Invisible Ghosts

  Everyone stared at her, horrified.

  “Like you weren’t all thinking it,” Max pointed out.

  I hadn’t been. But I certainly was now. I felt so awful that I wished I could disappear.

  “Maybe Gardner will say it’s okay,” Jamie mumbled hopefully.

  HE DIDN’T.

  I fiddled with the costume rack, watching as Jamie pleaded with our drama teacher. But Gardner just shook his head, his expression grim. I watched as Jamie’s face crumpled, as he fought a battle he would never win. And then I watched as Gardner pulled aside Seth Bostwick, giving him the role.

  My friends were all frozen onstage, trying to pretend they weren’t spying.

  “Okay,” Gardner said, clapping his hands. “We’re going to run act two again, subbing in Seth.”

  Jamie didn’t even stay to watch. He pushed out of there, and I heard the stage door slam shut.

  “Am I supposed to know the blocking?” Seth asked nervously.

  Max let out a sigh.

  “You’re the one who begged to be an understudy,” he accused.

  I went to find Jamie.

  He was sitting on the ground outside the door, looking miserable.

  “Hey,” I said, sliding down next to him.

  “Gardner cut me,” he said, marveling at it.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m really sorry. It got so out of hand yesterday, with Logan, and then you fell—”

  “I didn’t fall,” Jamie said, sounding shocked that he had to spell it out. “Logan broke the platform.”

  “He didn’t mean to,” I said.

  “Yes, he did,” Jamie insisted. “He absolutely meant to hurt me. He even said so. I could have died. And now I’m stuck in this stupid sling, and Gardner kicked me out of the play, which is just perfect, because it was, like, the one thing I was really excited about.”

  Jamie shook his head, turning away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like a broken record. “But at least, if you don’t have rehearsal anymore, that means we’ll have more time together.”

  “With Logan turning up every five seconds to threaten me.”

  “He won’t,” I promised.

  Jamie scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked over at me, like he had something important to say. He bit his lip, briefly debating.

  “I think we need to do something,” he said, “about Logan.”

  “What?” I scoffed. “Like exorcise him?”

  I meant it to sound ridiculous, but Jamie didn’t deny it.

  “No,” I said, still convinced I’d misunderstood.

  “He’s not stable anymore,” Jamie accused. “He attacked me, Rose.”

  “And your solution is to get rid of him? I can’t believe you’d even suggest that!”

  My throat was tight, and I could feel the tears welling up inside of me, hot and boiling.

  “Gardner gave my part to Seth Bostwick,” Jamie said, and I’d never heard him sound so bitter. “I have to get physical therapy, and my dad is freaking out about insurance premiums. My mom is on the other side of the world losing her shit. And now my girlfriend is defending the asshole who did this to me.”

  “I’m not defending him, I’m saying a shoulder injury and killing someone aren’t the same thing.”

  “He’s already dead, Rose!” Jamie fumed. “And you seriously need help if you can’t accept that.”

  “Wow,” I said, dripping sarcasm. “Tell me how you really feel.”

  “You should have tried out for the play,” Jamie went on. “But you let him bully you into sitting at home. It sucks that he died, and I’m sorry, but he’s ruining your life from beyond the fucking grave, and now he’s ruined mine, too.”

  It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to me, a patchwork of half-truths that sounded even uglier as a group. And I couldn’t believe Jamie was saying any of it.

  “If you feel that way, then maybe we shouldn’t be together,” I whispered, feeling the tears well up.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Jamie said, his voice tight.

  “Great.” I climbed to my feet. It hurt to swallow, and I knew I was going to lose it any second and start sobbing. “So I guess we’re done.”

  “Rose, come on,” Jamie pleaded. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore.”

  “Then don’t,” I snapped. I was furious all of a sudden. Jamie had no right to say such terrible things about me or about Logan. And he’d made no move to apologize.

  “He’s going to hurt you,” Jamie warned. “You can’t tell him no. And why is that, Rose? Because you know, deep down, that he’s dangerous.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said.

  My chest hurt, and my throat was too tight, and my eyes were burning, and I wanted to scream and cry simultaneously. The bell wasn’t going to ring for another fifteen minutes, but I didn’t care.

  I picked up my things and walked away from the theater. The universe had warned me, on the first day of school, but I hadn’t listened. I’d ignored all the good-hair days, thinking maybe I’d been wrong about them, but it turned out I’d been wrong about Jamie. The universe always expected payment, and this time, it was my heart.

  MY MOM WAS at home, banging around the kitchen with a cookbook and an entire raw chicken, which couldn’t be right.

  She didn’t even look up from her cutting board when I came in.

  “Hi, honey,” she said. “My root canal canceled, so I thought we could make coq au vin.”

  “Mom,” I said. Cooking some ridiculous Julia Child recipe was the last thing I wanted to do right now.

  “Rose,” she said, matching my tone. “This isn’t negotiable. Unless you have something more important going on that I should know about.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” I snapped.

  “Honey?” Mom said, finally realizing something was wrong.

  “Jamie and I just broke up,” I announced. “So please don’t make me cook dinner.”

  And then I went up to my room and closed the door.

  I curled up on my bed, hugging a pillow to my chest, unsure whether I wanted to sob into it or to scream.

  24

  MY MOM FORCED me to go to school the next morning. She even drove, letting me eat a Pop-Tart wrapped in a paper towel in the passenger seat. I told her I didn’t want to talk about it, but she kept glancing at me, concerned, as though I should want to tell her everything.

  Except I couldn’t. Not unless I wanted her to think I’d gone crazy, raving about ghosts and exorcisms. So I told her to please, please just give me some space, or else I’d start crying and would have to go to school with a puffy strawberry face.

  We pulled into the drop-off lane, along with all the underclassmen in their parents’ minivans. And something occurred to me.

  “Am I supposed to walk home?” I asked.

  Mom scrunched her mouth to the side, as though it hadn’t occurred to her.

  “Can you get a ride with your friends?” she asked.

  I looked at her like she was crazy.

  “They have rehearsal,” I reminded her.

  “Maybe I can move my crown this afternoon,” Mom said doubtfully.

  “It’s not that far, I’ll just walk,” I told her.

  “Sorry,” Mom said.

  “It’s whatever, I don’t care,” I said, and then I climbed out of her SUV, joining a sea of fourteen-year-olds who were hugging their algebra textbooks.

  DARREN WAS WAITING for me in homeroom. He grinned when he saw me and flicked his hair out of his eyes.

  “You won’t believe who posted a butt selfie on Instagram,” he told me.

  His phone was already out.

  “Darren—” I started.

  “It’s Nima’s sister,” he said gleefully, tilting the phone in my direction.

  It was definitely a butt. With a lower-back tattoo of the Deathly Hallows symbol. And a black-and-white filter that wasn’t succeeding at making it any classier.

  “Nima’s pa
rents are freaking out,” Darren went on. “It’s amazing.”

  I managed a weak smile, and then I took out my precalc and pretended I had an exam, just so I wouldn’t have to keep talking.

  At lunch, I went back to my table in the library, the one where Jamie had found me running lines all those weeks ago, after he’d chosen me as his partner in drama.

  I hated that I was sitting there, staring at homework I’d already done, but joining my friends on the grass was totally out of the question. This was why I’d liked being invisible. Because my disasters were mine and mine alone. This breakup felt publicly catastrophic. I didn’t want to be the train wreck that everyone was watching in real time, and I didn’t want to see Jamie, his arm in a sling, watching Seth Bostwick stumble through the lines he’d already memorized.

  I wished we’d never had that séance. That Jamie had never told me we could exorcise ghosts. But most of all, I wished that the tiny, perfect world I’d created could have gone on forever. A world where I hung out with Logan and Jamie after school.

  Except nothing lasts forever. I knew that more than anyone, but how easily I’d forgotten. So I slid down in the hard plastic chair and watched everyone else, who didn’t believe in ghosts, who had never encountered the dead, who didn’t have to give up anything to play at being ordinary. I watched as they copied homework and snuck sandwiches out of their backpacks and scrolled through their phones. They were happy. Carefree. Normal.

  I wondered what it was like.

  WHEN THE BELL rang, I would have given anything not to go to art history. But I didn’t have it in me to skip.

  Of course Jamie got to the classroom before I did. I knew he would. I could picture him waiting there, his parka draped over the back of his chair—another thing no one else wore—his notebook and pen already out.

  I’d gotten it exactly, and I hated that I knew him so well, that I could conjure him in my head like that.

  “How was the library?” he asked.

  I hated that he knew me, too.

  “Fine,” I said, sliding into my seat and taking out my notebook. I’d switched to pen sometime in the past few months, so it would match when we had to share a handout, and it looked so wrong on my desk now, this thing that you couldn’t erase.

  The bell rang, and still neither of us dared to say anything else.

  The silence between us screamed.

  “Rose—” Jamie began, but Mr. Ferrara started class then.

  “You’re going to be partnering up for the next few classes,” he said, handing out instruction sheets. “And selecting two works of art that have symbolic or allegorical images. I want you to discuss how the works use these to convey meaning.”

  It sounded like nonsense. Like he was just making up words for the sake of teaching, not like those were actual instructions for an assignment.

  “You can choose your partners now,” he said.

  I could feel Jamie straining for us to work together. But I knew that would be the worst idea ever. So I turned around and caught Preston’s attention.

  “Partners?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, shocked.

  Jamie stared at me as though I’d betrayed him. I doubted he knew Preston had asked me to prom last year, but it was my theory of closed friend groups once again, how you’re always supposed to pair up with the same people.

  I switched seats with the tall red-haired boy who’d been sitting next to Preston, who became Jamie’s de facto partner.

  Up close, Preston had more acne than I remembered. He smelled faintly of fast food, and I realized that he’d gone off campus for lunch.

  “This is unexpected.” Preston raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t want to work with your boyfriend?”

  “Not today,” I said.

  Preston glanced down at the instructions sheet, his brow wrinkling.

  “So, any ideas?” he asked helplessly.

  “Me?” I said, surprised.

  “I’m totally lost in this class,” he confessed.

  I resisted the urge to groan.

  LOGAN WAS WAITING for me by the front door when I got home. Same shorts. Same hoodie. Same ridiculous socks with the hole in the toe. Everything had felt so off balance in school that day. So ruined. But here Logan was, the same as always, waiting for me so we could hang out, just the two of us.

  “Logan!” I said.

  “You can see me?” He sounded overjoyed, which seemed strange.

  “Of course. Why?” I asked.

  “You couldn’t the other day,” he said. “I kept screaming your name, but you were in bed crying. Did Jamie do something? Is that why you were upset?”

  I set down my bag with a sigh.

  “Jamie’s not coming over, is he?” Logan asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “No,” I confirmed. “We, um, aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

  “Good,” Logan said, grinning happily. “Now I get you all to myself.”

  Logan looked so glad to see me that I wondered if he knew how much I was hurting. But of course he didn’t. Because he hadn’t seen Jamie and me break up. Hadn’t witnessed my lunch in the library or my shameful partner switch in art history.

  “I feel like we should rewatch Star Trek,” he said, and then amended, “The originals. I have no ulterior motive . . . other than exploring space, the final frontier.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, pasting on a smile. Because this was what I’d wanted, after all. Not just yesterday, but back in those first few months after I’d lost him.

  One more day, just the two of us, just sitting around and watching TV in the living room after school, I’d wished.

  Funny how wishes can twist into unrecognizable shapes when your back is turned.

  25

  WHEN I GOT to school on Monday, Claudia was standing next to the bike rack with two cups of fancy coffee from Bean & Bond. She was wearing a velvet coat and boots that laced up to her knees, and she looked impossibly cool.

  “Rose,” she said, smiling when she saw me.

  I was a mess compared to her. My hair was scraped into a knot, and my leggings had a hole in the back of the knee, and there was a pimple on my chin.

  “Hey.” I bent down and U-locked my bike. “Is everyone ready for tech week?”

  Claudia gave me a look.

  “You owe me, like, fifteen texts,” she said. “And an explanation. Jamie says you broke up with him?”

  She handed me the coffee and I took a sip. Milk, no sugar, vanilla syrup. I was touched that she’d remembered.

  “I didn’t see your texts,” I apologized. “My mom took my phone.”

  It wasn’t an answer, and Claudia seemed to realize the same thing. But then, I couldn’t exactly tell her the truth about why we’d broken up. Whatever I said would sound absurd and fake, because it would be a lie. And Claudia would know I was lying. She’d think I didn’t trust her enough to tell her what had really happened, and the rift that had split me from Jamie would widen until I was cut off from everyone.

  “It’s—complicated,” I told her.

  “Well, you both look sick over it,” she said. “You guys should talk. Work it out.”

  “I don’t think we can,” I confessed.

  Claudia bit her lip, wishing I would just tell her. And I wanted to. I wanted to sit down on a bench and tell her everything, and have her fold me into a hug and tell me what I should do. But that could never, ever happen.

  “Listen,” she said. “Did something happen at the tree house? He wasn’t pressuring you or anything. . . .”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Nothing like that.”

  “You can tell me, whatever it is,” Claudia said. “Just so you know.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I need some more time.”

  Wrong. It wasn’t time I needed, it was a different love story. Before, when I was the only one who knew about Logan, the secret was contained. Manageable.

  But I was starting to realize that sometimes, keeping a secret mean
s losing the freedom to be yourself.

  LOGAN WAS WAITING for me after school, hovering impatiently around the edge of the hiking trail. As I walked my bike down our street, he chattered about the cleaning lady, who had come that morning.

  “I kept moving her bucket over,” Logan said. “Whenever she wasn’t looking. It drove her crazy.”

  “That’s mean,” I said, unlocking the front door.

  I always felt like I had to tiptoe around after the cleaning lady came, like I was trying not to disturb a patch of unmarked snow. The house smelled of pine-scented cleaner, and the pillows on the sofa had been fluffed and placed in perfect rows.

  “It was funny,” Logan insisted. “She really freaked out toward the end. Crossed herself and everything.”

  “What did you do?” I asked suspiciously.

  Logan shrugged.

  “I maybe moved the mop.”

  “Logan!” I said. “If she quits, Mom will start up with the chore wheel again.”

  “Fine, okay,” Logan said, pouting.

  He flung himself onto the sofa, and I went into the kitchen to make a sandwich.

  I watched as he scrolled through my Netflix queue.

  “There’s gelato in the freezer,” he said without looking up. “Vanilla.”

  Ugh. Mom always chose the worst flavors.

  I took a bowl of it anyway and brought my food over to the living room. Logan turned on an episode of Buffy, grinning as he punched the buttons on the remote. I’d never really related to Cordelia before, but I understood her now. She was lonely and unsure, and learning that there were supernatural creatures in the world had ruined high school for her, splitting her off from her friends.

  “One more?” Logan asked after the episode ended.

  “Sure,” I said, digging my art history packet out of my backpack.

  I read the instructions for our group assignment, then started leafing through the textbook. Working with Preston was going to be a nightmare. He was the worst type of nerd—the kind who wasn’t actually smart. I was going to have to do the whole assignment myself.

  “Rose,” Logan whined. “You’re not watching.”

  “I’m listening,” I promised. “I’m just doing homework.”

  “Do it later,” Logan insisted.