I was sitting in my living room flipping through my TV guide, mainly focusing on the Syfy channel, when I saw something that got me really excited. This was on a Saturday , so really I didn't have anything I absolutely had to do, and I was already up to Tuesday on my DirecTV guide and there was going to be a marathon of Ghost Hunters International from 8 a. m. to 4 p. m. so I immediately perked up.
Well, you're probably wondering who I am. My name is Joséphine Hanna Abendroth, but I go by Josie. I'm 25 years old and I have long, brown hair and green eyes, but unfortunately I'm only about 5' 4" and I have a fairly long torso, which means I have fairly short legs. My mother, Christine, is French, which is where my first name came from, and my father is German, which is where my middle name came from. I loved my maternal grandparents to death and was always glad when they visited, but I'd never met my paternal grandparents because they had died during the Holocaust in a concentration camp. But anyway, I'm an only child, but by no means am I spoiled. All my life I've had to work for the things I wanted. One plus, though, is that my mom is one of my best friends.
Well, now you're probably thinking why am I excited about a marathon of GHI on a Tuesday. I do have a job, but said job is at a high school. I am the band and orchestra director at the biggest high school in all of Rhode Island. There are probably over 100 kids in the band and orchestra separately, but I think that's probably better than a small number of kids in each all because of how many different personalities there are. Other than my teaching job, I do local paranormal investigations with a small group of people or sometimes even with some of my students, which is always fun to do. There is one very fortunate thing about my paranormal investigating, I ended up being pretty good friends with Jason and Grant from TAPS, mostly because my parents we close to Grant's parents, and I'd even taken evidence to them to check out for me. But back to my Tuesday reasoning. School had ended a couple of weeks ago, so I had nothing better to do. As I continued to flip through the TV guide, my cell phone started ringing (my ringtone is the song Rush by Sam Hazo. What can I say, I'm a band geek). When I looked at my caller ID, I smiled and answered it. "Hey Grant, what's up?" I said.
"Hey Josie, nothing really. The crew from Ghost Hunters International is coming later today and Jason and I thought that you should meet them. And a plus to that is that they just lost a team member because she's getting married and their search for someone to replace her isn't going so well." Grant said.
"Oh cool! I'd like to meet them. Can I come up to the office now?" I said, excited to be able to meet the GHI team.
"Yeah, there's no problem with that, It's just me, Jason, Kris, Steve, and Tango here." Grant said, sensing my excitement.
"Awesome! I'll see you in a few." I said, already heading out to my car.
"Okay, bye." Grant said and we hung up.
The whole way to the TAPS office I was nearly bouncing up and down in excitement. When I walked into the office, Kris Williams was sitting at the front desk like always.
"Hey Kris." I said when I saw her.
"Hey Josie. I guess you're here to meet the GHI team, huh?" Kris said, smiling.
"Yeah. Grant called and asked me to." I said. Me and Kris were pretty good friends, I wasn't as close to her as I was to Grant or Jason, but it was nice to have a girl to talk to on TAPS.
"All right. They're already here so you can probably just go straight back. They're talking with Jay and Grant in the conference room." Kris said.
"Okay, thanks." I said, smiling, and headed towards the conference room. When I got to the conference room, the door was cracked slightly and I could hear the guys talking quietly. I tapped lightly on the door and Grant opened it. "Josie! It's great to see you again!" Grant said, hugging me.
"It's great to see you again too, Grant!" I said, returning the hug. "Hey Jason, good seeing you again too." I said upon seeing him and punched his arm lightly,
"What, he gets a hug and I don't?" Jason said, playfully looking disappointed.
"Maybe." I answered back playfully.
"Oh just come here." He said and gave me a bear hug. I grinned broadly and tried to hug him tighter than he was hugging me, but to no avail. There had always seemed to be something between me and Jason, we just weren't sure what, so we left if at something like twins, just a little more than that.
After the gigantic hug, Grant said, "Well, Josie, this is the GHI team. Robb Demarest, Dustin Pari, but you already know him from his time with TAPS, Brandy Green, Barry Fitzgerald, who you've met before as well, and Joe Chin. Guys, this is, well, I'll let her say her name. It sounds better when she says it than when someone else does."
"Okay then. Well, uh, hi. I guess he means for me to say my full name. It's Joséphine Hanna Abendroth, but everyone calls me Josie." I said, smiling at everyone, particularly Dustin and Barry because I sort of had a little thing for them, though I found Robb kind of cute too.
"That's an interesting name. What nationalities are your parents?" Joe asked.
"My mother's French and my father's German. How did you know they're not of the same nationality?" I said, cocking my head to the side.
One of the other guys answered instead, "The way you said your first and middle name. You said them in two completely different accents." Dustin said.
"Hm. I've never noticed that. I guess they have to be said in two different accents." I said, laughing a little.
"Okay, well you guys can get a little better acquainted later if you'd like because I did ask Josie to come here for a reason." Grant said, looking rather pleased with himself. "Jason and I know that you have been looking for a new team member since Angela left and when you called and said you were coming back to the States to try to find someone, we knew you had to meet Josie and we both hope you might consider her in your search. She is a good investigator and has even brought us some really good evidence from a couple of her cases." Grant said, but then the door of the conference room opened. "Josie!" I heard someone exclaim from behind me and almost immediately someone lifted me off the ground in a backwards hug. I restrained from squealing too badly and said, laughing, "It's good to see you again too, Steve." When Steve put me down, I turned around and saw that Tango was with him and greeted him with a hug as well.
Once everyone was done having a laugh at the way Steve greeted me, Robb was thanking Grant about finding someone for him right off the bat like that and we set up a time that I could have an interview with the team. I was very excited about this and thanked Grant as well for the amazing opportunity.
While I was getting to know the GHI team a little better, I would occasionally glance at Dustin or Barry and as I was leaving, Steve took the time to say to me, "Je pense tu aime ils." So at that point I really hated that he knew French, but I promptly replied with, "Fermez la bouche."
When I left, Jason insisted that I allow him to walk out with me and I knew he was going to tell me to be careful. When we were outside, I leaned against my open car door as Jason talked to me.
"Now I want you to promise me that if you get a position with GHI that you'll be careful and for the first month or two that you'll call Grant or myself regularly, okay?" Jason said with concern.
"Okay, I promise. And you know that careful is my middle name." I said, smiling cheesily.
"Yes, but unfortunately I also know that your last name is reckless so just be careful. We'll see you later." he said and playfully flicked my nose, which I pretended hurt really bad, making him laugh. I playfully sighed and rolled my eyes, choosing not to answer that comment and just hugged him and he hugged me in return.
Now, you're probably wondering about this whole little thing with me and Jason. I do know he has a wife and kids, so don't think he's doing anything to harm them, because he's not. I met his wife not too long after they got married and we because good friends pretty quick. We always talked to each other about our problems and I was the second person to know each time she was pregnant with each of their children (she always let Jason know first of course) and I've known their children literally since they were born. Their kids absolutely love me and have even adopted calling me 'Aunt Josie', well, whenever they get to see me.
When I got home, I did a little excited dance (25 year olds can do that too, haha) and decided to get ready for my interview, which was that night and would consist of a series of questions and even a mini investigation of a local bar. I opted to take another shower since I had time and when I was done I put on a nice pair of skinny jeans and a black, low-cut top that was tight around the top of my jeans and loose everywhere else and I opted to wear a pair of black flats that are literally the next best thing to not wearing shoes at all, which I really liked a lot. I decided to put on a little bit of eye liner and mascara, but only on the top and that was all the make up I wanted to put on. When I went back into my living room, I decided to eat a little bit of something then go on back to TAPS office because it was getting close to 5:30 and I had to be there at 6 for the interview.