I can’t tell if she understands what I’m saying, and I don’t have it in me to look at her face. She thinks I’m rich and stealing for attention, but I’m not. I don’t want to live in a world without music, and every time they find out I’ve been listening to something, they make me burn it. They don’t care that it makes me want to leap into the flames, too.
Instead, she nods. “My parents give me some stuff too, but I don’t know why. They give me fancy watches that slide rightoff my wrist and sparkly earrings and stuff, but I don’t even have the holes for them. Sometimes they send me into a stinky shop and the man at the counter trades me money for stuff, but I don’t get to keep it. I wish they’d give me stuff I like too.”
“That’s weird,” I mutter to myself, frowning as I try to understand what all of that means. “What school do you go to?”
She shrugs. “Daddy teaches me some things, like how to add and how to spell. He says they can’t afford to let me go. I really want to though, is it fun? It seems fun.”
“Not really, but it’s better than being in there.” I nod toward my house and lean back to brace on my hands. “My mom said I might get kicked out of my school if I get in another fight. I was thinking it would be cool if I ended up at your school, and maybe then it could be fun.”
“I wish. They thought about letting me go when we were at our old house. We were there for a long time, almost a year. But Daddy said it wouldn’t be good and we moved again anyway.”
“Why do you guys move so much?”
She shrugs,grabbing a Snickers. “I don’t know. Every few months, my mom says it’s getting too hot even if it’s the middle of winter, so we move somewhere else. And it’s almost always warmer where we end up, it’s so dumb.”
I thought my family was strange, but hers is making me think mine is normal. Maybe normal is what I hate. “Weird. So how long will you live here?”
“Sebastian!” my mother shouts, making me flinch and hold my finger to my lips so Alaina doesn’t speak.
“What?”
“Don’twhatme.” Her voice moves closer. “Get in the house. Your father is going to pray with you.”
“Why?” I hear her feet stomping on the grass and rush over to climb down before she peeks inside. “Okay, I’m coming.”
She tugs my ear all the way inside for giving her attitude, but my mind is still on the girl hiding in my treehouse and the fact that I didn’t get to say goodbye.
I just have to hope she comes back, because somehow... she makes me feel less alone.
Chapter One:
Sign Of Life
Alaina
“You’re hard to pin down, you know that?”
Bash chuckles, glancing over at his bandmates before he speaks, and their guitarist Yasmin Flores shakes her head. Not that he listens. “I usually like being the one that does the pinning,” he jokes, making the interviewer blush slightly when she realizes she walked right into that one. “I thought this was just a quick Q&A, Miss Brodie. I didn’t know you were going to try to dominate me.”
“Would you let me?” Holding up a hand, she laughs awkwardly and shakes her head. “Don’t answer that. You’re right, the fans want a Q&A with Hollow Apparition, and here you are. The firstquestion is for you, Bash. Maggie from Burning River wants to know if you believe in ghosts,” she says. “Some of your lyrics — and obviously the band name itself — suggest you do, but give us the deets. Are you a believer in the supernatural, or is it just a spooky little gimmick?”
“Nothing is a gimmick,” he responds quickly, his teasing smile gone. “I don’t write music for attention, every word is there for a reason. Of course I believe in ghosts. I think the only people who don’t are kidding themselves because they don’t want to fuck with things they don’t understand.”
“Kidding themselves sounds a little harsh,” the drummer Levi interjects. “I think what he means is that the supernatural makes people nervous, and they’d rather go about their day not thinking about it at all.”
Bash rolls his eyes with a huff. “Yeah, until one is sitting next to them.”
The interviewer laughs a little uncomfortably. “One of them... like a ghost?”
“I see them far more than I see God,” he says with his eyes locked on hers, almost like he enjoys the fact that she’s a little uncomfortable. “When I was a kid, there was a girl that used to visit me in my treehouse.”
“Not this again,” guitarist Yasmin laments. “Are you ever going to admit you made her up?”
Jonah, the band’s bassist, scoffs. “You’re Hispanic, aren’t you supposed to believe in ghosts?”
“You’re white, shouldn’t you be off stealing someone’s land?” she counters. “Ghosts are real, but they don’t drink Dr. Freakin’ Pepper.”
The interviewer glances between them as Bash’s brows narrow. “I’ll remind you this question was for Bash. Who was the little girl? What makes you think she was a ghost?”
