Dead Air

by Michelle Schusterman

  “So . . .” I chewed my lip. “You think maybe he’s not a Crimptown ghost?”

  Jamie shrugged. “He could be—the theater’s got one of the entrances to Crimptown. Or he could be the show’s ghost.” He grinned at me. “Or maybe he’s haunting you.”

  “What?” I said, startled. The Thing leaned closer, and I shifted uncomfortably.

  Hailey bounced a little in her seat. “Aw, maybe he’s your ghost.” She sighed dreamily. “Lucky you.”

  I stared at her, then burst out laughing. “You guys are both totally insane.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jamie said. “The camera—remember? You were with the crew when the camera started acting weird. Thirteen Xs. And that was on the boardwalk, far from the theater and way above Crimptown.”

  “He followed you!” Hailey placed her hand on her heart. “How romantic.”

  “Yeah, a ghost stalker,” I said, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “That’d be very romantic and not at all creepy. So what do you think his thirteen Xs meant?”

  Jamie opened his mouth, but Hailey cut him off, flapping her hands wildly. “Ohmigod, thirteen kisses! Thirteen kisses!”

  I half-laughed, half-groaned. Jamie shook his head, his expression solemn. “It’s the kiss of death, Kat.”

  “Thirteen of them.” Hailey gave me a wicked grin, ducking when I threw my napkin at her.

  “We should head back soon,” Jamie said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “I told Dad we’d check in at eight.”

  Hailey snorted. “Yeah, like he’d notice if we didn’t.” I glanced at her in surprise as she slid out of the booth. “I’m gonna use the restroom first, okay?”

  “Sure.” Jamie watched her go, his brow slightly furrowed.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  He blinked a few times. “What?”

  “Hailey seems kind of . . .” I paused, unsure of how to say it. “Well, upset with your dad.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jamie wrinkled his nose. “It’s no big deal. Our parents don’t spend a lot of time with us, that’s all. They’re really busy at work,” he added hastily. “I’m used to it, but Hailey gets mad sometimes.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What does your mom do?”

  “Have you heard of Head Turner?”

  Immediately, I pictured the stack of magazines that used to sit on our coffee table, each one featuring an impeccably dressed, flawlessly beautiful model on the cover. They disappeared sometime in July, although I’d never asked Dad what he did with them.

  “Fashion magazine, right?” I asked lightly, and Jamie nodded.

  “My mom’s the editor in chief.”

  “Wow, that’s really cool.” I winced at how perky my voice suddenly sounded.

  “She and Dad both travel a lot for their jobs,” Jamie went on. “So, you know . . . We don’t see them a lot. And even when they take us, like this trip, they just . . . They’re always busy, so we still don’t really see them much.”

  I made a face. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Jamie said, a little too quickly. “Hailey’s still upset that they missed open house at our school last month. They usually take turns with school stuff, but they got it mixed up this time. Dad thought Mom was going, Mom thought Dad was going . . .” He trailed off, shrugging. “Stuff like that’s been happening more lately, that’s all. Hailey can’t stand it.”

  “It doesn’t make you mad, too?” I couldn’t help asking. “They’re your parents. They’re supposed to be there.”

  It came out louder than I intended. Pressing my lips together, I stared down at the table.

  “Yeah, they are,” Jamie agreed. “But . . . I don’t know. Being angry about it isn’t going to change things, is it?”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. He was right, of course. But like Hailey, I had a hard time just letting go when something made me mad. The best I could do was pretend the problem didn’t exist in the first place.

  Hanging out with Jamie and Hailey turned out to be the perfect distraction from my phone call with She Who Must Not Be Named. We checked in with their dad when we got back to the hotel and found him on a call. He handed Jamie a handful of bills for the vending machines and waved us out of the room without lowering the phone from his ear. Hailey rolled her eyes but said nothing as we headed to see how the crew was doing.

  Room 301 had been transformed into a makeshift production control room. Jess paced between the beds, barking questions and commands left and right. Lidia and Mi Jin kept scribbling, erasing, and scribbling again on this giant dry-erase board they’d propped up by the TV. Roland sat hunched over the laptop, reviewing footage and editing, a pile of sucker wrappers on the floor surrounding his chair. Next to him, Sam lounged in an armchair, occasionally interrupting Jess with comments like, “Sonja would prefer the first shot; it’s more atmospheric.”

  “That was just lens flare,” Jess said impatiently, and Roland snorted, choking a little on his sucker. I watched him closely, wondering if even now he was plotting his next anonymous post on the forums. Or if he’d managed to get in touch with Emily yet.

  On Roland’s screen, Sam and Lidia walked slowly through the tunnels. Lidia was rubbing her arms, like she had a chill. Roland rewound a few seconds and hit play again.

  Sam tilted his head, watching the footage of himself. “That cold spot right there, that was where I felt Red Leer’s presence most strongly,” he mused. “Hopefully I can find it again when I go back down.”

  Jess sighed loudly. “Sam, we’re not going back. We don’t have time.”

  “Not to shoot,” Sam said, his expression suddenly frustrated. “Sonja moved on, I’m sure of it—but Red Leer is still here. I might be able to help him.”

  Jess’s lips were a thin line as she turned away from Sam. “Jack, did you find a few minutes we can trim out of the interview with the restaurant owner?”

  “Yeah, I’ve marked a couple of places here . . .” Dad glanced up from a binder he was studying and noticed me hovering near the doorway with Jamie and Hailey. “Kat!” He hurried over, jumping aside as Lidia stepped back from the dry-erase board. I felt a sudden surge of panic at the concerned expression on his face. Was he was going to ask about the phone call in front of everyone?

  “Hi, Dad!” I said in a pointedly cheerful voice. “How’s the episode coming?”

  Dad studied my face closely. I stared back without blinking. “All right,” he said at last. “Good. Lots of material to work with.”

  “Even with you three getting in my shots,” Jess added, wagging her finger at us. Her voice was light, but I heard a tinge of irritation in her tone and felt another rush of guilt.

  Next to me, Hailey fidgeted. “Why couldn’t you use those shots, though?” she blurted out. “I mean, if all of our parents gave permission, couldn’t we be on the—”

  “This isn’t Nickelodeon,” Roland yelled without taking his eyes off the screen.

  “Hey, having kids on the show would probably help us bring in a younger audience,” Jess joked, causing Roland to groan loudly.

  Sam was watching me with a thoughtful expression. “That’s not such a bad idea, actually. Children are often more receptive to messages from the spirit world,” he said, and I shifted uncomfortably.

  Shaking her head, Lidia stepped back from the dry-erase board. Her oversize lenses magnified the shadows under her eyes, and I couldn’t help wondering if she should be working this hard after . . . whatever it was that happened to her last night. “Would you guys mind checking on Oscar?” she asked. “I think he’s up in our room—I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

  “Sure.” As I turned to go, Dad put a hand on my shoulder, his raised eyebrows asking the question he didn’t want to say out loud. I shrugged his hand off.

  “You’d better get back to work,” I sa
id, smiling at him before turning and following Hailey and Jamie into the hall.

  “They really should use the footage with us in it,” Hailey muttered once the door was closed. “Especially you, Kat—do you think Jess got there in time to film Sonja shoving you into the cell? I mean, can you imagine how much the fans would freak out if they saw that?”

  “My blog post,” I said suddenly. “There were a bunch of comments this morning, but I forgot to read them! Were they all people from the forums?”

  “Mostly,” Jamie replied, punching the button for the fourth floor. “They started a thread about it, too. They’re pretty obsessed with the photo—you should check it out.”

  Oscar looked mildly surprised when he opened his door and found the three of us standing there. “Um, hi?”

  “Lidia said to check on you.” Hailey brushed past him without waiting for an invitation, and I struggled not to laugh.

  “Can we come in?” Jamie asked loudly and pointedly, but Hailey was already sitting down at the desk and didn’t seem to hear him.

  Oscar shrugged and stepped aside. “Sure.”

  “Are you okay?” I squinted at him. His eyes were shiny and pinkish. “You look kind of . . .” I trailed off, reluctant to say it out loud. Kind of like you’ve been crying. “Tired.”

  “So do you,” Oscar said, arching an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”

  We stared at each other and for a moment, I felt like my mask had slipped. Oscar knew. Somehow, he knew about my mom’s “news.”

  Then I shook it off. Just my imagination. It had to be. There was no way he could know.

  The four of us spent almost an hour combing through the comments on my Crimptown post, then the forum thread AntiSimon had started about the photo of Lidia. It was just like Roland predicted—a lot of them thought the outline of the boy ghost was faked (as if I knew how to edit photos like that). Some of them believed it was the show’s ghost . . . or wanted to believe. But I could tell most of them were still just a little bit skeptical, even the really hard-core fans.

  Not that I could blame them. I would be, too, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. And even so, a small part of me regretted being so honest. I’d published a post claiming to have seen the ghost of a woman killed hundreds of years ago, possessing Lidia until some random boy ghost helped her move on. Trish and Mark left comments that made it clear they thought I was joking—or at least, that they hoped so. (Grandma completely believed it, though. Shocking.)

  While Oscar and Jamie raided the vending machines, Hailey and I flipped through the limited TV channels. Hardly anything was in English, so I hurried down the hall to my room to grab the Invasion of the Flesh-Eating Rodents DVD Grandma had given me. We’d just gotten to the extended shower scene (not nude—the shower curtain and careful camera work hid everything important, thank you) when Mi Jin stuck her head in.

  “Just checking in on you guys . . .” Glancing at the screen, she squealed and let the door close behind her. “Edie Mills, oh my God! I love her!” Mi Jin sat on the edge of the bed where Hailey had sprawled out with a pile of candy bars. “Flesh-Eating Rodents—classic. Vampires of New Jersey is my favorite Edie movie, though. I was Maribel Mauls for Halloween a few years ago. Used a whole can of hairspray.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Vampires is your favorite? Seriously? It’s so cheesy!”

  “That’s why I love it!” Mi Jin leaned forward, squinting at the TV. “Hang on . . . I don’t remember this scene! Are those guinea pigs?”

  “Yeah, this is a special edition,” I told her, holding up the case with Never-Before-Seen Footage! blazoned in red across the top, right above Grandma’s wide, horror-filled eyes.

  “Whoa, when did this come out?” Mi Jin grabbed the case and flipped it over to read the back. “I have all of her movies. She’s the best.”

  “I don’t think it’s been officially released yet.”

  “Then how’d you get a copy?”

  “My, um . . .” I closed my eyes briefly. Good job, Kat. “My grandma gave it to me.”

  Jamie shot me a curious look. “How’d she get it before it came out?”

  “She’s, uh . . . she’s Edie Mills.”

  Four heads swiveled in my direction. “What?” Mi Jin yelped.

  Oscar reached up from his spot on the floor and pressed a button on the laptop we’d connected to the television. On the screen, Grandma froze midscream, a rabid guinea pig gnawing at her neck. Everyone stared at me expectantly, and I sighed.

  “Yeah, so, Edie Mills is my grandma.”

  “Um.” Jamie squinted at me, then at the screen. “You and your grandma kind of don’t . . . look alike?”

  “She’s white,” Hailey added bluntly, and I bit back a laugh.

  “She’s my mom’s mom. I look more like my dad. Er, obviously.”

  “Oh, wait!” Hailey lunged for Oscar’s laptop and sent the candy wrappers flying. “The comments on your blog—there’s an Edie, right? There is!” She turned the laptop so we could see the screen, a triumphant smile on her face. “Edie M! She comments on every post! She’s the one always asking for pictures of Sam!”

  At that, Oscar burst out laughing. Mi Jin clapped both hands to her mouth, her eyes round with shock.

  “Oh my God, Edie Mills is seriously your grandmother? Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

  “Well, it’s not like she’s that famous,” I said. “Most people have never seen her movies. I didn’t know you had.”

  “Are you kidding? She’s, like, my idol!” Mi Jin exclaimed. “No, for real—when I was in middle school, I only auditioned for the cheerleading squad because I wanted to be like Kimmy Kickwell in Mutant Cheerleaders Attack. They got mad when I brought fake blood to the first game to use during a routine, so I quit. And when I was sixteen, I was a cannibal clown for Halloween, and my friend Laura dressed up as Tina Soares—she even made this trapeze swing as part of her costume. And this one!” Mi Jin flapped her hand excitedly at the TV, where Grandma’s battle with the guinea pigs was still paused. “Vampires was my favorite movie, but Katya Payne’s definitely the best character Edie ever . . .”

  Mi Jin trailed off. The room fell silent as realization dawned, and I sighed, bracing myself. Oscar was the first to say it.

  “Katya?”

  Giving him an innocent look, I ripped open another bag of Skittles and popped a few into my mouth. “Mmhmm?”

  “Oh. My. God.” Mi Ji gazed at me, shaking her head in disbelief. “You were named after Doctor Katya Payne, weren’t you. Katya Sinclair.”

  Chewing slowly, I pretended to consider it. Then I shrugged. “Hey, it’s better than Kimmy Kickwell.”

  “It’s awesome!” yelled Hailey, while Oscar and Jamie cracked up. “No, shut up, you guys—she’s named after a character her grandmother played in a horror movie. That is, like, the coolest thing ever!”

  “Not just any character,” Mi Jin added, her eyes still wide with awe. “Katya Payne—”

  “Gets attacked by guinea pigs in the shower,” Oscar cut in, and Jamie fell on his side, laughing. “Hiding any scars, Kat?”

  Mi Jin swatted him on the head. “Stop, you don’t understand—Doctor Payne is one of the best horror-movie heroines of all time. Edie won—”

  “Doctor Pain?” Hailey interrupted, giggling. “Like, ow pain?”

  “Oh man, I’m so calling you Doctor Pain from now on,” Oscar said, grinning at me. I flicked a yellow Skittle at his forehead, sending Hailey into hysterics.

  Jamie grabbed the laptop. “I’m changing the name of your blog to The Doctor Pain Files,” he announced, and a moment later a red Skittle bounced off his nose. Within seconds, the room was a tornado of flying candy, chips, and wrappers.

  “I should get back downstairs,” Mi Jin called, hurriedly backing up to the door. “You guys have a good night. Watch out for guinea pigs in the shower
, Doctor Pain.”

  A half-empty bag of Cheetos smacked against the door the instant it closed behind her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RETURN OF THE JERK

  P2P WIKI

  Entry: “Automatism”

  [Last edited by Maytrix]

  Automatism refers to a spontaneous, involuntary movement caused by spirits. In most cases, the individuals are unconscious of their actions, which are influenced by the presence of the spirit. Automatism may also be a sign of possession.

  RING-RING. RING-RING. RING-RING.

  “Make it stop,” I moaned, blindly groping for a pillow and cramming it over my face. A moment later, I heard Dad flip the alarm clock off.

  “Sorry about that.” His voice was muffled, thanks to my pillow. “I must’ve hit snooze when I turned it off earlier.”

  “Mmmph.”

  “I’m heading downstairs to get some work done,” Dad went on. “It’s already after nine—try not to sleep in too much, okay?”

  “Mmmph.”

  “Kat.”

  Heaving a sigh, I pulled the pillow off my face. “I’m on fall break, you know. We’re not doing lessons this week.”

  “Yes, but you’ll never adjust to the time-zone change this way,” Dad said matter-of-factly. “Naps in the middle of the day, staying up late, sleeping in.”

  “Why bother getting used to it?” I mumbled. “We’re leaving for Brussels in a few days, anyway.”

  “Brussels is in the same time zone as Rotterdam.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Oh.”

  Dad headed to the door, then stopped and turned around. “Kat, about your phone call with . . .”

  Rolling over to face the window, I yanked the blankets up and over my head. I heard Dad sigh, and a moment later the door clicked closed.

  I slept for another two hours.

  By the time I stepped off the elevator and into the lobby, it was almost eleven thirty. The breakfast room was empty except for Lidia and Oscar, who sat at a table in the corner talking quietly. I studied the remains of the free continental breakfast: a few cantaloupe slices, some sugar-free, taste-free bran cereal, and two muffins I was pretty sure were from yesterday.