Amy and Bernice

"Don't frown, I know you want to be here just as much as I do," Bernice said in a sing song voice as she glanced up at Amy who's arm she still had linked with hers. "I have seen the podcasts you listen to girl and I know for a fact you were fun before you got this RA gig. So turn that frown upside down and let's have some fun."

"It's not that I don't want to have fun," Amy sighed as she looked down at Bernice. She remembered when the woman had first started university. A clueless teenager with bright eyes and an even brighter future. Just no idea who or what she wanted that future to be. She had tried her hand at more majors than Amy thought were offered and , yet, she still managed to outdo that with the amount of new aesthetics and personalities she shifted between.

Amy still remembered when Bernice had tried to take up the saxophone after a month of getting heavily into tabletop gaming. This had been followed by a brief stint trying to be a nudist that was quickly shut down by campus security much to many, including Amy's, disappointment. Bernice had one hell of a body and it was a great shame to cover it up in Amy's opinion. At least in her gothic phase there was plenty of cleavage visible through the pentagram cut out in her little black dress.

"The Amy I knew in my first year liked to party. Hell you took me to my first party! You were a riot," Bernice said as she gazed back up at the tall black woman. "You used to dye your hair neon blue! You were on the basketball team doing keg stands and banging chicks! I used to want to be like you!"

"Bernice, I don't think there's a person you have not wanted to be like," Amy groaned but Bernice just rolled her eyes. "I get your point though. Yeah I suppose I have gotten a bit more… uptight and less fun being an RA. But you're all my responsibility now. It's my head on the block if something happens to any of you."

"Yeah but uni is about having a bit of fun. I'm not saying you have to dump all your responsibilities and be careless. Just let yourself cut loose once and a while. No one is on their own out here, they all have their phones and their big girls, not idiots," Bernice stated but Amy simply raised an eyebrow. "Okay, maybe not complete idiots. Now come on, let's have some fun!"

"Fine… let's find a ghost," Amy said and smiled along with Bernice. There was a crash of thunder. "Do you hear that?"

"The thunder?"

"No, something else," Amy said cupping her ear as she glanced around the hall they were in. She walked over to a very tall, winding staircase. "Like static or something… I think it's coming from up here!"

"I can't hear it," Bernice said, glancing up the dark staircase.

"It's getting fainter… come on," Amy said as she went racing up the stairs. "Or do you not want to find a ghost before I do?"

"Oh bitch, I am so not letting you take the credit!" Bernice shouted as she hurried up the stairs after Amy.

"Better hurry then, because if I find it first I get to name it!"

"That's not how ghost hunting works!"

"It is now."

The pair of them sprinted up the stairs, calling up and down at one another. Amy was taking them two at a time, bouncing off of walls at the landings before running up the next set of stairs, her athletic body carrying her with ease up the old creaking wooden boards. Bernice struggled to keep up. Her voice was replaced with panting and wheezing gasps as she pushed her much less athletic, more homely body up the flights of stairs. It seemed almost like there was an endless amount of them. Far too many for how tall this house was, but neither girl noticed as they chased the ghostly noise. Amy's voice became more and more distant as Bernice watched her light slowly vanish above.

"I'll… catch up… with you… at the… top," Bernice called up between gasping breaths as she doubled over. Running in these chunky combat boots was not easy at the best of times but up this staircase, they had been hell on her legs. She could feel the thin layer of sweat over her body soaking into the dress. She reached down and began fanning air down the front of her outfit.