I hated it in here. Mrs. Oates’ office was a nightmare incarnate; even during the day it was a dimly lit room with dark wooden walls that seemed to absorb the light. This was where hope went to die. I’d never appealed to her for help, but I knew other girls did. They begged. She didn’t give an inch. The heavy, imposing desk dominated the space, covered in papers . Harsh portraits of stern-faced figures glared down from the walls. I didn’t recognize them. Her relatives?
This place was the heart of the prison masquerading as a school.
“Sally, do you really think she is hiding her secrets in here? Her plans just out where we can find them? And really, what will we do if we do find them?” I lifted an eyebrow.
Casey pointed at me. “What she said.”
“Well, maybe I just wanted to play on her computer for a while.” Sally grinned. “I mean fuck it, I want to see what’s happening in the world.”
She jumped down to sit in the big, stiff-looking chair, and I couldn’t help my own smile. Betsy grabbed my hand. “I know you’re shaky. Take it easy, okay? If you get dizzy, sit.”
“Thank you. I mean it. Thank you.”
My friend nodded. “We knew you were one of us the second we saw you. The cool girls here.” She winked. “Or maybe not. Maybe we are just all really fucked up.”
Casey groaned. “Don’t listen to her, Alatheia. She’s from Florida. All that sunshine made her a constant optimist. We people from Maine know better.”
Sally had gotten the computer on. “Any of you a hacker?” She looked around but none of us volunteered that information. Phoenix was a hacker of sorts. That didn’t matter right now. “Boo. You all suck.” She shrugged. “Not that I am. I was going to be a ballet dancer.” That made her snort. “All right, what should we do? Oh, YouTube. I want to see some of that dancing Gus Monroe is doing.”
“No.” Betsy laughed, nudging her out of the way to enter the URL. “You can have your dancing in a second. Let’s do something snarky. Oh, thePoor Relation.They posted. A lot, actually.”
What? Now that wasn’t possible. I was the Poor Relation. That was my creation, my baby. Betsy clicked on the link, and I watched the latest video. It had been uploaded the day before. There was the other Poor Relation, not Gretchen but the guy I had invented who was like her but not. She wanted him to be the Real Deal. He was arguing with someone. He had to find Gretchen, and she wouldn’t talk to him. She was off somewhere,and he was lonely without her, needed her. His aunt, who only cared about what he could do for her, wasn’t interested.
I had absolutely not written this, although I liked it. And the movements of the characters were different than I would have done them. Not bad. Just… different.
One of the Lents must have done this. But why? For what purpose? I had never made money on this because only in the days leading up to my being brought here had I even had a birth certificate—albeit a fake one—to use to open a bank account. Not that they needed money. They had somewhere around twenty million dollars each in trust funds. Why do this?
The girls were about to move on when I stopped them. “Let me see that for a second? I am… ah… really into the fandom.”
Betsy took her hands off. “Sure. Go ahead.”
As fast as I could, I scanned through the comments. People were noticing that the story had changed. They hadn’t seen Gretchen in months and the Real Deal was so sad all of the time. They wanted it to move on. What had happened?
I chewed on my bottom lip. Should I do something here? Would it matter? Fuck. No one would notice.
I grabbed the keyboard and typed a comment. “Maybe the real creator is locked in a prison somewhere in the Caribbean and this isn’t the Real Deal?”
Without giving it any more thought, I hit send. That might be the last time I ever got to see my own channel.
Sally took the keyboard. “Dancing now.”
All right. I stepped back. How bizarre had that been?
“Can you imagine if that was true?” Betsy leaned on my arm. Her hands were shaking too. “If the creator of thePoor Relationwas here too? I mean we know he or she isn’t. They’re making content. But it would be fun, right? I bet she could tell great stories.”
Great stories? I wasn’t the storyteller outside ofGretchen, the Poor Relation. Julian was. He had written a whole play. A good one. If he was here he would talk about ghosts. The ghosts we carry around with us. In fact, he’d had the Black Dahlia as a character and had her tell stories about the ghosts around her in the play.
Who were my ghosts right now? My family. The Lents. The Poor Relation. The life I wanted but would probably never have .
“What ghosts are you guys carrying around with you?” I asked the room.
It was Dora who answered. “Hopefully none. It would be really spooky to be haunted.”
“This place could be haunted.” Casey smiled. “Can’t you see it? Ghosts all over this place.”
Sally ignored me. She was stretching her arms, maybe imitating the movements of what she saw on the screen.
It was Betsy who sighed. “I think I carry my mom with me. Her ghost. Do you carry yours?”
