Give Up The Ghost

  Thanks to that, everything I know about party prep I learned from Paige:

  1. Shower until the hot water runs out. Wrap hair in towel and scurry into bedroom.

  2. Get the creamiest lotion you can find and rub it all over yourself.

  3. Shimmy into a dress. Decide you look fat. Remove dress.

  4. Pull on a skirt and blouse. Decide you look like a first-grader. Remove skirt and blouse.

  5. Squeeze into the leather pants you’ve been hiding in the back of the closet. Decide it’s too likely that Mom and Dad will pitch a fit at the sight of them. Stuff pants back into closet.

  6. Throw on another dress. Check neckline (low enough?) and hemline (high enough?). Decide everyone will think you look like a cow, but you’re too tired to try on anything else.

  7. Mash gel into hair. Blow-dry upside down for volume.

  8. Smother face with foundation, powder, eye shadow, blush, mascara, lipstick, and anything else you can dig out of the makeup drawer.

  9. Spray perfume on bosom, neck, and hair.

  10. Lounge on bed as motionless as possible, so as not to disturb the delicate balance of cosmetics, until your male attendant arrives.

  I didn’t bother with any of it except for number 1, because, really, people are a lot less likely to listen to you when you’re grubby. I stepped into the same pair of jeans I’d worn to school and grabbed a T-shirt out of my closet at random. My hair I let air dry. Paige would’ve had a fit, but she’d conveniently wafted off sometime earlier, leaving nothing but a wisp of candied apples. She must have been missing Mom really bad if she was braving the airport to wait for the plane.

  Looking at myself in the mirror, I decided there was no way Tim’s crowd could think I’d made any effort to look pretty for them.

  Tim wasn’t due for another twenty minutes. I went downstairs and flopped onto the couch next to Dad. He had Gilligan’s Island on.

  “What’s the story?” I asked.

  “The Skipper thinks he’s onto some voodoo,” Dad said, chuckling.

  On the screen, Gilligan and the Skipper were arguing. My nerves crackled like fireworks. I tried to watch, but I kept losing track of what they were arguing about. After a few minutes, I squirmed down on the couch and lay my head on the armrest. The ceiling required less concentration.

  The sound cut out as Dad muted the TV. “Cassie?” he said. I shifted so I could see his face.

  “Yeah?”

  Before he spoke, he took off his glasses, examined them, and slid them back on.

  “This, ah, tonight, is this a date?”

  I laughed. The chances of me having a date were less than none. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it might look like one.

  “Nah,” I said. “I’ll be hanging out with a bunch of people. The guy picking me up is just my ride.”

  “All right.” He smiled, and I wondered if he was thinking about Paige running around with her date that last night. Maybe she’d jumped in the water only to impress Larry. Dads like to blame the boys.

  I bet Paige would have gone for it whether there’d been a boyfriend around or not. She’d liked being a little crazy, trying it on for size. Dad had never known about the leather pants in the back of her closet. I’d snuck them out before he overhauled her room. They were in the back of my closet now.

  “You’ll be home by midnight?” Dad asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “If not before.”

  “Good, good.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll look after myself.”

  I sat up and gave him a quick hug. Down the hall, the doorbell chimed.

  “That must be your ride,” Dad said. “Have a good time. And remember . . .”

  “What?”

  His smile turned sheepish. “To look after yourself.”

  “Of course.” I squeezed his arm and jumped off the couch. As I reached the doorway, I had to force my feet to slow down. My skin was twitchy, and my heart was flip-flopping like a fish on a dock. It’s just a party, I reminded myself. Just a bunch of kids hanging around. Nothing I couldn’t handle. Sure, I hadn’t been to one in more than four years, and a high school party was a far cry from preteen sleepovers—there would be lots of booze and no parents—and it was being held in the house of someone who hated my guts, but, really, what could go wrong?

  I breathed slow and deep, exhaling the jitters as I walked along the front hall. Then I pushed my hair away from my face and opened the door.

  “Hey.” The porch light was off, and the shadows softened the angles of Tim’s face. His skin had more color than I remembered. Maybe the talk with his mom had helped, despite all her worrying. Good. I tried to give him a little smile, but I was so nervous my lips went crooked.

  He tossed his keys from one hand to the other. “You ready to go?”

  “Just a sec.” I wiggled my feet into my boots, laced them up, and followed him out to the driveway. Tim wasn’t much more dressed up than I was: polo shirt and khakis. If he saw anything wrong with my clothes, he didn’t say so.

  In the car, I leaned back and stretched out my legs as much as the cramped space allowed, watching the houses slip by. It was real now. I was going to this thing. My heart started jumping again. In just a few minutes, I could be face to face with Danielle. And Matti and Paul and a few dozen other people who’d sooner give me a kick in the head than the time of day.

  Maybe this was a mistake. It was like going into enemy territory without a map. What if they ate me alive? There’d be enough of them there who’d want to.

  I swallowed thickly. No. They wouldn’t dare. No matter how many of them there were, no matter how many hated me, I had them scared. I had their secrets. They couldn’t touch me.

  Tim focused on the road ahead, where his headlights swam in the dusk. “I mentioned to Matti that you were coming with me,” he said after a minute. “Since it is his party.”

  My mind leapt back to my conversation with Norris that morning. So that was what Matti had been pissed off about. “He must have been overjoyed.”

  “He was pretty upset. Said I was crazy and stuff.” Tim laughed sharply. “But I told him I’d already asked you to come, and I wasn’t going back on that, and he let it go.”

  He sounded so determined about it I found myself saying, “You didn’t have to. Not go back on it, I mean.”

  He glanced over at me. “You don’t want to come?”

  “Well—” It could easily be the best and the worst night of my life, rolled into one. But he was looking at me, he was talking, like it was important to him, and suddenly my heart was stuttering for a completely different reason.

  Dad had asked—Tim couldn’t think—he did know he was just my way into this thing, nothing more than that, didn’t he?

  “What about the rest of them?” I said quickly. “Do they all know?”

  “Matti brought it up at lunch, so a lot of the Frazer people who’ll be there know I’m bringing you. Does it matter?”

  “No,” I said. It didn’t, did it? Danielle would still come, Paul would still come. They wouldn’t want to admit that I made them nervous.

  God, it was a good thing they didn’t know how nervous I was.

  Don’t think like that. Stay focused. It’s just a stupid party. Think of her face when you shove the truth in it. That’s why you’re here—because she deserves it.

  Tim watched me for a moment longer before shifting his gaze back to the road. I pretended not to notice. I couldn’t think about him, or about anything except getting this thing done, not until it was over.

  Matti’s house beamed from the middle of its block, all the blinds up and the windows bright. It was a broad three-story, with a huge driveway that was already packed with cars. Tim pulled the Oldsmobile around in a U-turn and parked on the opposite side of the street. As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, he twisted around to grab a liquor bag from the back seat. Streams of music drifted out of the house. The beat was so faint that after a few seconds, I couldn’t tell whether I
was hearing anything more than my pulse thumping inside my head.

  I picked out the cars under the streetlights: Jordana’s yellow Bug, Flo’s mom’s tan Corolla, and Paul’s Mustang, red as a ripe apple. Leon didn’t drive to school, but he’d be there, by foot or in one of the cars I didn’t recognize. Danielle would have come with Paul.

  We crossed the street, Tim’s bag clinking. I hung back as he rang the doorbell.

  A guy I didn’t know opened the door—he was from a different school, I guessed. “Cheers,” he said, holding up a beer bottle. A sprig of chest hair showed where he’d left his shirt unbuttoned. His gaze dropped to Tim’s bag. “Excellent, you brought the goods. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  He headed down the hall before we’d made it over the doorstep, and when Tim had pulled the door shut behind us, he loped after. Guitar chords crashed from the living room speakers, mixing with the movie voices warbling down the stairs from the second floor. Tim hadn’t bothered taking off his shoes, so I left my boots on and edged along the wall to the living room.

  Jordana and three other girls had wedged themselves onto the leather sofa. They chattered loudly to each other over the music. Jordana squealed with laughter. Leon stood in the corner, checking out the sound system as he sipped his drink. A couple of Frazer seniors were squatted on the floor with Matti’s video game system, eyes glued to the TV. They punctuated every jab at their controllers with wordless shouts.

  Jordana’s gaze flickered my way briefly and then she went back to giggling with the other girls as if she hadn’t seen me. Tim was in the kitchen, I figured, concocting a few drinks. Only a pathetic twerp would trail along at his ankles. He’d done me the favor of bringing me here; now I was on my own.

  Past the sound system, I could see a corner of the dining room where cans of pop and bags of chips were scattered on a buffet. I crossed the room, my boots thudding on the hardwood floor, and swiped a root beer. Opening it, I settled back against the buffet.

  A bunch of guys had an air hockey game set up on one end of the dining room table. “Hey, check this out,” one of them said, tossing a beer cap onto the rink. It rattled back and forth a few times before flying off and landing on the floor. Matti poked his head in from the kitchen. He laughed with the guys and said something I couldn’t hear. Then he saw me.

  His mouth snapped shut, and he studied me for a moment, his eyes as narrow as the line of wispy hairs on his chin, where he was trying to grow a beard. He punched one of the air hockey guys in the shoulder, shouted something to another, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  As I craned my neck to check up on Jordana in the other room, Matti, Tim, and Mr. Chest Hair passed through the front hall and headed up the stairs. Tim glanced around and caught my eye, shooting me a quick smile. Matti elbowed him onward, scowling. Jordana waggled her fingers at him. When he’d passed out of sight with the others, she leaned over to look at a magazine her friends had opened.

  Other than that one weird look from Matti, it was like I wasn’t there. Maybe this was what it felt like being dead, unseen. As I scuffed my boots on the floor, a twitchy feeling crawled across my shoulders, making me squirm. I tried to gulp my root beer like I was perfectly content where I was. My hand shook. I set down the can.

  Then Flo sauntered in. When she spotted me, she grinned and hustled over like we were best friends.

  “Cass McKenna!” she said, her eyebrows arching, her smile baring all her teeth. “I heard you were coming, but I didn’t believe it until now. Enjoying our scene?”

  Good old Flo. Maybe it was time she found out what it was like to have someone shove their nose into her business.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “I always thought, ‘That Cass, she’d be a good girl to get to know.’ Bet you’ve got all kinds of great stories. You ever think of writing them down?”

  Big surprise—she was mining me for newspaper material. Funny how she was so eager to talk to me now, when she’d never said a word to me in the nearly three years we’d gone to school together. I might have been flattered if I hadn’t known she was just softening me up so she could drag whatever information she wanted out of me.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure the teachers would appreciate the sort of articles I’d write.”

  “Aw, I’d find a way to swing it past them. Maybe tackle more general topics instead of specific people, but there’s still a lot of meat in that.” Flo waved her hand dramatically. “Can you imagine? We’d be the coolest student paper ever, with the kind of exposés you specialize in. Nothing like the brutal truth to shake things up.”

  Now that she’d relaxed, her smile was more friendly than predatory. Maybe she meant it, after all. I eyed her. “You’d really want me to write for the Gazette?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Heck, I’d have come after you sooner, but . . . you’re not exactly approachable, you know? But you’re here, so I figured, best chance I’m going to get.”

  I was speechless. This honesty didn’t fit with the girl I’d expected, given what I knew.

  She seemed to take my silence as indecision. “Well, think about it, okay? You want to talk, I’m sure you know where to find me at school.”

  Grabbing a handful of ketchup chips, she headed over to make eyes at Leon. I let out a breath and picked up my root beer.

  Well, that hadn’t gone exactly the way I’d expected. Had someone slipped a niceness pill in her drink?

  The air hockey guys were shooting me strange looks. I guessed it wasn’t cool to spend the whole evening staked out by the snacks. Time to move on, then.

  As I left the buffet, Danielle came sashaying into the living room. She flopped into a tiny space that opened on the sofa beside Jordana. She’d gotten dressed up for the party, of course: a flared dress with an empire waist in the same cut-grass green as her eyes, and a flowery faux-gold choker. Her hair was pumped up with mousse, her feet bare, each perfect toenail painted coral pink. Paige would have approved.

  My stomach turned, and I looked away. I wasn’t ready for her yet. My fingers tightened around the can, and I hurried past the air hockey players to the kitchen.

  A couple of Frazer juniors were fishing pizza out of boxes on the counter, and a couple more were pawing through the bottles in the fridge. The pearl-gray room smelled like grease and fried cheese. My boot squelched in a puddle of soda. I squeezed over to the sink and stared into it, like I was looking for something.

  Of course she’s here, I told myself. You knew she’d be here. That was the point. Get it together.

  “There are clean glasses in the dishwasher.” Matti cocked his head toward the speckled appliance at my right, aiming a glare at me. The juniors scuttled away from the fridge, and he leaned into it, grabbing a bottle, his eyes never leaving me. With the dark locks and the smooth baby face, I’m sure he’d have looked like a real sweetheart if it hadn’t been for the scraggly pseudobeard and the daggers in his eyes.

  He probably meant it to intimidate me, but instead I felt steadied. Hostility I could deal with.

  “You want a drink?” he asked, like he was offering me a knuckle sandwich.

  “Got one,” I said, raising my can. “Thanks anyway.”

  He closed the fridge and set down the bottle, unopened. His hand clenched against the counter. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here—”

  “Maybe you should ask Tim,” I suggested. “It was his idea.”

  “Yeah, sure, and monkeys will fly out of my butt.”

  “That’ll be interesting to see.”

  He glowered at me. “The point is, this isn’t school. This is my house. I bet you have all your little secrets ready to throw in everyone’s faces—well, no one cares here. You even look at anyone funny and I’ll kick you out so fast you’ll think you never left home.”

  I couldn’t blame Matti for being grouchy. Back when I’d first gotten started at Frazer, he and a couple of friends had been making a buck a pop selling ch
eat copies of the winter exams to freshmen. The worst thing was, Norris overheard them snickering about how they’d pulled one over on the new kids. The exam copies weren’t real—they’d made up the questions themselves. The kids were paying for the privilege of failing.

  Back then, I hadn’t learned yet that it was better for me and more humiliating for them if I kept student business between students. The teachers got involved, parents got called, and some people ended up temporarily suspended.

  Yeah, I’d been stupid. But Matti was more stupid if he figured he could get burned only once.

  “Kick me out?” I flicked at a stray chip. “So that’d be like how you got Paul kicked off the list for athlete of the year? Funny about that, ’cause he still seems to think you’re his best bud.”

  Matti’s face twitched and his mouth tightened. He held my gaze, scowling.

  “Hey,” I said, “I’m still here.”

  “You’re not going to tell him.”

  “Try to push me out the door and we’ll see if I do. It’s got to happen sometime.”

  He looked down, popped the cap off the bottle, and took a long swig. After a few gulps, he smacked it down on the counter.

  “You know what’s pathetic?”

  “I have the feeling you’re going to tell me,” I said, bracing myself.

  “What’s pathetic,” he said, “is a reject like you trying to blackmail some guy into being your boyfriend.”

  I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come on. That’s got to be it. You found some nasty thing on Tim, and you’re working it as hard as you can. Or maybe you’ve cast a little spell on him. Whatever it is, it’s pathetic.”

  Clearly, he was not only a jerk, but also completely insane.

  “What would I want Tim for?” I said. “I didn’t even—He came after me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and he won’t dare deny that.” He pointed the mouth of the bottle at me, sneering. “You pretend you’re so high and mighty, but you’re the worst of any of us.”