Sara by Greg Herren

covered his ears with his hands.
    â€œNoah!” I screamed and grabbed for the wheel.
    â€œMake her stop laughing!”
    The truck went out of control.
    It flipped, and my door came open, and I was flying through the air, rising higher and higher, and I opened my eyes and I could see the truck rolling over and over, and then Noah’s screaming, and then the truck exploded, and I was falling, and the ground was rushing up to meet me, and then I stopped falling a few feet from the ground.
    â€œI saved you.”
    I looked to my left, and she was standing there, dressed in black, her long hair blowing in the wind. She was beautiful, even more beautiful than I remembered.
    I put my feet down and walked over to her. She didn’t move. She reached out to me and pulled me to her, and then she kissed me. She was cold, so cold, and when I pulled back away from her, her face was a skull.
    I started to scream.
    I could hear her laughing.
    I sat up in bed, drenched in sweat and shivering. The moon was streaming in through the window…
    â€œTony—”
    I turned my head and backed into the corner of my bed. “Stay away from me!”
    Noah was standing there, and I knew I was still in my dream because I could see through him to the posters on the wall behind him. That didn’t make it any less real, though.
    â€œTony, be careful.” His voice sounded hollow, like what the wind would sound like if it could form words.
    â€œCareful?”
    â€œOf her .” He shuddered. “She hates, Tony, she hates.”
    And then he was gone.
    I sat up in my bed and took several deep breaths. I had had nightmares before, but never any so vivid as this. I got out of bed and noticed something shining on the floor in the moonlight. I bent over and picked it up.
    It was a key ring, with the initials NG on the engraved silver circle that hung from it.
    A chill went through me.
    The key ring fell through my hand.
    I stood in the darkness for a long time.

Chapter Five
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    I couldn’t fall back asleep the rest of the night. I just lay there in my bed, holding on to the key chain, staring at the ceiling, terrified that Noah’s ghost was going to come back—and not knowing what I would do if it did.
    I’d been pretty sure it was a dream—until I found the key chain.
    As a nightmare, the whole thing was bad enough.
    But as the darkness began to lift and the sun started coming up in the east, the terror of the night began to fade away.
    It had been a nightmare, nothing more—what else could it have been? I didn’t believe in ghosts—and even if I did, why the hell would Noah’s ghost come to me of all people? We weren’t friends before he died.
    If his spirit was restless, wouldn’t it make more sense for it to go see Laney, or Randy Froelich, or one of his actual friends? Maybe even his parents, or his brother?
    With the sunlight coming through my window in the morning, it was a lot easier to be calm and rationalize the whole thing away as a bad dream. It was just the shock of Noah’s death—I probably wasn’t the only kid in town who’d had some kind of nightmare, right?
    As for the key chain, well—it’s not like I was an expert on ghosts or anything, but from what I remembered from movies, I didn’t think a ghost could actually carry something real around with him.
    So there had to be another explanation for the key chain ending up in my room, even if I couldn’t figure it out for myself.
    I debated mentioning it to my mother after I showered and ate breakfast. I had the key chain in my jeans pocket, but she looked more tired than usual. She looked at me after I washed out my cereal bowl.
    â€œYou doing okay?” she asked, her eyebrows up. “If you want to talk about your friend—”
    â€œI’m fine, Mom,” I cut her off. “Noah wasn’t really my friend.” As I said the words, I realized I sounded like