PAIGE

          My birthday morning starts off with a bang in the shape of a text message. Multiple ones, in fact.

          My phone, resting on my bedside table, buzzes so hard with the influx of new notifications it nearly falls to the floor, but I'm faster, even without taking off my sleeping mask. Although I'm not expecting happy birthday messages at the same capacity as last year, I still have a massive family who's big on celebrating important occasions, so I'm not surprised to be spammed for turning twenty-one.

          It's as big of an occasion as any, but I'm not in the mood to celebrate. It's a stark change from my mood around this time last year, when I'd spent months planning out my birthday party to ensure people would still be talking about it months after. I was somewhat upstaged by the fight between Brie, Rhett, and her ex-boyfriend; even though she apologized profusely for stealing the spotlight from me over something like that, I didn't hold it against her. Besides, I knew people would talk about it, remembering it fondly, and I had the foresight to be certain of it.

          Lo and behold, I was correct, and it paid off. Nothing anyone in Bennington ever does will ever come close to it after months of preparation and brainstorming, which is an honor I wear with pride. However, that also means I've shot myself on the foot, having set an impossible standard to live up to; perhaps I should have gone all out for my twenty-first birthday, not my twentieth.

          Back then, I still had the energy and the motivation to worry about stuff like that. It's what I did best and I truly loved it, but, like with everything else, I took it in my hands and crumbled it like a piece of paper, then threw it out onto the street. Something of that caliber can't be prepared in the span of a few days or even weeks, so I know I won't be beating myself.

          It's the same as what happened with my senior project preparation; I procrastinated, thinking the summer would be perfect to think about both of these two monumental life events, and then everything fell apart.

          It's frustrating, though, the feeling of failure nestled comfortably in my chest. It's always heartbreaking when you realize you're not as good as you used to be at the things you used to be the best at, and it's no one's fault but my own. If I were that type of person, I'd blame it on Andy for dying and wrecking my life in the process, but I love my brother too much to disrespect his memory by even allowing such a thought to cross through my mind.

          There will be a party, all right, thanks to my inability to keep my mouth shut, to Ripley's dedication to helping me when I've ruined everything and gotten myself in a pickle, and to Keane's unbelievable talent for provoking me into doing things I'll regret. See: this party; inviting him to said party; agreeing to be on Spirit Files.

          One-upping him won't be the hard part. Most people had attended his last party because they were promised a séance, which ended up not happening, and it hurt his party boy reputation. Not that I care about his reputation, of course; he doesn't care about it himself, and he doesn't care about mine, either. I'm willing to bet he'll show up because he doesn't think I can beat the lousy excuse for a party he threw, but I'm always ready to prove people wrong, especially him.

          In the middle of all the notifications coming from the massive family group chat, random emails from companies offering me birthday discounts, and mentions on social media, there's something I didn't expect to see in this day and age.

          IZZY
          Happy birthday, big sis.

          Smile a little. I promise the world is not out to get you.

          It's not what I hoped she'd say, as there's a certain bite to it she wouldn't have included had I not destroyed our relationship, and I hate being told to smile—something she knows. It's still more than I expected from her, especially following our small yet explosive argument at Keane's party and the way we haven't spoken since, but, at this point, I'll take what I can get. Paige de Haan doesn't settle for mediocrity, but Izzy is a sore spot for me.

          She's the only sibling I have left. The same applies to her. One would expect us to be kinder to each other, to be more forgiving, but there's never a moment when we're not at each other's throats or when we're not trapping ourselves in a cold war of passive-aggression.

          I miss her, along with how things used to be before our worlds were pulled out of their axis, but I've made my bed and I need to remember that. It's better to get acquainted with this new reality and adapt to it instead of longing for something I can't have.

          I try to convince myself it's good that at least she's not trashing me on social media for all her followers to see, but I'm also aware there are strangers online forming their opinions about me and my family and how we're grieving. I could never be a celebrity, even a minor one like she is, and that's without mentioning the ice hockey fans. Though Andy never got to play, the Internet had its eye on him since before he got signed, so he had his fair share of fans.

          Ripley tells me to not read the comments. I try to—really, I do—but it's easier said than done. It should be easy to avoid something I know will only ruin my day and make me feel horrible about myself and my life, but I'm attracted to train wrecks. I thrive in my own misery. I read the vile comments people make about my family and about me, scrolling through them for hours on end, and it takes me three times as long to recover from their impact.

          I could shatter myself into a million pieces for people and it would still not be enough. I still wouldn't be sad enough, serious enough, human enough, and it's exhausting trying to please thousands of people who are constantly expecting me to fail. They do it to my parents and, to a larger extent, to Izzy. I want to protect her from those vultures, take her under my wing and shield her from the blows, but she doesn't want me to. She never wants me around anymore.

          It's ironic, isn't it? When it's the same thing I've done to my own family and friends?

          I chew on my bottom lip, fingers hovering above my screen. She'll be expecting me to deliver a snarky, mean comment in response to her message, and I know everything I say will be misinterpreted as a jab even without it being one.

PAIGE
Thank you ♥

Will I see you at the party later today?

          IZZY
          Can I vlog it?

          Ideally, no. I don't think anything good will come out of it, especially when we're already being criticized for daring to move on with our lives following Andy's death, and I'm terrified of what people will say regarding a party. That's not the behavior of a grieving sister; some people will commend her for being able to go out and do something that makes her happy to distract herself from the horrors, but not everyone is that kind. Especially when there's some anonymity granted by technology.

          It's always easy to be cruel when you're hiding behind a screen and a keyboard. It's even easier to forget there's a human being with a shattered heart reading what you're telling them.

PAIGE
If you want.

          IZZY
          I don't.

          I'll be there.

          In spite of myself, that brightens my day, a lot more than she imagines. A lot more than she probably cares, too, so I don't tell her that. I should, but I don't; I'm already the villain in every version of the story for her and I've slowly come to terms with that.

          That's the truth for all of us. We're all someone's villain, and we have our own, too, but there's also the other side of the coin. There are heroes.

          No one tells you what to do when your hero and your villain are the same person. No one bothers to tell you how to deal with the heartache that realization leaves behind. You try to talk about it, only to be met with remarks about how they'd warned you about your reputation, that you've done this to yourself, and it's no surprise things got mixed up along the way.

          It breaks me into even smaller pieces to know this is where we ended up, but this is my fault. I did this to her, I raised her, raised this new version of her, and the shift in our dynamic is here to stay. To her, everything is my fault and I've ruined it all. Jeff told me so himself, that I buried myself so deep, all the way up to my neck, and ignored every hand people reached out to pull me out, and I had it all coming. I severed the ties, made everyone my enemy.

          No wonder no one can stand me, but wasn't this what I wanted? Don't I always get everything I want?

          No. No, I don't. I want Andy back and I can't have that.

          Everything I touch dies.

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          I'm not asking for much tonight.

          All I want is for the party to go on without a hitch, without people getting into fistfights or stealing my thunder by hard launching a relationship immediately following said fistfight. I don't want keg stunts, people throwing up into the house plants in the frat party, or to be the one cleaning up glitter off the floor. It's hard enough to get it out of my hair, let alone the floor; it gets into every tiny corner, especially between the pillows on the couches, and it's hell.

          I'd also like for Izzy and I to get along, just for tonight, but I'm not sure how we'll manage that considering I constantly feel like I'm standing in the middle of the battlefield when it comes to her. Walking on eggshells around people is not something I'm familiar with, although it's all they do around me lately, so I have a faint idea of how annoying and overbearing Izzy has been finding me. Even on my birthday, even after begging the universe to let me live in peace for twenty-four hours, I'm finding ways to ruin it all for me.

          "Paige, seriously, if you don't back off, I'm leaving," Izzy threatens. There's a red cup on her hand, but I watched her pour the drink. It's an innocent mix of Sprite and Diet Coke, Brie's signature party cocktail, and I have no clue where Izzy got the idea from. "I'm fine. I'm just trying to enjoy a party and I can't do that with you breathing down my neck every five seconds. Why don't you go have fun? It's your birthday and you're acting like an old hag."

          "I'm not an old hag," I protest, fingers clenched around my own cup, filled with the exact same mix of drinks. Brie Sheridan, I raise my glass to you over this strange combination that somehow works. "I'm twenty-one."

          Her eyes narrow. A few feet away, the group of girls that follows her around is huddled together, glancing at us and whispering like they're still in high school. I try to cut them some slack, reminding myself they are fresh out of high school and think everything is the same, but I have zero patience for mean girl behavior. If they want to behave like bullies, they can do that anywhere but my birthday party.

          It's not lost on me that this is how other people—especially other girls—saw me until not that long ago. I didn't care about the false narrative they'd created about me, as I've always liked to keep my inner circle small, reserving those spots for people I trust instead of temporary friends, relationships forged out of convenience and because we see each other every day. It made me appear unapproachable and arrogant; although valid and occasionally true, it still felt unfair.

          I know people are scared of me—they still are, even after my period of exile and isolation, but it's for a different reason. Now I'm glad they mostly leave me alone, but I wish they did it because it was easier to aspire to be me, strong and self-assured, than because they don't know how to handle me, how to talk to me. I'm still me, still a normal person, and I deserve to be treated as a human being as opposed to a zoo attraction.

          "Act like it, then," Izzy insists. She flips her hair back over her shoulder, a gesture reminiscent of how I do it. She looks so much like me it freaks me out; she's just shorter and has rounder features, along with the dark hair and the blue eyes. "Go make out with someone. Get laid. Do something that's not impossibly boring." She looks at me up and down, lips twisted into a scowl. "Maybe go shopping after. Your wardrobe is in desperate need of an overhaul."

          There's nothing wrong with what I'm wearing. She knows it, as she kept begging me to let her borrow this particular dress—it's a sequined black Ralph Lauren dress that I had tailored and shortened. Coupled with my Miu Miu heels, my legs look perfect, a mile long.

          "I'm not trying to pick a fight with you, Izzy, I swear."

          She rolls her eyes, lined with Kohl. "I wish you would be picking a fight with me. At least you'd be doing something with your life."

          Defeated, I decide to leave her be. Past me would never let her talk to me that way—I would start a fight with her, no questions asked—but I'm trying my best to remain calm. I can survive tonight. It's just a stupid party.

          Needless to say, I'm not in a party mood, so I'm suffering through the debilitating effects of cognitive dissonance. I hate everything about this party, from how basic it is to how it's being held in the frat house, and I never thought I'd find myself in this situation—counting down the minutes until I can call it a night so I'm allowed to retreat into my room again.

          Partying, smiling, and laughing feels wrong, like the real bitch that is guilt during a period of grieving. Ripley helped me spread the word about Paige's Birthday Bash (as in, she did the whole thing; my name is just there), pointing out that being surrounded by happy people could help me by osmosis. Although I'm thankful for all she's been doing, I haven't had the heart to tell her it's not working, but I think she might have seen it coming.

          It's not normal for me to be acting like a party pooper at a party, let alone my own birthday party, and, even though I hate it when people use the 'but Andy wouldn't have wanted you to feel this way' argument, I know it's true. Even if he was alive, he wouldn't be here because of his hockey career, so I don't have to imagine the look on his face if he could see me right now, about to burst into tears simply because someone brushed against my shoulder or gave me a tight hug.

          His hugs were the best, capable of arranging my bones in and out of place. I'd kill for one more hug, one more conversation, one more moment with him. That would be the greatest gift of all.

          It's how I find myself drunkenly pouring my heart out to someone I found outside, sniffling and weeping on a concrete bench. I give myself permission to cry it out for once, the combined effects of every bump in the road from the past couple of months finally crashing against my skull, and the person sits there and listens. They even get me a sealed bottle of water, opening it in front of me so I can hear the click of the cap.

          "And I'm just fucking furious at myself, you know?" I blabber, leaning forward to set my elbow on my knee. "I have all these things to do, all these things to be happy about, and I feel like shit all the time. I feel miserable. People tell me they're miserable around me." A bitter laugh escapes from my throat. "Like, what am I supposed to do with that?"

          "That feels out of context," they say. A cold breeze whooshes around us and, when I shudder and scoot closer to them for warmth, something brushes over my shoulders.

          It's a jacket. Someone is legitimately wrapping their jacket around my shoulders. What a moment.

          "It is, but it doesn't matter." I sip my water. "It just sucks. I'm sitting here, turning twenty-one, and I'm surrounded by people who couldn't care less about me, but part of me is desperate to go back inside and prove to them I can still be the life of the party. I can still be the version of me they liked. I want to believe I can do that, but what if I go there and I can't? What if this is all I'm destined to be—a disappointment?"

          "You're not a disappointment."

          "No, I am. All my life, I was always what people wanted me to be. I was always the person they wanted to be. Now that all of that was tossed out of the window, what am I supposed to do? I don't know how to live without the applause and the admiration."

          "Paige," they sigh. My hand lolls to the side until it's resting on their shoulder, then their chest. The scent of their cologne feels oddly familiar, but what trips me out the most is the heartbeat.

          I'd recognize it anywhere.

          It's probably why I don't move, even though I should.

          "Everyone hates me now," I continue. "My sister hates me. You hate me."

          "Izzy doesn't hate you."

          I raise my head just enough to get a good look at him. He's so pretty, especially under the moonlight. "What about you?"

          He stays pensive, fingers laced between his knees, then leans his cheek against the top of my head. My heart does a somersault.

         "No, Paige," Keane mutters. "I could never hate you."

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it's funny because i could never hate paige either

ghost hunting bznss next chapter