The Phamtomime

Chapter 7

I stared at Will, who sat beside me looking as real as I did—now he was out of the sun.

"I'm going to have to rethink my stance on Bigfoot now," I said.

"And the Loch Ness Monster," Will said, with a wide grin.

"No. That's fake. My stance remains unchanged."

"I think you might be related."

I followed my instinct to punch him. My hand passed right through his shoulder in a shock of icy air. Snatching my hand to my chest, I stared at him.

"Not that face again," he said. "I'm a ghost, you're not, that had to happen some time."

I rubbed my fingers to get some blood back into them. "You guys better be the only ones here, then."

Will turned his head in my direction. "There is one more, that I know of. He lives up in the gods."

"The gods?"

"The seats way up in the balcony at the very back. He threw me off the balcony once." Will sniffed at the memory.

The thought that ghosts lurked in places I didn't know about intrigued me. Every weird noise I ever heard in our house took on whole new possibilities.

I climbed to my feet. "I should go face Cresswell."

"Finally." Will jumped up and brushed the imaginary dust of his imaginary pants.

Now that his secret was out, he walked straight through the doors without opening them. Knowing what he was and seeing it in action were two different things. I prodded at the wood where he'd passed through. His hand appeared there again, held out like he wanted me to walk through the solid door too. The fingers wiggled, beckoning me.

"Quit that," I yelled, and the hand sucked back into the door.

I shoved the door open and hurried through. Will stood balancing on the back of a theater seat, as easily as if he stood on the ground.

"Watch this." Glancing over his shoulder to make sure I kept watching, he hopped lightly from one row of seats to the next. Tricks like that made my dares look pretty lame, but I wasn't about to become a ghost just to make my dares more impressive.

I applauded.

He let himself drop to the ground and hurried back to me, straight through the seats as if they were no more solid than him. "What did you think of that?"

"I think you're an insufferable show-off."

"Jealous?"

"Horribly."

"Excellent. You ain't seen nothin' yet." He climbed up on the stage to meet the other actors who were gathered under the single light bulb. They looked very human.

In my world, adventures began for a reason. Someone dared you, or you had an excellent idea. No way would I become a ghost and assume that's all there was to it. I'd have to know why.

Cresswell strutted onto the stage. "Come on," he bellowed. "We have wasted too much time."

I hurried up to the front row, checked a seat for unwanted wildlife, and sat down. I wanted to run home and tell Marissa the amazing things I'd learned, but I couldn't tell her, or anyone else. Not now or ever. They'd send me to live out my days in a home for the terminally artistic.

I squirmed in my front row seat, waiting for rehearsal to begin. What if it sucked? The ghosts had already been through a gruesome death and decades spent rehearsing this play. A bad review might be all it took to send them completely poltergeist.