Chapter 10. Reed
Reed
“So, it’s really not your phone?” she asks.
“Tessa.” I look at her scathingly. “Do you honestly think I’d own this ancient device? My mom had a phone like this before I was born.” I turn it over. Dark gray with a small antenna, it fits perfectly in my palm in its closed position.
“Well, flip phones are kind of a thing now. They have a whole vintage vibe.”
We’re seated side by side against one of the mirrored walls of the ballroom. The sky outside is a mixture of dusky rose and burnt orange as the sun dips behind some trees on the horizon, reminding me of the stained-glass window on the greenhouse outside.
“Let me see it.” She reaches for the device. “Maybe someone from school left it behind, or one of the cops?”
“I’ve passed by that entranceway table a bunch of times since we died, and it’s always been empty.
Then you ran through the door after your family and that phone appeared.
You triggered it arriving somehow.” What I don’t say is how impressed I am that she conquered that crucial skill before me. I can’t handle her gloating right now.
She flips the phone open and closed a few times, examining the small screen.
“That’s why I was trying to get your attention so badly, to tell you something had changed. When you mastered the skill with the door … I don’t know … it’s like you leveled us up.”
A smug smile breaks across her face, a flash of victory. She knows I wish it’d been me. “Have you tried turning it on?”
“No, I was waiting for you, in case someone called.”
She gawks. “You think someone’s going to call?”
“How the hell would I know? But we should be prepared for anything.”
“Maybe the creepy smoke things will call.” Tessa wiggles her fingers at me. “Reeeeeeed,” she rasps, making her voice sound as spooky as possible, “how do you like your new fliiiiiip phooooone?”
I ignore her. “That side button should power it on.”
Tessa rolls her eyes. “No need to mansplain. I know how to turn on a phone.” She presses the side button, then flips it open. We both lean for a closer look as the small rectangular screen fills with a string of numbers, counting backward.
“Whoa,” I breathe.
“Maybe it’s a bomb.” She looks ready to toss it across the room.
“A bomb?” I scoff. “We’re already ghosts, are we supposed to die all over again?”
She shrugs. “Okay, maybe not a bomb, but it does seem like it’s a timer for something. Makes you wonder what happens when it gets to zero.”
“Someone calls us?” I reach for the phone, pushing the green button. We both tilt our ears to the receiver. Tessa’s so close her breath mixes with mine. It’s distracting. I make myself focus, but nothing happens—not even when I select the big circular button in the middle. “What a piece of shit.”
The numbers on the home screen continue ticking backward. Every discovery we make here leads to more questions.
“There aren’t even any apps,” I grumble, brushing my hair back from my eyes. I’m so tired. How can ghosts be tired?
Tessa takes the phone and taps around. The only thing it seems able to do is turn on and off.
“Great, so we have a useless phone circa the nineties counting down to some death day apocalypse or maybe just to a call from the welcoming committee and still no answers.” She sends the phone skittering across the ballroom floor.
I lean my head against the mirrored wall behind me and sigh deeply.
“You know, the most absurd part is that when I found that phone, I was sure it was a sign my dad would call. That he’d come for me.
” A quiet sob slips from my lips, no matter how much I’d rather Tessa not see me like this.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I mean, he’s dead.
I’m dead. Why hasn’t he come?” I drag my eyes back to hers, feeling utterly lost and helpless. It’s embarrassing.
“I don’t know if it works that way,” Tessa offers, not shying away from my gaze, from the dark places I tuck away from the world. She seems surprisingly willing to look at them. “I’m sure he’d try to reach you if he could.”
I wish I could believe that, but he’d have every reason to hate me.
It’s my fault he’s gone. If I hadn’t begged to come home early from my friend’s house because I was having trouble sleeping, if I hadn’t put my comfort over his safety, made him travel through a snowstorm that night, sliding out on black ice, then he’d still be here.
Years of therapy, and that voice is still there in the back of my mind: You’re a terrible person and you deserve what you get.
Tessa leans her head toward me. “You remember that day in sixth grade in Ms. Baker’s class? I’d snuck back after school to grab my sweater and found you sitting beside your mom. You were hugging your backpack with an unopened package of goldfish crackers on your desk.”
“Yeah, I remember.” My voice wavers, the events of that horrible afternoon racing back to me: my mom weeping because I was having a hard time “moving on,” Ms. Baker offering her a tissue, while this pesky girl with freckles and braids gawked at me from the wall of cubbies.
“I was sure you were going to tell everyone what a pathetic crybaby I was.”
She scooches around so she’s facing me. “I want you to know, Reed, I never breathed a word. Not to Tilly or anyone. And not because you glared at me as you crushed your goldfish crackers into dust. Which was kind of a hardcore kid-world threat, to be honest.” She flashes me a weak smile.
“I could just … I don’t know, tell how much you were hurting. ”
“Thanks for that.” I wipe my thumb across my eyelids, catching the small tears pooling in the corners.
“I actually had a ticket this summer to visit my dad’s side of the family in Spain.
My last name used to be Pena before my mom married Steven Walker.
” I shake my head. “Having to change my name, when I was eleven, the name I’d grown up with until then, it felt like … like we were erasing him.”
I run my fingers along the woven bracelet my cousin sent me, shoving the pain back into the corner of my heart where I keep it tucked away.
“Most of the family lives in Seville, but my cousin Carla and her husband, Rubin, are in Cádiz, about two hours away on the coast. They run this kitesurfing school, Surfear y Volar, Surf and Soar.” I indicate the graphic on my maroon shirt.
“I was going to learn to kitesurf this summer, spend time with Carla, with my aunts and uncles, get to know them all better.”
“Get to know your dad better, too, I imagine,” she says gently.
“Exactly.” I let out a hard breath. “But now I’m stuck here instead, forever wearing a T-shirt that reminds me of the family I’ll never know.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I died in someone else’s wedding dress.”
I quirk my head to the side, taking in her ensemble. “That’s someone’s wedding dress?”
“Yep. I discovered it in a discount bin at my favorite vintage store in Albany, Second Place. I loved the lace and the cap sleeves when I found it. So I raised the hemline, sewed in a bodice, and dyed the fabric black. You know, made it my own. Oh, I made these, too.” She waves her hands, showing off her fingerless gloves.
“Wait. You actually made all that?” My mouth drops open. “It’s amazing.”
“Thanks.” She shrugs off the compliment.
“It’s nice to know someone appreciates it.
I was pretty proud of it.” She reaches down to untie her boots, kicking them off onto the hardwood ballroom floor.
With the sun fully set, the first stars are breaking through the darkening night.
“So, it looks like I’ll be spending eternity wearing someone else’s discarded dreams.”
“It could be worse.”
She arches an eyebrow at me.
“Like … what if you were a team mascot and died the night of the big game, having to spend eternity dressed in your mascot outfit? That’s definitely worse.”
“Hold up.” She laughs, and it reverberates through the hollow room. “I need to go back for a minute. Why would you be dying in your mascot outfit?”
“Any number of reasons.”
“Like?”
“You owe money to the mob. Or … you interrupted a key play and the team had you offed in the locker room.”
“Offed in the locker room? That’s all you’ve got?”
“Oh, like you could do better?” I challenge, but there’s laughter behind it. Not many people can snap me out of a funk. I’m surprised to find Tessa might be one of them.
“Duh. Obviously. Lovers’ quarrel.”
“In your mascot outfit?”
“Yes,” she says. “Picture it. Two star-crossed mascots from opposing teams, deeply in love, but it turns sour when she learns about his affair with the concession lady selling those giant foam fingers. Betrayed, she buys two, strangling him the night of the playoffs with her big foam hands. No fingerprints, see?” She taps her head, playing up her smarts.
“That’s how you pull off the crime of the century. ”
“Have it all figured out, do you?”
She kicks one foot on top of the other, leaning back on her hands. “I’m just sayin’ … if I had to do it, that’s what I’d do.”
I take her in, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. “Tessa Sinclair, ruthless mascot assassin.”
We grin at each other. For one breath.
Two.
And I realize: I like how her eyes crinkle at the edges. And how her smile reveals itself slowly, like an unfolding secret. It makes me want to excavate for more. It’s the smile of someone when their guard is down. She’s not gloating, or trying to one-up me, or score an extra point.
And how must I seem to her? It’s so surreal to be sitting in the dark together, with the moon rising, grinning stupidly at each other in the abandoned van der Born mansion.
I shift my eyes away, worried I’ve been staring too long, and pretend to find something fascinating out the window.
“Seriously, though, I can’t believe you made that dress. It looks professional.”