Read Online Notes from Ghost Town by Kate Ellison - Free Book Online Page B

now. Before I came in.”
    “Raina,” I answer quickly, moving my gaze to the boxes full of Mom’s things, still exposed on my carpet. Dad hasn’t mentioned them. He won’t. “We were Skyping.”
    He shakes his head, gives me his
I know you’re lying and it only disappoints me more
look. “I know what you’re up to, you know,” he says with a sigh. “And it’s not going to work.”
    Dad probably thinks I’m plotting ways to prevent him from marrying Heather. But I gave that up as soon as he told me they were engaged. He was in too deep already.
    He shuts my door behind him with a soft click. Without meaning to, I snatch a pillow off my bed and hurl it against the closed door. It thuds softly to the ground. Then I sit on the floor next to mom’s boxes, drawing my knees to my chest.
    I take a caramel from Mom’s secret box of treats.
Poor Dad. He’s got a nutso ex-wife, and a nutso daughter now, too
.
    But … if Stern’s real, and if he’s right, then there’s a chance I’m
not
going crazy. That I’m fine. Sane—at least for now.
    I haven’t had caramel in forever. It tastes good.
    Every year, on my birthday, Mom would spend hours making my cake from scratch, trying out new recipes, new combinations. I’d watch her stir smooth icing in a big ceramic bowl, rapt;
come over here, Livie. Tell me what this needs
, she’d say, letting me taste off a long silver spoon. She’d dye it pink with beet juice, or sapphire with blueberries, ice it all over in colorful peaks and valleys.
    And I know: if there’s even the smallest chance in hell that what Stern says is true, I’ll listen, I’ll help, I’ll do anything.
    I lean back against the edge of my bed for a second, trying to think what to do.
    In the blankness of the ceiling, I see Mom, smiling above me from the middle of a white ocean.
    Let him be real
.
    A current of panic snakes its way up my chest, and Isit up stock-straight. If he’s not real, if this is just how it starts—what happens next? How does it end?
    Please. Please, god—please anyone. Let him be real. Let him be
right.
    He
has
to be.
    I’ll prove it.

seven
    I consider calling Raina for help, but only for a second. She won’t understand. How could she?
    The thing about Raina is: sometimes she gets on my nerves so badly I could scream. I love the girl, and I’d probably be dead in a ditch somewhere without her, but sometimes I think our friendship is just this other
thing
she’s trying to win. Next week, she’ll go to the unveiling, stand beside Stern’s parents like
she
was his best friend, act the saint, while I, the capital-A Asshole, can’t even face them.
    And the award for
Most Compassionate Friend to Parents of Dead Kid
goes to …
    Raina!
    What kills me is that I introduced them in the first place. Raina was in my social studies class in sixth grade and she looked lonely—she’d just moved to Miami from Minneapolis—and I liked the streak of fake pink hair she’d clipped into her dark ponytail. So I invited her to sleep over. Stern, who always went to magnet schools thatwould help
foster his musical talents
, came over to eat a mushroom pizza from Stefano’s and watch
The Sandlot
; it was the first night the three of us ever hung out.
    We talked all night long, about Minneapolis, about how her dad just split town one night without a word and she and her mom and three sisters moved a month later because her mom got a job here, as a translator. She taught me how to put liquid eyeliner around my eyelids, real thick, and we snuck into Mom’s closet and dressed up in her concert gowns, put pantyhose on our heads, and invented a fake band called “The Stockinghead Sisters.” Stern acted as our manager, booking us fake gigs at all of the most influential venues across North America, Western Europe, and China.
    We were pretty much inseparable after that.
    But he was always mine first.
    I inhale sharply: Stern.
Mom
. My heart hiccups a little in my chest, replaying again what