Thursday, as we sat at our chemistry table and studiously ignored each other, it hit me that I didn’t actually need Wyatt’s help to figure out what the ghost wanted. I could do it alone. Yeah, it might take me a little longer, and maybe I didn’t have his freakishly honed detective skills, but I could do it. And then, by figuring it out and unlatching the spirit, I would also unlatch myself from Wyatt forever.
So after dinner and homework, I decided to get back on track. I turned on my computer to check my email for a reply from Paige Pollan. It had been four days since I first tried to contact her.
As the computer booted up, I summoned as much courage as I could (not much) and said, “Diana?”
There was no answer.
“Diana Del Mar,” I said. “Hello?” For a moment, I thought of getting out the moldavite ring and the candles. Would those make it easier to reach her? If they had attracted her in the first place, why shouldn’t I just use them now? It seemed counterproductive to ignore the most effective means of getting in touch, just because some near-stranger was feeling overly cautious. Leyta Fitzgeorge wasn’t the one being awakened in the middle of the night and shoved into a bathtub.
I was about to dig the box out of my closet when the computer finished booting up. Since I was there, I might as well do a little research before opening the portal again. To be honest, I wasn’t all that excited about disregarding Leyta’s warning. On some level, I believed she knew what she was talking about.
I clicked on the web browser. Explore every lead, I thought. Leave no stone unturned.
So I decided to start with something easy — I Googled Paige Pollan.
That’s when I realized that there would never be a reply to the email I’d sent.
Because Paige Pollan killed herself last August.
On Friday morning, as I stood at my locker, Marnie raced toward me, a blur of green and white. She grabbed me around the neck and jumped up and down.
“Willa!” she squealed. “Willa, seriously!”
“What?” I asked, trying to peel away from her. I was exhausted from the sheer hopelessness that had descended on me after I discovered Paige’s fate. I almost wished I could talk to Wyatt about it — but not badly enough to break our silence. It was lab day in Chem, so I was already planning an imaginary headache and a trip to the nurse’s office to get me out of having to interact with him. Now, with Marnie shrieking and hopping around, my “imaginary” headache could easily slip into all-too-real existence.
Marnie put her hands on my shoulders and beamed at me. “It’s so awesome, I don’t even want to tell you. I want you to bask in the anticipation for a minute. Could you bask, please? I need to see some baskage.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, smoothing my cardigan where Marnie’s embrace had flipped it up. “But okay, I’m basking.”
“What if I said … I had something amazing to show you?” she asked, hooking an arm around my waist and leading me toward the courtyard.
“That would be … nice?” Her excited energy was actually starting to make me antsy.
“Feast your eyes … on THIS.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and handed it to me.
It was a photo of two random glamorous girls —
No, wait — it was a photo of Marnie and me. From the premiere.
I stared at myself — my luminous skin, the rosy pink of my cheeks, my large doe eyes. My hair was perfect, the red dress so elegant.
I’d never seen myself look like that before. I never even knew I could look like that.
And next to me, Marnie embodied retro awesomeness, from her wild sequined dress to her glasses.
“Wow us,” I said quietly.
“It gets better,” she said, grabbing the phone and scrolling down. “Look at the caption.”
Can you say “totes adorbs,” Stalkerz? Gorgeous Hollywood starlets Ramona Claiborne and Bernadette Middleton arrive at the premiere of the new Kurt Conrath flick The Never Time.
“We’re … on … Starstalkerz,” Marnie said. “Willa, you and I are on Starstalkerz.”
I’d heard of it. It was one of those gossip sites that has its own TV show and is always posting famous people’s mug shots.
“No, Ramona and Bernadette are on Starstalkerz,” I said. “And I’m sure the website will take the photo down when they realize that Ramona and Bernadette aren’t real people.”
“Look at the comments!” Marnie practically shrieked. “Look — ‘Bernadette is so beautiful I hate her.’ Someone hates you because you’re pretty. And this one — ‘Where did Ramona get those glasses they R so kewl I want them.’ Someone wants my glasses. People want to know who we are. They want to be us.” Marnie’s face was animated in a way I’d never seen. “Willa, here’s what I’m thinking — we find a way to get into every party and event we can find. We always go as Bernadette and Ramona. Soon we’ll be the It Girls. We’ll have fan pages and thousands of followers. I mean, if we handle this right, we could get … like, I don’t know — our own reality show!”
I scrolled back up to the photo. “But how did they even find out your name was Ramona? We decided that after we went inside, didn’t we?”
Marnie gave me a saucy smile. “Well … I might have written a press release from a publicist about Ramona Claiborne and Bernadette Middleton, Hollywood’s hottest new BFFs.”
“Wait — you actually put in writing that I’m Kate Middleton’s cousin?”
She grinned and shrugged.
“Marnie!”
“Oh, stop acting scandalized. What are you, a pilgrim?”
“You mean a puritan? No … but that’s lying about a real person.”
“Lying?!” She drew back, pretending to be scandalized. “On the Internet? No! I don’t believe it! I’m pretty sure Kate Middleton is too busy trying on tiaras to care whether someone halfway across the world is pretending to be her distant relative. I mean, think about it. Can she prove you’re not related?”
I ignored her crazy talk and stared at the picture. “Won’t we get in trouble when they find out?”
“For heaven’s sake, no,” Marnie said, rolling her eyes. “This is Hollywood, Willa. I don’t even know how old my own mother is. Everyone lies, and there are no consequences. It’s like a magical fairyland!”
My plan for avoiding Chemistry went off without a hitch, so for seventh period I lay on a cot in the nurse’s office, thinking about Marnie. After a while, the nurse left me alone, so I pulled out my phone. It took me a few different combinations of search terms, but eventually I found what I was looking for:
A photoblog called MARNIE + WYATT = FOREVER.
As the posts loaded on the page, one by one, I felt like I’d been spun around a hundred times and dropped down on a balance beam.
Photo after photo of Wyatt and Marnie. Sitting together at a football game. Holding hands. Him giving her a piggy-back ride. Him standing behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder. Tenth-grade Marnie had a short chin-length bob and wire-frame glasses. In every photo, she was smiling brilliantly.
It was surreal, seeing them together. I felt an unpleasant twinge, and told myself it was because this was confirmation that so much of what Marnie had told me was outright lies.
Or maybe, I mused, flinching at a photo of him kissing her on the cheek, there’s more to it than that.
The pictures spanned almost their whole sophomore school year. One from the winter formal with Marnie in a pale blue dress and Wyatt in a gray suit, posing together. A picture from Valentine’s Day, showing Marnie holding a tiny teddy bear.