Meg Cabot: Reunion

"Huh." I tried to angle an oddly shaped object into the small space allotted for it. "Angels who were trying to lift a twelve-pack of Bud."

"Here." Father Dom found a copy of the paper I'd looked at the day before, only he, unlike me, had taken the trouble to open it. He turned to the obituaries where there were photos of the deceased. "Take a look and see if they are the young people you saw."

I passed him the Gameboy. "Finish this game for me," I said, taking the paper from him.

Father Dominic looked down at the Gameboy in dismay. "Oh, my," he said. "I'm afraid I don't - "

"Just rotate the shapes to make them fit in the spaces at the bottom. The more rows you complete, the better."

"Oh," Father Dominic said. The Gameboy binged and bonged as he frantically pushed buttons. "Oh, dear. Anything more complicated than computer solitaire, and I'm afraid - "

His voice trailed off as he became absorbed in the game. Even though I was supposed to be reading the paper, I looked at him instead.

He's a sweet old guy, Father Dominic. He's usually mad at me, of course, but that doesn't mean I don't like him. I was, in fact, growing surprisingly attached to him. I'd found that I couldn't wait, for instance, to come rushing in and tell him all about those kids I'd seen at the Quick Mart. I guess that's because, after sixteen years of not being able to tell anybody about my "special" ability, I finally had someone to unload on, Father Dom having that same "special" ability - something I'd discovered my first day at the Junipero Serra Mission Academy.

Father Dominic, however, is a way better mediator than I am. Well, maybe not better. But different, certainly. See, he really feels that ghosts are best handled with gentle guidance and earnest advice - same as the living. I'm more in favor of a sort of get-to-the-point approach that tends to involve my fists.

Well, sometimes these dead folks just won't listen .

Not all of them, of course. Some of them are extremely good listeners. Like the one who lives in my bedroom, for instance.

But lately, I've been doing my best not to think about him any more than I have to.

I turned my attention to the paper Father Dom had passed me. Yep, there they were, the RLS Angels. The same kids I'd seen the day before in Jimmy's, only in their school photos they weren't dressed in their formal wear.

Father Dom was right. They were attractive. And bright. And leaders. Felicia, the youngest, had been head of the varsity cheerleading team. Mark Pulsford had been captain of the football team. Josh Saunders had been senior class president. Carrie Whitman had been last season's homecoming queen - not exactly a leadership position, but one that was elected demo-cratically enough. Four bright, attractive kids, all dead as doornails.

And up, I happened to know, to no good.

The obituaries were sad and all, but I hadn't known these people. They attended Robert Louis Stevenson High School, our school's bitterest rival. The Junipero Serra Mission Academy, which my stepbrothers and I attend, and of which Father Dom is principal, is always getting its academic and athletic butt kicked by RLS. And while I don't possess much school spirit, I've always had a thing for underdogs - which the Mission Academy, in comparison with RLS, clearly is.

So I wasn't about to get all choked up about the loss of a few RLS students. Especially not knowing what I knew.

Not that I knew so much. In fact, I didn't really know anything at all. But the night before, after coming home from "'za" with Sleepy and Dopey, Gina had succumbed to jet lag - we're three hours behind New York, so around nine o'clock, she more or less passed out on the daybed my mother had purchased for her to sleep on in my room during her stay.

I didn't exactly mind. The sun had pretty much wiped me out, so I was perfectly content to sit on my own bed, across the room from hers, and do the geometry homework I'd assured my mother I'd finished well before Gina's arrival.

It was around this time that Jesse suddenly materialized next to my bed.

"Shhh," I said to him when he started to speak, and pointed toward Gina. I'd explained to him, well in advance of her arrival, that Gina was coming all the way from New York to stay for a week, and that I'd appreciate it if he laid low during her visit.

It's not exactly a joke, having to share your room with its previous tenant - the ghost of its previous tenant, I should say, since Jesse has been dead for a century and a half or so.

On the one hand, I can totally see Jesse's side of it. It isn't his fault someone murdered him - at least, that's how I suspect he died. He - understandably, I guess - isn't too anxious to talk about it.

And I guess it also isn't his fault that, after death, instead of going off to heaven, or hell, or on to another life, or wherever it is people go after they die, he ended up sticking around in the room in which he was killed. Because in spite of what you might think, most people do not end up as ghosts. God forbid. If that were true, my social life would be so over … not that it's so great to begin with. The only people who end up being ghosts are the ones who've left behind some kind of unfinished business.

I have no idea what business it is that Jesse left unfinished - and the truth is, I'm not so sure he knows, either. But it doesn't seem fair that if I'm destined to share my bedroom with the ghost of a dead guy, the dead guy has to be so cute.

I mean it. Jesse is way too good looking for my peace of mind. I may be a mediator, but I'm still human, for crying out loud.

But anyway, there he was, after I'd told him very politely not to come around for a while, looking all manly and hot and everything in the nineteenth-century outlaw outfit he always wears. You know the kind: with those tight black pants and the white shirt open down to there …

"When is she leaving?" Jesse wanted to know, bringing my attention away from the place where his shirt opened, revealing an extremely muscular set of abs, up to his face - which, I probably don't have to point out, is totally perfect, except for this small white scar in one of his dark eyebrows.

He didn't bother whispering. Gina couldn't hear him.

"I told you," I said. I, on the other hand, had to whisper since there was every likelihood I might be overheard. "Next Sunday."

"That long?"

Jesse looked irritated. I would like to say that he looked irritated because he considered every moment I spent with Gina a moment stolen from him, and deeply resented her because of that.

But to be honest, I highly doubt that was the case. I'm pretty sure Jesse likes me, and everything....

But only as a friend. Not in any special kind of way. Why should he? He's one hundred and fifty years old - a hundred and seventy if you count the fact that he'd been twenty or so when he died. What could a guy who'd lived through a hundred and seventy years of stuff possibly see in a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore who's never had a boyfriend and can't even pass her driving exam?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

Let's face it, I knew perfectly well why Jesse wanted Gina gone.

Because of Spike.

Spike is our cat. I say "our" cat, because even though ordinarily animals can't stand ghosts, Spike has developed this strange affinity for Jesse. His affection for Jesse balances out, in a way, his total lack of regard for me, even though I'm the one who feeds him, and cleans out his litter box, and, oh, yes, rescued him from a life of squalor on the mean streets of Carmel.

Does the stupid thing show me one iota of gratitude? No way. But Jesse, he adores. In fact, Spike spends most of his time outdoors, and only bothers coming around whenever he senses Jesse might have materialized.