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."