Reunions, Ominous Warnings, and Girls Gone Wild

Yep, that's Yasmine. I'm totally shocked.

"Okay, Vladimir, I know you're shocked, but get over it. You have to listen to me."

I'm floored. How did she? How could she? She...read my mind?

"Ghosts are all equipped with special abilities. Myself, more so, as I was...gifted as a human. You of all people would know that."

I would so want to kill her if she weren't already dead. I look down at Cameo, who's simply looking forward, peacefully.

"She can't see us talking. She's sleeping, and she thinks you are too. I've frozen this moment so we can talk privately. It's another gift, I guess. Comes in handy really. You can get up and everything, just make sure you move back when you're done speaking with me."

Against all reason, I extricate myself from Cameo's icy arms. Normally this would bother me, but for some reason...Yasmine better have a good reason for...

"Oh, I do. Just listen."
"Why should I? You tricked me into revealing the Inside, you nearly killed Delaina, and Cameo for that matter, and you infiltrated the safehouse!" I try very hard not to yell.
"Wait...I didn't try to kill Cameo." She looks bewildered, and totally unaware of my yelling tirade.
"Then why did we find her slashed up and Xanaxed out then?"

"Xanax? Aw man." Yasmine's ghostly facial features are twisted with worry. "I didn't think it would do that."

"Do what, Yasmine?" I ask. I hate being one step behind. I never am.

"Sit down, Vlad. This is going to take awhile."
I comply, against all reason.

She begins her tale.

"Okay. That day in the safehouse was because I wanted revenge. Not on you. On Delaina and Alex. You're their only common denominator. I wanted to hurt them. Badly. I couldn't blame you for ousting me. After all, I'd totally deceived you. But it wasn't their business. They'd made sure I'd lost everything on the Outside. And that wasn't fair. And Cameo had honestly just been a spare. Plus, I'd heard you liked her. Can't blame an ex for being curious, can you? Not like it matters now."
"What happened to you?" Curiosity is winning out over antagonism.

"Isn't it obvious?" she says, smiling with a sincerity I hadn't seen in her for over a year.

I finally take the time to look at her. She doesn't look overly different to me. But she did look familiar. Like I'd seen her before...or rather, I'd witness someone see her before...it finally clicks with me.

"You're the girl Cameo saw. Cutting up the paper."
"Yeah, that was me. I couldn't believe she didn't recognize me either. Or that you'd believe it too."
"I didn't have too much to go on anyway. You kicked me out."
"What?" She looks bewildered. "No I didn't."
"She said 'She kicked you out.'"
"Honestly, Vladdie, you're dealing with ghost people. You ever think there's more entities than meets the eye?" she says with a slightly patronizing air. Very Yasmine. "I didn't do it. I read her mind, yeah, but..."
"How did you read her mind anyway?"
"Can I finish a sentence, buddy?" she says, slightly miffed.
"I can read minds remember? You didn't do it. I believe you. Now how can you read minds?"

She takes a deep breath.

"Ghosts are naturally empowered. We can go through walls because were spirits, but we can also solidify, and walk around as people, which is how your girlfriend saw us. We can also get some other stuff tacked on, like mindreading and time freezing for me. It works best on other ghosts, which was why I was able to read Cameo so easily. You're pretty hard to read, because you're human. We were cutting up a message to send to New York. I was cutting up the Dear the Inside part. The other guy cut out Chicago. He didn't tell me because he knew I knew you guys while I was alive."
"Who was that guy, anyway? I remember him." I ask.
"He was the guy who tried to shoot Delaina. I told you, I really didn't like her. She used her powers to kill off that guy."
"Wow. Rock on, Delaina." I chuckle. "You loved her when we were dating. What changed?"
"Ask Delaina." She's trying to dismiss the subject. The hell with that.
"Why? I want to hear it from you."
"She said she'd kill me if I told. Oh wait, I'm already dead. What the hell can she do to me now? Okay, ill bite. Only don't get mad at her. She was confused at the time."
"Huh?" I'm totally lost. She begins her tale anyway.

"About six months ago, I ran into Delaina at a party. We'd always been friends, even before I'd met you. We were in the same Girl Scout squad, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember." Alex and I had always laughed at her about that.
"I didn't hold the whole me getting kicked out of the Outside thing against her at the time, just Alex. The whole thing was in the past, anyway, and I was working my way back in. So I was letting the whole thing go. So I ran into her, and we got to talking. I was telling her what I was up to, and she was telling me about her recent heartbreak and her rebound guy."

I think of Michael. Poor guy. I just hope he's as detached from her as she is from him. He'd always been sensitive.

"So we were talking, and we'd had too much to drink, and I invited her to hang out with some friends of mine that I'd been hanging out with post Outside. We'd ended up going to my friend Marissa's apartment that she shared with her boyfriend and Delaina and I were hanging out in the spare room. Everybody had gone to sleep and all, and she, well, both of us, started joking around about experimentation."

I already know where this is going. I even remember that morning. Delaina had come into the house with sunglasses, headphones, and a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck. It wasn't the weather for scarves. I tried to read her mind as to why she didn't come home last night, and all I got were song lyrics. All in all, very clever of her. It was around the same time she'd come to me about feeling like she was missing something.

"Wow."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking the whole time. Vlad, you never dated the girl why?"
I give her a withering look. Not what I wanted to know.
"Who started it?"
"She did, actually. I'd never been a questioner, really. I don't remember what happened, just that she'd initiated it, and I woke up wrapped in the girl's arms in a bed I didn't immediately recognize."
"So...what you're telling me is that my best childhood friend got further with my ex than I did?"

She laughed. "She got all the way, so I guess so. You wouldn't think a straight girl would know her way around, but she did. Afterward, she told me to forget about it and spurned me in public. A few days later she showed up at my house asking for another go round. Her rebound guy wanted a relationship and she didn't know how to handle it. I said no...at first. Delaina's not one to take no. Not that I objected, which was my fault. After, she completely ignored me. Again. That's when I began hating the girl. And she started hating me when I never called her back."

I'm reeling. I'm not mad at either of them, really. It was six months ago, I was over Yasmine, I never liked Delaina that way, and obviously, Delaina likes boys now, so she's not going to do it again. And Yasmine's dead, so there goes that. I'm just confused.

"I know it's a lot to process, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to warn you. You have to protect your girlfriend. She's a lot more valuable than even Alex knows. And they will take her."

"Why her, Yasmine?" I ask.
"Its not so much Cameo, as the ghost inside her." She says this with a degree of worry as she stares at the frozen Cameo sitting on the sofa.

"What does that mean?"
"It means that although they want her too, the ghost is the one they want. And they can't take the ghost, or else they'll take her, and kablam goes the planet."

"Can you stay?"

(Alex to Vlad)

Alex looks panicked. I'm not even sure he realizes how panicked he looks. And he's freaking me out.

Cameo's shaking wasn't like she was having a seziure or anything. She was just cold. Icy cold, give that she was holding my hand and she'd been getting progressively colder. As she gradually stopped convulsing from the cold, she got colder.

"Is she....dying?" Alex asks me. The only thing he'd ever ask me advice on besides matters of the heart is matters of science. He'd done well in history, I'd always kick ass in science. You have dreams of going to medical school, naturally you're good at science.

"I'm not sure." And I really wasn't. She'd always been slightly colder than other people. Next to Delaina, she felt like a freezer most of the time. According to Alex, that's how half ghosts normally feel. Cold to the touch.

Suddenly, Cameo stops shaking. Alex and I look at each other, unsure of what to do.

That's when her eyes snap open.

She looks at us like she didn't know we were even here. Then something clicks in her head.

"Have you guys been watching me this whole time?"
Alex responds first. "No, but I came in to talk to Vlad and you started...convulsing, so I stayed to make sure you were okay."

She considers his explanation, then speaks.

"Alex, can I talk to Vlad for a second, privately?"
He exits.

Am I in trouble or something?

My expression must have given my thought away, because she knew what I was thinking.

"No, Vlad, you're not in trouble." She smiles as she says this. "You just have to understand that I can take care of myself, okay? I'm not used to being taken care of. I didn't have that kind of childhood where people were taking care of me."
"So because you were self sufficient as a kid, you don't want to let anybody in now?" I try to interpret her words. I don't think I'm doing the best job.

"No, its not that." She sits up to look at me. "My parents died when I was really young. Ashleigh was like seventeen when my uncle delivered me to her. She was the closest relation to me, and that's what their will said. The closest relation had to take care of me. Only the adults didn't want me, because...Ashleigh doesn't talk to most of them now, because of the things they said."

"What did they say?" Damn, she had a sucky childhood.
"They said...that there was something weird about me. Something that they couldn't put their finger on. They all thought...I can't believe they'd say that now, but before I believed them."
"What?" I ask. "Do you want t talk about this, because you don't..."
"I wouldn't have brought it up otherwise." She interrupts me. "Like I said, you guys can't protect me forever. They thought...that I'd killed my parents."

"What? Didn't they die in a car accident?"
"No. They did, but they didn't. They said my mother nearly died on the delivery table giving birth to me. I was healthy, yeah, but I'd nearly killed her. She never was healthy after that. My dad suffered along with her. They were on their way to pick me up from ballet class when it happened. I'd been dropped off at the hospital to my aunt and uncle on my father's side, when they got the news. They said my mother would have made it if she had been healthy...had she not had a risky childbirth. Nobody ever looked at me the same, except Ashleigh. Her mom was still alive. Is still alive. She was in the middle of moving out when my uncle delivered me to her house about a month later. They said they couldn't handle me anymore. I heard them telling Ashleigh's mom that I'd been...taking the life out of everything I touched. Like plants, I'd touch them and they'd die. They got paranoid and abandoned me to Ashleigh, who wasn't even legal at the time. So she had to juggle college and raising me. I owe her the world. Everything."

"That's why I haven't been good with people taking care of me. I altered Ashleigh's life, and either killed or drove crazy everybody else. I can't do anything about them, but I can do something about you guys. Your lives shouldn't be altered because of me." She finished her speech.

So she has deep seated feelings, not of abandonment, but that she'll kill us. Okay. What else can I say?

"Cameo, listen to me. Just like you can take care of yourself, so can we. I can't speak for Alex, but I know you've already changed me. There's nothing that can be done about that. It's for the better, so don't worry about it. And I'll be sure to give you space. Everybody will. But we're dealing with invisible, malevolent, ghost people who want to use you as a weapon of mass destruction against all humanity. So we're going to end up being a little close."
"I understand that. But as much as I'm half ghost or something like that, I'm human too. I don't want to destroy the world. You guys know that. I know you do. You guys are going to have to trust me. If I feel anything that I shouldn't, or feel like there's one more ghost then there should be, I'll let you know, okay?"
"That sounds fair, I guess."

I'm unsure as what to do next. I decide to get up and leave her alone for a bit.

"Okay, so...I'm going to go now, give you some space, get some breakfast, talk to Alex. He's trying to get Delaina. It's kind of cute really."

She smiles as I get up to leave.

I'm almost to the door when...

"Vlad?"
I turn around. She's off her bed and walking toward me. She's maybe five steps away from me.

"Can you stay?" Without waiting for an answer, she closes the gap and hugs me like she'll never let go. I'm actually pretty surprised.

"I thought you wanted space?" I question her.
She squeezes me tighter than I ever thought her capable of. "Not right now. Not from you." She lets go, only to lead me to her room's sofa. We both sit down.

"I don't want you to leave." she says simply as she leans her head on my shoulder and grabs my hand. She's still cold, only not as cold as before. If anything, she's...getting warmer. Odd.

I look down at her. She's staring down at my hand in hers. I focus my head to look into hers.

She's happy. Unequivocably happy. It's not a feeling I've seen in her often. And I made her that happy. Yay.

That's when I look up. And get the bejesus scared of me by...

Yasmine?