Ghost of a Chance (9 page)

She looks down at herself and fingers the bottom of the long violet-colored sweater she's wearing. Then she picks her arm up and watches it trail through the air.

“But I wouldn't get too caught up in the semantics of it,”
I say. “I mean, ‘ghost' is just a word. Your life is really what you make of it.” That last part doesn't make much sense, since obviously she doesn't have a life anymore, at least not here on earth, but she must get the gist of what I'm saying, because she nods.

“Okay,” she says. “I guess.”

“So,” I say, looking down at my notebook. “It's good that you remember so much, but the hard part for me is going to be getting into your room.”

She nods. “So, what? You have to, like, break into my house or something?”

“No.” I take a deep breath. “I need to somehow get invited over there.”

“Well, that's easy,” she says. “Don't you know my sister?”

I consider this. Obviously I do know Madison. But now's definitely not the time to tell Lily about the, uh, complicated history Madison and I share. The poor girl has been through enough. Plus she obviously doesn't know her sister is a big brat. If she did, she wouldn't be expecting me to go over there and somehow get invited in.

“Yeah,” I say slowly. “I know Madison.”

“Great!” Lily's face brightens. Her smile is very pretty. “Are you friends with her? Maybe she'll invite you over. Madison loves having people over.” She rolls her eyes. “It used to be so annoying, her and her friends playing their music while I was trying to study. And now I kind of miss it.”

“Right,” I say. “Um . . .” I think about it. Madison
did
give me her phone number. So I guess, technically, I could send her a text or something and try to get invited over to her house. Then, once I'm there, I could try to sneak into Lily's room, have a look around, and see if there's anything there that could help me. On the other hand, the last thing I want to do is spend time with Madison Baker.

Plus what if I call her and she's with Brandon? Could you imagine how horrible that would be?

“You should call her,” Lily says, sounding even happier than she did a second ago.

“Sure,” I say, shutting my notebook. “Or maybe tomorrow I can talk to her in school.”

“Oh.” Lily's face falls, and she pulls on one of her long curls. “I thought maybe we'd be getting started today. I mean, I just thought, if you guys are friends . . .”

I sigh, then look over my shoulder. The only thing waiting for me at home is an empty house, where I'd probably end up in my room, counting down the seconds until my dad got back so we could have some big, horrible conversation about me lying to him. And let's face it, this isn't going to be the normal how-could-you-have-lied-to-me-and-gone-somewhere-without-telling-me conversation. This is going to be a long, emotional why-did-you-go-see-your-mother conversation.

And I know I said I was done with this whole helping-ghosts
thing, but Lily seems so nice. Plus if I'm going to have to somehow get myself invited over to Madison's house, shouldn't I just get it over with?

I pull my phone out of my purse and scroll down to Madison's phone number.

I click call and cross my fingers that she doesn't answer. At least then it will be out of my hands and I won't have a choice about what to do. The decision will be made for me.

One ring . . . two . . . Madison's definitely one of those people who always have their phones with them. I've seen her texting constantly when our teachers aren't looking. She's also probably one of those people who look at the caller ID and decide whether or not they want to take the call. I can just imagine her looking down at the phone, seeing it's me, then rolling her eyes and sending me to voice mail. She probably thinks I'm—

“Hello?”

“Oh,” I say, surprised she actually answered. “Hi.”

“Who is this?” she asks, obviously just to be snotty. She knows it's me.

“It's Kendall,” I say. At this point I want to hang up, but really, there's no turning back now.

“Oh, Kendall,” she says. “Hi.” There's a bunch of talking and laughing in the background.

“Are you busy?” I ask, hoping she says yes.

“No,” she says. “Well, I mean, I'm always busy doing
something
. Right now I'm at the mall, picking out an assortment of boots for winter.”

“Oh. Well, if you need to call me back, then—”

“I don't need to call you back,” she says. “I'm pretty much done. They have nothing knee-high here, which is a total disappointment.”

I have no idea what she's talking about, but I feel like she wants some kind of reaction out of me, so I say, “Wow, that sucks,” in what I hope is a sympathetic tone.

“Yeah,” she says. Then she lowers her voice, like we're old friends and she wants to tell me a secret. “So what's going on? Do you need to talk?”

“Talk?” I repeat, confused. And then I realize she thinks I'm calling her because I'm upset about Brandon, or maybe confused about Micah. I don't want to talk to Madison about Brandon. I really do not want to hear about how they've been hanging out, or anything he said about how much he hates me, or if he told her I told him I could see ghosts. But if I want to make sure I get invited over to her house so that I can get into Lily's room, then I'm probably going to have to at least give her a little something.

“Yeah,” Madison says, sounding annoyed. “You know, about all your emotional problems.”

“They're not emotional problems,” I say before I can stop myself. Next to me, Lily frowns and looks at me in confusion.

“Well, kind of they are,” Madison says. “They're really hard issues to deal with. I mean, if the love of my life broke up with me, I'd be a total basket case.” You can tell from her tone that she doesn't think that would ever happen to her.

“Yeah,” I say, hating myself a little as I say the words, “it
has
been really hard. And it
would
be nice to have someone to talk to.”

“So talk,” she says. “I'm listening.” Which isn't even true, because a second later I can hear her telling a salesperson to wrap up the boots she wants, and that she'll be paying for them with a credit card.

“It's not really something I want to get into over the phone,” I say. “I'd rather talk in person.”

She sighs, like she can't believe she's actually going to have to hang out with me to get some gossip. But she must decide it's worth it, because she says, “Okay, I get it. After I'm done buying my boots, I'll come over.”

Someone mumbles something in the background, and then Madison says, “No, Maura, you're going home.”

She must mean Maura Dohnson, one of her little minions. Apparently Madison's going to ditch Maura to hang out with me. Probably Maura's used to it, though. I mean, if she's friends with Madison, I'm sure that's not the worst thing she's been through.

“Um, well, you can't come over here,” I say. “My dad's not letting me have friends over right now.”

“Because of your emotional problems?”

“Exactly.” I roll my eyes. Lily's giving me a what-is-she-saying look, but it's way too complicated to get into, especially with a ghost.

“Fine,” Madison says. “You can come to my house.”

“Great.” I give Lily a thumbs-up sign, and she claps her hands.

“I'll text you the address,” Madison says. “But give me, like, forty-five minutes to get home.”

“No prob,” I say, then click off.

“Wow,” Lily says. “That was awesome. You're a really good liar.”

I'm actually kind of a terrible liar. But I don't want her to lose confidence in me. I mean, we've just gotten our first victory. “Lily,” I say, “you have no idea.”

Turns out Madison didn't
have to worry about me waiting forty-five minutes to get to her house, because it takes me a good forty minutes just to bike over there. I'm probably not supposed to be riding my bike so far in the dark, but since my dad's not home, I just leave him a note letting him know I'm at my friend Madison's house. I mean, it doesn't even really matter. A little bike ride at seven o'clock is probably not going to rate high on the list of things he's upset with me about, when I already took a bus halfway across the state to see my mom.

I thought for sure Madison would live in one of those neighborhoods filled with big, sprawling McMansions, the kind of houses that all look the same and have long,
winding driveways and street names like Cider Cove Circle and Pashmina Glen.

But Madison's neighborhood looks pretty normal. Yes, the houses are big, but not, like, over-the-top crazy or anything.

“I miss this house,” Lily says wistfully as she hops off my bike. She could have just floated alongside me, and she did for part of the way, but then she started goofing around, sitting on my handlebars and pretending she was catching a ride. It was pretty funny, actually.

I climb the cobblestone steps and ring the doorbell.

Madison makes me wait, like, two minutes before she finally answers the door.

“Oh,” she says when she sees me standing on the top step. “You're here.” She sounds all surprised, like she didn't just invite me over less than an hour ago.

Then suddenly she grabs my hand and drags me up the stairs. “My friend's here and we're going upstairs,” she yells over her shoulder, I guess to her parents.

She herds me into her room, then lets go of my hand and shuts the door behind us.

Lily gets caught out in the hallway. “Wow,” she says as she floats through the door. “How rude.”

I smile. It's kind of funny, Lily calling her own sister rude.

“What are you smiling about?” Madison asks. She tilts her head and looks at me. “Is something funny?”

“No.” I shake my head and then sit down on her bed. She has an aqua-and-black-striped comforter that's very cool. “I was just remembering this joke I heard.”

“Whatever,” Madison says. She sits down next to me and starts unzipping her boots. They're the kind that zip all the way up to your knee, the kind of boots my dad would never let me wear in a million billion years. She's wearing them over a pair of patterned gray tights. Actually, now that I think about it, Madison's wearing a completely different outfit from the one she wore to school. I guess going boot shopping calls for a change of clothes.

“I like your boots,” I say. “Are they new?”

“No.” She doesn't offer any more information, just pulls off her boots and drops them onto the floor with a thunk.

“So,” she says, turning to me. And then she takes my hand in hers. “Are you okay? How are you holding up?”

“I'm fine,” I say, before remembering I called her and told her I was having a hard time. “I mean, considering all I've been through.”

She nods and pats my hand. “I can only imagine. So, what's the deal?”

“Well, it's just really hard,” I say. I rack my brains, trying to come up with some salacious details Madison might find interesting. “I mean, Micah is so trying to be my boyfriend, and it's just, I don't really want a boyfriend right now.”

Madison frowns. Obviously she doesn't like this. She
probably wanted me to be all upset about Brandon. She stands up, opens her top dresser drawer, and pulls out a long gauzy scarf, then wraps it around her neck. “What about Brandon?” she asks.

“Brandon?”

“Yeah.” She arranges the scarf around her neck and then turns this way and that, admiring herself in the full-length mirror. “Aren't you upset that he broke up with you?”

“No,” I say. “Because I broke up with him, remember?” Isn't that what I just told her in math today? I'm starting to get to the point where I can't remember my own lies. Which is very dangerous, especially around someone like Madison.

“Whatever.” She sighs and then pulls the scarf off her neck. “This scarf makes me look washed out.” She tosses it over to me. “You can have it.” She beams, like she's done something totally generous instead of just giving me a scarf that she thinks makes her look horrible.

“Um, thanks,” I say. I pick it up. Madison's looking at me like she's waiting for me to do or say something else, so after a moment I wrap it around my neck.

“Cute scarf,” Lily says, nodding in approval.

I stand up and look at myself in the mirror. It
is
a pretty cute scarf. I don't know what Madison was talking about, that it washes her out. This scarf could not wash anyone out. I touch the material. It's silky and smooth and slips through my fingers like buttery, shimmery, beautiful goodness.
This is not a scarf that came from Old Navy or the Gap. This is a scarf that came from somewhere expensive. I wonder if it would be really rude of me to check the label. If I can adjust the scarf on my neck, then maybe I can check the tag without Madison noticing.

“Here!” she says. “These are the perfect earrings to go with that.”

She pulls a pair of glittery hoops out of her jewelry box and hands them to me.

“Thanks,” I say, putting them on. She's right. They look perf with the scarf.

“I was going to say you can borrow them,” she says, choosing a pair of small diamond studs for herself. I wonder if they're real, like her hair extensions. “But they look so good on you that you can just keep them.”

“Wow,” I say. “Thanks.” I'm not being sarcastic—it's really nice of her to give me this beautiful scarf and these beautiful earrings. At the same time, I'm not stupid. Obviously she's trying to suck up to me so that I'll let my guard down and tell her stuff about Brandon.

“So did Brandon ever mention me?” She's pulling a brush through her hair now. “Sit,” she commands, pointing to the spot next to her on the vanity bench.