What’s going on with you?” Marnie asked the next morning. We were sitting on the floor in front of my locker, finishing up some homework before the first bell.

“Huh?” I tore my attention from the Trig assignment and glanced over at her.

“You’ve been acting weird lately,” she said. “Distant. Like you’ve got other stuff going on.”

“Oh, no, Marnie,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of having a life outside of our time together.”

She picked up on my sarcasm and shot me an annoyed glance. Then she glanced at my work sheet and copied the answer I’d just written onto her own paper.

“Wait a second,” I said, moving my notebook out of her view. “How long have you been cheating off me?”

She ignored the question. “Kas said you ate lunch with Wyatt yesterday.”

“Yeah? Well, I did.”

Neither of us spoke for a minute.

“Do you have a problem with that?” I asked.

“A problem? No …” she said. “I expected more from you, that’s all. I mean, I warned you about him —”

“Marnie,” I said, careful to keep my voice even, “I think a lot of what you said about Wyatt was lies.”

“Lies?” She laughed humorlessly. “Okay, sure.”

Not exactly a denial, was it?

I sighed and faced her squarely. I guess if we were going to do this, now was as good a time as any. “I saw the photos; I looked up the blog. You guys were clearly an actual couple.”

She didn’t get angry. She gave me a blank smile. “When did I ever say we weren’t?”

I gaped at her for a second. “At your house, after the premiere.”

She shook her head. “Hm-mm. I don’t think so. You must have misunderstood me. You can be … a little obtuse sometimes. No offense.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t misunderstand. You said he thought you were going out and it was really awkward for you. But you guys did go out.”

“Of course we did!” she said, exasperated. “We were, like, the It Couple. Why do you think we had a blog?”

Okay. Deep breath. This was veering from uncomfortable to downright bizarre.

“And the balloons,” I said, even though I knew I should stop. “You said he came to your house with balloons, but you were the one who gave them to him.”

There was a moment when our eyes met and there was a laser connection between us, an unmistakable hyperloop of the serious, actual truth. And we both felt it.

But Marnie recovered and sat back, shaking her head. “I took a chance on you, Willa. When no one else in the entire school would talk to you, I invited you to sit with me. I introduced you to my friends. I even took you to an important Hollywood event, where you proceeded to lie to journalists about —”

“Okay, no,” I said. “Stop. Don’t even finish that sentence, please. We both know who invented Bernadette Middleton and sent that press release.”

“I thought we were friends,” she said, fixing a wide-eyed stare at me. “What are you accusing me of?”

I realized, all at once, that she actually didn’t get it. And then I realized that there was no point in continuing our conversation.

“Look,” she went on, “I realize now that you have a thing for Wyatt. Maybe you’re … I don’t know, threatened by me or something? But believe me, you’re welcome to him. He’s all yours. I’m sorry you got so many wrong ideas. I was only trying to look out for you.”

Staring at her, I felt almost nothing. No anger. No desire to make her admit her lying ways. Only a tiny hint of regret for the loss of the person I thought she had been.

Wyatt was right — Marnie was pathological. But she couldn’t be held accountable. She was a force of nature. A runaway train.

I knew I had a choice now. I could either accept it, and her, or I could spend a ton of energy agonizing over the situation. Spending tons of energy agonizing over things was pretty much my specialty, after all.

I shrugged. “All right,” I said. “Apology accepted.”

Her eyes sparkled and she shot me a brilliant, empty smile. “I knew I liked you. Hey, what do you have for number twenty-two?”

I tilted my work sheet so she could see the answer.

When the bell rang, she got to her feet. “So … I guess you’ll probably want to find somewhere else to stay this weekend.”

Oh, right. I forgot about that. “Of course,” I said, my stomach sinking at the thought of ruining my mother’s honeymoon.

“Cool.” She nodded. “I have big plans anyway. I mean, a thing I’m doing later this week. And then I might have really big news. I just might be too busy to … you know, babysit you.”

Okay, ouch. But I forced myself to ignore the barb. I knew she was being deliberately mysterious, trying to bait me into grilling her. “What kind of big news?” I asked.

“Can’t tell you. Top secret.” She pantomimed zipping her lip. “Anyway, you and Wyatt do whatever —”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“Suuuure,” she said, in her driest voice. “You talk about him all the time and hang out with him and look up pictures of him online because you hate him so much, right?”

Her musical laugh filled the hallway.

“The world’s full of skeptics. I know — I’m one myself.” She gave me an odd smile. “Just watch out for Wyatt. He’s no gentleman, see?”

Then she walked off, leaving me speechless.

“You look different,” Wyatt said.

“Free?” I asked, setting my tray on the lunch table.

“No.” He studied me. “Annoyed.”

“It’s been an interesting morning.” I started to sit down.

“Wait, don’t get settled here,” Wyatt said, running a hand through his hair. “I have to tell you something. I was thinking we could go out to the courtyard.”

“But it’s raining,” I said.

“Even better,” he said. “More tables to choose from.”

“Why can’t we ever sit and talk like two normal people?”

He gazed at me evenly. “Because if someone hears what I’m about to say, I could go to jail.”

We ended up in a corner of the courtyard, sheltered by a slight overhang. The rain cooled the air, the clouds blocked the sun, and we sat side by side, shivering. I crossed my arms and buried my hands in my dark green Langhorn-issued cardigan, resisting the urge to huddle close to Wyatt for warmth.

“C-can you h-hurry?” I asked. “Before we f-freeze to death?”

“No one had seen Paige Pollan for four days before she was found,” Wyatt said, glancing down at his notebook for confirmation. “Her school assumed she was home sick, and her mother was in Vegas — she worked weekends as a blackjack dealer and sometimes just stayed the whole week there. She had no idea her daughter was missing. But when they found the body, the coroner estimated she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours — not four days.”

I breathed on my hands and then tucked them inside my sleeves. “So she skipped school, hung out at home for a few days, and then killed herself?”

He shook his head. “She had a goldfish. It was dead when the police found her. People who are planning to kill themselves — I mean, people who don’t do it in a moment of passion — do it because they think the world will be better without them. They don’t let their pets die just because they feel depressed.”

I didn’t know exactly what Wyatt was hinting at, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it. “Maybe the fish died accidentally — goldfish are pretty delicate, right?”

“All that,” he said, “I could rationalize away. If it were only that. But then I found this.”

He handed me his notebook, where he’d written out a paragraph.

I’M SORRY. I HAVE BEEN VERY LONELY AND STRUGGLED WITH A LOT OF THINGS. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS THE FEELINGS I’VE HAD. NO ONE IS ON MY SIDE. IT’S LIKE I’M COMPLETELY ALONE. I REALIZE THIS IS THE COWARDLY WAY OUT BUT I CAN’T STOP MYSELF FROM BEING A COWARD. MY WHOLE LIFE IS LIKE A BAD DREAM.

THE KIND OF DREAM YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM.

PAIGE

I read the words over and over until they swam in front of my eyes.

“It’s her suicide note,” Wyatt said, a mite unnecessarily.

The kind of dream you don’t wake up from.

Suddenly I didn’t even feel the cold. “Paige saw the script,” I said. “Somehow she knew that line.”

“It makes sense, in a way,” Wyatt said. “We know she was a fan of Diana Del Mar.”

“But that line,” I said. “What are the odds?”

“The odds of any of this happening are astronomically slim,” he said. “I don’t think we should worry about odds anymore.”

I turned to him. “You said you found that. How is that possible? I want the truth about where you get your information.”

“Right. That’s why I brought you out here.” He cleared his throat nervously. “My dad’s a crime-scene consultant for the LAPD. Sometimes I take his security pass and access evidence storage. And occasionally I look at investigation information online.”

“You … what? Is that even legal?”

Wyatt sat back uncomfortably. “Not by the remotest stretch of the imagination.”

“Does your dad know about this?”

Wyatt shook his head, his lips pursed.

“How do you get in?” I asked.

He took a second to answer. “I know the guy who controls the access.”

“You know the guy who controls the access …?” I said. “Wait, do you mean you bribe the guy who controls the access?”

Wyatt sighed deeply. “He knows I’m not going to abuse the information I find. Listen, it’s not immoral — I’m not even sure it’s unethical. It’s just illegal. Don’t judge me, I don’t want to hear it.”

I shook my head, shocked. Perfect, precise, by-the-book Wyatt, breaking into the police archives and accessing information illegally.

Okay, it was pretty scandalous, but it was also kind of … audacious and cool.

Imagine that.

“That’s why you have to write everything down in your book,” I said.

He nodded. “When I go there, I leave my phone at the desk, and I can’t photocopy anything because it would show up on my dad’s records. So I copy it all out by hand.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to picture it. “And your dad has no idea?”

“None.” Now Wyatt looked extremely unhappy. “If he found out, he’d … I don’t even know what he’d do. Can we go back to talking about Paige, please?”

“Sure,” I said. “She obviously knew about the movie, right? Is it so hard to believe that she would use the line in her suicide note? If she liked Diana Del Mar enough …”

“She must have liked her a whole lot,” Wyatt said. “Diana Del Mar was found dead after taking sleeping pills and falling asleep in a full bathtub. Paige Pollan died the exact same way.”

“Like … in tribute?” I shivered, not because of the cold.

Wyatt frowned and didn’t answer.

“It’s not right,” I said. “I know there’s something we’re not connecting.”

“But we’ll keep working on it.” He looked at me, his expression somber. “Remember when you asked me when I’d be done, and I told you I felt like a piece was missing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”

“Well … I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel like we found the missing piece. We just need to figure out how it fits into the puzzle.”

Mom spent the afternoon rushing around the house, packing for Palm Springs as if they were going on a three-month trek to Siberia and not a three-day trip to a city two hours away from home.

I racked my brain for a way to tell her that I’d been uninvited from Marnie’s house, but the right moment never seemed to arrive.

So instead, I came up with a foolproof plan, which was: Don’t tell her.

After all, I was seventeen years old, practically an adult. Plenty of people my age stay home alone all the time. And I wouldn’t even be truly alone — I had the ghost, right?

I was in my room trying to catch up on English Lit reading when there was a light knock on my door.

“Willa?” Mom said.

“Yeah, come in.”

She carried in a small empty suitcase. “Did you pack yet? I thought you might want to use this.”

Oh, right. As far as she knew, I was going somewhere. “Thanks,” I said, taking it and setting it on the floor next to the bed. “Are you excited?”

She smiled, shrugging. “I guess. I feel bad for leaving you. Maybe we should have done a familymoon.”

“First of all,” I said, “familymoon is a totally disturbing word, and an even more disturbing concept. Second of all, go have fun. Relax. Stop worrying about me for a couple of days.”

“I’m a mother,” she said. “I know it’s a cliché, but I’ll never stop worrying about you.”

I made a face. “Do I seem that helpless?”

“Oh, Willa, of course not.” Mom reached over and rubbed my back, like she used to when I was a little girl. “You’re the opposite of helpless. You’ve been growing so much lately. But … they say when you become a mother, part of your heart walks around outside your body.”

“That would be me, huh?” I asked. “The mobile segment of one of your bodily organs?”

She shrugged. “I’m not going to apologize for loving you more than anything else in the world.”

I leaned my head on her shoulder. “You really think I’m growing?”

“Oh, yes. Don’t you feel it? Since we got here, you’ve developed this … I don’t know, this aura of confidence.”

“That’s totally ironic,” I said, “because the stuff that’s happened to me here is so non-confidence-aura-making.”

“You’ve had a hard time at school?” Mom asked, sounding slightly heartbroken.

I didn’t answer.

“But, honey, don’t you see? Even if it’s tough now, those are the things that are making you stronger. Facing difficult circumstances. Getting through them. And look, you have Marnie — and you’re friendly with Reed — and you’re coming out of your shell a little.”

I was incredibly glad that we were sitting next to each other so she couldn’t see how red my face turned when she mentioned Reed.

She sat up and gave her hair a little shake. “I’m proud of you. And I’m sure your father would be, too.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Stop. You’re going to make me cry.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a drama queen.”

“We’re both drama queens,” I said. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

She stared out the window. “I guess you’re right. Poor Jonathan, having to live with us.”

“Poor Jonathan? What about poor you? And poor me? Why is Jonathan the only one whose suffering is considered legitimate?”

Mom sighed. “That’s not what I meant —”

“I’m tired of feeling bad about everything,” I said. “And you should be tired of it, too.”

Mom shrugged. “I feel selfish. I wanted to marry Jonathan — you didn’t get a say in that. And then you got dragged out here, also without a say. And now that I’m here, honestly, I don’t even know what to do with myself all day.”

I looked at Mom, who was staring at the floor. “Really?” I asked her softly.

“Yeah,” she said. “And I know I should go back to work, but what if I can’t get a job? What if I’m not good enough?”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “Of course you’re good enough. You think the people here are so special? They’re normal people. You’re probably smarter than ninety-nine percent of them.”

Her left cheek dimpled, the way it always did when she was trying not to smile.

“Start applying,” I said. “You’ll get something right away. Or you can have Jonathan call in some favors.”

She laughed. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Mom,” I said. “He married you. He puts up with your nutso daughter. You think he won’t make a few phone calls, if it would make you happy?”

She sighed. “I just wish I knew how long it would take for me to feel like myself again.” Suddenly, she grabbed her head with both hands. “Like this! I mean, how did I end up blond? I swear, Willa, sometimes I look in the mirror and it’s like I don’t even recognize the person looking back at me.”

I rested my head on her shoulder. “I recognize you.”

She smiled through her tears and rubbed my upper arm before pulling me into a giant Mom-hug. “You’re one of a kind.”

“That’s probably for the best,” I said.

She kissed me on the forehead and then stood up. “Oh, look, your sink is running. How strange. Is the faucet acting up?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“Dinner’ll be ready in about an hour, okay? I made spaghetti.” She went into the bathroom, shut off the faucet, hugged me again, and left, closing the door gently behind her.

I lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, feeling oddly at peace.

Later that night, as I brushed my teeth, my whole body suddenly felt warm and clammy, and my head began to ache. I took this as a not-so-great sign.

I closed my door and climbed into bed. Even though I was already hot, I didn’t push the blanket off. I wanted protective layers between myself and whatever the night had in store for me.

As I reached over and switched off my bedside lamp, I heard a short, sharp shattering sound.

I forced my eyes shut so tightly that they ached immediately.

I’m ignoring you, Diana, I thought. La la la, I can’t hear you.

Except of course I could.

Through the darkness came another sound:

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

I sat up and walked over to the bathroom, gave the door a tiny shove, and reached in to switch on the light.

Nothing happened.

Pushing the door open a few inches farther revealed what must have been the source of the first sound — a lightbulb in a thousand pieces on the floor.

That didn’t explain (a) why the lights hadn’t come on at all, because there were two bulbs, and (b) the source of the second sound, which was now poking me in the brain with a fiery-hot knife.

SQUEEEEEEEEEAK.

Could it be a mouse? But it seemed to come from up high. Then my eyes went to the lone lightbulb that remained in the fixture over the vanity.

Ever so slowly, making the faintest squeak, squeak, squeak, the bulb was spinning. Before I could dash forward to catch it, it came free and plunged to the counter below, shattering.

The ghost was there. Right now. With me.

In a panic, I backed away, staring in horror into the darkened room.

“What?” I asked, my voice trembling. “What do you want, Diana?”

Another crash. The towel bar fell, leaving two patches of torn plaster in its place.

Then the bathtub faucet and shower both turned on at once.

Was it going to destroy the whole bathroom?

Feeling utterly helpless, I sank to the floor, ducking my head and squeezing my eyes shut. Like a little kid making herself as small as possible.

“Please,” I said. “What do you want?”

The faucets turned off. The room fell quiet.

I opened my eyes and glanced around.

In my bedroom, on the wall opposite the bathroom, in huge black letters, was written:

WRONG

Behind me, the sink faucet turned on again.

Suddenly, the word wrong was appearing on every inch of the wall, and floor, and ceiling of my room. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.

The closet door burst open. Thousands of rose petals flew out, swirling in midair.

I watched for a moment, speechless, and turned to run for the door.

Then I saw my bed.

The sheets and blankets had been completely stripped off. My pillow was shredded, its stuffing strewn everywhere.

Drawn on the mattress, in black, was a giant question mark.

“What?” I said. “What?”

I spun in a slow circle, taking in the chaos around me. The flower petals churned silently overhead.

“Wrong … question?” I asked.

And in a whoosh, everything disappeared. The rose petals were gone. The walls were wordless once again. I heard the faucet shut off.

“Wrong question,” I whispered, looking down at the pillow stuffing that littered the floor.

Not what do you want, but …

Maybe there was a reason Diana Del Mar wasn’t replying to my questions.

“Who?” I asked. “Who are you?”

I swallowed hard and waited for my answer.

More writing appeared, once again covering every available square foot of wall space in the room:

I AM AN ASPIRING HOLLYWOOD TYPE DETERMINED TO DO MY HOMEWORK BEFORE PLUNGING INTO THE SWAMP OF TINSELTOWN I AM AN ASPIRING HOLLYWOOD TYPE DETERMINED TO DO MY HOMEWORK BEFORE PLUNGING INTO THE SWAMP OF TINSELTOWN I AM AN ASPIRING HOLLYWOOD TYPE DETERMINED TO DO MY HOMEWORK BEFORE PLUNGING INTO THE SWAMP OF TINSELTOWN I AM AN ASPIRING HOLLYWOOD TYPE DETERMINED TO DO MY HOMEWORK BEFORE PLUNGING INTO THE SWAMP OF TINSELTOWN

I closed my eyes and sat down on the bed.

And then I said, “Hi, Paige.”