I had two things to report to Kayla when I found her leaning up against her car scrolling through messages on her phone. The first was that I had to make a pitstop at home to tell Jack about Blake. Second, I needed to tell Kayla that her scowling modern homesteader ex was enrolled in our high school.

"Shit, I thought I saw him down the hall but then I couldn't find him, and I assumed I must be wrong. Why would he be here?"

"He's a half-demon sent from the hellfire to torture me until I give up the purity that is Jack to the flames of eternal damnation?"

Kayla's face froze partway between sneer and laugh. "He's not that bad."

"He's not that good either. But still, I've dealt with demons so I know what's up. He and I have made a truce, I think. Oh, and he's here because his parents don't have time to deal with him right now."

"I guess having another kid on life support sort of eats away at the clock." She motioned for me to get in the car and then she did the same. I recounted my conversation with Ethan while we drove the short distance to my house. "I'm going to go home and let Pookie out." Pookie was her mom's Goldendoodle and the unofficial forth child of the family. "See you back here in twenty."

I took the steps up to my front door at the pace of a geriatric dachshund. At school, I could hardly wait to tell Jack about the day's huge reveal but now that the moment was upon me, it would have been nice if a small earthquake happened to rumble through and delay things by an hour or decade. Jack might think I was as nuts as Kayla thought when I told her. I wasn't even smart enough to snap a picture of Blake to show to Jack, though I could probably track him down on social media later tonight. I didn't think I had the ability to explain the Blake phenomenon to him in a way that would make sense to him. It didn't even make sense to me.

No earthquake occurred. The gods did not intervene on my behalf. I closed the gap to my front door, and, taking the key from my pocket, unlocked and opened it.

"Boo!"

"Aaaah!" I jumped a foot back onto the porch.

Jack doubled over laughing. "You should see your face, Mazie!"

"Why did you do that? My heart feels like it's going to explode enough already without you deciding to act like a stereotypical ghost. And... since when can you stand in the foyer?"

"Since this morning! I can go anywhere in the living room now too!" He danced around, showing off his newfound slightly less limited freedom of movement.

"Wow, that's great, Jack."

Catching on to my lack of enthusiasm, he rejoined me near the front door. "How was your first day?"

"Predictably awful, though not in its entirety, just parts. But mainly just weird. Like weirder than realizing you have a ghost living with you weird."

"How so?"

I brought him over to the living room as though telling him what I had to tell him too close to the front door might let the weirdness spill out into the streets of Dorn, contaminating the whole town with a logic-depleting illness.

"I've got a few minutes to tell you something that you're going to think is super strange, but I swear I'm not joking or making this up. And I'm not mistaken."

He swallowed. His feet began tapping. "Of course. I'll believe whatever you say, Mazie."

I wasn't so sure, but in that moment, standing before Jack's crooked smile—the same smile Blake wore sans any of the underlying warmth, I knew I had to give it a go.

"The thing is, Jack. I met you today. You in real life."

#

I didn't understand people capable of facing change with ease. My friend Chelsea was like that. When she was the new girl in my school back in fourth grade, she'd already moved to new towns five times. By the end of the day, she knew the names of everyone in the class and had been invited to three birthday parties. It took me longer to get to know her than just that first day because I wasn't an insta-friend type of person. You have to work on me, picking away at my layers until you discover the Mazie at the center of the tootsie roll tootsie pop. It was about midway through the school year before we hit our center.

One day as we lay on the floor of Chelsea's room, walls covered with soccer posters, I asked if she'd been nervous that first day of school when everyone knew each other except for her. She looked at me like she'd never thought about it before. "Why? You were all just people. People aren't scary."

People weren't scary—they were terrifying. I had thought that then, and I thought that now. Or I would have thought it, except I was trying very hard not to. It was exhausting, imagining seeing Ethan Campbell in Communications class every day, having to sit behind tanning bed Popular Queen Dakota in homeroom for the rest of the year, having to shuffle between kind, adorable Jack, and his evil living counterpart Blake. I was terrified as soon as I thought about any of that so instead, I focused on the right corner of Jack's mouth, the side that stayed motionless while the other slid upwards into his trademark grin. Well, the one both he and Blake would have to trademark seeing as though it was the same damn grin.

Now, however, both corners of his mouth were staying put in a thin line of confusion that I was not bound to clear up for him, no matter how I tried.

"How can I be someone else?" He lifted off the ground and started air pacing between the television and the kitchen isle.

"I don't have any answers here, Jack. All I can do is tell you what I see." I tossed my book bag onto the couch. "He's you. I mean, he looks like you, he sounds exactly like how you sound. Even the way he walks is the same, but..."

"But... how is that possible?"

"There's more to it than that. You in real life? You're a total asshat."

"He's not even nice?"

"Not even remotely. You were a total dick to me when all I was trying to do was get to my locker and you were blocking it."

"Stop calling him me! I... I don't know who this Blake person is, but you have no proof that it's me! I don't want to be an asshat!"

I took a step back, surprised by the strength of his anger. He was right, though, I didn't have proof. All I ever seemed to have was circumstantial evidence. I'd make a crappy lawyer. "You're right, I'm sorry. Until we can prove otherwise, Blake is your evil clone and that's all."

He nodded, his feet fluttering down a few inches. "I don't like this development. I think you're wrong. Lots of guys might look like me. Maybe you're trying so hard to find who I am, this Blake guy melded with me in your mind."

I bit my lip. No, there was no melding going on. "Maybe."

A car beeped and I glanced out the front window. "It's Kayla. Remember, Jack, we're going to look for your house. We're still exploring every lead we get. I'm sure we'll sort this all out for you soon."

He nodded. "I'm sorry I got upset."

I'd be upset too if someone said I was the ghost of a guy like Blake Sumner. It was a ridiculous thought anyways. How could Jack be the ghost of someone who wasn't even dead? "No, you're right, Jack. I must be mistaken. Blake is alive and well. Kayla says he doesn't have any brothers but maybe he has a cousin who died who no one knows about."

Jack's face brightened. "Hey, that could be!"

"I've gotta go. I'll take pictures, see you soon!"

Leaving Jack in hover mode, his legs lodged midway into our coffee table, I headed out to Kayla's car.

"How'd he take it?" she asked as soon as I slid into the passenger's seat.

"Not well. Lots of denial."

She huffed. "That makes two of us."

"Please don't lecture me on how wrong I must be, Kayla. I already got that speech from Jack and I totally understand why. Believe me, I'd like to solve this mystery once and for all and be declared as wrong as can be. So, let's just gather the evidence and see in what non-Blake Sumner direction it takes us, okay?"

"Fine, fine." She turned the car towards downtown. We passed by Mazzeria and the other shops and restaurants of Main Street before turning again into a residential area that sat on a low bluff overlooking the bay. "There's a lot of old houses mixed with new construction in this area. Same as the neighborhood I had you check yesterday, only this one's larger. We've got prospects here."

She headed up a hill a few blocks. "That one's old and... kind of salmon."

I shook my head. The house she'd pointed to was vaguely the same color as Jack had described, but there were no houses directly surrounding it. Plus, it was on the wrong side of the street, with the hill rather than the water behind it. I took a picture anyways. "Let's keep looking."

We circled the neighborhood. I took several more pictures but none of them seemed like matches. Disappointment began to set in, but Kayla remained determined. "Let's try up this way."

She drove on, turning left at a small playground brimming with summer drunk children screaming and laughing. I gazed at their bobbing heads as they kicked their legs up high on swings and propelled themselves down slides, wondering if I'd ever been like them. Probably not. I'd always refused to set foot on a playground if there were too many other kids there. Even as a little girl, the thought of having to interact with my peers made me tremble.

Kayla's gasp brought me out of my thoughts. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"

"What?"

She pulled the car over just as I saw what she was looking at. Half a block down from the park was an old salmon home with lace curtains in its windows and a neighboring house that fit Jack's description to a tee. I craned my neck to see the view between the two homes. Sure enough, the bay appeared through the branches of evergreens.

Fingers tingling like my body wasn't sure if I was excited or about to succumb to a panic attack, I grabbed Kayla's shoulder. "That's it! These are the houses from Jack's memory."

That's when I realized Kayla wasn't staring at the salmon house or its contemporary neighbor or the view in between them. She was looking at the house across the street, a towering three story dark blue modern home with large windows and a garden that looked like it required several skilled gardeners to maintain. The front stoop was small and looked out onto a front lawn with no fence. Just like Jack had described.

"Your little ghost boyfriend has some serious explaining to do."

"Why?"

She pointed to the blue house, her hand shaking worse than my own. "Because that house? That is Blake effing Sumner's house."