Girl Meets Ghost (18 page)

“Bran?” Kyle asks. “My mom can probably drive you.”

Brandon hesitates and I hold my breath. And then he finally says, “Yeah, okay. I'll go.”

My breath comes rushing out of my in one big whoosh. “Me too.”

Daniella will just have to deal.

•  •  •

But Daniella is not, um, really that good at dealing.

“You're doing
what
?” she screeches at the end of the day. I'm at my locker, loading up my bag with the books I need for my homework tonight.

“I'm going ice-skating with Ellie and Kyle and Brandon,” I say. “Daniella, I had to! It's my only chance to make Brandon see that I'm not a total freak with a father who wants to kill him if he even looks at me.”

“But this is my only chance to move on!” She puts her hands on her hips and stamps her foot. “Moving on trumps dating drama.”

“No, it doesn't,” I say, “and it's not your only chance. Don't be so dramatic. Anyway, it's probably going to take
forever to dig up whatever magical item it is you think is going to help you.”

“That's not true,” she says, glaring at me. “And even if it is going to take forever, then the sooner we get started, the better.”

I'm walking down the hall now, toward the front door of the school, where Kyle's mom is picking us all up and driving us to the ice-skating rink. My dad's going to drive us home, which could definitely be awkward, but I'll deal with that when it happens.

“Look,” I say, “I'm sorry, but I have a life too. You can't just come in here and disrupt things, thinking I'm going to drop everything to—”

“I think,” she says, cutting me off, “that me getting out of limbo or wherever it is that I'm stuck is a little more important than your dumb middle school romance. And besides, we had a deal.”

“It's not a dumb romance,” I say, “and just fyi, you're being pretty mean. You don't rule my life, Daniella. And if you keep acting like you do, you might have to find someone else to help you move on.”

This must really make her mad, because she disappears. And then I do feel kind of bad, because we
did
have a deal. I'm about to call her name and see if she'll come back, but then Brandon is standing behind me.

“Hey,” he says, looking around, “who were you talking to?”

• • •

Okay, so that was a little bit awkward. I mean, I'm supposed to be convincing Brandon that I'm normal, not that I'm even crazier than he first thought. So I told him that I'm going to be in the school play and that I was practicing my monologue. And then he said that he didn't even know there was going to be a school play, and so then I told him I didn't either but at some point there would be, and I wanted to be prepared.

“Ellie,” I whisper as we walk down the sidewalk toward Kyle's mom's car. “When we get in the car, make sure you mention how I've always wanted to be an actress.”

“What?”
Ellie's eyes are about to bug out of her head, probably because the last time I tried to be an actress was in second grade when we did the Christmas play and I ran off the stage in the middle of the performance because I had such bad stage fright.

“Just do it,” I say as we all pile into Kyle's mom's car. Kyle sits in front. And me, Ellie, and Brandon sit in the back, with Brandon in the middle.

“So how are you doing with working toward your dream of becoming an actress?” Ellie asks once we've said hello to Kyle's mom and we're pulling out onto the highway.

“Very good,” I say, nodding. “I'm going to be trying out for the school play.”

“What school play?” Ellie asks. I shoot her a look.
“Oh, right, the school play that's coming up soon.”

“I want to be in the play!” Kyle says. I didn't even know he was listening.

“Kyle, you have enough extracurricular activities,” his mom says. “You need to focus on your grades.”

“That's true,” I say. “Grades are more important. Besides, I'm not exactly sure when the auditions are. I just, uh, heard some teachers talking and saying that they're going to be coming up soon.”

“Kendall's working on her monologue,” Brandon explains.

Ellie's eyes pop open really wide. “Your
monologue
?”

“Yes,” I say, “I have to do a monologue. You know, at the audition.”

“I used to love preparing monologues,” Kyle's mom says. “It's so exciting, being up there on the stage all by yourself with the spotlight on you!” She sighs, like she's thinking about fond memories. Probably because her monologues were real and not fake.

“You were an actress, Mom?” Kyle asks. He reaches over and turns on the radio, scanning the channels for a good song. I cross my fingers, hoping that he turns it up loud enough so that we can't talk.

“Well, I was in a few plays in college.” She looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Where's your monologue from, Kendall?”

“Um, it's . . .” I think about saying it's from
Romeo and Juliet
, because honestly that's the only play I can think of right now. I mean, it's totally famous. I wouldn't even know any other place to do a monologue from. But if I say
Romeo and Juliet
, I'm afraid Kyle's mom might ask me to do it, and then what would I do? I've never even read
Romeo and Juliet
. So I say, “It's an original piece.”

“An
original piece
?” Ellie asks.

“Wow,” Kyle's mom says. “That's very ambitious, Kendall.”

Luckily we're pulling into the skating rink now, and I open the door and hop out to the parking lot before anyone can ask me to do a bit of my original monologue. We all troop inside, and on the way Ellie says, “What the heck is going on?”

“I'll explain later,” I say, pasting a smile on my face.

We all rent skates from the front counter and then head out onto the rink.

Ellie and Kyle immediately grab hands and start skating, leaving me and Brandon standing there on the ice, looking at each other kind of awkwardly.

“So,” I say brightly, “are you a good ice-skater?”

“Sort of,” he says. “I played hockey, so I can at least stay up. But I can't do any tricks or anything. You?”

“Just spins,” I say. I spin around to show him, pulling my hands in close to my body and going around and around and around. But when I come out of it, I'm a little
bit dizzy, and so I stumble a little, and the toe pick of my skate gets caught on the ice.

“Whoa,” Brandon says, putting his arms around me to stop me from falling. My face is buried in his puffy green coat, and I inhale his scent, not able to stop myself from thinking about what it would be like to kiss him.

“Sorry,” I say, laughing and pulling back. “I guess I'm a little rustier than I thought.”

“That's okay,” he says, giving me a smile. “I thought it was great.”

We start to skate around the rink at a steady pace, dodging in between the little kids going super-slow and the older kids, who are racing around like they're in the Indy 500. The ice goes scraping under our skates as we build up a little speed, and after a while we're skating pretty comfortably, without too many wobbles.

“So did you ever find out how you did on the math test?” he asks.

“Eighty-eight,” I tell him proudly.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling myself blush even though my cheeks and nose are a little cold from being on the ice.

“That's so awesome.” He puts his hand out to give me a high five, and I reach my mittened hand up to slap against his. But something about reaching for his hand makes me go a little off balance, and I stumble again. It's not as bad
as the first time, so Brandon doesn't have to put his arms around me. But his fingers tighten around mine, and I use his grip to stabilize myself.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry. I don't know what's going on. I'm usually able to stay a lot more upright.” He's still holding my hand. No wonder I'm sliding all over on my skates. I can't keep my stomach from flipping all around, and it's obviously interfering with my knees and legs.

We skate around for a little longer, still holding hands, and then we decide to hit the snack bar for a hot chocolate. We buy two steaming cups and an apple cider doughnut to share, then climb up the bleachers so that we can watch everyone else skate while we eat.

“What do you think of those two?” I ask Brandon, pointing as Kyle tries to do a backflip on the ice. His form is all wrong. Daniella would definitely have something to say about that.

“Kyle and Ellie?” Brandon asks. He breaks off a piece of our doughnut and hands it to me.

“Yeah.”

“I think they're good together.” I raise my eyebrows at him. “No, seriously, I do,” he says. “I've never seen Kyle act so nice to a girl before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I think he really likes her.”

“I think she really likes him, too,” I say. The moment is so perfect—watching my best friend skate with a guy she really likes, while I sit up in the bleachers with a guy
I
really like, a nice hot drink in my hand. I close my eyes and inhale the smell of the ice, feeling happy and content.

“Are you cold?” Brandon asks. Probably because I just kind of shivered, mostly because I was so happy and he was so close to me.

“A little,” I say.

“Here.” He takes his hat off and puts it on my head.

“Thanks,” I say. And when he takes my hand again, I lean my head on his shoulder.

Daniella's on the warpath.
Big-time.

“You,” she says, “are not a very good ghost talker or communicator or whisperer or whatever you want to call it.” She's wagging her finger at me and getting really loud.

“Stop,” I say. But I'm not too upset about her yelling at me, because all I can think about is how fun it was to go ice-skating with Brandon. He even let me keep his hat. Well, not forever. At least, I don't think. I'm going to give it back to him at school tomorrow. Yay! We're back on track! Ellie was right. All it took was a little fun and normal time for Brandon to realize how fun and amazing and smart I am. And now, hopefully, I'll be able to relax a little around him.

“No, I will not stop,” Daniella says. We're in my room, and I'm lying on my bed, writing down in my journal everything that just happened at the ice-skating rink while Daniella continues her rant. I'm wearing a pair of comfy black yoga pants, a long-sleeved pink crew T-shirt, and a pair of soft and warm slipper socks. Brandon's hat is still on my head. I'm warm and toasty and starting to get sleepy.

“You were really mean to me earlier, and now you're being even meaner! If there were some kind of department or something I could report you to, I would,” Daniella says. “I would report you immediately. I would tell them to take away your ghost license!”

“I don't have a ghost license,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And if I did, I would love for you to report me. I wish it were that easy to stop having to see ghosts.” Could you imagine? If that's how it worked, I could just ignore the ghosts until I got tons of complaints, and then they would go away.

“That's the problem,” Daniella says. “You don't
have
to do anything I say. You don't
have
to help me. There's nothing in it for you, and . . . and . . . it's really hard being dead!” Her voice is starting to shake, and I look up from my notebook in alarm. I didn't want to make her feel so bad.

“Hey,” I say, jumping off the bed. I can't hug her, of course, but I should at least try to make her feel better. “It's going to be okay.”

“No, it isn't,” she says. “I don't want to be here anymore,
and you . . . you . . . you don't even care about helping me!” She's really crying now. Like, sobbing uncontrollably. Yikes.

I sigh. “Fine,” I say. “First thing in the morning we'll go over to the cemetery and start digging. Just please stop crying.”

“No,” she says, and swipes at her eyes. “Tomorrow's Wednesday. You have school in the morning.”

“Not until eight,” I say. “We'll get up at six.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes,” I say. I feel horrible for blowing her off today and making her so sad. Like it or not, I'm the only one who can help Daniella. And it's my responsibility to try to make things right.

•  •  •

Of course, when my alarm goes off at five forty-five the next morning, I'm not feeling so charitable. I was in the middle of this delicious dream where I was Cinderella and Brandon was the prince, and I'd left my hat at the skating rink and he was riding all around town on a horse trying to find me and confess his true love.

I reach out and slam the off button on my clock, then bury my head in my pillow, hoping maybe Daniella forgot about our plan.

“Rise and shine!” she yells from the bottom of the bed.

“I'm awake,” I grumble, even though I'm not.

“Come on, come on, come on.” She's walking over me
now, which I can't really feel, but just the fact that she's doing it is enough to creep me out. I throw the covers onto the floor, then walk grumpily over to my closet. I pull a sweatshirt on over my pajamas, shove my feet into my boots, and grab my coat.

“You're not even going to brush your hair or anything?” Daniella asks. She looks at me and wrinkles her nose, like she can't believe what a mess I am.

“Why would I brush my hair?” I ask. “We're going digging. I'd just mess it all up.” Even though she's a ghost, some people actually have to worry about getting dirt all over them.

“Well . . . then why aren't you wearing work clothes?”