Ghost of a Chance (10 page)

I sit. Hmmm. This is very weird, being in Madison Baker's room, sitting next to her at her vanity and watching as she puts makeup on. Wow. Very bright makeup.

“Here,” she says, handing me an eye brush and a big palette of makeup. “Do your eyes.”

“Oh. Um, okay.”

“So did he?”

“Did he what?”

She sighs, like she can't believe how stupid I am for not being able to keep up with the conversation. “Did Brandon ever mention me to you?”

“Um, I don't think so.” I wonder what color eye shadow would look good with this scarf. I settle on a smoky silvery blue and hope that if I go easy on it, it won't make me look like a clown. My grandma always said the trick with makeup is to make it seem like you're not wearing any.

Obviously, Madison doesn't agree with this, since she's piling on the purple eye shadow. Somehow it works on her, though. Her makeup always looks flawless. She should become one of those girls who give makeup tutorials on YouTube.

“Are you sure?” she asks now. “Because I have a feeling he likes me.”

My skin gets all tingly.

“Who's Brandon?” Lily asks. She's standing behind us, looking at herself in the mirror. “Cool,” she says. “I have a reflection. I didn't think I would. You know, since I'm dead.” She tilts her head. “And I'm not as pale as I thought I'd be either.”

“You have a feeling Brandon likes you?” I start to carefully swipe some eye shadow across my lid, which doesn't really work so well since my hand is shaking. I try to steady it. No way I want Madison to know I'm freaking out about the thought of Brandon liking her.

“Yeah.” She reaches for a plum eyeliner, then draws a perfectly smooth line right above her lashes. “I've always thought he liked me, ever since last year.”

“Oh.” The fact that she's saying he liked her ever since last year obviously means she thinks he liked her the whole time he and I were together. Which is pretty rude, when you think about it. I'm tempted to rip off my scarf and earrings and throw them at her, then stomp out of the room. But then I remember I have to help Lily. And besides, there's really no sense in rejecting a perfectly good scarf.

“Why?” I ask nonchalantly. “Did he say he likes you?”

“No.”

My heart soars.

“But I can tell by the way he looks at me. And how he's always trying to touch my hand, like, for no reason.”

My heart sinks.

“Well,” I say, “Maybe he—”

“Madison!” a voice calls from downstairs. “Please come and set the table for dinner!”

Madison rolls her eyes, and then she screams, “Mom, I have a friend over!”

“Too bad!” comes the reply. “It's your turn.”

Madison sighs. “Be right back.” She bounds out of the room. As soon as I'm sure she's down the stairs, I leap up from the vanity bench.

“She's always complaining about doing chores,” Lily says, shaking her head. “Half the time she'd con me into doing them for her.”

“Where's your room?” I ask, making my way toward the door. I'm not trying to be rude, but we have a limited amount of time to get into Lily's room and see what we can find. Not to mention, I'm really not in the mood for some kind of ridiculous anecdote starring Madison as the lazy sister and Lily as the sister who thinks Madison is so cute and puts up with her layabout ways.

“My room's down the hall, last door on the right,” Lily says.

I creep down the hallway. From downstairs I can hear the clink of dishes and silverware hitting the table, so I know it's going to be at least a few minutes before Madison comes back upstairs. Still. Something about this whole thing is a little creepy.

I mean, I'm lurking around in someone else's house. Plus it's dark out now, and for some reason the hall light isn't on. So I'm walking around in a dark, strange house. And when you think about it, what do I
really
know about Madison? Nothing. Being in a few classes with someone
doesn't mean you know them. Her family could be crazy. I could find anything behind that door.

Of course, I'm the one who can see ghosts, and now I'm spying and poking around in Madison's house. So probably she's the one who should be nervous.

I take a deep breath and keep going until I get to the last room on the right. There's a sign on the door that says
LILY'S ROOM
.

“Wait!” Lily says right as I'm about to go in.

I jump. “What?” I whisper.

“It's just weird,” she says. “I haven't seen my room in a while.”

“Well, get ready,” I say, “because we're going in.”

“Okay.” She doesn't look ready. But it's too bad, because we don't have time to wait until she gets herself all emotionally stable. I mean, we're on a schedule here.

I open the door and step inside. It's dark, and it takes my eyes a second to adjust. Luckily, there's a tiny night-light plugged into an outlet on the other side of the room, and that helps a little. I start walking over toward the window, figuring the balcony is the best place to start.

“Ow!” I cry as I stub my toe on something. It's a treadmill. Actually, now that I'm able to see better, it looks like Lily has a lot of exercise equipment in here. There's a weight bench in the corner, and a bunch of dumbbells resting against the wall. “I guess you like to work out,” I grumble, rubbing my toe.

“No, I don't,” she says, shaking her head. “This isn't . . . This stuff isn't mine.”

“Really?” I ask. “You didn't have a weight bench?”

“No!” she says, sounding kind of panicked. “This isn't my room.”

“We're in the wrong room?” Great. So much for her wonderful memory. Now I'm going to be lurking around up here, trying to find the right room. Probably I'll have to start opening doors. I might even accidentally end up in her mom's room. Which would be weird. I mean, no one wants to go into their parents' room. There's way too big a chance you might find something you don't want to see.

“No,” Lily says, shaking her head, confused. “We're not in the wrong room.”

“Yes, we are,” I say, trying to keep my patience. “If this stuff isn't yours, then—”

“But I'm
sure
this is my room.” She half walks, half floats over to the wall. “See?” She points to a place by the windowsill where her initials are scratched into the paint. “I carved that there when I was five.”

“Okay,” I say. “So then . . .
Oh.
” I nod, finally getting it. “Your parents turned your room into a gym.”

“They
what
?” she screeches. “They turned my room into a
gym
? That's awful! I've only been dead for a few months!”

“Well,” I say carefully, “everyone grieves in their own
way. I once helped this ghost whose parents had another baby right after she died. I mean, it wasn't like they were trying to replace her or anything. They just—”

“Whatever,” Lily says. She seems like she's trying to keep herself from getting too emotional about the whole thing. “So what? They turned my bedroom into a gym. It's not like I expected them to keep everything in here the same. I'm dead, after all. It makes perfect sense.”

“Okay,” I say, not really certain if she means it or not. I mean, she sounds like she does, but you never can tell with ghosts. One minute they're fine; the next minute they're having a complete meltdown.

“Just because this room's a gym doesn't change what we're trying to do,” she says. She has a determined look on her face, and she toys with one of the bangles on her wrist. “So let's find this balcony and get out of here.”

“Okay.” I cross the room to the window and look out, but there's no balcony. “It must be at the other window,” I say. Which doesn't make much sense. If I remember right, that side of the house faces out onto the neighbor's property. And honestly, who wants a view of their neighbor's yard? Probably someone added it who thought they knew what they were doing. My dad has his own construction business, and he's always getting called in to help people who've messed up their houses by doing their own home improvements.

I cross the room to the other window and pull back the curtains, expecting to see a nice set of French doors. But there's nothing—just your standard window.

“There's no balcony here,” I say to Lily.

“That's impossible.” She crosses the room and looks outside. “But . . . I'm
positive
I fell off a balcony. And I'm positive that whatever is going to help me move on has to do with finding something in my room.”

I look around and sigh. “Well, unless an exercise bike or an ab roller is essential to you moving on, I don't think we're going to find what we're looking for here.”

“But we are!”

“No.” I shake my head. “I've seen this happen before. See, when you die, your memories about the important stuff get all jumbled up. So you're probably not remembering everything correctly.”

“But I know it was a balcony!” She's getting all insistent and raising her voice. Yikes.

“Look,” I say, “I understand how you feel, but being dead, it's . . . it's different than when you were alive. I'm sure you used to have an amazing memory. But you don't realize how—”

The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs cuts me off. I freeze. Crap. I was so thrown by the fact that there was no balcony that I totally forgot about Madison.

“Come on,” I whisper to Lily, and make a beeline for
the door. If I'm fast, maybe I can make it back to Madison's room before she gets there.

But just then the door to Lily's room/her parents' new gym flies open. Madison flips on the light, and blinks at me.

She takes in the scene.

Me, standing there by the elliptical. I lean against it, trying to look nonchalant.

“What are you doing in my sister's room?” she demands.

“Your sister's room?” I try to look confused. “I thought this was a gym.”

“It's not.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “It's my sister's room. And no one's allowed in here without my permission.”

Wow. Talk about having an inflated sense of self. I mean, really. No one's allowed in her sister's room without
Madison's
permission? I doubt it.

“Oh,” I say. “Sorry. I didn't know.”

“Well, now you do.” She looks around, like she thinks I might have made a mess or stolen something. “What were you doing in here, anyway?”

“I was, um, looking for the bathroom.”

“And then you decided to walk all the way over to the window?” She raises her perfectly arched eyebrows skeptically. We definitely should have spent our makeup time on her teaching me how to get my eyebrows like that.

“Well, um, I started feeling hot.” I fan myself with my hand. “And then I thought maybe I was going to faint or something. So I knew I had to get some air. So, um, I wouldn't pass out. So I was trying to get to the window.”

I flutter my eyelids in what I hope is a convincing way.

Madison shakes her head. “Kendall,” she says, “it is definitely time for you to leave.”

“But I—”

“No.” She holds her hand up like she can't take me saying another word. “Leave. Now.”

Well. So, obviously
that
didn't go very well.

And I can't blame anyone but myself. I mean, think about it. How stupid was I? Not listening for Madison to come back when I was snooping around in her house? Making up some ridiculous story about how I was hot and thought I might faint? Seriously, that might be the worst lie I've ever told.

I have a hard time sleeping that night. I toss and turn, my thoughts swirling around in my head like a crazy hurricane. First I think about Brandon. Then my mom. Then Madison.

I'm halfway hoping Mrs. Dunham will show up and haunt me a little, just so I'll have something else to focus
on. But apparently now that me and Brandon are over, Mrs. Dunham has decided to leave me alone.

Finally, at around six o'clock, I give up and get out of bed.

I put my iPod in its speakers and turn on some music, hoping it will get me out of my funk. I crank the volume up high and let the bass shake the walls. I don't have to worry about my dad getting annoyed with me, because he left about an hour ago.

He wasn't home when I got back from Madison's last night, and so I crumpled up my note about going out so he wouldn't ask me a ton of questions. When he got home at around ten, he came upstairs and knocked on my door, but I pretended I was sleeping.

I'm still not ready to talk to him.

Since I'm awake so early, I spend the extra time doing my hair in two French braids that loop around my head. It's sort of a Princess Leia look, but a little more polished. I saw Katharine McPhee wearing her hair like this in an episode of
Smash
, and I've practiced it a couple of times on the weekend, but I never had time to do it on a weekday until now.

Once I'm done with my hair, I pull a long white V-neck sweater on over my fave black skinny jeans, and then tuck the bottom of my pants into my boots. They're not as cute as Madison's, obviously, but they're still pretty cute. And they're cozy.

Then I grab the scarf she gave me off the hook on the back of my door and loop it around my neck. Hopefully, when she sees me wearing her scarf, she'll remember that we're supposed to be friends. I'm going to have to get back on her good side somehow, and maybe this will be a good start.

“That scarf is a good touch,” Lily says, nodding in approval as we walk to the bus stop.

“Thanks.”

Lily's been quiet this morning, sitting on my bed most of the time, looking out the window and not really moving except to drum her fingers to my music. Which is fine with me. I'm not really in the mood to talk.