I was walking home from school on an unusually dark afternoon when I felt a pair of eyes staring right at me. I continued to walk forward, toward my house, not even daring to look behind my shoulder. The chilled air pushed against my back, causing my caramel brown hair to get into my face. The wind pushed me as if it were trying to warn me to keep moving, and instead, I found that I had begun to slow down. My feet slowed, and I finally halted, even though my head told me to run.

I felt icy tears form along the rims of my eyes, and fog growing on my crooked glasses. The subtle tap of shoes rose up from behind. Stop, please stop I chanted in my head, feeling the straps of my backpack. Suddenly, my shoulder grew extremely heavy, as someone’s cold, stiff hand rested along my left shoulder.

“You need to take the rose off of the grave, please,” a voice begged — it sounded scared.

“Who are you?” I asked. But I knew it was Ethan pretending to be Athenzo.

Athenzo was a part of some stupid curse my friends made up to scare me, but I wasn’t foolish enough to fall victim to this curse. The curse of Athenzo says that there once was a young man named Athenzo who had the love of his life stolen from him unfairly, and due to this shock, he passed away. The woman that Athenzo had lost was named Rose, and so legend says that if you touch the rose that is on his grave, your soul will take his place. And you will forever sit, waiting for someone else to touch the rose on the grave so you may be free. Overall, I thought the curse was pretty stupid, but I also knew that Ethan was foolish enough to attempt it.

I mustered enough strength to twist my head around, and I fell back on the sidewalk. There was a small sting in my elbows as I skidded back slightly. In front of me, I swear I had seen Ethan staring at me. Only his pupils were bleach white, and he appeared transparent.

The curse was true, and Ethan had taken Athenzo’s place. I screamed as I ran across the street. I headed for the graveyard remembering that he had told me to remove the rose. Maybe if I moved the rose, Ethan would be free of the curse. I sprinted, passed a few tombstones and stopped at Athenzo’s grave. One single rose lay on the frosted dirt. I clutched it tightly and threw it far away from the grave. Suddenly, I felt my stomach flip and my body dissolving. I felt myself disappear into the ground, and my eyes burned. I then realized that Ethan had tricked me into touching the rose, and now he was free. I had been fooled into giving up my soul for what would probably be decades.