Graveyard Slot

by Michelle Schusterman

  “Whenever you’re ready,” said Jess, and I took a deep breath.

  “This is the grave of Flavia Arias, a singer who was born in Salvador,” I began, hating the way my voice shook just a little. “She had a bunch of hit songs back in the ’90s and was starting to get famous internationally. Then one day she just stopped performing: no more tours or albums, nothing.”

  Dad nodded encouragingly, and I stood up a little straighter.

  “Last year, she died in a car accident,” I told him. “And it wasn’t until her funeral that everyone found out the truth about why she gave up her singing career.” I held up the picture, and Mi Jin stepped closer with her camera. “Her daughter, Ana, had cancer. Flavia wasn’t married, and Ana was her only child. She was really protective of her—she didn’t want Ana to have to deal with the media, especially after she got sick. So when she heard Ana’s diagnosis, she quit singing and stopped appearing in public. She kept Ana’s treatments really private, too. When Ana died in 1998, Flavia managed to keep it out of the news. She kind of turned into a recluse afterward, and eventually, the media lost interest in her. But when Flavia was killed in that car accident last year, everyone found out about Ana. Because Flavia had bought this plot years ago so she could be buried next to her daughter.”

  I pointed to the smaller tombstone. “That’s actually who Oscar and I are going to try to contact. Ana Arias.”

  Jess lowered her camera, and I exhaled shakily.

  “Kat, that was awesome,” said Mi Jin. To my surprise, Jess nodded in agreement.

  “I mean . . .” She glanced over at Dad, who was beaming proudly at me. “How in the world did you learn all that stuff about her daughter?”

  “I looked online to see if any famous people were buried here,” I told her. “Everything I found was in Portuguese, but Oscar translated most of it. There are a few other celebrities and politicians, but when I read about Flavia’s daughter, I figured she’d be the best one to try to contact. She was eleven when she died, and Sam always says the ghosts of children are more likely to contact other children, and . . . Why are you both looking at me like that?” I demanded, because now Jess wore Dad’s same goofy smile.

  “Future journalist,” Dad said triumphantly, raising his arms over his head. I wrinkled my nose.

  “What?”

  “You treated this like an assignment,” Jess told me, pointing to the picture in my hand. “All I said was, ‘Hey, let’s go film something in this cemetery.’ And you did the research. You found the story. Like father, like daughter.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If you say so. Ouija time?”

  “You bet.” Jess snapped back into director mode. “Oscar, Kat, over here. I want to get you two on either side of the board so we can see the tombstone between you. Mi Jin, this way . . .”

  I sat cross-legged opposite Oscar, carefully moving a few bouquets out of the way. Future journalist? I wasn’t so sure about that. Although I actually had enjoyed researching Ana. In fact I’d gotten so caught up in it, I’d accidentally blown off video chatting with Trish and Mark.

  Oscar unfolded Mi Jin’s electronic Ouija board and flipped the switch on the circuit board that was set between YES and NO. I jiggled the planchette, which held the mouse, over the letters until its little red light started winking.

  “Remember, no faking it,” I told Oscar in a low voice. “If this doesn’t work, we’ll just have to figure something else out. We can’t trick the viewers.”

  “Yeah.” He drummed his fingers on his knee, eyeing Jess. “Although you know if we do somehow contact Ana, viewers will think it’s fake, anyway.”

  “Not all of them,” I pointed out. “Some of the fans really believe in this stuff.”

  “Right. So . . .” Oscar leaned closer, tapping the planchette. “What difference would it make if we moved this thing around instead of a ghost?”

  “Oscar . . .”

  “It’s like you said,” he whispered. “No matter what, some people will believe and some will think we’re faking it. But that’s better than nothing happening at all, right? We need to make it entertaining. That’s what Roland always says.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Jess suddenly crouched in front of us, setting her camera on a short, squat tripod. Mi Jin stood behind the tomb, getting an overhead shot of us with the Ouija board.

  “Okay,” Jess said. “I’m not here, Mi Jin’s not here, don’t worry about looking into the cameras. Just talk to each other about Flavia and Ana, then give the board a try. And remember, we’re going to edit this, so don’t worry about whether things feel slow or boring.”

  I gave Oscar a pointed look, and he made a face.

  “Ready?” asked Jess.

  I nodded, wiping my palms on my shorts. Oscar bounced up and down a little. I wondered if he was nervous, too. The thought made me feel slightly better.

  “All right, here we go.” The red light on Jess’s camera blinked on again.

  Immediately, Oscar picked up the picture of Flavia and Ana and made a show of leaning it against Ana’s tombstone. “Tragédia Segredo de Flavia,” he said in a loud, solemn voice, pointing to the headline. “All the stories we found online focused on Flavia Arias. But this story is really more about Ana. Don’t you think, Kat?”

  I stared at him, mouth open. Why was he talking like a news reporter?

  “Uh . . . sure?”

  “According to this story, Ana was really shy around the media before her diagnosis,” Oscar went on. “She loved going to her mom’s shows, but she hated the attention she got.”

  “Well, some people don’t like having cameras shoved in their faces.” I couldn’t help shooting Jess a quick glare, and I heard Dad stifle a laugh. Jess waved at him to be quiet, although I could see she was smiling, too.

  “And some people love it.” Oscar batted his eyelashes at the camera, and I groaned. Overhead, Mi Jin’s shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. “Anyway, I read that Flavia once told off a bunch of reporters after a concert because they were harassing Ana. After that, she stopped bringing Ana to her shows, and she even turned down a European tour.”

  “You mean before Ana got sick?” I asked. Oscar hadn’t mentioned that part when he’d translated for me earlier.

  He nodded. “Her manager was really annoyed about it,” he said. “But Flavia made it clear that Ana took priority over everything else in her life. Then when Ana got sick, her mom basically gave up everything for her.”

  I nodded, studying the picture. “I wonder what that’s like.”

  Oscar paused. “What?”

  “You know, to have a mom who would . . .” I stopped as I realized what I was saying. To have a mom who would do that for me.

  A long pause followed, and I could feel everyone staring at me. I gazed at the Ouija board, the letters and numbers suddenly fuzzy. Had that actually come out of my mouth? What was wrong with me? It was one thing to think it, but saying it out loud . . . and with the cameras rolling, too. My heart dropped as I wondered what my dad’s expression looked like right now. I didn’t dare look up to find out.

  Finally, Jess cleared her throat. “All right, let’s try the Ouija board.” Her tone was uncharacteristically gentle, which just made me feel worse. I nodded, touching my hand to the planchette. After a second, Oscar did the same. Neither of us spoke, and after a few seconds, Mi Jin piped up.

  “One of you should talk to Ana out loud,” she reminded us.

  “Oh yeah.” Oscar glanced at me. “Want me to do it?”

  “Sure.”

  We turned our attention back to the board. “Hello, Ana,” Oscar said. “I’m Oscar. That’s Kat. So . . . how are you?”

  I snorted. “She’s dead, you dork. How do you think she is?”

  “Well, what am I supposed to say?”

  “You have to invite her,” I said, remembering
the way Jamie had contacted Sonja Hillebrandt back in Crimptown. “And we both have to focus on her.”

  Oscar let out an exaggerated sigh that reminded me strongly of Roland. “Okay. Ana Arias . . . we invite you to join us. Please. You know, unless you’re busy.”

  Gritting my teeth, I tried to focus on Ana. But I was too irritated. This whole thing had been a dumb idea. I didn’t want to be on television anyway. I’d probably—

  The planchette twitched lightly under my fingers. I could tell immediately that Oscar was trying to move it. Pressing down, I glared at him and shook my head slightly. He rolled his eyes, but the planchette stopped moving after a few seconds.

  Focus on Ana, I told myself. But it was a lost cause. Oscar’s weird Roland impression was annoying me, the stupid cameras were annoying me, but most of all, I was annoyed with myself. I hardly ever talked about my mother around anyone, much less while I was being recorded. Why had I said that out loud? It’s not like I wanted my mom to give up everything that made her happy just for me. But what Oscar had said about Ana being Flavia’s first priority . . . it was never that way with my mother. Her own happiness had always been her number-one priority, not mine.

  “Ana Arias,” Oscar repeated. “Are you here? We’d like to ask you a few questions . . .”

  Like with this wedding. I was still upset with my mother for leaving last spring, and then for not telling me when she moved back to town. I went over six months without talking to her, and now she expected me to be in her wedding. To wear a pretty dress and make my hair more “stylish” and smile at the camera and basically act more like the daughter she probably wished she’d had in the first—

  The planchette lurched across the board, and I gasped. “Oscar,” I hissed, but he shook his head.

  “I’m not doing it!”

  After touching the letter I, the planchette moved over to W. I pressed down again, glaring at Oscar. “Stop screwing around!”

  He scowled. “I’m not! It’s—” The planchette jerked beneath our fingers, then touched the A before zooming over to N, and then T. I frowned, watching as it moved from letter to letter so fast, it was hard to catch them.

  “O,” Oscar murmured. “U . . . T.”

  The planchette fell still, and we looked at each other.

  “‘I want out?’” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Oscar blinked a few times. Then he patted the ground beneath us and smiled up into Mi Jin’s camera. “Sorry, Ana,” he said, his annoying new reporter voice going strong. “Digging you up probably isn’t the best idea.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said dryly. My skin felt all creepy-crawly and exposed, and I wanted nothing more than to put as much distance between myself and the cameras as possible. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. To my intense relief, Jess flipped her camera off and got to her feet.

  “Well, that was interesting,” she said with a grin. “‘I want out,’ huh?”

  Oscar lifted his shoulders. “That’s what Ana said.”

  Jess eyed him. “Come on, now. You guys really sold that—you even had me going for a second. But it’s time to fess up. Which one of you was moving it?”

  “I wasn’t,” Oscar said immediately, and I snorted.

  “Yeah, you were.”

  Mi Jin had lowered her camera, too. “It really didn’t look like either of them were moving it from this angle,” she told Jess.

  “Because we weren’t.” Oscar glared at me. “Not me, anyway.”

  I crossed my arms. “You tried to, and I stopped you. Then I . . . I got distracted, and you started shoving it all over the place!”

  “Kat, I swear I—”

  “Okay!” Jess interrupted. “If Mi Jin says it looked legit, that’s good enough for me. Let’s get a few closing comments, and we’ll wrap this up.” Apparently my despair showed on my face, because Jess took pity on me. “Oscar, why don’t you do this one, since Kat introduced the story. Here, let’s move back over to Flavia’s grave . . .”

  Oscar followed her and Mi Jin without looking at me, but I was too relieved to be away from the cameras to feel guilty. Dad walked over to me, hands in his pockets. We stood there silently for a few minutes.

  “I suck at this,” I said quietly.

  Dad smiled. “Nope. Pretty much the opposite, actually. You did a great job.”

  “Maybe with the research,” I admitted. “But I’m talking about being on camera. I hate it.”

  “You might hate it,” Dad said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean you’re bad at it.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I guess we’ll find out when this goes online. Can you, um . . .” I fixed my gaze on my shoes, my face growing warm. “Can you make sure Jess edits out that thing I said about, um . . .”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks,” I said to my feet. Dad didn’t say anything else, and I had the feeling he was waiting to see if I wanted to talk about it. A few seconds passed with nothing but the sound of Oscar talking in the background. Then I blurted out:

  “Aren’t you mad that Mom’s already getting married again?”

  Dad exhaled like he’d been holding his breath forever. “No,” he said at last, and I looked up.

  “Seriously?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism from my voice.

  He smiled. “Okay, truth? I was. I was hurt, and I was mad. But I’m not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, I . . .” Dad hesitated, gazing out over the cemetery. “I wouldn’t trade this adventure you and I are on for anything. And I want your mother to be happy, too. Once I realized that, there was no point in feeling hurt and mad anymore. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded, because my throat was too tight to respond. It did make sense. It really did.

  But I was still hurt. I was still mad. And maybe it made me a terrible daughter, but I still didn’t want to be a part of my mother’s wedding.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE LETHAL BITE OF THE INTERNET TROLL

  Post (draft): Flavia and Ana Arias

  Publish? Yes/No

  “JUST publish it already, for the love,” Oscar pleaded. Instead, I moved the cursor over to the video again.

  “I just want to watch it one more time.”

  He moaned loudly, but stopped the second it began playing. I had to admit, Jess and the others had done an amazing job editing our video. It started out with about half a minute of exploring the cemetery while one of Flavia Arias’s songs, a slow, haunting ballad, played in the background. My explanation of her story came next. We’d watched this video seven times already, but my stomach still squirmed uncomfortably when I suddenly appeared on the screen. (Flash! Sickening Strapless.)

  Of course, I wasn’t actually wearing a dress. Video-me wore a new T-shirt Grandma had bought me the day after Thanksgiving: black, with Frankenstein Say Relax in neon green. The letters kind of glowed in the dark.

  I didn’t look nearly as nervous as I remembered feeling, either. And I did sound like I knew what I was talking about, so that was cool. The Ouija part came next, and Oscar leaned forward, watching himself so intently, I almost laughed.

  Jess had edited out the part where I’d started talking about my mother, thankfully. Pretty much everything else was there. The video switched angles a few times, then stayed on Mi Jin’s overhead shot when the planchette started flying around the Ouija board. I had to admit, it did look legit.

  The last part was Oscar speculating about what the message from Ana could mean. “She loved her mother’s songs, but she hated the fame that came with them,” Oscar said, looking straight into the camera. “‘I want out’ doesn’t make much sense as some sort of message from her ghost . . . but it could be an echo of her consciousness. On the next episode of Passport to Paranormal, we’ll be investigating the site of a residual haunting. This message from Ana could be something simil
ar. Stay tuned to Kat’s blog for more about where we’re filming next, here in Salvador. And if you have any theories about Ana Arias, we’d love to hear about them in the comments!”

  As much as I hated to admit it, Oscar’s weird reporter voice worked. He was really charismatic on camera, especially compared to me. It made me even more self-conscious. (Not that I’d ever tell him that.)

  “That was my idea, to plug the next episode at the end of the video,” Oscar said. “Jess loved it.”

  I pressed my lips together. “I know. You told me last night. Twice.”

  “I heard her telling Roland that she changed her mind about us,” Oscar went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “She thinks Fright TV is right, that adding us is really going to help the show.”

  “Somehow I doubt Roland agrees,” I said, touching the trackpad on Dad’s laptop. “Okay, here we go.” I clicked Yes, and a second later, a new post appeared on my blog. “Ugh. It’s up.”

  Oscar finally tore his gaze from the screen and looked hard at me. “Seriously, Kat,” he said. “Why do you hate this so much? It’s not like you to get freaked out about . . . well, anything.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m a photographer. I just like being behind the camera, not in front of it.” There was more to it than that, but I didn’t know how to explain the way my skin crawled when the cameras were filming me, like my skeleton was ready to leap out of my body and make a run for it. “Anyway, why do you like it so much? You’re way more into this than I thought you’d be.”

  Oscar’s eyes flickered to the screen. “It’s just . . . it’s fun, that’s all.” He clicked the refresh button and scrolled down to the comments, which still said 0.

  “We literally published it ten seconds ago,” I told him with a grin. “I’m thinking people will want to actually watch it before they leave comments.”

  “We should put a link in the P2P forums!” Oscar said suddenly, pulling the laptop closer. “I’ll do that right now.”