Blake wasn't waiting for Dakota by my locker on Monday. If he broke up with her over the weekend, her perfectly applied makeup gave nothing away. She strutted around like usual, the head hen with her flock of dumb chickens following her everywhere she went.

I kept my head down at lunch, listening to Vanessa and Kayla argue over which Star Wars movie was the worst. Darren warned me at the beginning it was best not to add my opinion to the conversation. "This is going to get heated," he whispered. "And besides, they're both wrong, but don't tell them that."

Even if I'd cared to toss in my opinion, I was focused on a short, short time ago in a pizzeria one point six miles away. My conversation with Blake played over and over as my current self-destructive loop. The only thing I wanted to do was make it through the day without having to deal with him.

I would have made it too, if it wasn't for that meddling kid...

Kayla left for work as soon as the final bell rang. I finished my English assignment in the library and then headed home via the treacherous streets of Dorn. At any moment, I expected to be accosted by a street herbalist trying to slather me in essential oils samples. I made my way from campus, jacket collar pulled up around my cheeks even though it was nearly seventy degrees.

Five blocks from my house, it was a twelve-year-old who took me down. Shelby. She broke away from a pack of adolescent Populars-in-training, crossed the street, and attempted to greet me with pleasantries and eye contact. It didn't turn out so well for her.

"Hello? Mazie, didn't you hear me? I asked how you're doing."

I'd kept walking up to this point but resisting Shelby was an exercise in futility. "Hello, Shelby. My day was a Monday. How was yours?"

"You sound like someone's robot maid who doesn't realize she's hilarious."

"A robot isn't a she."

"See? There you go. You're funny, Mazie." She danced around me like a graceful robot ballerina. "I'm going to be a robot for Halloween. You should be too. We can be twins."

Hard pass. "Um... maybe?"

"So, you're coming, right?"

"To what? Halloween?"

"No, I mean tonight. To see my dance studio."

"Oh, I don't know..."

"Because Blake told me you were interested." She stopped dancing and began hopping up and down instead. I followed her movement until my neck began to ache."

"I just wanted to know what it was like in case I decide to take a class."

"That's why you should come. Check it out. It's the best!" One more hop and then she grabbed onto my shoulders. "Please? It would be so fun! You have to come. We'll drive you and everything."

"Shelby, I can't really dance."

"Duh! That's why you go to a dance school. To learn how to dance!" A car pulled up down the road and beeped. "That's our ride. Come on."

She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crosswalk. "I'll even let you sit in the front seat."

She opened the passenger side door and I braced myself to have to explain my presence to Shelby's mom. Shelby pushed me in, where I found myself face to face with someone even more terrifying: Blake.

"Oh my God, are you kidding me?"

Blake snorted. "Hello to you too. So happy we've moved beyond the awkward stage."

Shelby bounded into the backseat. "Blake always drives me to dance classes on Mondays, except during Basketball season. But it's football season right now and our parents won't let him play football because they're afraid he'll get a concussion."

"No, I don't play football because I don't like playing football. Stop bullshitting, Shelby."

"I'm going to tell mom you swore at me."

"I'm going to tell mom you're making shit up again."

"I'm going to tell mom how glad I am that I'm an only child." I buckled my seatbelt and leaned against the car door, as far from Blake as I could get. "Isn't the point of you driving your sister to dance lessons that the car actually moves towards where it's supposed to go, or are the two of you going to sit here fighting while your car pollutes the air?"

Shelby giggled. "I like her. She's way funnier than Fakota."

"I told you not to call her that."

Now it was my turn to laugh, which only encouraged Shelby. "Get it? Dakota, Fake-ota. Because the only thing real about her is her ability to make people miserable."

I had to admit, this meddling kid was growing on me.

Blake put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. The twenty-minute car ride mainly consisted of Shelby signing along to the top 40 station while Blake glared at the road ahead. I twisted my fingers around each other and bit the inside of my cheek. It had been a mistake to laugh at Shelby's Dakota pun. Expressing any sort of disloyalty towards the Popular Queen was bound to be considered treasonous. As soon as Blake told Dakota about this incident, I would be thrown in a dungeon and starved while Dorn High's royalty decided my fate.

"Why are you doing that?"

It took me a second to realize Blake was speaking to me. He'd said nothing almost the entire car ride to Silverdale. "I'm.. I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"For laughing at Fakota. That wasn't really nice."

Blake sighed, steering the car into the parking lot of Little Dancers, Big Dreams Studio. "I meant, why are you wringing your hands together like you're waiting to open a college acceptance letter. Ans no, it's not nice, even though it's also the truth. Dakota isn't comfortable with herself, so she hides behind a façade. It's not about the makeup or hair or tanning bed addiction. None of that matters, really."

"The last one might if she develops melanoma."

"The point I was trying to make..." He pulled into a parking space and shut off the car. Shelby burst out the door and up to the front of the studio before he could finish his sentence. He turned towards me, left arm draped over the steering wheel. "...is that her problem isn't that she's fake, it's why she's fake. You aren't the only one who struggles with herself, Mazie."

I blinked. "How do you know I struggle with myself. I happen to love me very much."

"You do, huh?"

"Yep. Poster girl for self-confidence. That's why I'm absolutely not on the verge of a panic attack right now."

He leaned in closer. I held my breath, not wanting to take in his woodsy aroma. Jack had no scent, but Blake got to smell like cedar trees. It wasn't fair. "Do I make you that nervous?"

"Everyone makes me that nervous, so don't think you're special."

He opened his door. "Shelby's waiting for you. She likes you for some reason, so try to rein in the weird around her."

He slammed his door shut before I could come up with a retort. I spent the next ten minutes on a Shelby-led tour of the dance studio, complete with an introduction to her fellow dance students, and to Miss Barklay, the head dance instructor. It was about a dozen more people than I wanted to have to acknowledge, but for Shelby's sake, I did my best to check my social anxiety.

Once that was done, Shelby disappeared into the changing room, which left me to wander aimlessly around the lobby. Or not quite aimlessly. Blake sat in a chair in one corner, scrolling through his phone while I avoided his space. Fast-paced music floated in from the studio. Class must have begun.

"You could go in and watch, you know."

I started at the sound of his voice. "Oh, no, that's okay." Going in meant people would see me. They might try to get me to dance and to get out of it, I'd have to pretend to trip, leading me to a nasty pretend sprained ankle. I wasn't in the mood for fakery. What would Shelby nickname me then? Fakzie?

Blake shrugged. You came all this way to sit out in the lobby? I thought you were interested in taking lessons here." He put his phone down and cocked his head to the side as he stared at me. "Or did you have some other reason I should know about?"

There was my window. This could be the moment when I fessed up, told Blake the truth. "Your ghost twin lives in my house, I have a huge crush on him, and he knows how to tap dance because he's you and you're him... somehow."

I didn't say any of that because none of that fell in the category of reining in Mazie's weird. "I'm just... this is hard for me, okay? I don't do new people and new situations well. If you want to think I'm strange because of it, fine. But I'm not ready to go in there and have a bunch of strangers stare at me and ask me dance related questions when I have no idea how to answer them because I know nothing about dance. Are you happy?"

The Blake/Jack crooked smile came out in full force. I turned away from its welcome brilliance. A moment later, a familiar tap tappity tap reverberated over the floor. I turned back to him and it was all I could do not to sob. Blake, haloed by a harsh western sunlight streaming through the bay window, was tapdancing. For me.

He looked like Jack. He felt like Jack, doing a Jack-like thing. If I didn't hate myself already, I did at that moment when I thought about reaching out and touching him. It would be like touching Jack, only real and disastrous and disastrously real.

"What is it?" Blake asked as he turned around, then extended his hand in my direction. "Stop thinking and come here. I'll teach you."

"No!" I already had a teacher, not that I could tell him that.

He tapped his way over to me. "Just a few of the basics. Then maybe you won't feel so awkward next time you come here."

There would never be a next time. "I don't know."

"Yes, you do. You want this." He grabbed my hand and both of us stopped breathing.

Electricity snaked its way between our palms.

When I finally remembered to breathe, Blake was no longer dancing. He stood next to me, hand still clasped to mine. "I've wanted to hold your hand for so long. Haven't I?"

I swallowed. Jack would be so upset if he knew this was happening. Why couldn't Blake be the obnoxious ghost in my attic and Jake be the real, kind, loving living boy? "Did you... have you broken up with Dakota?"

If anything was going to kill the mood it was that question. Blake tugged his hand away from mine. Good job, Mazie.

"I haven't had the time."

"How long does it take to dump someone?"

"I don't know Mazie, how long did it take all the times you've been dumped? It's not like I'm one of those assholes who breaks up with someone over a text message."

He seemed exactly like the type of guy who would do that. "No, of course not."

"Besides, what business is it of yours?"

"None. As long as you refrain from trying to touch me."

He looked down at his hand as though it was the culprit in all of this. "I don't know why I did that."

I knew why. Jack wanted to and so he wanted to. Blake on his own didn't even know if he should break up with the despicable person who made him miserable. "Let's never speak of this again. And I'm sorry I brought up Dakota. If you're happy with her, then that's all that matters."

He looked up from his hand. The emotion in his face was so Jack-like, my eyes began to water. "I'm not happy with her. But it's not just her. It's... everything. I've never been this way before. I shouldn't be confiding in you of all people, but it's like you're the only one who I can say any of this to. And that's what bothers me more than anything. I don't even know you."

His phone beeped and he took it out of his pocket. "It's Dakota." He turned around, exited the building, and sat in his car texting her until Shelby's class ended.

When Shelby came out of the changing room, she looked flushed and happy. "I thought you might choose to hang with my brother instead of watching the class... and I was right." She giggled. "Do you like him? Please say you do. I want you to be his girlfriend, not Fakota."

I frowned. "Don't fill your head with fantasies, kid. It's not going to happen."

She shrugged. "Never say never. He talks about you more than her. Even in his sleep."

"He what? Are you making that up?"

"Nope. Swear to God. A couple nights ago I got up to go the bathroom and when I passed his room he said 'Mazie, I can be in this part of the hallway now.' Which is weird, but whatever. Did you guys just kiss?"

"What? No!" So, this was a new development. Blake dreaming something that happened to Jack. Man, if the plot got any thicker, I'd have to carve my way through the rest of this mystery with one of Mazzeria's pizza slicers.

"You will eventually. Where is he?"

"He's in his car texting his still not broken up with girlfriend."

"Aww." She hung her head and I put a tentative arm around her shoulders.

"Sorry, Shelby, but I'm not even friends with your brother, much less the object of his desires. We move in two very different circles at school."

"I don't care what you say, I can tell. There's something about you that makes him a nicer person."

"I'm not trying to make him anything."

We walked out to the car. Blake started up the engine as soon as we climbed inside and we sped away. He looked like he couldn't wait to get rid of me, but Shelby had other ideas.

"Remember, you're dropping me off at Tiana's house on the way home so we can work on our science project. Then you and Mazie can go on your date."

"Jesus, what is wrong with you?" Blake looked like he wanted to spit. "I already have a girlfriend. You think I need another one?"

"I think you want another one." She put her earbuds on and tuned us out from that point on.

We didn't go on that date Shelby had imagined for us, not unless you count as a date the ten minutes it took for us to drive from Tiana's house to mine. And not unless a date could be defined as an alarming interaction between two people and possibly a ghost.

The alarm bells began ringing as soon as Blake pulled into my driveway. I meant that literally. Blake's phone chimed. My eye caught his screen before he swiped the alarm off. Pills.

"What? I'm on meds, just like half the planet. My phone reminds me, so I take them at the same time every—what the hell?"

I turned to see what had caught his attention and froze. Jack stood in the attic window staring down at us. His expression matched Blake's. Shock and horror. My God, could Blake see him?

"Damn, this is where you live? It's a real shithole."

That was a no then. I grabbed my backpack from the backseat. "Not all of us can live in million-dollar Architectural Digest houses, Blake."

"I've been here before."

"You have?" I shifted in the bucket seat, ready to make a run for it. "Not since I've lived here."

"Your bedroom is blue. Like the color they paint a baby's room."

My wrists started to tingle. First sign of an impending panic attack. "How do you know that?"

His staring contest with my shithole house finally ended and he turned his attention to me again. "I don't know what's happening."

His eyes brimmed with tears. I don't know what's happening. The first words Jack spoke to me.

"You and me both."

He reached for my hand but ended up brushing the back of my jacket as I fled the car. From there, I ran up the driveway, into my house and up the stairs. Jack waited for me outside my door. "That's him, isn't it. It was hard to see from that angle, but I could feel... That was me in the car."

Tears slid down my cheeks.

"He... I made you cry."

I shook my head. "I need you to do something for me."

"What? Anything."

"I need another tapdancing lesson."