The Edge of Great

by Micol Ostow

  Julie and her Hologram Band—tonight at the dance!

  “I posted it all over social media,” she said, proud. “You have an excellent marketing team.”

  “What?” This was too much. Too fast. “This is in front of the whole school.”

  Never gonna happen.

  Flynn saw the look on my face and giggled. “Sorry, but you already have sixty-eight likes …”

  Okay, well … I guess now I just had to break the news to the guys …

  “It’s not exactly the Sunset strip.”

  That was Luke’s reaction after school when I told the boys about the gig Flynn had lined up for us. He and Reggie were hanging in the studio, but Alex was nowhere to be found. They said he’d been out taking walks, poofing away for some quiet time. They assured me he was fine, just sensitive—I hoped that was all it was.

  “And we’re not exactly alive,” Reggie pointed out. “So maybe you should be happy we have our first official gig together as a band. And at a school dance? Sweet!”

  I was super grateful for Reggie’s enthusiasm. “I wasn’t in love with the idea at first, either,” I admitted to them. “But it could be great for us. It’s how we build a following, right?”

  “Yeah,” Reggie agreed. “We need to play wherever we can, whenever we can.”

  “No, you’re right,” Luke said, relenting. “We’ll rock those kids’ faces off. Then we’ll start playing clubs …”

  “Then record a single that’ll get a billion streams …” I said.

  Luke gave me a confused look. “Don’t know what that is.”

  (I kept forgetting that they were totally behind on any pop culture that took place after 1995. Which was a lot.)

  “But, hopefully, it leads to us getting a manager and going on tour,” he finished.

  “Then we release a bunch of hit albums!” I said.

  “What are we waiting for?” Luke asked, getting into the spirit of it. “Let’s start rehearsing. Except—where’s Alex?”

  It turned out, no one knew. Right. That’s what we were waiting for.

  Willie and I had been hanging out more and more since we first met, and today he wanted to show me one of his favorite places. Willie said you hadn’t really lived until you’d skated the floors of the contemporary art museum. I tried to remind Willie that we couldn’t actually live, right now, what with how we were ghosts, but he didn’t seem all that hung up on the language.

  “I feel like this isn’t about the art,” I said, standing in front of the museum’s closed—and locked—doors. “You just like breaking rules.” That was my takeaway.

  “Maybe,” he said. “You should try it sometime.”

  I looked at him. “We’re going in there, aren’t we?”

  He smiled and took my hand.

  Between both those things, I suddenly didn’t care how many rules we were breaking. I would have followed Willie just about anywhere …

  Once we were inside, Willie quickly put on his helmet.

  “Sick,” I said, taking in the big, empty spaces and the concrete floors. The atrium was closed for renovations and there were all kinds of sawhorses and things spread out—a makeshift skate park, for sure.

  “And we have the place all to ourselves,” Willie said, taking off.

  After a while of winding around the sculptures (which, I had to admit made me pretty nervous), he took a break. “Hey, slide that bench over here. I’m gonna try to jump it.”

  He pointed to something huge and stone. “I can’t move that.” I shook my head. “I can barely move small things.”

  Willie laughed. “Trust me. If you concentrate on putting all your energy in your hands, you can move anything. Here, we’ll do it together.”

  Together. I liked the sound of that. Willie grabbed one end of the bench and I tried to grab the other … but my hands went straight through it, just like always. “Guess I need to start doing ghost push-ups,” I said.

  “Just focus,” Willie said.

  “Yeah, I have a hard time focusing,” I admitted. “I was always pretty anxious, and then I died, which did not calm me down.”

  Gently, Willie took my hand in his. He guided me back to the bench. This time, I imagined my energy like a beam of light, shining straight ahead onto the solid stone of the bench. Close … close …

  If the bench did move, it was barely a centimeter. But it was something. I felt it. And that was huge.

  “Not bad,” Willie said, approving. “We’ll keep working on it. You’ll see—you’ll get it in no time.”

  I hoped he was right.

  “Is that why you got into drums?” he went on. “To help you with your anxiety?”

  “Pretty much. There’s no better way to work out your problems than wailing on some drums.”

  Willie looked at me like he was thinking something over. “Do you know what makes me feel better?”

  Why did I not like the look of that gleam in his eye?

  “Yelling in museums.” He gave a full-on grin and belted one out. “AHHHHH!”

  I looked at him. “Ahh.”

  “You gotta put your heart into it!” he insisted, grabbing me. He leaned in, so close I could feel his breath when he opened his mouth to scream again. “AHHHH!”

  I did it, too. I finally let go. All the stress, all the worry … twenty-five years of crying! “AHHHH!”

  Now we were both screaming. We were laughing, too.

  “Feels good, right?” he asked, eyes twinkling.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It does.”

  I was talking about the screaming, but I was talking about being here, now, with Willie, too.

  We were still rehearsing for the dance when Alex finally poofed back. He said he’d been out on one of his pacing walks, and the guys seemed to take that at face value. I didn’t know Alex well enough yet to be able to judge, but I did vow to try to keep a closer eye on him, to make sure he was okay. We filled him in quickly, then it was time to put together our set list.

  “Remind me later to show you some Sunset Curve songs we want to do with you,” Luke said.

  “Ooh, show me now,” I said, wagging an eyebrow.

  Luke picked up his notebook and flipped to a dog-eared page. “This one’s got a great riff.” He picked up his guitar to show me.

  Oh, a classic. “So you want to sample?” I asked.

  “What do you mean? What’s sample?” Luke asked, confused.

  “Sample someone else’s song,” I explained. “Me and my mom used to sing that at the top of our lungs in the car. It’s a classic Trevor Wilson song.”

  Now Luke looked totally lost. “No, it’s a classic our song.”

  “Pure Sunset Curve,” Reggie agreed. “I’ve never heard of Trevor Wilson.”

  “Maybe you’re mixing it up with another song?” Alex suggested.

  “I don’t mix up songs,” I insisted. “Trust me, I used to be best friends with his daughter and hang out at their house all the time. I know the song. Here—I’ll prove it.” I pulled out my laptop, searching Google while I talked. A few taps on the keyboard and there it was. I turned the screen around to show them.

  “Trevor Wilson. His first album had a ton of hits. But his later stuff was never as good.”

  Luke’s eyes flew open. “That’s Bobby!”

  “Seriously? I just told you his name is Trevor.” The guys were being so insistent; it was weird.

  “Well, he must have changed it because that’s definitely Bobby,” Alex put in. “He was our rhythm guitarist.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Trevor Wilson was in your band?” It was just hard to put it together—that major star and these … well, ghosts, living in my mother’s music studio.

  Reggie looked horrified at the image on the screen. “I can’t get over how old he looks!”

  Alex made a face. “Yeah … he looks like a substitute teacher.”

  Luke looked at me, suspicious. “What were his other hits?”

  I thought about it. “ 
‘Get Lost.’”

  “Yeah,” Luke said, taking his guitar off. “I wrote that.”

  “ ‘Long Weekend’?” I tried.

  “Luke wrote that, too!” Reggie said.

  “ ‘Crooked Teeth’?” I almost didn’t want to ask.

  “And that!” Alex confirmed. “It was about Reggie.”

  “I thought it was about you!” Reggie protested. “I don’t like that song anymore.”

  “Wait,” I said, pressing my hands to my temples. “This is freaking me out. Trevor’s songs are kind of a big deal to me. He introduced me to rock.” If Trevor’s biggest hits were actually taken from his time with Sunset Curve … what did that mean?

  Alex stated the obvious. “No, he didn’t. Luke introduced you to rock.”

  I glanced at Luke. “All this time, I was hoping you guys were connecting me to my mom. But instead, you’re connecting me to Carrie’s dad? Of all people, why the one girl who has it out for me?” I couldn’t believe it. This would have been upsetting even without the whole confusing Carrie part of it.

  Alex shook his head, obviously as thrown as I was—as we all were. “Add it to our list of questions. Bobby was our friend. He would’ve never done something like that.”

  “But Trevor did,” Reggie said.

  My mind raced. “Back when Carrie and I were friends, the three of us would talk music all the time. He never mentioned you guys.” Which meant …

  “Unbelievable,” Luke said, disgusted. “He took all the credit, and no one knows it but us.” He pulled one of the darts from the dartboard hanging in the corner of the studio.

  “And he’s rich,” I said. “He has his own helicopter.”

  Thwack. One of the darts sailed straight into the target of the dartboard.

  “We live in a garage!” Alex protested.

  I resisted the urge to point out that technically, they didn’t live anywhere.

  “It’s not about the money, guys,” Luke said.

  “It’s a little bit about the money, though!” Reggie said. “He could’ve shared it with our families. Maybe then my parents’ house wouldn’t have been turned into a bike shack.”

  “What he did was steal our legacy,” Luke said. He turned to me. “Where does he live?”

  “Above the beach in Malibu.”

  “Let’s go teach him a lesson,” Luke said.

  There were a million reasons why this was a terrible idea—for one, we had to rehearse for the dance—but before I could even get one of them out, the boys had poofed from the garage, leaving me all alone to think about Trevor Wilson.

  And how he was a liar and a thief.

  I never really did believe much in karma. After all, I died eating an expired hot dog. Like, what could I possibly have done in a past life to deserve that?

  But wandering around Trevor’s mansion—with its huge open spaces, giant windows overlooking the glittering ocean and a cloudless sky, lined with photos of him hanging out with every major music star of the past two decades (I had to assume) …

  Well, I hoped karma had a few things in store for him.

  “Bobby’s house is ridiculous,” Alex said. He pointed to the framed albums on the walls. “Have you seen the platinum records?”

  I looked at one. “He recorded ‘My Name Is Luke,’” I said, incredulous. “My name is Luke!”

  Then the front door opened and a greasy-haired middle-aged man in a motorcycle jacket wandered in. He was still wearing his sunglasses. “Hey, Carrie, I’m gonna meditate!” he called out.

  “That’s him! He wears sunglasses indoors,” Reggie said, upset. “I can’t stand him!”

  I glared at him, watching with fury as he went off to “meditate.” “Time for his past to haunt him,” I said, menacingly.

  We were right behind Bobby—Trevor—as he made his way up the stairs.

  The meditation room turned out to be, like, a yoga studio, with tons of pillows, dim lighting, incense … and a little altar covered in candles. That made the haunting easier at least. Trevor lit one right away, making prayer hands and lowering himself onto an ottoman. I grinned. This was going to be fun.

  Knowing he couldn’t see me (and for once, super pumped about it), I stepped forward and blew out the candle.

  He sat cross-legged and placed his hands on his knees. “Ommmmm,” he chanted. But he only made it halfway through the mantra before I stuck my wet finger in his ear. Oh, no you don’t. This was a haunting, after all.

  He flinched, making a face and shaking his head like a dog trying to dry off after a rainstorm. Then he settled back in. “Ommmmm . . .”

  Clearly we had to up our game. Good thing we’d been practicing how to move things. Alex had passed along some tips from his friend Willie’s ghost lessons, and it was paying off big-time! We were basically pros now. This time we managed to switch Trevor’s New Age whale sounds to some serious electric guitar.

  “Carrie?” he asked, finally looking seriously weirded out. Good. He stood up to turn off the stereo, which was when we turned the shower in the adjoining bathroom on.

  He jumped back, then peered around. Reluctantly, he walked into the bathroom, knocking on the door even though we all knew there wasn’t anyone there.

  (Well, no one alive, anyway.)

  The shower had steamed up the bathroom mirror. In an inspired moment, I wrote “HI BOBBY” in the condensation.

  That did it; Trevor was totally freaked. He darted for the bathroom door—only for us to slam it in his face!

  He pounded on the door, his man bun bobbing. “LET ME OUT!” But we were having too much fun for that just yet.

  I turned the music back on.

  We let him wrestle with the doorknob for a few seconds, loving the panic rising in his eyes. When Alex finally let the door open, he raced out.

  “Carrie! I’m gonna go see my therapist!”

  The next thing we knew, he was taking off in his own private helicopter. Of course he has a private helicopter. We should’ve haunted him harder.

  Had he paid enough? Not nearly. Not yet. But it was still a good start.

  We were still watching him fly off in the distance when Julie found us on the helipad. I guess we should have known she’d show up eventually.

  “Did you guys have fun in there?” she asked, obviously annoyed.

  “Come on,” I said, “you’d do the same if someone stole all your songs.”

  “But you have new songs, with me,” she reminded us. “The best way to get back at Trevor is for this band to do great. And to do great, we need to play dances, then clubs …”

  “Then tour, I know.” I sighed. I did know. And I should have known better than to run off on my own personal revenge scheme when Julie was counting on us. Because we were counting on her, too. And, the truth was, she was becoming important to me. I hated to let her down.

  “I have to go start setting up, but I’ll see you guys at the school. We go on at nine. Please don’t be late,” she said, her eyes on me, imploring. “A lot of people are gonna be there.”

  “We got it,” I promised her. “Don’t worry.”

  After Julie left, though, Alex and Reggie and I agreed—dumb, personal revenge or not—we were glad we’d scared Bobby. And the truth was, we wanted to do it again. We wanted to do it more. Which meant that we had more to learn.

  “Hey, Alex, you think Willie might have a few more tricks up his sleeve?” I asked.

  Sure, we had the ghostly basics down. But, now, I wanted to kick it up a notch. And I had a feeling I wasn’t the only one.

  Alex grinned and nodded.

  “Well,” I said, “maybe we should swing by and talk to him before it’s time to meet Julie.”

  Maybe more tricks are just what we need.

  We found Willie in the park, skating, of course. I was happy to introduce my friends to him—it was kind of cool to be the only one of the three of us to have a connection beyond just our band. And Willie showed the guys how to move heavier things and stuff,
just like he taught me. But Luke wanted to go bigger. He wanted to learn how to talk to Lifers. We explained what we needed.

  “Sorry,” Willie said, “talking to Lifers is even out of my league.” He paused for a minute, thoughtful. “But there is one ghost who might be able to help. He’s kind of a big deal.”

  The next thing we knew, we’d poofed to a glamorous old-school Hollywood hotel—the kind that you’d see in black-and-white movies. Willie led us up the stairs into a grand lobby, with a giant crystal chandelier overhead and a shiny marble-tiled floor.

  “So this is where your hotshot ghost lives, huh?” Luke asked, impressed by the place. “Word.”

  “We’ve passed by this hotel a million times, but I never knew this was here,” I said. Leave it to Willie to find some secret, back-alley section of the place to use as a hangout.

  “This area’s been sealed off for decades,” Willie explained. “If you weren’t invited, you wouldn’t even know it exists. I’m just gonna go make sure everything’s cool. Be right back.”

  Reggie wandered back and forth, looking at the posters and old signs that were hanging. “Hollywood Ghost Club?” he read. “This place is creepy.”

  “Yeah, well—so are we.” I felt a little defensive, since this was Willie’s place and everything. Sort of.

  “I don’t know about this,” Reggie shot back.

  “Hey, if you get scared, you can hide behind me,” I said. I smiled to show I was mostly kidding. “I’ll be hiding behind Luke.”

  “Grow up, you two,” Luke said impatiently. “We’re gonna do whatever it takes to get back at Bobby. He needs to pay for ripping us off.”

  Abruptly, Willie poofed back into the lobby. “We’re good,” he said. He began to lead us toward the grand staircase in the center of the room.

  “Just so you know,” I told him, “we only have, like, an hour before we’ve got the gig with Julie.”

  “No worries, follow me.” He winked. “Hope you guys are ready for this.”

  As we walked down the staircase, my jaw dropped. I didn’t think that was a thing that literally happened, but I guess I was wrong. Willie led us to a secret ballroom that was everything I’d imagined old Hollywood to be. I’d never seen a place as fancy as this in real life.