Disclaimer: Yeah. The normal junk. Everything belongs to Meg, except the stuff that belongs to me.

Chapter 4

"That was hilarious," Gina screamed, as we shut the door to her bedroom behind us. "Did you see his face? Damien was staring at you for, like, the whole meal." Gina had apparently never been taught to use her indoor voice. "And he was gay. Your love life really is cursed." This last sentence sounded very serious, until Gina let out this totally evil cackle. "Only you, Simon. Only you would end up on a date with some guy who is not only another mediator, but can't even like you because of his sexual orientation."

"It's a good thing he's gay," I said darkly. "Otherwise Jesse would be totally pissed. I'm gonna have a hard time explaining this to him as it is."

"I don't get it." Gina looked at me curiously, pausing while searching under her bed for her pajamas. "Why does he have to know? It's not like you have a hard time lying to anyone else." I guess Gina was still bitter that it had taken me so long to tell her about the whole mediator thing.

"It's not that I feel bad about lying to Jesse," I replied. "It's just that he always knows. I think the whole ghost thing got to him." I had filled Gina in about Jesse's ghost-to-human transition. Not that she really understood it. Hell, even I didn't get it.

"Can ghosts tell when people are B.S.-ing?" Gina asked me. She had found a pair of black boy-shorts and was now rummaging inside her pillow case. I opened my suitcase to search for my own nightclothes.

"Not necessarily," I said, in answer to her question. "But they get these weird senses…they're sort of like gut instincts, only magnified. And more often."

Gina thought for a second. "Weird," She said to me. Then, "Aha!" She triumphantly held up a tiny little tank top which had been stuffed into one of her sneakers. My best friend was not exactly the most organized person in the universe. "Turn around," Gina ordered me.

"Why?" I asked.

Gina rolled her eyes. "Well, if you really want to see me change, fine." She held up the top and shorts, shaking them at me playfully. I turned and went back to looking for something that I could sleep in. Unfortunately, my load seemed to consist of nothing but socks. Knee highs, ankle socks, cutesy little white socks with bows on them. I didn't even know that I owned socks like that. Either I had gone temporarily insane while packing, or someone was playing jokes on me, and I had a very shrewd idea who.

My suspicions were confirmed when Gina suddenly reached over and grabbed something from my bag. "What is that?" she asked me, holding something up by a tiny pinch of cloth. I inspected it cautiously. It was the shirt that Dopey liked to wear when he was lifting weights, and consequently, it smelled like sweat. It really smelled like sweat.

I had opened my mouth to tell G that one, or possibly all, of my stepbrothers had decided that it would be funny to deprive me of anything decent to wear, when the phone rang. "I'll get it," Gina yelled, then reached over and yanked her extension off the receiver. "Hello?"

As she was saying this, Gina was wriggling into the shorts that she had found under her bed. "Yes," she said. "Uh-huh…Okay, sure." She gave the pants one last tug, so that they covered all of her purple-on-orange polka dot panties. "Suze, it's for you." She held out the phone.

Oh good, I thought. A chance to touch base with sanity. Or, at least, with people who don't wear orange underwear. "Hi, Suze!" said a familiar voice. On second thought, maybe not.

"Hello, Kelly," I replied wearily. I was hoping it would be Jesse, calling to see how my flight went, or Cee Cee, yammering on about her date with Adam, or even Dopey, so that I could yell at him for messing with my luggage. Kelly Prescott— junior class president, girlfriend of Paul Slater, and wanna-be Barbie― was not exactly on my top ten list of people to talk to.

"Suze," Kelly squealed, managing to sound excited and disgusted at the same time. "Oh my god. How was your flight? How is New York? How is Gina? Oh my god. Are you guys totally having a blast? Isn't it cool how you got to miss school? Oh my god. Suze!"

Yup. Definitely Kelly Prescott. Too bad. I was hoping that I had temporarily suffered from hearing problems and had only imagined that she was talking to me.

"Anyway," Kelly went on, not waiting for me to respond to her questions. "I was calling because…well, I went out with Paul tonight." I assumed as much. Kelly and Paul went on a date every Friday. A lot of other days too. "And he was acting, well, strange. I don't know why. I mean one minute, we were making out, and he seemed totally into it." Kelly began to gush, words piling up like spam in my e-mail account. "Like, we were watching this movie, right? Only it was totally boring. I don't even remember what it was. So I was all like, 'Want to just leave?' And Paul goes 'Hey, we paid for those tickets, right? Might as well make the most of it.' Which is really true. I mean, the movie was like, crap, and the theater was almost as bad. It smelled like grease, and the popcorn was disgusting. It was, like, covered in butter. I would probably gain five pounds by eating one handful. Anyway, he leaned over to kiss me, only he hit the armrest, you know, those stupid ones they put between seats with the place for you to put your drink? So, I pushed the arm-thing up, and I leaned in, and our lips touched, and it was really good, you know? Paul is like, the best kisser. And, at first, it was, like shallow," just like you Kelly, "but then, it kind of deepened. Only, it wasn't like either of us was doing it. It was, like, what's that word? You know…oh yeah. Mutual. It was totally mutual. It tasted really good, too. Sort of like, I don't know, piña coladas or something. And then, Paul kind of ran his hands up my back. I was wearing this totally adorable little white halter top, with this little twist in the front that looked really elegant. So anyway, then I put my hands on his thighs—"

It was at this point that I set the phone down on Gina's desk. We could still hear a high pitched whistle coming from it, as Kelly yammered on about her evening, completely oblivious to the fact that no one was listening. I breathed deeply, counted slowly to fifteen, then picked the phone back up in time to hear "—and I think he tried to undo my bra strap, except I totally wasn't wearing one. I mean, it was a white halter top, and the only strapless bra that I own is pink, which would totally clash with my shoes."

"Kelly," I interrupted. "Could we get to the point please? Much though I enjoy hearing about your evening, I have other things to attend to." Like murdering my stepbrother.

"Oh, right, Suze." Kelly hadn't understood my sarcasm. "Well, in the middle of all this, Paul suddenly breaks off, staring into space. Like, there was nothing there. Well, I mean, there was air and floor and stuff. But why would he be looking at that? So then, he goes, 'I have to go to the bathroom," and disappears for a really long time. And when he gets back, he just wants to drop me off at home right away. He was totally distracted the whole ride. And Suze, I don't know what I did wrong. You've got to help me. I mean, you're friends with Paul, right? He talks to you. You've got to figure out what went wrong." Yes. Paul and I were friends now, to some extent. But we mostly talked about mediation, or school. Never our love lives. This was partly because it was too weird for him, as he used to have this huge crush on me, and partly because the thought of him and Kelly Prescott making out made me want to puke almost as much as coming home from school to see that the dog has gotten into my closet.

"Okay, Kelly. I'll talk to him." Well, what could I say? She sounded so upset. Besides, I was pretty sure that Paul's "strange behavior" had been caused by the appearance of a ghost. Hadn't Damien behaved in almost exactly the same way when he saw one? Ghosts can totally screw up your dates, and even Paul deserved some help cleaning up the mess.

"You'll do that? Oh, thank you Suze. I just don't want Paulie to be mad at me." Paulie? Eeeeeeewwwww.

I finally got Kelly off my back, after promising to call Paul right away. It was not a conversation I was really looking forward to having, but anything beat listening to Kelly. At least Paul had a sense of humor.

I dialed Paul's phone number carefully, so I was very surprised when the voice that answered said "No, I don't want any damn Girl Scout cookies" in a heavy Korean accent. I hung up, confused.

"Did you dial the area code?" Gina asked me, smiling. Oh. Right. Area code.

"According to my information, your tongue tastes like alcoholic pineapple. Anything to say to this?" Gina, who didn't know who I was talking to, cracked up completely.

"Where on earth did you get that from, Suze?" Paul sounded truly curious.I grunted. "Your girlfriend has just forced me to listen to every detail of her date with you tonight. Ghost problems?"

"Yeah," replied Paul, sounding disconcerted. "Kelly actually called you? I mean, you two aren't exactly the best of friends."

"Well, who else was she going to cry to? Correy?" I named one of Paul's jock friends, a big burly guy who never talked. "Somehow, I doubt he'd be very sympathetic to Kelly's rambling. At least I'm a girl."

Paul thought about this for a few seconds. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Kelly knows we hang out a lot."

"Sooooo….." I prompted. Who was the ghost? "What happened?"

"Well, Kelly and I went to see this movie, right? And as we were watching it, I saw this ghost. She was watching the movie too." At this point, I gave up trying to find anything wearable in my own laundry and started raiding Gina's dresser. "So, I excused myself, and I went to talk to her. She seemed pretty contemporary; she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I don't know how she died, but she gave me a number and asked me to tell her sister that she loves her. I wanted to get it over with fast, so I took Kelly home. End of story."

I snorted. Paul's version of events was much more G-rated than Kelly's. "What was your ghost friend's name?" I asked.

"Julianna. Why?"

"She sounds like a ghost I mediated about a week ago. She wanted me to call some number and say the same thing. But her name was Beth." Beth's sister had not really believed me, but Beth had moved on anyway. Or, at least, I never saw her again. Paul seemed a lot more interested in this information than I was. If Beth didn't need my help anymore, then I wasn't going to go out of my way to give it to her.

"What did Beth look like?" Paul asked me. I couldn't answer him right away because I had placed my hand over the mouthpiece in order to hiss "Find me some pajamas, will you G?"

"Light brown hair, hazel eyes, dimples, about twenty-five."

"Not very descriptive, are we Suze? That could be almost anyone."

"Well, I'm sorry, but that's all I've got. And I should probably go, so I can find something to wear in this disaster zone." I raised my voice for the last bit, so Gina would hear me. But it wasn't really necessary, since she was listening to my call anyway. Growing up with a house full of brothers, the words "personal space" meant nothing to Gina.

"Bye," said Paul, sounding a little sad to have to stop talking, as though I was slightly more interesting than M-TV. "Oh, and Suze?"

"What, Paul?"

"Thanks. For telling me about Kelly. I know you don't like getting mixed up between us, but understanding how she's feeling will go a long way toward making things right between us."

This thank-you embarrassed me quite a bit. "You're my friend. Besides, I told Kelly that I would call you. I didn't want to break my promise."

As I hung up on Paul, something soft hit my face. Gina giggled, and I saw that she had thrown her P.E. uniform at me. I didn't really want to sleep in it, but hey. Beggars can't be choosers.

A/N: Wow. That was a really long chapter. Especially considering that not that much stuff happens in it. But, whatever. Hope you guys liked it. If you did, recommend it to your friends. If you didn't, recommend it to your enemies. (Yah, I didn't make that up.) Just REVIEW! Pleasey pleasey please? With a cherry on top? And whipped cream, and fudge sauce and cookie dough pieces?

Nikki007: Jesse is still alive. And I'll put him in soon, I promise. I just needed to cover some of the NY stuff, but I'll talk about the west coast next chapter.

Charcoal Hearts: yeah, this chapter doesn't end with a cliffhanger either. But the West-coast mystery is starting to unravel. Muahahaa (evil cackle).

P.S.: What is Gina's last name? I really need to know. Please, don't make me have to invent a name and end up with something like "Gina Smith."