"Mixed CD's?"

Arielle looked at the leather bag at her feet, filled with snacks and brochures and maps—and yes, the CD's that she'd discovered in the box of Jade's stuff. "Check."

"And... mix-tapes, in case the CD player breaks like last time?" Stella sneered.

Arielle hit her shoulder. "Also check. Are you sure you want to drive first? It's a ways out to Philly, I'm fine with starting." She buckled her passenger seat-belt, taking a large gulp of the lingering stuffy ashtray odor. She didn't smoke—but her dad did, and he often took her car to work to toy with it.

Stella adjusted the mirrors, reclined the chair, fastened her own belt. "I got it. To be honest... Mom and I had another big fight and driving... keeps my mind occupied. You can be the DJ." She turned to Arielle and flashed her signature grin; wide, toothy, impossible to not find adorable. "Are you excited?"

Arielle gaped out the front dash, unsure what to respond. Was she excited? Stella wasn't—she only asked because she wanted to get this over with. Explore places that were supposedly full of specters and that would likely rouse her powers and somehow prove to her mom that she did have the medium gene? It didn't take a genius to know Stella dreaded this. But she'd organized it for Jade, and stubborn as she was, she'd see it through.

A true Capricorn.

"Yeah. I'm nervous, too, I won't lie. These tours sound credible as fuck, but... yeah." Arielle leaned into the seat, trying to get comfortable in the squeaky, spongy cushions.

Stella started the car, and they took off. "Eastern State Penitentiary, here we come!"

The name alone evoked recollections of episodes of Ghost Adventures that Jade had made the girls suffer through, a few months prior, when they first spoke of this trip. Jade's chants of "Zak went here!" and "We have to say the same shit he said!" echoed in Arielle's ears as they left behind their busy Columbus suburb and rolled onward to a new adventure.

"Did you download all the apps I put on the list?" Stella's gaze again found the tattered bag at Arielle's feet before returning to the road. "Some of them seemed shitty, but they were the best I could find considering how broke we are."

Fumbling with the first CD—The Backstreet Boys, because why not?—Arielle nodded. "I tested a few of them out, for the hell of it. They're serious garbage, but the voice recorder one is genuine enough, from the reviews I read. The scanner one is fifty-fifty. We might catch something but... we'll do better with our phone-cameras."

Knock-offs. Cheap downloads from play-stores, whatever scrounged up a halfway decent review on the internet. Stella had spent several hours researching, reading through comments and articles, and Arielle experimented.

Stella groaned. "Oh, and don't make fun of me, but I brought my big-girl camera, too. That might up our chances. I mean, we won't get anything, because ghosts aren't real, and when you die, you don't dawdle in the same spot to haunt people, no matter what you and Jade and Mom say—"

"—don't throw me in the mix! I don't believe in any of that crap either!" Arielle's hands flew up. "Drive, would you? We'll see what we get, and we'll deal with it, yeah?"

"As long as you love me" came on, and the girls set aside their serious conversation to sing at the top of their lungs, windows rolled down for all in the vicinity to hear. They sang off-key, screeching and ridiculous, garnering giggles from people using crosswalks as they stopped at red-lights. But they didn't care—they were taking a road-trip for the ages, giving homage to a lost loved one, and hopefully... getting closure. So they sang, and sang, and sang some more.

Stella would want to rush through each location, mock the ghost tours, and chortle at the artifacts in each museum. But that stuff fascinated Jade. Gloomy, dank cells with blood on the walls that told stories of prisoners who died from riots or outbreaks of viruses that claimed the lives of many. Tales of demonic children haunting bedrooms and lakes and bars, or lost souls wailing their woes, their spooky voices flitting down hallways.

Deep down, beneath her mild skepticism... Arielle wished to be captivated by it all, too. She'd never admit it out loud—especially to Stella, skeptic extraordinaire, despite her mother's occult origins—but she believed in... something. Ghosts? Maybe. Heaven and Hell? No. But the afterlife? Yes. She was obsessed with wanting to know what happened after death. She yearned to find her mother, her brother, her former best friend, embrace them, and ask them where they were. What they were doing. Why did they die?

Was there some greater purpose, some higher being regulating human lives? She wasn't religious, and neither was Jade—behind her Christian parents' backs, that was—and Stella claimed to be agnostic, though she wouldn't accept her mother's paranormal powers. Yet, setting her atheism aside... something itched under Arielle's skin whenever Jade mentioned Zak Bagans and his investigations. Whenever they watched The X-Files or Supernatural, or whenever they played with that damned Ouija board... but she couldn't tell Stella. She couldn't divulge to her reluctant friend that she might have been okay with all the sinister shit Jade enjoyed.

Oh sure, Arielle also made fun of those ghost-shows and meant it. The excessive screams and the "Fuck, what was that?" jumpiness annoyed her; but some of it had to be true. Some of it... had to come from somewhere, right?

"So... say we capture something," said Stella after a few songs had passed and they'd deserted their unloved town. She had that peeved look about her; chocolate gaze narrowed, lips thinned, fighting the urge to wrinkle her nose, gripping the steering wheel as if wanting to choke it. "What do we do? Keep the evidence and pretend it doesn't exist? Sell it? Start our own TV program about it and become famous? Ugh, Jade would have loved that."

"Yeah, she would have." Arielle imagined Jade dialing numbers on her phone, desperate to reach professional paranormal investigators to give her information and proof for a price. To demand to be featured on a show, though preferably one of those she watched. "She'd fawn over Zak and squeal and squeak and rupture our eardrums. Poor Trevor," she guffawed, "I wonder how he dealt with her."

His name tugged at her heartstrings. Trevor, Jade's boyfriend. How had he never been irritated by her constant squirming about famous television show hosts and her wishes to meet them? How had he not been exhausted by the never-ending list of her fandoms and the autographs she'd been planning to line up for at all the conventions she planned to attend? Such a patient, well-raised kid, he was; the opposite of Jade. He was quiet, discreet, obedient. Athletic, but not a jock, sweet, but not a pushover.

Their parents had accepted the match, and though Jade complained about him regularly, she did care for him.

"He keeps me level-headed," she'd say, whenever Arielle brought up how often they spent time apart. And... to think of it now, she did bring it up a lot. Always wondered what would unite two completely different people like that. She was more like Jade, minus the luxurious tastes. She stayed up late with Jade talking about death and spirits and local haunts they should have checked out—

"He loved her." Stella pressed the gas pedal as they reached the foggy and near-deserted freeway. "Were you aware she coerced him into sneaking out to hang with her at night?"

Brows scrunching, Arielle whipped to her left and glared at Stella. "No way. Trevor? He freaked out if he stayed out past ten! Even in college!"

Pleased she knew something Arielle didn't, Stella smirked. "Jade told me because her parents would never interrogate me for her whereabouts, since they hate my guts. But she admitted it... several times a month, she'd convince him to go out and... hunt."

"Hunt... as in ghost hunt?" The tug in Arielle's heart turned painful. "She'd take him to investigate shit?"

"That's what she said. Claimed she craved to use him like Zak uses that one dude in Ghost Adventures... Adam? Andrew?"

"Aaron," Arielle replied, dragging her gaze back to the freeway ahead. She suppressed a shiver, rubbed her upper arms, and swallowed, doing her best to hide her disappointment. "I... I had no idea."

She was supposed to investigate ghosts with me... and refused to sneak out when I asked her.

She couldn't inform Stella they'd spoken of this many times. That they'd discussed breaking out from their houses and whisking off to interrogate ghosts. A multitude of abandoned barns and cabins sprawled about their region, and more than once they'd plotted on how to investigate them... but Mrs. McNeely always interfered, always found out. Yet somehow, Jade snuck out with Trevor?

"I'm done indulging your stupid obsession with ghosts, Jade! If you must watch that show, fine. But you're not rushing off with Arielle to capture things on camera that can be explained with science! You will not embarrass us like that, never!"

Jade, cunning as ever, disobeyed, broke rules, acted reckless. And apparently she did so with Trevor, her super serious and never-acting-out boyfriend.

Not with me, her best friend. Rude.

"Okay, so we agree if she were here and we caught something, Jade would go nuts. But... what would you do, Ari? You're... on the fence about this stuff." Stella's voice was profound, insistent—she meant business and wanted the truth. "You criticize the shows, but... you are intrigued by these phantom and death things, aren't you?"

Yes.

Arielle wanted to confess to it, but that signified coming to terms with it, accepting it as her biggest obsession, her worst fear. Death, and the desire to know what transpired after it. Jade had been aware of this—she read Arielle like an open picture-book. But Stella... lived in another world. In a place where she'd float through life without acknowledging her heritage and continue to convince everyone she'd never be a medium, never agree that spirits lurked in the darkness, never allow her abilities to grow.

"Well... I mean, I'm intrigued. Not on Jade's level, but... we have to try our hardest, right? That's what this adventure was for. She wanted to prove you wrong and wanted to pull me to the dark side; to the believer's side." Arielle shifted in her spot, memories washing over her like salty tidal waves. Like when she'd admitted to Jade how people around her seemed to die mysteriously, and how she feared what that meant, how she feared letting anyone get too close to her because of it.

She'd never given those details to Stella, because Stella's mom would find out and make it her goal to talk to Arielle and help her get closure. But the trip, the ghost-hunting, the honoring Jade's memory—that was her closure.

Then she recalled Jade's words that same night—the Ouija board night—and gritted her teeth to not convulse in her seat and worry Stella. She hadn't told Stella about the notes in the bottom of the box; those mentioning the coma and the off-putting encounter with a being named Penny.

Arielle's eyes widened as Stella switched lanes.

Wait. Penny... wasn't that also the name on the Ouija board, in our Freshman year?

She pictured Jade's handwriting and closed her eyes. Why did she only make the connection now, a month after Jade's death? Several years after that horrid evening of summoning ghosts and deciding to never come near a Ouija board again?

"Ari?" Stella tapped her shoulder. "Girl, you there? I feel like you weren't done with your sentence... you went off to la-la land."

Refusing to let her anxieties plague her, she rid herself of the tremors lancing down her arms, the images flashing in her brain, the frightening coincidences she wished she hadn't noticed. "I... I wouldn't want to make my own show." She chuckled and switched the song. "As long as you love me" had been on repeat, since the shuffle feature on her old-school CD player was malfunctioning. She blew out her cheeks. "Maybe I'd give some real investigators the footage, have them decipher it. I'd rather... stay behind the scenes and not be too involved, you know?"

Stella agreed and started babbling on about the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy—but Arielle's woes and worries wouldn't dissipate.

Jade... you have all the answers, and... you took them to the grave.