The audition sides have already been sent his way, enough to keep him busy and distracted from everything that happened in New York.
Meanwhile, I am sucked into every article about us. Reporters predicting how long we will last before he gets bored of me. A small part of me allows it to bother me. So much so, I’ve fully committed to a whole day of bed rotting.
A large thumping sound beats on my door like a drum.
With all the random sounds from Skye and strange gusts of wind, I close all my windows, check all the burners and raise the temperature on my AC unit before creeping to the front door.
In the peephole, I can see her four-foot-ten frame patiently waiting for me outside my door.
Lena Davis is wearing a black miniskirt and red tube top. Making herself feel right at home after I swing the door open to greet her, she tosses her bag on the couch and immediately gives me a hug. I inhale her perfume of cashmere and vanilla with hints of alcohol on her breath.
She still has on her back cat-eye sunglasses, taking up almost her whole face as she storms through my apartment, looking exasperated from the day.
In a rush, she sorts through the bag she just tossed on my couch for two Advils, which she pops in her mouth immediately.
“You won’t believe what just happened to me.”
“What?”
Lena takes out her miniature mirror from her handbag and applies her red lipstick.
“Remember Karen from Accounting?”
She doesn’t give me a second to answer before she jumps into telling me about her day. I am not sure why she is applyinglipstick, because as far as I know, we have no plans of leaving this apartment.
Lena starts, “She somehow convinced the whole team to go day-drinking. On our fifth bar, I started to hear people talk about Holden at the table across from us. A bunch of twenty-one-year-olds gossiping about who he is dating.”
My hands go up, covering my face. And I know exactly where she’s going with this.
“To my pleasant surprise, it’s my good friend, Charlotte. Care to explain?”
The impact of her statement makes me wince. My whole body locks up and my eyes close as I blurt out the words, “I think I’m being haunted” in one fast-paced breath.
Once it goes from being in my mind to slipping out of my mouth, it becomes real. It’s no longer a passing thought anymore.
Lena’s eyes are wide and her mouth is hanging open. Unusual for the girl who can’t keep quiet even if she tries on most occasions, she is currently tight-lipped.
I push her open jaw back into place. It takes a moment for her to respond. She goes through the five W’s—who, what, when, where, why—before she lands on the coherent sentence of…
“What do you mean, you’re haunted?”
Lena places a hand to my forehead. And once nothing comes of that, she moves her ear to my chest to hear my heartbeat.
“Did you go day-drinking too?”
“I am fine,” I say, pushing her hand away, taking a step back.
“I think I’m being haunted. Remember that pendant you caught me finding in my bag the other day—the one that was glowing and luminescent and also just crazy because I’d never seen it before?”
She nods slowly, leaning into the pendant hanging around neck, analyzing every intricate detail displayed on it.
“Well, I think it belonged to a dead girl, because I’m hearing things, I’m seeing things, and the last few weeks haven’t been adding up.”
“So, you hear dead people?”
Lena displays a cheeky grin on her face, knowing I will understand exactly what she’s saying, referencing a ’90s movie about a little boy seeing dead people.
“Clever,” I say.
