How Not to Spend Your Senior Year (15 page)

I pulled in a deep breath to steady my nerves.

“I'm not Elaine,” I said in my own voice.

“What's going on?” Alex said.

I eased my head out from between the curtains, sincerely hoping I looked like a face floating in the air. I could just make out Alex's form. He was standing in front of the first row of seats, gazing up at the stage. I knew the moment he saw me. He sucked in an audible breath.

“Jo!”

He put his hands flat on the stage as if to hoist himself up.

“Don't come any closer, Alex!” I said. “I won't be able to stay if you do.”

Slowly Alex dropped back down. “Jo, is that really you?” he asked.

“It's really me, Alex,” I said. “I don't have much time, but we have to talk. I had to see you. There's something I have to try to make you understand.”

“Understand?”
Alex said. “I don't
understand
any of this. How can this be happening? How can you be here at all? I mean . . . I thought that you were . . . ” His voice trailed off.

He doesn't want to say it,
I thought.
He doesn't want to say the word “dead.”

“That's why I'm here. To explain,” I said. In his confusion, Alex had given me precisely the opening I'd wanted. If I could convince him the reason I was still around was because he hadn't let me move on . . .

“Alex, I know you . . . care about me,” I began. “But you've got to listen. You've got to let . . . ”

“Oh, Jo! I knew I wasn't making it up or hallucinating. I knew you'd really come back,” Alex burst out suddenly. “I knew you'd give me the chance to explain.”

“Explain what?” I asked, the question out before I could stop it. “Alex, what are you talking about?”

“It was . . . that after . . . ,” Alex said, “before the accident, when I asked you to go to the prom. I kissed you.”

“I remember,” I said.

All of a sudden a horrible suspicion
began to dawn. If we'd had a conversation like this under other, less otherworldly circumstances, I'd have pretty much had to figure that . . .

“Alex Crawford, are you trying to tell me you
take it back
?”

At my words, relief flooded Alex's face.
I don't believe this!
I thought.

“Oh, god, Jo. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” Alex said. “I tried my best to make it up to you. I got the student council to approve all those memorials.”

“You do mean it,” I said. “This is unbelievable. You're taking it back. I haven't even been dead a month and you're telling me you never really liked me in the first place. What happened to love at first sight?”

“Omigod!” a girl's voice I couldn't identify screeched. “There she is! There's Jo O'Connor's ghost! I think she and Alex are having a fight!”

Alex's whole body jerked. His head whipped around like a sports fish on a line. I could hear my heartbeats, those things I was no longer supposed to have, thundering like a jackhammer in my ears. Though
it could have just been the sound of all those footsteps suddenly pounding down the theater aisles.

I had no idea how many of them there were.

I didn't particularly want to stop to count.

“Hey, Jo, what's it feel like to be dead?” I heard a guy call.

I did the only thing I could. I answered the question.

“Right at this moment, it pretty much sucks eggs,” I said.

Then, finally, Elaine killed the lights, plunging the auditorium into total darkness.

During the confusion which ensued, I was the only one who kept my head. I whipped it back behind the curtains, yanked the stocking cap off my hair, and ran. Out the side stage door, down the short flight of steps, straight into Mr. Barnes.

“For heaven's sake!” he exclaimed. “What is it? You look like you've just seen—”

“Oh, Mr. Barnes,” I sobbed out. “I've just seen the ghost of Jo O'Connor.”

“The minute I stepped into that theater, I
knew
. I just
knew
there was something freaky going on. I mean, I'm not even
in
Drama. How did I know to even go there in the first place? But then, all the women in my family are like that.”

I paused in the act of doodling instead of taking interview notes and glanced across the table at Khandi Kayne.

“Like what?” I inquired.

Several hours and what felt like several hundred interviews later, I was sitting in the library study carrel I'd established as my private office. It had a number of advantages. I could close the door, giving
those students who came to see me a certain amount of privacy.

Spending the entire day at Beacon was a break in the routine. Following my encounter with Mr. Barnes, I'd phoned Mr. Hanlon and informed him of the latest ghost sighting. I figured it would look a little weird if I didn't. He'd given his permission for me to remain at Beacon for the day, interviewing as many people as possible.

I could have done without Khandi Kayne.

“We
know
things,” Khandi said now, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The women in my family, I mean. We can just sense them.”

I drew a little witch's hat with an arrow poking through the crown.

“You mean supernatural things?”

She nodded. “Personally I wasn't one bit surprised to walk into that theater and see Jo O'Connor's ghost. I knew as soon as I put my hand on the door handle that something funny was going on. I got all sort of lightheaded.”

Probably the blood trying to find its way through the labyrinth of your brain.

“I think it was because I could sense something evil,” Khandi went on.

Oh boy,
I thought.
Here we go.

Khandi had wanted to stab me, stab Jo O'Connor, in the back from the day we'd first met. Who says delayed gratification can't be fun?

“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “You're saying Jo O'Connor's ghost is evil?”

“Well, maybe not actually evil. That might be too strong a word,” Khandi said. “But did you ever hear of a happy ghost haunting someone? I just don't think that happens. Besides, Jo wasn't very good for Alex when she was alive. Why should she be good for him now that she's dead?”

“It sounds as if you didn't like her very much,” I commented.

Khandi gave a trill of nervous laughter as she eyed my notebook. “Well, I don't know that I'd go that far,” she said. “I mean, I'd hate for you to quote me or anything. It's just . . . I never really felt Jo was right for Alex. She only wanted to go out with him because he was student body president.”

You are
so
full of it,
I thought. Images of red and white Christmas candy canes danced through my brain. I seized them and snapped their little striped necks. I flipped through my notebook, pretending to look for previously recorded information.

“I understand he asked her to the prom.”

“I wouldn't know anything about that,” Khandi said with a sniff. “But I'll tell you this.” She leaned forward as if about to impart a great secret.

“If Alex did ask her, it was because he felt sorry for her. But it totally backfired on him. I think that's why Jo's ghost is still here. She just can't bear to let Alex go. Even she knows she's a nobody without him.”

Nobly, I resisted the impulse to stuff my notebook down her throat.

“That's an . . . interesting insight,” I said.

“Oh, well,” Khandi said, sitting back and preening ever so slightly. “All the women in my family are like that.”

“They know things and they have insights. Fascinating combination.”

“We like to think so,” Khandi said.

The bell rang, saving me from further information on the matriarchs of the Kayne clan.

“Thanks a lot for your time,” I said, closing my notebook to signal that the interview was over.

“Don't you want a picture of me?” Khandi asked.

By the end of the day I'd compiled the following fascinating facts. Jo O'Connor's ghost had:

1)
Confronted Alex in the Little Theater, vowing to haunt him forever over the fact that he intended to dump her. (I probably don't have to tell you that one came from Khandi. Ironically it was the only one that came anywhere near being accurate.)

2)
Been seen sitting at her favorite table in the snack bar eating a chocolate donut and drinking a Coke during morning break.

3)
Appeared on the basketball court
in the middle of senior boys' P.E. A thing which had caused the school's best free throw shot maker to miss the basket. A circumstance which he insisted would otherwise never have occurred, it was so unusual.

4)
Shown up in the office of Ms. Geyer, the head school counselor, pleading with her to be allowed to attend graduation. Ms. Geyer was briefly treated for hypertension, then sent home for the rest of the day.

And those were just my top four faves.

As far as I could tell, about the only people on campus
not
claiming to have seen Jo O'Connor's ghost were the two who might legitimately be able to say they'd actually done so: Alex and Elaine. Both had kept their distance throughout the day. Elaine had gotten her two cents in, however. Stuffed into the locker assigned to Claire Calloway was a note that said, “I told you so.”

“Claire?”

I jumped, the pen I clutched in my
numb fingers making a jagged line across the notebook page. All day long I'd waited for this moment with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

“Hey, Alex,” I said.

He looked absolutely awful. Tired and drained.
He looks confused and unhappy,
I thought, and felt guilt swarm up to choke me.

“Okay if I sit down?” Alex asked.

“Sure,” I said.

Alex pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. I made sure my glasses were securely on my face.

Don't think about Jo O'Connor now,
I thought.
Don't think about all the mistakes you've made. Concentrate on being Claire Calloway. On doing her—your—job.

“I wanted to thank you,” Alex said.

I felt my jaw wobble as I struggled not to let it drop open.

“That's nice. What for?” I asked.

A faint smile moved across Alex's tired face.

“For not immediately hounding me with billions of questions I don't know how to answer.”

“Oh, that,” I said. I flipped open the notebook to a clean page. “So, Alex, how was your day?” I asked.

He laughed, and I could feel some of the tension flow out of him.

“I think the safest thing I can say is
interesting
,” he said. “I was wondering if I could . . . talk to you about it.”

“That's what I'm here for,” I said, wishing my heart wasn't beating quite so fast. “Where would you like to start?”

“I don't quite know.”

“How about if I ask questions, then?” I said. “I think that's why they call this an interview.”

Alex smiled again.

“So, tell me. Do you usually play things safe?”

Alex looked surprised. “What makes you ask that?”

“The phrase you just used,” I answered. “You said, ‘the safest thing I can say'. Somehow, it made me wonder whether the choices you're used to making are the safe ones. It's always seemed unusual to me that someone with your track record would see a ghost at all.”

Who are you?
I thought.
Will you tell me, Alex?

“Okay,” he said. “I guess I get that. And the answer would have to be yes. I think that was one of the things that first attracted me to Jo.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Jo was different,” Alex said.

“It seems that you and”—I made a show of consulting my notebook—“Khandice Kayne would agree on that.”

Alex snorted. “Don't even go there,” he said.

“Is it true what they say?”

“Depends what it is.”

“That you fell head over heels for Jo O'Connor, then realized you'd made a mistake. It's been suggested you were going to dump her, but she died before you got the chance. I'm sorry if that sounds unfeeling.”

“I was
not
going to dump her,” Alex said, his tone emphatic. “You can't dump someone unless you've actually gone out.”

“I think you're playing with semantics,” I said. “The impression I've gotten over the last couple of weeks is that you and Jo were attracted right from the start.
Today people are saying her ghost totally freaked because you told her you'd made a mistake. That's kind of confusing, don't you agree?”

Alex was silent, staring down at the tabletop. On impulse, I closed the notebook with a snap.