Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(19)

“Oh, sure, no one, I can tell. What’s Mr. No One’s name?”

Her blush deepened. “Seriously, no one. I was playing a video game.” She flashed me a look at the front of her screen to prove it. Ghost Mediator.

I frowned. “Really?”

“Sorry. I know we’re not supposed to play games in school, but it’s totally addictive.”

“I don’t care if you play games. I think it’s cool that you’re a gamer. I just don’t understand why you like that game. It’s really stupid.”

“Ghost Mediator isn’t stupid. It’s really cool. Have you ever played it?” For the first time, her eyes showed some life in them. “See, what you do is, you have to kill all these ghosts in order to get out of the haunted mansion and into the nightclub, but first you have to be able to tell which ones are normal people and which ones are the ghosts, and if you accidentally kill a normal person, you go down a level, into the cemetery of doom, so then there are even more ghosts—”

“You can’t kill a ghost,” I said, feeling my blood pressure rising. “They’re already dead. That game is inherently flawed. Ghosts are the souls of deceased people who need help moving on to their next plane of existence. They shouldn’t be killed, they should be pitied, and whoever invented Ghost Mediator needs to be stopped—”

“Oh, my God.” She blinked at me. “Calm down. It’s just a game.”

She was right. What was wrong with me? I’d missed a perfect opportunity to ask her about Lucia, and instead used it to vent about my hatred for a stupid franchise—

“And my stepmom is the one who told me the five-carats thing,” Becca added. “That’s how I knew it. I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t even like anyone.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry.” I needed to get a grip. “But your stepmother is wrong. The size of the diamond doesn’t matter; it’s the ring itself that’s the symbol of the guy’s commitment to—you know what? It’s as stupid as the game, actually. The whole thing is a dumb, antiquated practice that I don’t even believe in. I’m only doing it because my boyfriend is really old-fashioned. Otherwise, we’d just be living together. So back to what we were talking about earlier. You said something about there having been an accident?”

Becca wasn’t going for it.

“My stepmother said no way would she have married my dad if he hadn’t committed to at least five carats.”

Who the hell was this girl’s stepmother, anyway?

It’s kind of ironic that at that exact moment the door to the administrative office was thrown open, and a tall, attractive blond woman strode in. She was wearing dark Chanel sunglasses that she lifted to glance in dismay from the mess on the floor to the mess in the chair seated beside me.

I, however, was what she seemed to deem the biggest mess of all.

“Suze Simon?” she said in distaste.

“Kelly Prescott?” I could hardly believe my eyes. “What are you doing here?”

Becca sighed. “That’s my stepmom.”





seis


“Kelly Prescott married Lance Arthur Walters, of Wal-Con Aeronautics, last summer,” CeeCee said, licking a bit of foam off the top of her chai latte. “Hey, wasn’t Debbie a bridesmaid in that wedding, or something? I thought you got invited.”

“Yeah,” I said, still feeling a little numb from my shock back at the school. “I blew it off.”

Because I’m not a fan of weddings. Or of Kelly.

But if I hadn’t been such a fool and gone, I’d have met Becca there, seen her tiny ghost companion, and maybe been able to prevent what had happened earlier that day.

I was a loser who pretty much deserved all the terrible things that were happening to me. I also needed a drink. But it was my friend CeeCee’s turn to choose the place we were stopping for after-work libations, and cocktails didn’t appear to be on the menu.

“Well, Lance Arthur Walters is one of the richest men in America, and twenty-five years our senior,” CeeCee went on as we slid into seats at a table at the Happy Medium, her aunt’s coffee-slash-holistic-healing shop. “Obviously, it’s a love match.”

“Man, Kelly’s taken gold digging to a whole new level.” I sighed. “She’s basically gone pro.”

“It’s antifeminist to judge another woman for her choices, no matter how crappy they might be. And if you’d bother to read my online alumni newsletters, you’d already know all this.”

“Hey,” I protested. “You’re one of my best friends. You’re supposed to tell me this stuff, not wait for me to read about it in some newsletter.”

“That I write.” CeeCee shook her head, her asymmetrically chopped white bob—CeeCee is an albino—bouncing. “Honestly, Suze, you’re the worst. Do you ever even go online?”

“Of course. To buy things.” I thought wistfully of my boots. “Not always successfully.”

“I meant to connect with people socially.”

“Why should I, when all the people I want to socialize with are right here in town?” Then I remembered my youngest stepbrother, who’d just started his junior year at Harvard. “Oh, except David, of course. But we make it a point to talk on the phone every Sunday.”