Invisible Ghosts

by Robyn Schneider

  Jamie and I squished onto opposite ends of the sofa, polishing off the rest of the chocolate chip cookies as Logan hunched forward, enthralled by the crew of the Serenity.

  Jamie kept glancing at his phone and getting up to refill his drink. Halfway through the episode, he said he had to head out.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, and then mentally kicked myself. Way to seem desperate for someone to keep hanging out with you.

  “Yeah, I have a calc test tomorrow,” he explained, as though he would have stayed for hours otherwise.

  He stood up, stretching. His shirt lifted along with his arms, revealing a strip of smooth skin and the waistband of his jeans, cinched with a brown leather belt. I glanced away, suddenly finding the scratches in our coffee table fascinating.

  “I’ll memorize the rest of the scene tonight,” I promised.

  “You better,” Jamie said, picking up his bag. “I’m counting on you to make me look good.”

  10

  DELIA, EMMY, AND Kate were waiting to ambush me at the bike rack the next morning. It wasn’t hard to guess why. All night, my phone had been buzzing with Snapchats from Delia, who clearly thought she was being very covert.

  What’s going on with Jamie? She’d scrawled over her face in pink cursive. And then I can keep a secret ☺. After I still didn’t respond, she sent a stream of pouting puppy-filter selfies.

  But I knew she was just waiting to screenshot my answer and show it around. So I’d sent her a deliberately blurry snap of my homework, imagining the excited flutter she must have gotten when she saw the alert that I’d replied.

  Now, seeing her standing there, my act of snapterfuge seemed like a grand miscalculation. Like the kind of thing you did when you wanted to ruin an enemy rather than keep a friend. I ducked behind a lifted truck and waited until they headed for advisement before docking my bike.

  I slid into my seat seconds before the bell rang, and Darren pantomimed applause, his headphones still on. Somehow, the universe was on my side that morning. Which was why, when lunch rolled around, I decided not to chance my window of good luck.

  I made for the quiet study section of the library, taking out my script for Gardner’s class and reading it over, even though I knew it by heart. It was a convenient enough excuse for sitting there, in case my friends came looking for me.

  Mom always said doing nothing is doing something you’ll wind up regretting. Of course, she was talking about getting regular teeth cleanings, but it also applied to Delia. I’d put up with her terrible behavior for so long that I’d inadvertently made the problem worse. And now I couldn’t say anything without it turning into this huge drama.

  “The Egyptology books are over in nonfiction,” Jamie said.

  He was wearing a button-down shirt, and his sunglasses were clipped to the front, like he’d just taken them off to come inside. There were dark circles under his eyes, and I hoped he hadn’t stayed up all night studying.

  “That line’s getting so old it’s practically ancient history,” I grumbled.

  “Wait, was that a ‘yo mummy’ joke?” he asked.

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

  “I went by your table first,” Jamie said, enjoying himself immensely. “Did you know it’s both National Talk Like a Pirate Day and National Butterscotch Pudding Day?”

  “I did not,” I said. “And now I’m sorry you do. Matey.”

  “Interesting friends you have,” Jamie said casually.

  “Not really my friends,” I told him. And somehow, saying it out loud made it true.

  “I can see that, since you appear to be dining solo in the library.” Jamie nodded toward the contraband bagel on my lap. “What are you doing in here?”

  “What does it look like?” I asked, motioning toward my script.

  “Staring at something you’ve already memorized.”

  Jamie sat down across from me, and I sighed, caught.

  “Okay, maybe I’m hiding,” I admitted.

  “In here, or in general?” he asked, and then winced. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I mean, you’re right.”

  “It’s Logan, isn’t it?” Jamie went on. “The reason you try so hard to be invisible.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Just so you know, it isn’t working,” he said. “At all.”

  I knew he meant it to be a compliment, but it didn’t feel like one. I didn’t want him to bring me into focus, the way he’d done with our scene yesterday. I wanted to stay fuzzy and unmemorable.

  At least, I thought that was what I wanted. But staring into Jamie’s impossibly deep brown eyes, I found myself questioning that decision.

  “It was working fine,” I huffed. “Before you showed up.”

  “Was it now?” Jamie asked sarcastically. He leaned so far back in his chair that it looked like he was going to tip.

  He lost his balance all of a sudden, the chair tilting much too far back. He scrambled to fix it, his cheeks going bright red.

  I snorted. Jamie glared at me like it wasn’t funny, even though it was hilarious.

  “Damn it,” I said mock sadly, “now I only have two wishes left.”

  “That right there,” he accused. “Opposite of invisible.”

  I shrugged. I knew he didn’t see it, but keeping to the shadows came with its perks. No one expected me to get a role in the play or a superlative in the yearbook. No one cared if I wore the same leggings two days in a row or wasn’t asked to the homecoming dance or got tagged in an unflattering photo.

  High school was hard enough without enduring a constant stream of public scrutiny. And that was when you didn’t have anything to hide. I didn’t know how Jamie stood it. How he could adjust so quickly, or pretend so convincingly to be normal.

  The bell rang, and Jamie pushed back his chair, as though he couldn’t wait to get to Gardner’s class.

  “Come on, Cleo,” he said excitedly. “Let’s show everyone how it’s done.”

  He meant our scene. I felt this bolt of panic stab through me, because it was only just occurring to me that we were about to go onstage together, in front of everyone.

  I hesitated, and Jamie grinned.

  “Don’t tell me you have stage fright,” he teased.

  “Performance anxiety,” I corrected. Jamie saw that I was serious.

  “Hey,” he said. “Relax. Just do it exactly like we rehearsed and it’ll be great.”

  I managed a smile and nod, even though there was no possible way I could relax.

  If our scene wasn’t good enough—if I wasn’t good enough—I’d disappoint everyone. Sam’s crowd would go cool toward me, realizing I couldn’t keep up with them, and Jamie would see that I wasn’t magic after all. That he’d been wrong about me.

  It was like this story my sophomore year physics teacher had loved, about Schrodinger’s cat. The moment you looked inside the box, you knew the truth about whether the cat was dead or alive. But so long as you didn’t look, you didn’t know. And I wasn’t sure I wanted everyone to know the truth about me. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know the truth.

  Except somehow, I’d stopped paying attention, just for a moment, and now Jamie was cheerfully opening the box, convinced he knew what was inside. But he didn’t, because we can only guess at what we contain. And our guess is just as good as anyone else’s.

  When I made a move to sit in the back of the theater, Jamie stopped me.

  “Hold up,” he said. “We’ve gotta sit close. I’m blind as a bat, remember?”

  He was no such thing. When your dad’s an optician you know a thing or two about glasses, and Jamie’s prescription was slight. But before I had a chance to protest, Jamie had marched us to the front row of the theater.

  I could see the backs of Sam’s and Claudia’s heads, bent together in conversation. Max and Darren were making their way over from the far aisle, chugging bottles of flavored iced tea before they had to put them away.

  “After you,” Jamie sai
d, gesturing for me to go first.

  I’d always pictured it differently, sitting with my old friends again. I’d imagined that they’d all look up in unison, as though my presence was this big interruption. But that couldn’t be further from what really happened.

  Instead, no one looked over at all. It was a total nonevent, and I felt mildly embarrassed for having built it up so much in my head. I put down my bag, wedging it under my seat, and when I glanced up again, Max and Darren were arriving sans iced tea.

  Claudia glanced over first. She looked surprised and then delighted, as though my appearance was exciting instead of completely unprompted.

  “Hey, Rose,” she said, leaning across Sam. “I love your top!”

  I was wearing a cream high-necked lace blouse that had sat in the back of my closet for months, more intimidating at home than it had seemed in the dressing room.

  “It’s from that vintage store—” I started to explain.

  “On Ocean?” she asked, and I nodded. “Oh my god, I spend all of my babysitting money there. Did you know they have a student discount?”

  “They do?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of a secret,” she said. “You have to ask, and they make you sign up for their mailing list, but you get fifteen percent off.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  I loved that place, with its antique phonograph in the window and embroidered aprons hanging from the ceiling, like they were about to take flight.

  Delia hated it. When I’d wanted us to go in one afternoon, she’d loudly announced that her cousin had gotten HPV from a pair of used jeans, which isn’t even possible. So I’d told her never mind, and had spent the next hour watching her and Emmy try on sixty-dollar sweaters in Brandy Melville.

  Max joined us, and Sam glanced around, confused.

  “Hold on,” Sam said. “Where’s Nima?”

  Max snorted.

  “In the back. With that girl.”

  “No.” Sam looked shocked. “Our Nima? Sitting with a girl?”

  Subtlety definitely wasn’t Sam’s thing. He twisted around, being wildly obvious.

  “Stop,” Claudia begged, swatting at him. “Everyone can see.”

  “I don’t care,” Sam said, but he turned back around, looking dejected. “Nope. They’re both staring at their phones. I can’t tell if they’re covertly texting or ignoring each other.”

  “Rose knows her,” Darren announced. He turned to me. “What’s your verdict?”

  Suddenly, everyone was staring at me with interest. But I couldn’t picture a less likely pair than gloomy Kate and cheerful Nima.

  “Ignoring each other. Definitely,” I pronounced, and everyone groaned.

  Gardner called our class to attention then. He leaned back against the stage, legs crossed beneath a sherbet-colored polo shirt, looking more like an ice-cream cone than ever.

  He had his attendance sheet out, and he checked Jamie off immediately, then frowned, glancing up.

  “Where’s Rose?” he repeated, squinting toward the back row.

  “Right here,” I said.

  Gardner looked surprised to find me sitting up front, and I didn’t blame him. It took him even longer to locate Nima.

  The theater tech class was already in the sound and lighting booth with their teacher supervising. The lighting suddenly went orange and then slowly turned blue. I realized that we were doing scenes so they could practice. We combined classes occasionally, I just hadn’t expected them all to be here, watching.

  Sam and Claudia volunteered to go first, setting up the chairs and helping to set the sound and lighting for everyone. They were calm and patient through all of it, cracking jokes with Lara, the stage manager, whose voice crackled over the God Mic.

  While they were setting up, I glanced at Sam’s seat. No backpack. And a tiny part of me relaxed, knowing that Sam was secretly nervous.

  After they finished, Jamie raised his hand, volunteering us. I wasn’t expecting that, and I stared at him in shock. Panic washed over me, fast and disorienting. But there was no time for panic, and so I pushed it down.

  I took a deep breath and followed him onto the stage, my heart still hammering. I’d sat down with the best actors in our class, and when you did that, you couldn’t screw up. I couldn’t screw up.

  Jamie gave me a slight nod and then delivered the first line. There was a stillness to the air, punctuated by the occasional crackle from an overhead mic.

  So many people were watching. Expecting. Waiting. But somehow, I knew what to do. It was like Jamie and I were passing a bolt of electricity back and forth between us, building it bigger and bigger with each line, until it escaped all at once in a thunderclap of applause.

  When we climbed down from the stage, Jamie grinned at me.

  “Well done, partner,” he whispered, and I didn’t know whether to be flattered or relieved.

  “You too,” I whispered back.

  We watched the rest of our classmates perform, all of it blending into a sea of flubbed lines and applause and Seth in a flaming orange hat, improbably doing an old-school gangster accent while Abby murdered him with her glare.

  Nima and Kate went last. Part of me hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. Instead, it was worse. She dropped half her cues and recited her lines like she was reading a textbook. Without anything to play off, Nima fell flat, the way that I always had. I’d just never wondered how much of that was Kate.

  I could see Nima straining to salvage it, but nothing helped. They both looked relieved when it was over. He didn’t even bother going back to his seat, just slumped into the front row with us and slid down in his chair until he was practically horizontal.

  “What a face-plant,” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Darren said.

  Max rolled his eyes, obviously of a different opinion.

  And I thought about how lucky I was that I hadn’t tanked my scene with Jamie. That he wasn’t slouched in his seat, trying to forget the horror. But just because I hadn’t face-planted the assignment didn’t mean anything. The universe was in my favor today, but my luck could change in an instant.

  Gardner let us go a few minutes early. Everyone started to pack up, but Jamie turned toward me, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

  “What?” I accused.

  “Kate,” he said. “You made me feel terrible for stealing you away.”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, and explained my theory about the rule of friend groups, and mandatory partnership, and how it creates this endless loop of forced sameness.

  I didn’t realize I had an audience until Claudia started giggling.

  “Challenge accepted,” she said.

  “Thanks a lot, Rose,” Sam deadpanned. “Now she’ll ignore me for a week just to prove a point.”

  “Not a whole week,” Claudia countered.

  “Well, count me out from this escape-your-comfort-zone bullshit,” Max said drily. “You see how well it turned out for Nima.”

  “Yeah, but what about Jamie and Rose?” Claudia countered. “Who were awesome, by the way.”

  “Good scene chemistry,” Sam added innocently. Claudia whacked him.

  “We worked on it outside of class,” I admitted. I meant it as an explanation for why I hadn’t sucked, but Sam took it completely the wrong way.

  “Did you?” he asked, grinning.

  “Shut up, we did, too,” Claudia reminded him.

  I glanced toward the back of the theater, looking for Kate, in case she was still hanging around. But she’d left without me. And somehow, I’d known she would. “Okay, so, Billz?” Nima asked.

  “Definitely,” Claudia said. “Max owes me a Splendor rematch.”

  Max grumbled, and I stiffened, waiting to see if they’d invite me along.

  “Rose, do you need a ride?” Sam offered, as though there was no question I was invited.

  “She can ride with me,” Jamie said.

  “Great.” Claudi
a grinned. “We’ll meet you there.”

  I could feel myself lighting up again, and whether it was because of my proximity to everyone else’s charisma or whether I’d found a hidden reserve of my own, I couldn’t say. All I knew was, for the first time since Logan’s death, a piece of the darkness had receded, and just like that, I was glowing.

  11

  THE SUN WAS setting by the time we abandoned the back table at Billz. We spilled into the parking lot, arguing over some silly game point of Gloom. Max and Nima had their phones out, each of them determined to prove the other one wrong, and somehow, their absurd argument had become a joke in its own right.

  I didn’t even remember what was funny about it, but we were laughing in ragged gasps because the joke was bigger than the sum of its parts.

  And that was the magic of it all, I realized. There had been so many times when, from the other end of the quad, I’d wished I could know what they were laughing about. Except now I knew: the joke didn’t matter. Sometimes you didn’t even know what you were laughing about, just who you were laughing with.

  I looked around, at this group of friends who only last week had seemed impossibly distant. I’d slunk out of this same coffee shop mortified because only Nima had waved at me.

  I realized now that everyone would have been friendly if I’d walked over and said hello. That no one would have minded if I’d pulled up a chair and joined in. Jamie had figured this out on the first day of school, but it had taken me an embarrassingly long time to realize that popular kids are intimidating but fundamentally nice.

  “You should ride home with us,” Sam said. It took a moment to register that he was talking to me.

  “Um, are you sure?” I asked, wondering where the offer had come from.

  “I don’t mind dropping her off,” Jamie said.

  Sam snorted.

  “Whatever, University Village,” he teased, since unlike the rest of us, Jamie lived south of the parkway. “I’ve got this. Rose, hop into my party bus.”

  Sam’s “party bus,” it turned out, was a secondhand Suburban. The seats were covered with Navajo blankets, either as a decoration or as courtesy, and the whole thing smelled faintly of stale fast-food grease. There was a Chick-fil-A bag crumpled under the driver’s seat, canoodling with a flock of half-empty water bottles.