Page 33 of Paper Ghosts

So began an absolute nightmare of a senior year. Of having her PE clothes hidden. Of eggs cracked into her locker. Of constant taunts in the hallway that led her to find whole new routes to classes. Of deleting her social media accounts because of bullying, and having to create new ones under a different name. Bailey just watched it all happen, detached, earbuds in her ears. She was never aggressive, not like Vanna, but she didn’t have to be, not with a grandmother like hers. She had more quiet power than anyone and she could have made it stop, but she didn’t. And Tasha began to hate her for it.

So much for not becoming enemies.

The only thing Tasha could do was keep her head down and focus all her energy on one thing and one thing only. College. She got into all her top schools, but she decided on Columbia. Her scholarship wouldn’t cover everything, but she wasn’t afraid of hard work. She would work every hour she wasn’t in class, if necessary. Anything to keep her from coming back here. The Feathers would never torture her again. And Tasha would no longer have to shield what hell school had turned into from her mother, pretending that everything was okay because one slip could send her mother spiraling. When Tasha left, she would cease to be her mother’s keeper.

She couldn’t wait.

Even if the ballot incident had never happened, Tasha still wouldn’t have been surprised when no one RSVP’d the graduation invitations her mother mailed out later. Who wanted to go to Smeller’s bonfire? But because the ballot incident had happened, it was a foregone conclusion. And Tasha was fine with no one showing up. She didn’t need a celebration.

But the universe had other ideas.

On the last day of school for seniors, Tasha was on her laptop in the rowdy cafeteria, making a spreadsheet. On it were all the bills her mother was going to have to remember to pay after Tasha left. She was going to stick a printout of it to the refrigerator when she got home, to get her mother used to seeing it. Remembering was going to be Pam’s responsibility soon. Tasha had done her time. It was hard to concentrate with all this noise, though. She would normally spend her lunch in the library, but end-of-year testing was going on there for juniors.

A couple of boys were playing catch with a Hostess Snoball snack cake, which everyone thought was just so funny. One of them went long, and another one knocked against Tasha’s chair as he ran for it. She glared at him. Before she looked back down at her laptop, her eyes found Bailey.

The Feathers were laughing and chitchatting, but Bailey was staring across the cafeteria at someone. Vanna Delaney suddenly shouted down the table to Bailey, asking what graduation parties she was going to that weekend, which everyone knew was zero. Bailey didn’t go to parties. Bailey looked to Vanna, then across the cafeteria to whoever she’d been staring at again, then finally to Tasha—a triangle of connection Tasha wouldn’t understand until much later.

To everyone’s surprise, Bailey called back, “Tasha’s party tomorrow night sounds like fun.”

It made the hairs stand up on Tasha’s arms and she immediately smelled uneasiness, which was a sharp, bitter scent, like the pith of a lemon.

The bell suddenly rang. Tasha put her laptop in her backpack, then rushed into the hallway already gushing with students. She needed to call her mother, quick, to get ahead of this. She reached her locker and took out her phone.

That’s when the Feathers walked by and Vanna bumped Tasha with her shoulder, causing her to drop her phone. “See you tomorrow night, Smeller. Seven, right?”

Bailey only glanced at Tasha before looking away.

She bent to pick up her phone and when she stood, someone said from behind her, right into her ear, “Yes, see you tomorrow, Smeller.”

She jumped away so fast she banged her elbow against a locker.

Clutch Vallow smiled and walked by.

He didn’t hang out with anyone from school, so why was he coming to her party?

She watched Bailey and her group turn left toward their classes, followed shortly by Clutch, who had no business going down that hallway.

“Darling!” her mother said as soon as Tasha walked in the door. Tasha had been scrolling through texts from people she knew didn’t have her number, all asking if they could come to her party and, oh, could they bring a friend?

Pam worked at the insurance office until six, so she was never home when Tasha got in from school. Had she gotten fired? Barry was usually uncommonly understanding about her mother’s highs and lows. Was this a precursor to one of her weeks-long blue moods? Or the opposite? Like when she’d purged their house of almost every stick of furniture they owned three years ago? “You won’t believe the calls I’m getting about our bonfire party! Come to the grocery store with me. We don’t have enough food for tomorrow tonight. And I called the church and asked to borrow a few foldable potluck tables from the fellowship hall. We need to pick those up, too.”

“I’ve decided I don’t want a party, Mom.”

“It’s too late now!”

“We can’t afford it.” If all else failed, money was always an excuse. And Tasha knew what was in her mother’s bank account to the decimal.

“Yes, we can!” Her mother held up the Good Credit Card, the one she kept hidden above a loose acoustic ceiling tile in her bedroom.

“No, Mom—”

“Come on,” her mother said, giddy as she led Tasha back out the door. “Your father is going to be green with envy. He loved that property.”

“Dad isn’t going to come.”

“Darling, everyone is coming.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN