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I sighed.
“Do you believe in God? I believe in God. And I think God makes people exactly who He wants them to be.”
I blinked. “I—I don’t know if I believe or not—”
Elliot shook her head. “You’re missing the point.”
No doubt. “Which is…?”
“Which is, get over it. Forgive yourself. Stop assuming that you deserve the worst of everything.”
I dragged my finger in a circle on the desk. “Easier said than done.”
“Easy?” she repeated, raising her eyebrows. “Who wants easy? Easy’s boring. Now, I have to get back to work. You go take a nap in the library or something.”
I sighed again. “Thanks. I think maybe—”
“Don’t think, grasshopper,” she said. “Gut, remember?”
I’d promised Jared I would come over after school, but I made a detour first—to the small brick house near Redmond High.
I parked on the street, a few houses away, and got out of the car, my camera hanging around my neck. I tweaked the exposure way down and started taking pictures, expecting to see the girl in the purple dress.
The white light did hold a quivering, jittering figure—but not the girl.
It was a man. A boy, actually—a football player.
Held tightly in his left hand was a trophy. I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—get close enough to see what it said, but I zoomed in on the figurine on top of the gold pedestal: a football player cradling a ball under one arm.
The ghost was carrying something—just like the girl with her roses.
A second superghost?
He hovered about a foot over the sidewalk, looking in the direction of the high school, with an expression of pure rage on his face—forehead furrowed, teeth gritted. He had short, slicked-back hair, and his uniform looked oddly old-fashioned. His shoes were simple no-name black cleats. If I had to guess, I’d say he died in the 1960s.
At least he had eyes.
And this guy, unlike the girl in the purple dress, didn’t seem to notice me. His entire focus was directed toward the school. I cringed as another couple walked by. This time, the boy started hopping on one foot and saying, “Ow! Cramp! Ow, ow, ow, cramp!” as they passed the spot where the superghost stood.
I went closer and fired off a few more frames. Then I looked at my camera. Across the back of the boy’s jersey, I could make out his last name: CorCoran.
“Five minutes,” I said. “Ten. Then we can hang out.”
“Can’t you do this at home?” Jared asked.
I was sitting on his couch with his laptop balanced on my legs. “Mom’s laptop is the only computer in the house that gets internet. And she guards it like a junk-yard dog. But I’ll only be a minute. This is important.”
He tried to remove my hand from the keyboard. I shook him off and went back to typing. In the web browser, I searched for corcoran + redmond street.
It pulled up an address listing: RANDALL CORCORAN.
When I went on to search for Randall Corcoran, what came up was his prison record. His most recent jail time had ended less than two years ago—it was fairly safe to assume that he was the drunk guy Lydia had seen passed out inside the house. So he wasn’t dead.
Then who was the ghost? His football uniform had accents of green and yellow, like the girl’s cheerleading uniform. So I tried Corcoran dead Redmond high school.
And found: “Redmond High Holds Memorial Assembly for State Champ Quarterback Phil Corcoran.”
The article was dated 1965, and it was published in the Los Angeles Times, a much bigger newspaper than our local Surrey paper. Presumably this was a high-profile story because of Phil’s triumphant performance at the state championship. He’d been a senior, the star quarterback of the football team, when he died of injuries sustained in a car accident.
But something didn’t add up:
“We take tremendous comfort from the fact that Father Lopez was able to administer the Last Rites to Philip before he died,” the boy’s mother, Mrs. Joseph Corcoran, told the assem bled students. “He died in a state of deep peace. He knew he was going to a better place.”
Impossible.
Because people who die in a state of deep peace don’t become angry ghosts.
They just don’t.
“What are you looking at?” Jared asked, leaning over to look.
“Nothing,” I said.
He hovered at my shoulder, sca
He lifted the computer off my lap and went to his school’s website, clicking through a few screens to the headmaster’s bio page.
“Yeah,” he said. “Look. He was ordained in 1962 and served at Saint Viviana’s on the east side of Surrey. That’s right by Redmond High.”
Gears started turning in my head.
“But why are you looking at this?” Jared asked. “It’s pretty morbid.”
“I…” I didn’t have the faintest clue what to say. “One of my teachers was talking about this guy.”
“And now you know who he is. So do the rest later,” Jared said, head-butting my arm gently. “Spend time with me.”
“Come on,” I said. “Three more minutes.”
“No more minutes.” He wandered away. “Look, I’m going to go through your stuff. I’ll totally rearranging your obsessively organized book bag.…”
That actually sounded fine, if it would distract him. One of the perks of being obsessively organized is that chances to reorganize things are like little treats.
“I’m looking at your science book.…” He took it out and set it on the floor. “I’m going to read your English journal.…”
That was just a reading journal where we summarized what we were reading for class.
“Go ahead,” I said, turning back to the computer.
He was quiet for a minute—he really was looking through my stuff. I should have stopped him, but I needed the time for research.
“What is this?” Jared asked. He was staring at a piece of paper—the one with my drawing of the purple dress.
“Nothing,” I said, reaching out to take it back.
He whipped it away, holding me back with his other arm.
“Seriously, Jared, it’s just a stupid sketch.”
He finally took his eyes off of it. “Why did you draw this?”
“No reason. Just give it back, please.”
He smiled—but it was one of his fake smiles—and moved the paper a tiny bit closer to me. “I’ll trade it for a kiss.”
“Jared—”
He handed me the page, and when I’d folded it and slipped it back inside my bag, I felt hands on my ribs.
As soon as I turned back to him, our lips were pressed together.
Usually, kissing was a way to wipe the slate clean, to forget our petty arguments. But in that moment, a thought barged into my head like an uninvited guest: If Lydia showed up now, what would she say?
She would say he was distracting me. Trying to keep me from being mad about his jerkish, immature behavior.
I’m not going to lie. Kissing Jared could drive a girl to distraction in the best of circumstances. But when I was irritated, or thrown off guard, or made to feel dumb by his little I’m-going-through-your-stuff antics, I was extra susceptible.
And I couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew it.
Jared stood up and pulled me with him. He walked me into the foyer and pressed up against me, his breath coming in hot puffs against my neck. I found myself backed against the wall. Then I felt the soft touch of his hands on the skin of my stomach, his fingers trailing around to my back, leaving thin lines of sparking energy behind them.
“Want to go to my room?” he whispered.
To his room?
“No,” I said, dipping my head to escape his kisses. “I really need to do some more work right now.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, nibbling lightly on my neck.
Don’t worry about it? I tried to picture myself and Carter together—me telling Carter I had work to do and him telling me not to worry about it. And not in a cutesy way, either—in a way that meant that he really expected me to stop worrying or thinking about anything but standing there, making out with him—because it was what he wanted.