Jack refused to admit defeat.

"This isn't going to work," I told him as he went over the time step for the dozenth time that morning.

"You're already better than you were when I gave you your first lesson. If you keep practicing, you'll get it, Mazie. I promise."

"No, I don't mean the dancing. Well, okay, I do mean the dancing. I'm not cut out to move my feet in coordinated patterns for extended periods of time. But I also mean..."

I sat on my bed, and with a groan, pulled off the tap shoes my very confused mother had bought for me at the mall last weekend. She'd tried to get me to take dance classes when I was younger, only to be met with the full weight of Mazie Rivera's panic-stricken resistance. By the time I was six, she'd given up, which made my newfound interest perplexing. "It's about that boy who came to our opening, isn't it?" She'd asked on the drive back from the mall. "Didn't you say his sister is a dancer?"

"Nope. Not about him." Pretty much.

She nodded and let the subject drop, but the smile playing on her lips didn't convince me I'd convinced her.

Now, in my room, several dance lessons in, I was beginning to think my mom had wasted her money, but that was beside the point.

"Jack, things with real life you—with Blake—they're weird. I don't want to have anything to do with him. But because we're trying to figure out why you exist and he's part of that equation—a big part—I keep getting caught up in his drama. And Dakota's."

Jack glided forward until he stood next to me. "I don't want you to be involved with him anymore than you do, trust me."

"But it just feels inevitable at this point. I wanted to tell you and Kayla this last week, except then Kayla found out Zeke woke up from his coma and that news threw everything off. I haven't known how to say it."

We both knew I was making up excuses to soften the blow.

"Just say it, Mazie. I can take it."

I stood up so I'd be at eye level with him. The worst that could happen is that the news would upset him so much, he'd buzz away and never come back and I'd have to go through the rest of my days knowing I'd obliterated a benevolent spirit due to my own selfishness.

"I don't want to solve this mystery anymore, not if it means having to get closer to Blake. He makes me feel confused, and I don't want to be confused. I just want to spend time with you and not worry about what happens next."

Silence spread through the room, blanketing us an awkward tension. Finally, Jack nodded. "Okay."

"Okay? That's it? You're okay with this?"

"I mean, maybe it wouldn't make a difference anyways. Maybe if we figure it out, I'll still always be trapped here, or you'll grow old and move away and die and I'll still be a sixteen-year-old whatever I am, until one day I'll disappear and that will be that."

My shoulders hunched forward. "God, that's depressing."

"It could be inevitable, though. Or..." He rose a few inches off the floor. "Maybe we have to face the fact that there's a reason you and only you can see me and it's because you're the only one who can figure out what's going on. Maybe you can fix me."

"Stop saying that." Jack didn't need to be fixed. He was sweet and kind and perfect.

"Fix me. I mean, Blake me."

"Oh, no. No, no, no, no. I'm not a miracle worker." My palms began to sweat just thinking of it. "And if there's one thing my mom taught me right, it's that you never try to fix men. If they can't fix themselves, get the hell out of Dodge."

His crooked smile came at me in full force. "I'm talking more on a cosmic level."

"You want me to charge up some crystals and sneak them under his pillow?"

"If only it were that easy. I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do, Mazie. Just think about it. All our work towards figuring out what's going on—it might be worth it in the end."

Or maybe we'll all die anyways. I wiped my hands against my jeans.

"Have you talked to Kayla about this?" he asked.

I shook my head. "She's been so busy with school and Mazzeria."

"Ask her what she thinks. She's a voice of reason."

"As compared to me, who's the voice of unreason?"

He flittered up towards the ceiling. "Aren't you going to be late for school?"

#

I nearly was late, walking into homeroom just as the bell rang. The room seemed lighter, freer. Queen-less. "Where's Dakota?" I whispered to Darren.

"I don't know. Re-welding the iron throne so she can take her rightful place?"

"She'd totally outsource that sort of work. It's beneath her."

He shrugged. "You know who is back today? Ethan."

"Really? I wonder how his brother is doing."

"Better, I guess. That's what Kayla said. He was released from the hospital yesterday, but he's gotta do physical therapy."

I tapped my pencil against my desk. "So why is Ethan even here? I thought he was only doing public school because his parents were over in Seattle with Zeke all the time."

"You've reached the limits of my knowledge of the situation," Darren said. "That's already more than I wanted to know about those two, but Kayla wouldn't shut up. It was 'Ethan this and Ethan that.' Totally nonstop." He scrunched himself down in his seat, his eyes narrowed.

"Well, they do have a history, and—wait a minute... does that bother you?"

"No!" He slid even lower. An inch more and he'd fall off his chair.

"It does!" I leaned in so no one else could hear. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. I won't even tell Kayla."

"She already knows. I wrote her a long note over the summer telling her how I felt and asking her out. She said she'd consider my proposal."

"That sounds like her."

"But it's been two months and she hasn't said a word. I'm doomed."

I studied him, trying to come up with something to say that would boost his morale. I had my own problems, though, without delving into his unrequited love and a potentially messy love triangle. "I think she's focused on her own life right now. No time for dating anyone."

"Yeah, but she dated Ethan, that ass. And she's been talking to him again."

"Not, like, to get back with him. She's taking an empathetic interest in him because his brother almost died. It doesn't mean she's into him."

"You think so?" He perked up, coming into a semi-slouched position.

"You um, you want me to talk to her?" Please say no, please say no.

"That would be great! Thanks, Mazie."

"Yeah, okay."

Pile that one onto my list of hot-button topics I needed to discuss with Kayla. Time was against me, however. We had an exam in English, and lunch provided us with no privacy. Kayla spent most of it trying to convince Vanessa to apply for a job at Mazzeria. "You have to, Vanessa. We need someone with waitressing experience for Friday and Saturday. And Mazie won't work there because she's too cool for school."

"That's not true. I won't work there because I don't want to go to jail for the rest of my life for murdering my parents. But still, I'm helping this weekend, because someone begged me to."

Kayla smiled. "We're short-staffed and you need to step it up. It's your family's livelihood."

"For now."

A crash ended the discussion. Like synchronized swimmers, the whole lunchroom turned in the direction of the Populars table.

"Looks like they have a table crasher," said Vanessa.

"Ethan!" Kayla hissed. "What is he up to? He should really sit with us."

I exchanged a glance with Darren, who tilted his head as if to say, "I told you so."

Ethan had not only crashed the table, but also slammed Blake's tray to the floor. A half-eaten slice of pizza balanced on the table's edge before gravity won and it slid, cheese side down, onto the bench. I expected Blake to stand up, beat his chest and then pummel Ethan, but the two sat and stared at each other instead. The Populars, minus the absent Queen Dakota, gasped and sputtered as though a beggar had just broken into their banquet hall.

The bell rang and no one moved until Mrs. Lewis came over and shoed everyone away. Ethan got up, condescending grin plastered onto his face, and left first. Spell broken, the rest of the table got up and proceeded as though nothing had happened.

In Communications class, Ethan leaned over his phone so he could guard it from my view, his focus shifted from me to his screen. He acted like a nervous bunny who didn't want to stop eating its carrot despite a fox lurking nearby. Finally, he put his phone away and turned to me.

"So, what's he told you?"

"Who? What?"

He kicked at the seat in front of him with his boot. "You know who I'm talking about. You were in lunch, weren't you?"

"Why would Blake tell me anything about anything?"

He rolled his eyes. "Come off it, Mazie."

My fingers began their tingling—the first sign that I was becoming agitated. "I don't know where you get your information from, but I barely know Blake. He's a Popular and I'm the new girl. And even if that wasn't the case, what do you think he'd be telling me anyways, huh? Why are you even remotely interested in Blake?"

The answer came not from Ethan but from a memory: I don't care, you were there too. This is not all on me. This had to have something to do with Zeke's accident. But the dots still weren't quite connecting. I needed him to feed me something more.

Maybe Jack was right. Maybe it was inevitable that I figure all of this out. I, Mazie Rivera, queen of nothing but anxiety, was inadvertently thrust into the middle of this, and I couldn't stop it. Not until I'd solved it.

Ethan huffed and puffed for a minute. "I'm not interested in Blake. Look, let me give you a piece of advice about that guy."

"He's an asshole. Stay away from him. Yeah, I've heard."

"Okay, but why? Don't you want to know why he's an asshole?"

"Are you going to tell me?"

"He's a liar."

I thought about how Blake had lied to Dakota re: me having a crush on him. "I'm already aware. You got anything else?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Do not forget I told you this. You've been warned. Blake Sumner is dangerous. Swim with him at your own peril."

With that, he slipped out of his desked and left Communications before the class had even begun. He didn't come back, but his words... they haunted me like a tapdancing ghost in my attic.