My heart was pounding out of control, so I turned the camera off and set it down. I paced around the room, rubbing my arms and glancing at the mirror every few seconds.
I couldn’t prove it was Ana. But it was clearly something. I had proof I wasn’t seeing things.
The problem was, proving it meant showing people this video. This video of me giving myself a pep talk about my stupid stage fright. Which happened to be the exact reason my brain was tricking me into seeing Ana’s ghost, according to Roland. What if—a shiver passed through me at the thought—what if Jess wanted me to put this video on my blog? What if she wanted to use it in an episode?
“Nope,” I said loudly and decisively, grabbing the Elapse again. I pulled the memory card out and tucked it securely in my pocket just as the door flew open.
“Look at this!” Oscar hurried in carrying his laptop, which he shoved in my face. Startled, I dropped my camera onto the bed and took the laptop with both hands.
To: [email protected], [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Interview on Rumorz!
Hi, Kat and Oscar!
I’m a writer on staff at Rumorz, a website that covers all the latest in entertainment news and reviews. I’ve been covering many of Fright TV’s shows for years, including Passport to Paranormal—you may have seen my article on the incident at Daems Penitentiary a few weeks ago.
Thomas Cooper, Fright TV’s Executive VP, mentioned that you two are about to become cast members yourselves. How exciting! I was wondering if you’d be interested in doing an interview for Rumorz? I’d love to hear more about your blog, Kat, and any other juicy “behind the scenes” tidbits you’d like to share! Let me know if we can set up a call, preferably sometime before your next episode airs.
Thanks a bunch!
Shelly Mathers
“Oh yes, please, I’d love to do an interview with a trashy gossip website,” I said sarcastically. “We’ll give them all the juicy stuff, like how Jess bleaches her hair or that Roland wears Batman pajamas.”
“Come on, Kat!” Oscar took his laptop back, scanning the e-mail again. “We should totally do this. No cameras or anything, and she said she’d call. It’d be great publicity for the show and your blog.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I already say all the behind-the-scenes stuff I want to say on my blog. I don’t have anything else to talk about. And my grandma always says Rumorz is really sleazy,” I added. “This reporter probably thinks she can trick us into giving her some real dirt.”
Oscar made a face. “Still . . . it’d be cool to do an interview. It’s like we’re actually celebrities.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “Look, you can do it if you want. But you should probably at least ask Lidia first.”
“Mmm,” Oscar said noncommittally. By the look on his face, I could tell he was already giving an interview in his head. Probably on the red carpet.
Our seven-hour flight to Argentina turned into a twenty-seven-hour flight thanks to a monsoon. Well, not an official monsoon. But the sheets of rain slamming into the windows at the São Paulo airport all night during our extended layover was the loudest storm I’d ever heard—loud enough to keep us from sleeping. (The hard plastic seats didn’t help much, either.) By the time our plane touched down in Buenos Aires, the entire Passport to Paranormal cast looked more like Night of the Living Dead.
“It’s a few minutes after seven,” Lidia croaked, heaving her suitcase into the back of our rental van. “If we luck out with traffic, we might make it to the hotel before nine.”
“And so far, we’ve had tons of travel luck,” muttered Roland, unwrapping what had to be the hundredth sucker he’d had since we left Salvador.
No one spoke much in the van. I kept nodding off, my head dropping onto my chest before I jerked awake. The next thing I knew, the van pulled to an abrupt halt in front of the hotel. I sat up, startled, and realized I’d slept on Oscar’s shoulder the whole way there. Which maybe would’ve been embarrassing, but he was literally drooling on the window, so I figured he hadn’t noticed.
“We’re here,” I said, poking him in the arm.
“But I can’t play the piano,” he mumbled, and I giggled despite my exhaustion.
“Oscar. Wake up.”
He blinked blearily at me, then squinted out the window. “Hotel?”
“Yup.”
“Bed. Need bed.” Oscar staggered out of the van, yawning. Lidia tossed him his duffel bag, which he caught with a grunt.
“You can turn in if you want, but I kind of thought you’d like to watch yourself on TV first,” she said teasingly. At that, Oscar’s eyes flew open.
“Nope, I’m awake!”
I smiled, but my heart fluttered against my rib cage. In the haze of delayed flights and neck-cramp-inducing naps at the airport, I’d managed to put the fact that tonight was the night I would make my television debut mostly out of my mind.
By nine o’clock, all eight of us were crammed into Lidia and Oscar’s room. The warm scent of coffee filled the air, and the adults all looked much perkier. I was, too, although my adrenaline had more to do with fear than caffeine.
Mi Jin crouched by the TV with her laptop, face scrunched in concentration as she tried connecting them with different combinations of cables, cords, and adapters. I could see Fright TV’s website on the laptop screen; all episodes were available to stream at the same time as they aired on television back in the US.
“Got it!” Mi Jin said triumphantly, and everyone cheered as the network’s site appeared on the TV. I faked a cheer, too, shrinking back into my pillow. As if he’d read my mind, Dad slung his arm around my shoulders.
“Don’t worry,” he said as the opening credits started. “I watched this about a thousand times while we were editing. You and Oscar did great, so just relax!”
I tried to smile, thinking of the memory card in my pocket and the secret it held. Just. Freaking. Relax. Hoping no one else could tell how nervous I was, I leaned into Dad and squeezed my balled-up fists in my lap.
But it turned out Dad was right. The first time I saw myself on TV, I winced a little. After a few minutes, though, I was used to it. Sort of.
Oscar was way better at this than me; that much was screamingly obvious. Everything I said was clipped, and sometimes I mumbled. I also turned away from the cameras a lot. But Oscar spoke clearly and was pretty much the opposite of camera shy. If anything, he came off as a little too eager, at least in my opinion.
My favorite part was near the beginning, when we were setting up camp. Mi Jin must have sneaked up to the ledge, because she’d recorded me and Oscar joking around about Elsa battling the Abominable Snowman, right before I jumped into the pool. Neither of us knew she was there, so we both sounded like ourselves.
All of the non-me parts of the episode were great. Sam had been in top form, picking up all sorts of emotions from the residual haunting, piecing together a story of what he thought happened to the campers. Dad added to that with facts he’d learned about them—their families, where they went to school, their interests—which made Sam’s increasingly intense descriptions of their fear and panic as they realized they were going to die even more sympathetic and horrifying. And just when things would get really heavy, Roland would lighten the mood with a quip. Until the last few minutes.
In a voiceover, Dad talked about why the waterfall was likely the perfect example of a residual haunting, while clips of our hike back to the van played. But at one point when we stopped to rest, Jess took her camera over to Roland and Sam, who were sitting on the rail of a rusty train track, passing a water bottle back and forth. Roland’s expression was distant, and I suddenly remembered that this had been filmed just a few hours after the whole Ellie conversation.
“So, what’s the verdict, guys?” Jess asked.
“Skeptics argue that the reason anyone feels anxiety or fear at the site of a supposed residual haunting, the reason they think they hear or even see the event replaying, is simply because of the story itself—the same reason people think they hear noises in the attic or check under their beds after watching a scary movie, even though they know it’s fiction. Can we ever prove this kind of phenomenon is real?”
Sam opened his mouth to respond, but Roland beat him to it.
“It doesn’t matter.” His voice had none of its usual sarcasm. “Proof doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you believe or not. Maybe . . . maybe sometimes belief is enough to make it real.”
With that, he handed the bottle to Sam, whose eyes were so comically round with surprise that everyone in the room started sniggering.
“You out Sam’d Sam,” Mi Jin told Roland between giggles, and he grinned. But I couldn’t help noticing that his eyes looked sad.
“My granddaughter, the television star!”
I snorted, cradling the phone with my shoulder and scrolling through the newer comments on my last blog post. “I don’t think star is the right word.”
“You were fantastic,” Grandma said for, like, the hundredth time. “If you hadn’t sent me that e-mail about being nervous in front of the cameras, I never would’ve known. Did you try practicing alone?”
“Er . . .” I touched my pocket self-consciously. “Yeah, once.”
“And it helped?”
Yes, but not with my stage fright. “A little,” I replied. “I feel pretty dumb talking to myself, though.”
“You should recite something,” Grandma suggested. “Just pick a movie and start quoting it. My monologue near the end of Return to the Asylum is particularly good. Or . . . what’s that now?” Her voice got muffled, and I could hear someone talking in the background. “Oh, of course . . . Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to pass the phone over to your mom, okay?” Grandma sounded way too chipper all of a sudden. “It’s getting late, and she has to head home soon.”
I clicked over to my inbox, realizing I still needed to respond to Trish. My heart leaped when I saw a new e-mail from Jamie. “Sure.” As Grandma handed Mom the phone, I opened Jamie’s message.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: ALL CAPS WARNING
THAT EPISODE WAS AMAZING AND YOU ARE EVEN MORE AMAZING AND HEY GUESS WHAT I’LL SEE YOU TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was grinning like a dork when Mom got on the phone.
“Hi, Kat.”
“Hey.” I decided to respond to Jamie entirely in emojis. Sun. Beach. Sandals. Ghost. Skull.
“How cool was that?” Mom said in a fake-perky voice I knew all too well. “My daughter, on TV. Looks like you’re having fun!”
“Yup, Dad and I are having a great time.” Pizza. Devil. Thumbs-up.
Mom was quiet for a few seconds. “So the next episode is in a haunted . . . church?”
“Yeah.” Church. Ghost. Skull. Ghost. Skull. “There are catacombs under it. Lots of bones, and the ghost of a nun, supposedly.”
“Wow. When do you start filming?”
Palm tree. Popsicle. Spider. “In a few days, I guess,” I said. “This investigation is a little different. There’s a psychology professor from a university in Buenos Aires that’s been holding séances down there as part of a big research project with his students. They say they’ve actually contacted this nun, like, a bunch of times. So I think Dad’s going to spend some time interviewing him, plus he’s got to research the history of the catacombs and all that.”
“Ah.”
I felt a little stab of vindictive pleasure. Mom couldn’t have cared less about the show or dead nuns or any of this, and I definitely didn’t need to talk about Dad so much. But sometimes the only way I could get through these conversations was by playing a game. I called it: How long can I keep Mom from talking about herself?
“So . . . I finally decided on the bridesmaid dresses!”
I almost laughed out loud. That didn’t last long. “Yeah?” Bathing suit. Ice cream. Bloody footsteps.
“I’m e-mailing you a link right now, okay?”
“Sure.” I sighed, scanning my ridiculous response to Jamie. I needed one more emoji.
Heart.
I blushed and tapped Delete. Too soon.
Heart eyes.
After clicking Send, I went back to my inbox and found Mom’s e-mail. I groaned inwardly when I saw the link—not to a dress shop, but to one of her Facebook albums. Haunted prisons and catacombs were no big deal, but I rarely ventured into the fearsome place that was my mother’s Facebook page. It never used to be that bad—mostly just photos she’d taken, which were always great, considering she’s a professional. But ever since she left me and Dad, it was like she turned into a teenager again. Not that there’s anything wrong with adults saying things like “squee!” and taking tons of selfies, but it’s just weird when it’s your parent. One time she commented “YOLO” on her own status update, and I wanted to set my computer on fire.
This album was called “Wedding Prep!” and the first photo was of Mom’s maid of honor, Kathleen. The dress was pale purple with spaghetti straps and a flouncy skirt that ended at the knee.
“Nice.”
“You like it?” Mom asked eagerly.
“I guess.” I paused, taking a deep breath. If I was going to do it, now was the time. Mom . . . I don’t want to be a bridesmaid in your wedding.
“We’ll have to set up a fitting as soon as you know when you’ll be back,” Mom went on in a rush. “I’ve got one scheduled next week for me and Elena. You should see her, Kat,” she added, and the fondness in her voice made my stomach drop. “She refuses to take her flower-girl dress off; it’s the sweetest thing. She even tries to sleep in it!”
I forced a laugh. “That’s cute. Anyway, um . . . I’m not sure when Dad and I will be back next. Thomas Cooper from Fright TV is coming in tomorrow, and they’re supposed to go over scheduling through this summer. And . . .”
“Don’t worry, your father and I will work it out,” Mom cut in. “Honey, I’ve got to run. Talk to you soon, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Love you.”
“Bye,” I mumbled. It wasn’t until after I hung up that something dawned on me.
Mom had just watched me on television, and she hadn’t done her usual compliment-that’s-really-criticism-in-disguise thing. Nothing about how cute my hair would look if I curled it. No saying, “Have you tried this lotion? It has sunscreen and it evens out your skin tone!” No recommending mascara, eye shadow, or anything that “doesn’t even look like you’re wearing makeup at all!” (Then what’s the point of wearing it in the first place, Mom?)
For a few seconds, I actually thought maybe this was improvement. Maybe Grandma had talked to her or something. Then, just as I was about to close her Facebook album, my eyes fell on a photo. Mom was standing next to her car with a few giant shopping bags hanging on one arm. Elena clung to her other arm, holding out the skirt of what I assumed was her flower-girl dress—the same pale purple as Kathleen’s dress, but with ten times the poofiness. She and Mom were both beaming. The caption under the photo said, Look at my little princess!
I closed the tab quickly, feeling stupid. Of course Mom hadn’t stopped criticizing me because she thought I was okay the way I was. She didn’t care if I liked that stuff anymore because now she had a daughter who did.
CHAPTER SEVEN
STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES . . .
Rumorz
All the celebrity gossip you need (and then some)!
Interview with New P2P Cast Member Oscar Bettencourt by Shelly Mathers
Happy Friday, Rumorz readers! It’s another frigid December day he
re in New York, and I don’t know about you, but I could really use a little sun, sand, and . . . ghosts?
Many of you Fright TV fanatics already tune in to Passport to Paranormal—and if you didn’t before last month’s exciting episode in Brussels that culminated in the arrest of Emily Rosinski, I bet you do now! Wednesday’s episode, filmed in the wild jungles of Brazil, may not have had a crazy former-host-turned-stalker, but it did feature two new cast members . . . and they’re only thirteen years old! I caught up with Oscar Bettencourt on the phone while he and the rest of the P2P crew waited out a thunderstorm in the São Paulo airport. We had just enough time for a quick Q&A before he took off for sunny Argentina.
S: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, Oscar! Most kids your age are stuck at a school desk, but you’re traveling around the world hunting ghosts! How’d you manage that?
O: My aunt is the producer on P2P. I grew up in Portland with my other aunt, but last summer Aunt Lidia asked if I wanted to start traveling with her and the show starting in the fall.
S: Wow! And you were okay with leaving your home, your school—all your friends—behind?
O: Yes. Definitely.
S: So you were at Daems Penitentiary with the crew a few weeks ago, but you weren’t a cast member yet. Why do you think Fright TV decided to add you to the show?
O: Because of my charm and good looks? Just kidding. I think it’s because of Kat’s blog. It started getting really popular with some of the fans, and the network noticed.
S: I’ve read her blog! Very interesting stuff. I especially loved that video of the two of you, the one with the Ouija board . . . so fun to get extra content like that! Can we look forward to any more of those?
O: Yeah, definitely! In fact, I have some news about that.
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