.
Despite the accident a few months prior, the school was lively as ever. So was the wretched lab, the door open as if to taunt him as he passed, glass beakers and equipment lined up as if his life hadn’t changed in that very room. He scoffed as he rushed away, trying to peek over the overcrowded halls to get to his classroom.
“Hey- hey!” His voice was echoey, ghost-like, and turned no heads. Waving a translucent, wispy hand in front of someone’s face garnered the same effect, no reaction, just stepping forward and shuddering as they passed through him.
Noah Sanders, age 15, gave up and stepped into the lab where his life had changed- or, rather, where his life was taken away.
Where his life was figuratively and literally blown to shreds.
Brushing off the creeping feeling of fear, he takes a seat in the back of the class. It’s old, the chair creaks when he sits down. A faint cloud of dust poofs up when he shifts, cobweb under the desk snapping silently.
That caught people's attention, heads turning to stare.
“..what was that?”
“It’s- It’s an empty chair. why did it-..”
Of course. an ‘empty’ chair. Noah set his head down on the desk, mumbling quiet profanity under his breath at the ignorance of his classmates. He was right there. Right there, and they acted like he wasn’t real.
He could probably leave class and nobody would notice, but Noah wasn’t that kind of kid. Seen or not, he’ll pay attention.
No matter how many times he had to get up and get a copy of the worksheet for himself, no matter how many times it earned him shocked gasps and stares, he’d do it.
The class went by, as usual, the clock hitting noon and ringing its harsh, screeching bell. They need to change that , Noah thinks, shaking his head as he follows the crowd of kids out.
He starts to wander, thoughts drifting away from school and starting to wonder about his parents. They’d blocked off his room a few days earlier, to which he phased through the boundaries to get well-earned rest day after day. It was like they never noticed their son, just like everyone else after the incident.
That’s the only thing people called it now. Not the ‘minor explosion’, the incident . It made it sound.. morbid, disturbing, dark.
Nothing too bad happened. Or, at least that he had remembered.
As far as he was concerned, it was just an experiment gone wrong. Just the wrong beaker poured into the wrong canister.
The days after that were blurry, details slipping away as quickly as he had remembered them. He couldn’t recall why, but a sense of guilt hung over him. The feeling you’d forgotten something important, something
big
, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
After that is when everyone started to ignore him. Sure, he was beaten up, a large scar on his chest that surely could’ve killed him-
...wait.
Noah being dead could explain this. Could explain why he was being ignored, walked through, why whenever he entered a room people stopped to mutter that they felt like they were being watched.
But he couldn’t be dead! No, no, it just didn’t make sense- His injuries weren’t too severe, they were minor cuts and bruises at most! The scar on his chest could easily be explained away by the beaker being close to his body when he poured, could easily be explained by him not noticing the fizz and hiss and bubble of the liquids before everything went black-
He’d woken up at home that night. It had to be a bad dream or some kind of sick joke. Of course. That was the only explanation.
Or, rather, the only one he’d accept. How did you expect a fifteen-year-old boy to handle the possibility that he could’ve died?
You couldn’t, that’s how. It was impossible, utterly impossible, and that’s what Noah clung to as he ignored the sick feeling, the heavy-almost- stone in his stomach, dragging himself to the cafeteria.
He wasn’t hungry. Just needed time , time to process. Maybe he’d see if his friends had a change of heart.
That wasn’t the case, he soon learned, after knocking his backpack under the table.
The conversation around him continued as usual, the crunch of chips and bad cafeteria food carrying through the air, mingling with the smell of something long gone rotten.
No matter how many times he tried to interrupt the conversation, get someone’s attention- hell, he even threw a pencil at someone - he failed. It went on, normal, without him.
It felt wrong.
It felt wrong, being ignored, being looked through- shoved aside roughly as the group made its way outside, leaving Noah to his own devices in the cafeteria. Friends everywhere had begun to trickle out, and he realized that this just-.. “wasn’t working”? Was that the term he was looking for?
Noah grabbed his backpack again, standing still for a moment as students poured through and past him. He could swear that someone apologized, but the words were lost, drowned in the roar of laughter and chatter of the other students. It didn’t matter, anyway.
Shoving a hand in his pocket, Noah made his way out of the room, deciding that if anyone would pay attention to him, his teachers would. And so, he walked over back to the lab, pausing on the scorch marks that laid on the ground.
It’d been a sunny day, and Noah wasn’t supposed to be in the lab. That’s the first thing that came flooding back to the redheaded boy, followed by what almost felt like a vivid dream.
The sun felt warm on his skin. Made sense why it was a SUN-day, then, didn’t it? Noah chuckled to himself as he rummaged through the storage. Sure, he was supposed to be at home, but he’d missed an assignment, and that would not do. So, like any logical and not at all distressed student, he’d hopped the gate, popped open the lab window, and crawled in.
That’s all he could remember before the details slipped his mind again, and his grip on the straps of his backpack tightened.
The lab was empty, he noted, walking further in and wandering to the storage in the back.
Reaching for a beaker that had peculiar cracks spreading from it’s base, he was hit by another sequence.
He didn’t fully understand the instructions of the experiment. It didn’t help that he could tell the difference between the purple and red beakers. If only he could have. He grabbed the 2 solutions and another empty canister. He mixed them together, watching carefully as the colors blurred. And then there was a sizzling, and a pop. It was smoking, bubbling, and foaming.
He realized what was happening too late, felt the smell of smoke hit him before he could duck and cover, felt a sharp pain in his chest as his vision flashed white-
Noah snapped back to reality with sharp breaths, his heavy breathing filling the room as he grappled to understand what he’d just seen.
He was dead.
He was dead.
It wasn’t a joke.
His parents had been acting off because they were grieving, and Hailey-
Hailey.
Noah’d forgotten entirely. How long had it been? 2, 3 months?
3 months since he’d spoken to his partner. What hell it must’ve been for them, and just thinking about it, Noah winced.
Everything hurt, like an ache in his very bones- if he had any- and before he knew what he was doing, Noah found himself sprinting off, off, away, heading for the bathroom.
It was a good place to hide.
Not that he needed to hide. Nobody could see him. Nobody cared .
He’d fully intended to phase through into a stall, but instead crashed into someone.
And that someone was Hailey.
“N-noah-?!” Hailey’s voice was a shrill gasp, music to Noah’s ears, and they stared up in disbelief.
“y-you..” Noah sputtered for a moment, struggling to find words. “you..can see me.”
Hailey takes a deep breath in, nodding slowly. “...that was really cheesy.”
Noah grinned, giggling softly. Leave it to Hailey to turn any situation on its head.
“....3 months.” That’s softer, more… diluted, the tone like a brush of a rose thorn to ones palm.
“..i’m so sorry.”
“...you’re here now though,” Hailey smiled sadly, his eyes pricking with the beginning of tears, “right?”
“Yeah.” Noah stood up, pulling Hailey into a tight hug. “Right.”