Chrissie laughs. The ghost girl’s stomach roils; no one is supposed to make Chrissie laugh but her.
If the ghost girl can’t make Chrissie laugh, she will make her smile. The ghost girl gathers her secrets. She snatches Aimee’s phone from her locker. She snaps photos of her out by the tennis courts sneaking cigarettes. She sends the photo to her family, her friends, to Mrs. Logan.
Aimee is grounded, forbidden from the play, given a talking-to by a certain disappointed theater instructor.
“Don’t you know what those things do to your voice?” Mrs. Logan says. “I thought you were a serious student. I see now I made a mistake.”
Mrs. Logan pulls Chrissie aside. “I had the wrong idea about the lead,” she says. “I found the picture you put on my desk. What confidence, to do such a thing! With your nice wig, you could easily be my Sleeping Beauty.”
“My wig?” Chrissie says.
Mrs. Logan waves the picture at her; it’s a picture of Chrissie sleeping, blond hair spread across her pillow. Chrissie shivers but thanks her teacher. She and Trevor celebrate with cappuccinos at the local Holy Coffee! shop.
“You’re late,” says the ghost girl at their next lunch.
“Sorry,” Chrissie says, pulling her sandwich out of her bag. “I was talking with Trevor.”
“You haven’t eaten yet?”
“I didn’t have time.”
The ghost girl huffs behind her wall.
“What about you? You didn’t even show up last time! I said I was sorry.” Chrissie takes little bites.
The ghost girl waits, then waits no longer. “Enough,” she booms. “You know who gave you that role? I can take it back. This is it, Chrissie, your shot at being something here, your chance to show them that you’re not one of them. Do you want me to go?”
“No, please,” Chrissie shoves her sandwich back into her bag. “I can’t do it without you.”
“Then you must do as I say. To be great takes great focus. That’s what you have over all the other girls. Over Trevor with his boyfriend, his endless distractions. You can do this. But you need to make some changes.”
“What changes?”
“We’re going to have to set some rules.”
“Anything.” Chrissie presses her hand against the wall; it warms the ghost girl’s skin. “Anything as long as you don’t leave me.”
The ghost girl lays out five rules: Chrissie will practice every day for two hours outside of their lesson. Chrissie will not go out after school or on weekends. Chrissie will not speak to anyone but her. Chrissie will not tell anyone about her Angel of Music. “These are the rules you need to follow if you want to be something. If you want to be the best.”
“I do want to be the best,” Chrissie says. “I want to make you proud of me.”
That evening the ghost girl stares at herself in the mirror. She eats snack cakes from the dumpster. She fingers the scars of her face beneath her mask and pulls at the skin around her belly. She sings to a crowd of no one.
Chrissie follows the ghost girl’s rules until opening night, when Trevor pulls her into his car and takes her out for a pre-show dinner at the burger place down the street. The ghost girl follows them, moving as shadow through sewers and gas lines and an old buried military complex the town keeps secret. She presses her shadow body against the ceiling tiles and watches through a crack as the two scarf meat and laugh nervously like madmen.
“So what’s going on with you?” Trevor asks, dabbing his greasy fingers on his napkin. “Oh my god, are you pregnant?”
“No,” Chrissie says. She doesn’t smile.
“Honey, I was just kidding. That’s not it, is it?” He clamps his hand upon hers. The ghost girl’s stomach heaves. “You can tell me.”
“It’s her,” Chrissie whispers. “It’s my teacher. My Angel of Music? She’s very strict. I have to do what she says, or else I won’t be good enough.”
“But you’re good enough already. There’s no one as good as you.”
“But I can be better. I mean, I totally fucked up the second chorus in “Bring on the Sleep.”
Trevor rolls his eyes. “The music you’re singing sucks, first thing. Second thing, you’re seventeen. You don’t need to be a pro right now. You need to be a teenager. Chrissie, have you even kissed a boy? Have you even had a friend before?”
“I’ve had friends.” Chrissie shrugs. “I had to leave them all back where I came from. And my AoM. She talked to me when no one else would. She’s been there for me, from the beginning.”
Trevor sighs and leans across the table, tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’m your friend. Don’t you forget that. If you want me, I’m here.”
Chrissie untucks the strand. “You shouldn’t touch me,” she says. She presses her palm to the wall, checking for the chill. “It’s not entirely safe.”
The performance is everything the ghost girl ever hoped it would be. Chrissie hits the high notes as though her voice were breaking out of its shelclass="underline" revelation over shrill insistence. The ghost girl watches from the back row, the shadow of a seat. The theater is half-empty. The male lead, Chrissie’s Prince Charming, is unworthy but beautiful with his beach boy hair and thick lips.
“It’s nearly a shame to wake such a sleeping beauty,” he sings, “but if her brains are as big as her bonnet, I’ll have made the right decision.”
The ghost girl ignores the words. She makes up her own: lonely girls rule the lonely world. Bossy girls rule the bossy world. A ghost girl writes the story she wants to read across the blank slate of her burnt skin.
Everyone claps. Chrissie bows. Prince Charming holds her hand a little too tightly. The ghost girl disappears back underground, where she belongs.
Chrissie goes home that first night, and the second, and the third. On their penultimate night, when Trevor demands she join them at the after-party, Chrissie glances around the room as though checking for the AoM she knows will not be there. She smiles. “Why the hell not?” she says. “If my teacher’s mad about it, I’ll just quit!”
“That’s the rebel I want to know.” Trevor links his arm in hers. “Your Prince Charming will be there. Let’s see which one of us he likes more.”
The ghost girl races along the walls to follow them out, but they go too far from the school, out past where she can follow them underground, along long country roads with no shadows to seep into. She seethes in the abandoned theater, stomping her feet until they ache all the way up to her knees. She wanders the halls, ripping the BOOZE IS BAD posters from the walls. DEATH TO THEATER, she scrawls over the front doors. Downstairs, she sets her traps. Chrissie won’t go again where she can’t follow. She is so lost in her fury, her planning, that she doesn’t hear Chrissie and her friends sneak back in through the loading door to the theater. Finally, their drunken giggling breaks through.
The ghost girl makes her way to the theater. They are so busy laughing on the stage in the dark—Chrissie, Trevor, and the Prince Charming—that they don’t hear her enter, though, in her anger, she keeps only a tenuous hold on staying shadow, moving in and out of skin, of bone. She watches them as she would watch a show—and what a performance! The ghost girl studies each mess of hormones. They hold wine coolers in their hands; the ghost girl can smell the cheap sugary stuff from the front row. Neither Trevor nor Chrissie is the obvious winner of Prince Charming’s affections. They sit on either side of him and talk about their families: hard lives for soft children. They weren’t granted the power of invisibility. Their scars are hidden beneath more than masks.
“I don’t think my father loves me,” Chrissie says.