Just a quick note before we begin: each little scene/vine/take described in this chapter will be separated by virtue of full line spacing, so if the dialogue is only half of a line apart then you'll know it's still supposed to be the same shot or vine. It'll make sense, don't worry! I'm not used to writing out descriptions for filming, so this may be a little strange or awkward ^_^' Anyway, enjoy!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To make a long story somewhat shorter, it took quite an adjustment period to help bring any sense of normalcy back to the inner circle of the Relle Phantom secret. The first time Camry used her bare hands to catch a falling pan straight off the burning stove, her mother couldn't decide if the act itself or Camry's blasé response to it startled her more. Knowing this, Cam did her best to try and tone down any and all use of her powers in her parents' presence. Like with Mum, they also became a more active force in her ghostly existence: whether it was via text messages asking if she was alright or learning how to dress and treat minor wounds, their help became incredibly useful as the battles between Relle and her enemies began to grow much more, well, heated.
That didn't mean everything was all fine and dandy, though. Like most good parents, Sadie and Mason made it abundantly clear that they were afraid for their daughter whenever she went off to fight. Coming home with bruises, scrapes, and cuts at least twice a week did little to lessen their fretting. Now they knew exactly why Camry was showing up on their front step while wearing evidence of a fight on her skin. Still, she had to admit that it was a little bit nice to not have to sneak around behind their backs all of the time.
What's more, the grounding that she and Saoirse would have had to endure was lifted right away! As a result of their electronic and mobile freedom, a long-awaited video was uploaded to WeTube roughly a week later. Thanks to its catchy title, it sported nearly a million views within the first 24 hours since it was made public.
The video opened with a nearly pitch-black screen broken up only by green-lit night vision directed at a grove of trees some ten yards away. Saoirse, decked out in a pastel hijab and modest attire, popped into the camera's field of view and waved with her left hand; the right was in its sling, as it would be for multiple weeks.
"Hey, everyone! Welcome to a very special video for this channel. Now, I know the news channels are all over covering the ghosts that attack Bailey Lake pretty regularly, but here's what they don't know: I've received a tip that there's something big in the woods. Maybe it's a clue about where these ghosts are coming from? Maybe we'll finally learn the origins of Relle Phantom, our city's undead protector? Who knows!"
She reached for the camera then, removing it from its tripod, and pointed it back at the trees. "That's what I'm here to do tonight. I don't know what's going to happen in there, but if you find this footage, now you'll know what I was doing. Let's go!"
The clip cut to another, and Saoirse was fully in the woods. Her footsteps in their sturdy boots snapped fallen twigs and crushed detritus noisily, seeming to echo through the night. The footage picked up her breathing, even and calm for the time being. "Okay, I've been walking for a little while. Got my flashlight, got my compass, got my directions for the tip. Battery's good... Will keep you posted."
Another jump forward, and the shot panned across the midnight-soaked forest. The trees' light-colored bark shined with the night vision filter, making pillars of bright patches that were only contrasted all the more by the limitless darkness in between. "Huh... I thought I was walking north, but now it's saying that's west..." Saoirse commented under her breath. The camera shook like it was changing hands so she could check her directions. One corner of the footage seemed to glitch for a split second, but it was gone as soon as it had happened.
"I—wait. Guys, I think I smell something." Saoirse piped up after another cut forward. The trees around her were more densely packed and carried a very foreboding aura, as if not even night vision would reveal the secrets twisted into their knotted roots and branches. Her flashlight, a too-bright beam in the darkness, flashed across the scene and drifted up to a low-hanging tree branch. "Look at that! It's smoldering."
She reached a cautious hand up and drew back before coming into contact with the charred segment. "Yeah, it's still warm. Do you think... maybe Relle was just here? Or another ghost, I dunno. Let's keep going—I think I'm on to something here."
The video then droned on for almost thirty seconds of walking in a straight line before darting back up to look at the branches of a tree. "Wait—is that the same branch as before?" Saoirse gasped in a low whisper.
Suddenly, the sound of a huge branch snapping in half echoed like a gunshot through the night air, and the camera lurched before righting itself in her hands. "What was that?" she whispered, her breathing fast and frantic.
"You shouldn't have come here," an ominous yet distinctly feminine voice growled from somewhere so close by that the camera's microphone could barely handle it.
"Who are you?" Saoirse asked, her voice halting with terror.
"Get out!"
Then she took off! The footage was incredibly shaky, jumping up and down as she ran as fast as her legs could carry her through the dense forest. Heavy breathing and a panicked "I think she's after me!" were the only things the viewers could hear. A thick haze fell into the frame, blurring the defined lines of the trees and highlighting an indistinct glow that came into being as Saoirse panned over the clearing she found herself in. "Oh, no—it's so smoky all of a sudden!" She coughed a couple of times and readjusted her grip on the camera.
"Wrong way," that same voice intoned again, this time from a little farther away. A vaguely humanoid shape condensed into being out of the smoke, and Saoirse shakily focused the frame on that. It raised one arm to the side slowly, holding its pose when it was parallel with the forest floor.
"Your mistake."
A bright light flashed outward from the smoky person's palm and completely turned the camera's screen white. The last things it picked up before the footage cut off abruptly were two very distinct sounds: another shallow gasp, and the crackling of a raging forest fire.
Then... nothing.
Just before everyone watching could start to get antsy about the lack of content following that vaguely threatening ending, a wall covered by a pale pink sheet appeared and two heads rose up from crouched positions on the floor of a well-lit room. It was HijabiHilighters' studio!
"Hey, guys!" Saoirse cheerfully chirped. "Guess whaaat~?"
"What's that?" her special guest with blue hair asked her with comical exaggeration.
"I got to collaborate with the Relle Phantom for this video!" Saoirse exclaimed, and both beaming girls threw their hands up in the air. "Woohoo! And don't worry, I swear this was all my idea, completely. We aren't trying to say anything negative about ghosts. Relle, thank you so much for helping me spoof The Blair Witch Project."
"Hey, that was super fun!" Relle answered. "Thanks for having me on your channel, Saoirse."
"Aww, thank you for coming!" They hugged, cheeks pressed together, and pulled apart. "Do you wanna help me do the outro, Relle?"
"Absolutely," Relle Phantom said. "Let's hope I get it right, right?"
"Oh, you'll be fine," Saoirse assured her, accompanied by a flippant wave of her left hand.
"Okay, so, thanks for watching us walk around the woods at night, and be sure to click on the subscribe button down there so you can, uh, keep watching HijabiHilighter's stuff!" Relle pretended to be awkward as she pointed downward to signify the direction of the button and turned to look at Saoirse for confirmation. She nodded and grinned.
"Yep! We also did a second video of just goofing off, behind the scenes for this video, and some spoofs of popular vines!" Saoirse pointed to the viewer's right, where a box had appeared with a clickable link on the screen. "Be sure to check that out, too, if you want to see us being huge dorks and having a good time."
In unison, they waved to the audience and called out, "Thank you so much for watching, my hilighters, and don't forget to keep an eye on your own rays of sunshine!"
The video then faded into catchy music with links to social media accounts and other videos, including the aforementioned blooper and goofing off post. That, too, had a view count reaching into the millions within a short span of time. It opened with Relle and Saoirse standing in front of the camera but looking a little to the side, with Relle frowning ever so slightly.
"I so pale..." she drawled in a phony accent, and Saoirse used her sling to gently nudge the ghost's arm.
"The camera's rolling," she murmured, at which point Relle snapped up and looked right at it.
"And in today's ghost fight against—" she started to say like a newscaster only for the six seconds to end and be replaced with the usual HijabiHilighter intro music and brightly-colored card.
"Boo!" Relle Phantom exclaimed, her face filling the screen and grinning from ear to ear. Thanks to that hazy white aura around her, the video's color saturation was altered in an interesting way. "Haha! These things are so cool! I love how technology has progressed, y'know? What did you call what we're doing right now, HijabiHilighter?"
"It's called a vlog," Saoirse answered from behind the camera. "A video-log. Are you ready to start, Relle?"
"You know I am," she answered, pulling back and giving the cameragirl double finger guns for good measure. Now that she didn't take up the entire shot, it became clear that it was dusk and they were next to the forest where they would be filming the Blair Witch spoof. "What do we do first?"
Her question went unanswered and instead cut to a different setting, this one at Saoirse's makeshift studio. Relle said softly, "I am old..." to which Dude, offscreen, asked, "How old are you?"
She put her hands on her hips sassily and replied, "Sixteen! I'm a grandmother!"
Then he was in view and gestured sharply to Relle's feet while shouting, "What are thooose?"
Relle pursed her lips, pretending to be unamused, and said dully, "They are my boots."
"Honey~?" Relle called out after the scene changed over again, and from down a long hallway Saoirse's voice answered.
"What~?"
"Where's my super suit?" Relle asked.
"Whaaat~?"
"Where. Is. My. Super suit?"
Then they were outside, and a fake tombstone was surrounded by smoke in the grass. A patch of overturned dirt lay in front of it. The ominous beginning of "Thriller" was playing, and right at the moment where the keyboard melody started to play, Relle's bewildered head popped out of the ground and looked around suspiciously.
Back inside the studio, half of a dozen framed pictures stood in a cluster, each one bearing the candid image of one of Relle's enemies. The camera panned over them all before finding Relle, who then gestured to them and said, "Look at all those chickens!"
Somehow, Camry had the camera and was vlogging as she walked down the street. "Yeah, so this city is, like, haunted? Apparently this girl died here when she was, like, nine or something."
Offscreen, Relle spoke up in a peevish tone, "I'm sixteen, so shut the hell up."
"Saoirse, is that a ghost?" Dude yelled, pointing at Relle and Saoirse standing next to each other.
"Yeah, this is—" Saoirse started to say before he cut her off.
"I'm calling the Ghostbusters!" Then he was in front of a microwave and punching in the fictional phone number. The vine ended with a zoom in on Saoirse and Relle's confused faces as the Ghostbusters' theme started to play from out of nowhere.
"Okay, so you want me to stand over here and do what, exactly?" Relle was asking Saoirse as she tried to find a good place to film from. It was pitch dark outside, signaling that they were still shooting the spoof video in the woods.
"Just, like, make a bright light after you put your arm out to the side," Saoirse directed. The camera angle shifted and showed Saoirse pantomiming what she meant. "We'll make sure to edit in a white-out of the screen when we're done."
"If you are here, speak to us," Saoirse was saying reverently, holding out a voice recorder to thin air inside her makeshift studio. All of a sudden, Relle, wearing a white sheet over her head, appeared next to the recorder and leaned in close.
"Just a city boy!" she started to 'sing' at the top of her lungs. "Born and raised in South—!"
~~
It took about four days of intensive care via magic potions, spells, and cleansing rituals to safely bring Endellion back from his up close and personal encounter with Shasta. Her ghostly nature had done quite a number on his respiratory system, and even after being declared out of real danger from his wounds, he still wheezed with every breath and needed to take an inhalant every hour on the hour. Fan Liu and Allie worked together around the clock until they were sure the third member of their tiny coven wouldn't succumb to ghostly contamination right before their eyes.
As per the usual, no one batted an eyelash at his absence from school—not even one teacher took notice, which was just how the witch community liked it. There were countless spells in place to make sure no one could even suspect Kordelle of being a witch. By the time he was much better and back to his old self, his mind was made up.
"I can't... go back to that... school," he wheezed to Fan Liu. Their little family was seated in the dark living room, with Allie curled up next to her surrogate big brother and Fan Liu occupying her chair across from the couch. "Not for a while... at least."
Fan Liu pursed her lips for a moment, mulling it over carefully. "Well," she finally answered, "it was about time that you started to focus more on witchkind than your human life. Are you sure you're ready to let that go, though?"
He nodded, resolve etched in every line of his furrowed brow. "I am."
Unbeknownst to everyone except him, though, there was someone else in his mind who he thought needed to also let go of their human life.
~~
Summer was finally arriving, and as the days grew longer and the ants in everyone's pants became more frantic, serendipity decided to spring itself on an unsuspecting trio of friends. School was almost out for the year, and as long as there were no ghost attacks to fend off, the afternoons were more or less free of non-school obligations, leaving Camry, Saoirse, and Dude to do as they pleased.
On such a day, their backpacks were heavy with textbooks and responsibilities but their moods were lighter than air. "You guys wanna get ice cream? My treat," Cam suggested as they walked out of the school's double front doors.
"Perfect," Saoirse agreed, and Dude grinned wide.
"You sure you want to treat us? I could eat a cone like the ones you see in cartoons right now," he laughed.
"Within reason," Camry pretended to sigh with a mirthful tinge to her tone. "But I know how you feel. If it wouldn't melt too fast for me to eat, I would get myself one of those two-story cones, too."
"Oh, as if either of you could actually eat that much ice cream," Saoirse snorted, looking between the two of them skeptically. "I bet you wouldn't even be able to stomach the biggest size you can get at O'Creary's." Said ice cream joint was only a couple of blocks away from their high school, and their walking pace would bring them there shortly.
"Oh, it's on now," Camry whooped, punching a fist into the air for emphasis. "Ice cream eating contest!"
"Loser has to do one thing: anything the winner wants," Dude added, sharing a look with Camry that said he was not going to lose so easily.
"The stakes are high, but..." she tapered off, pretending to ponder the proposition. Then she whipped a hand out for Dude to grasp and shake. "Deal!"
At O'Creary's, Camry and Dude each picked out their favorite flavors to put in a quadruple-decker waffle cone while Saoirse ordered a simple two-scoop size in a dish. No one ate even a lick of the frozen treat until they were firmly seated at an outside table. Struggling to balance four scoops of ice cream, Dude and Camry pivoted to face each other. Both cones were raised in a mock handshake, and Saoirse fondly rolled her eyes at their showmanship.
"The winner has to fully chew and swallow the very tip of their cone or it doesn't count," Saoirse declared. "On your mark..."
"Good luck," Camry said, a spark of competition igniting in her eyes.
"Get set..."
"You, too," Dude replied, grinning behind his layered tower of chocolate brownie thunder and birthday cake.
"Go!"
Their focus was so intent that the attention their scarfing drew went completely unnoticed until their momentum started to fail them. Two and a half scoops ago, their bites were large and rich with gusto; now, they had to fight not to pause between each bite. "Uuugh!" Camry groaned, throwing her head back for a second before chomping down on another chunk of cookie dough and chocolate-caramel.
"You're melting," Dude mumbled around a mouthful as he pointed to the tiny river carving a path over her knuckles.
"Your mom," was her mature, muffled answer to that before she tried to take a too-large bite and immediately regretted the brainfreeze that drove a spike through her head. Camry groaned and paused to let it pass; perhaps it didn't take all that long to do so because her volcanic core and ghost powers kept her warmer than most.
Both Dude and Camry reached the tops of their waffle cones in near-perfect synchronization, but that was where one of them found an unexpected lead and took it for all it was worth. While Dude still had to chew through chunks of brownie and still-cold ice cream, Camry discovered that most of the once-frozen treat inside the cone had entirely melted thanks to her unnaturally warm grip. She tipped her head back and drained it all down, making quick work of the cookie dough pieces and then moving on to decimating the waffle.
It was over in less than a minute from that point on. Dude squirmed in his seat with the effort to finish his dessert first, but there was no chance he could win the moment after she tossed the point of the cone into her mouth and crushed it between her teeth. Her palms smacked the picnic table decisively and she opened her mouth wide so Saoirse could see that she didn't have any remnants left. Saoirse called it like an umpire, throwing a hand out to the side and calling out, "Finished!"
"Nooo!" Dude wailed around a full mouth, sounding muffled in defeat. He ate up the last of his own ice cream and slumped against the table. Camry followed shortly after a diluted victory dance that only helped her fully realize how bloated she felt from so much ice cream. Their heads on the table, they let out little moans of pain.
"Bluuuuguh..." Camry groaned, arms wrapped around her middle.
"You – buuurp – said it," Dude replied in a subdued tone. "Bluuuu-guh."
Saoirse rested her elbows on the tabletop, laced her fingers together, and adopted an amused expression as she supported her chin on her hands. "So, what're you going to make Dude do since you won, Cam?"
"Uhhh..." she mumbled numbly, lifting her head just enough to turn it to the left. A corkboard was posted on the side of O'Creary's, under an awning, and flyers were tacked to it, rattling in the gentle lake breeze. Her farsighted eyes fell on it and caught sight of two familiar words printed in bold, black letters against a neon pink background: DANCE COMPETITION.
"Ooh, what's that?" she wondered in a chirpy voice while prying herself out of the picnic bench seat and ambling over to get a closer look. Her eyes scanned the brightly colored page with growing enthusiasm, and before she was even finished reading she had ripped it off the board and was taking it back to her friends. "I know what we're gonna do!"
"'We?'" Dude echoed, lifting an unseen eyebrow while remaining facedown and too stuffed to move.
"Let me see," Saoirse said, reaching for the paper and accepting it when Camry handed it over. Her beautifully-painted lips moved ever so slightly as she read; Cam felt her heart flutter a little at the adorable sight. "Huh... A dance competition? Why that?"
"Hang on, what?" Now he was up, taking the flyer to read it for himself. "You want to enter me into a dance competition?"
"To enter us into a dance competition," Camry corrected him eagerly, her face bright with a wide smile flecked with traces of ice cream residue. "It's a couples thing! Any genre, any style—and I know the perfect one we could do, too."
Dude glanced between her and the flyer, taking time to process what was going on. "Y'know, I was expecting something more like eating something nasty or doing something kinda stupid. You know I'm not a dancer, right?"
"Sure I do," she said quickly, waving a flippant hand half a dozen times. Maybe her ghostly powers had helped her burn off her discomfort from the ice cream, and now she was running on a sugar rush. "But I can teach you the steps and we can make a routine and go and win the prize and be amazing!"
"Prize?" He looked back at the flyer and moved his thumb holding down the middle of the page. Underneath it was a little starburst graphic with the words "1K CASH PRIZE" inside. His black opal eyes glimmered at the sight. "Whoa..."
"See~?" Cam sang, knowing full well that she had caught his attention now. "I think it'd be really fun, too! Dancing is so much fun—I love to do it, and you've got so much energy that I bet we'd be unstoppable as a duo."
Saoirse leaned in then, a slightly pensive frown furrowing her brow. "Wouldn't it be hard to find time to make up this routine and practice it before the competition? It's only a couple of months away, and Dude has to learn everything from square one. Besides, you're really busy with other stuff." The extra emphasis could only mean that she was talking about their extracurricular ghost-fighting commitment.
"Let's do it!" Dude announced, slamming the flyer down onto the table enthusiastically. Oh, no, now the boy with boundless energy was discovering his own sugar rush coursing through his blood. Saoirse could already feel herself regretting the decision to foster this bet.
"Yeah!" Camry cheered, throwing both fists into the air. The sharp motion made her wince as it pulled on her sore abdomen, and she slowly retracted her hands until she was curled up with her cheek on the table again. "Owww..."
"I guess we won't be starting until tomorrow, huh?" Dude asked with that knowing tone that said he was totally right.
"Oh, hell no," she answered emphatically.
~
The pair of friends were among the last to sign up for the competition, which eventually panned out in a way that placed them as one of the last pairs to perform on the night of the actual competition. This event was something that Camry had actually competed in before, though that had been when she was twelve and danced with a boy from Madame Descoteaux's dance studio. They hadn't done very well back then, partially because their chemistry had been low in quantity and neither had been dancing for exceptionally long at that point.
This time was going to be different. Camry could feel it in her core as a buzzing hum of excitement for adventure.
"We only get a few minutes for our performance, but we can have the lights crew help make the show a little more interesting if we have them work with us on it beforehand," Camry said after they had registered for the competition. The trio was seated on a low wall outside of the dance studio, poring over the materials they'd been given upon signing up. Dude frowned at some of the restrictions in his packet.
"No outside assistance from choreographers or instructors? Like, not even for pointers or advice?" he wondered aloud.
"I guess not, but that's okay," Cam said as she leaned over to look over his arm at the papers in his hands. "We won't need Madame Descoteaux's help when we're working together."
"You're still gonna have to teach him literally everything in only a few weeks," Saoirse reminded her sternly. "Is this really feasible?"
"Anything is feasible when you're in YOLO mode," Dude stated with all the confidence of a man who's been given the world on a silver platter. "And yes, I am super into YOLO mode right now."
"Then you really do want to do this with me?" Camry persisted cautiously, her ever-present resurfacing in her tone. "'Cause I wouldn't mind if you thought this is kinda over the top and decided not to go through with it..."
"Depends, I guess," was his reply that had her perk up a little bit. "What kind of dance are we gonna try and do?"
The grin that stretched across her face downright maniacal, showing teeth and a mischievous glint in her iolite eyes. "Swing dancing, of course."
~~
It took many, many weeks of brainstorming, practice, perfecting, and reworking to get their routine down in a way that felt right and natural to both of them. First, they chose the song and felt out a few special moves to go along with key points in the melody, then built off of those. The costumes were another matter entirely, but Saoirse's knowledge about fashion and performing became paramount to their success in finding the right style.
"So I, uh, found something at the fabric store," Saoirse began with the barely restrained excitement that betrayed an incoming surprise. "I think it would go really well with your costumes~"
"What, what?" Dude demanded to know, bouncing onto his feet with more grace than he had possessed two months ago. One of the spare rooms in the Dowell household had been renovated into a makeshift dance studio, with a few floor length mirrors leaned against one wall and the furniture cleared out for the time being. This was where they practiced their routine whenever they weren't at school, trudging through homework, or fighting off the undead.
"Show meee!" Camry begged, her palms clapped together in front of her nose.
Saoirse whipped her hands out from behind her back and revealed two small boxes in each hand. Each package said in colorful lettering, "PRIDE BRIGHTS" that matched the flag they were supposed to represent. One hand held small garlands of rainbow lights while the other boxes were blue, pink, and yellow. "We can sew these into your clothes and try to help you both stand out onstage."
"OHHH!" both dancers exclaimed as they took their respective boxes and stared at them, entranced by the thought. A thought occurred to Dude a moment later, though, and some of his enthusiasm drifted away.
"Wait, then we'd have to have battery packs somewhere on us. Those are kinda heavy, aren't they? They might mess up our dancing."
"Oh," Camry hummed as she realized that he was right. "Uhm... Well... What if... we... didn't have battery packs?"
"Then the lights don't light up," Saoirse pointed out, squinting as she tried to see where her girlfriend was going with this train of thought.
"Maybe not, though," Camry replied slowly, feeling out her idea in the meantime. She pointed to Dude, then back at the boxes in his hands. "You could power them with your magic? If the wires all met up in the right spots, you could... generate a little bit of a current to make them light up, and... and if they get too hot, I can pull some of the heat out."
Saoirse and Dude exchanged a look. "Isn't that kind of like cheating?" Saoirse asked. "No one else in the competition is going to be able to do something like this."
"We could be careful," Dude relented half a moment later. "I've been practicing my energy control and getting a sense for how much I'm putting out."
"If we bunch up the wires somewhere discreet, I bet we could pull it off without being caught," Camry added, gaining momentum for the idea as he helped feed into it.
"That doesn't really change the fact that it's pretty much cheating," Saoirse grumbled, suddenly regretting picking up the lights in the first place. "You shouldn't risk having your secrets revealed just for the sake of convenience."
"Sure, but... let's just try it out on the outfits and see what happens. Just in case," Camry suggested. With Dude on board, more or less, Saoirse was outnumbered and decided it was better to drop the matter than try to parent the two of them.
~
Finally, the night of the competition was upon them. Their time slot was scheduled near the end of the program, at 8:50 pm, which would soon after shift gears so the judges would have time to make their decisions. Though it had involved countless, exhausting hours of work and dedication, both Dude and Camry felt confident in their routine and were more or less ready to go onstage for the audience.
"And to think that we're only here because I lost a bet," Dude pretended to sigh as he shook his head. They were waiting backstage with a few of the other teams milling about, talking in low voices while they anxiously waited to perform. "You doing okay, Cam? You're not nervous or anything?"
"Nah, nah," she replied, though her somewhat clipped tone said otherwise. "This is my element, my zone. I've been doing this since I was six years old! It's just... I'm worried that something might go wrong. Like, an unwanted visitor or... something."
Dude flashed her an easygoing smile. "Hey, you've got me here, right? They wouldn't dare try anything."
"Let's hope you're right," she said, wrapping her arms around herself while glancing out at the stage. The loud music had a lot of bass going on, and the pair dancing out there were really giving it their all to try and win the first place prize. Even so, Camry couldn't quite tell what genre their style was coming from, and she didn't want to waste the brainpower on figuring it out.
"Let's check the wires on more time," Dude suggested after a few moments of heavy silence between themselves. Camry wordlessly turned to put her back to him, and she felt the fabric of her dress shift a little bit above her lower back. Her skirts rustled, and Dude pulled back, satisfied that nothing had changed since the last time he'd checked. Then she did the same for him, checking the breast pocket of his smart-looking vest and making sure the wires were making contact with him. Lighting himself up was the easy part; it was doing the same to her that was the bigger half of the challenge.
"Y'know what? We've got nothing to worry about," she stated suddenly, playfully smacking his shoulder and standing tall—well, as tall as her five-foot-two could be. "We've got this routine down. It's fun, it's witty, and it's original. It's us. Are you ready for this?"
"You know I am," he said with a grin, swishing his green locks to the side and out of his face. "Let's crush it!"
"Shhh," a passing stagehand warned them, and they clammed up immediately. Oops, too loud.
Two more performances began and ended before the same stagehand brought the two of them to the edge of the stage to wait for their time to start. A quiet hubbub from the audience rose and fell before silencing altogether when the announcer for the event grabbed his mic and called out, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, a swing dance performance by Camry Dowell and Joaquín Hinojosa, featuring music by Caravan Palace."
The stage went entirely dark, betraying no presence of anyone at all. The audience was silent, waiting in mild anticipation for the show. Among the rows sat a group of parents and kids who were very eager to see specifically Camry and Dude perform; Sadie and Maria had their phones recording discreetly to capture the moment.
A spot light flicked on in the center of the stage, but no one was there. It turned off after two seconds, then flicked on again. A lone figure was now illuminated by the round circle of white light: he leaned with his elbow on thin air, completely at ease in his casual but classy navy blue vest and slacks. His white shirt under the vest was long-sleeved and collared, but the sleeves were folded up to his elbows for added effect. His black shoes gleamed under the spot light, but only for the two seconds it was on.
The light repeated this again, and this time Camry's shoulder was under his elbow. She pretended to examine her fingernails, with one arm crossed under her ribs and a knee casually bent. Her dress was down to her knees and white with black polka dots. Two thin lines of black wrapped around the top of the bodice, and two more hemmed the bottom of the skirt. A large black bow cinched it all at the waist, and her black heels were also polished to shine like Dude's shoes.
All of this happened even before the music itself began, but when Brotherswing started up she led the way by sashaying her hips to the slow beat the song opened with. Dude let up on her shoulder to let her spin out, and as she did the stage lights brightened to give them the whole stage. She danced around, letting her actions flow in time with the tempo, and beckoned for him to follow her lead. Dude stepped back and shook his head, arms out in front of him to convey his reluctance. Her response was to take him by the hand and use the first verse to pretend to teach him how to dance in swing. He played along just as they had practiced, letting his movements start out stiff but loosen a little over time.
The choruses were when they fell into sync rather than use an echoing sort of dance style that consisted of Camry teaching and Dude copying her. By the second chorus, he was basically doing just as well as she did with her fast footwork and spinning. Of course, the song built itself up before dipping into a lull straight after, and they drifted farther away from each other, still imbued with the urge to move with the beat but unsure of how to continue. The stage lights dimmed a little to mirror that emotion. A trill started, and they snapped up their heads to look at each other before darting toward centerstage.
Their timing was perfect! She leaped at him, reaching out to grab one hand and his upper arm, and his free hand found the small of her back. She kicked herself up as if to flip over, but they held the pose where he leaned over her and her leg was sticking straight out while the other was bent at the knee. The multicolored lights on their clothes flashed to life at the exact moment the music met the top of its crescendo, much to the loud gasping and excitement of the crowd. Giddy grins on their faces, Dude swung Camry gracefully back onto her feet, and with hands linked they twirled around each other, their feet flying underneath them.
The music was punctuated with louder bursts, which they mimicked with elongated spins by Camry and energetic kicks from Dude. The final crescendo was their grand finale, and even though their breathing was starting to become ragged, they were going to make the most of it. An invisible tile under Camry's foot gave her a slight leg up as she launched into the air with Dude's help, and she spun like a top before coming back down into his arms, a leg kicked out just as before. He set her down into a twirl that took her to one side of the stage while he rhythmically drifted in the opposite direction. The music then shifted into the same slow melody as the beginning, and they languidly walked offstage apart with Camry swinging her hips and Dude adjusting his sleeves all the while.
It was almost too difficult to hear the end of the song, though, because the audience's applause was so loud and roared up so suddenly that it almost drowned it out! As soon as they were out of sight, Camry wasted no time in running to the other side from behind the curtained backdrop and launched into Dude's arms, laughing loud and with too much delight to be contained. He jumped around with her, too jazzed from the rush to coherently form real words.
"That was amazing!" Camry exclaimed, sliding back to the ground and clinging onto his shoulders. "Dude, you were incredible! I can't believe how well that went—I never get this much natural coordination, even with other dancers!"
"You—that—I gotta—sit down," Dude gasped, his voice sounding the way it would after running a marathon. Sweaty, exhausted, buzzing with a kind of energy either teen really ever felt, they found a couple of folding chairs and moved them side by side to catch their breath. A different stagehand from the one before handed them each a bottle of water, which they gulped down ravenously.
"Holy—that was such a rush," Dude said after he had caught some of his breath back. "I'm glad I didn't drop you."
"I'm glad I didn't step on you with my heels," Camry tacked on with a cheeky grin.
~
Announcing the awards passed by in a blur. Dude remembered feeling his heart race as he and Camry held onto each other for good luck and mutual support. Then they were rushing out of the crowd of competitors, definitely exhilarated beyond belief. His breath was light and airy, rapidly moving in and out of his chest like a rabbit, even as he embraced his family and showed them the prize that Camry had been insistent on him keeping.
Now, his rabbit-like breath was back for a very different reason. His heart raced once more, but this time the adrenaline coursing through his weary veins was turning his stomach sour with the tinges of fear and dread. He stood on the sidewalk outside of the competition venue, flanked on both sides by glowing blue trees that threw shadows across the face of he who stood before him. Somewhere inside, his mother and sister were with the Dowells and Mahadeos, still going on about the wonderful dance they had just witnessed.
Kordelle was unmistakable with his height and lanky gait. The usual charm jingled in his ponytail, but even that pleasant sound had taken on a more sinister tune. "Dude, you used magic in your routine."
"We weren't caught—" he started to say in his defense, but Kordelle held his hand out show an open flip phone in his palm.
"Never mind that. Listen, I've been doing some thinking, and after what I saw in your performance, I'm sure of it now."
Dude took a menacing step forward and stabbed an index finger at the taller boy. "If you think I'm letting you get anywhere near her again, you're dead wrong."
"No, no. Let me explain." Kordelle waved that thought away with his free hand. "Dude, that ghost has its hooks far deeper in you than I could have ever predicted. You won't be able to reach your full potential while you're letting it hold you back like this. I need you to trust me on this."
"You know, your track record of trust is pretty questionable," Dude reminded him, his gaze stony and unyielding. "And you don't know what you're talking about."
"If you won't believe me, then believe someone who definitely knows what he's talking about," Kordelle said, holding out the phone with more emphasis this time.
Dude wavered a little, his curiosity itching to take the phone but his distrust of Kordelle holding him back. What if the phone was a trap? It could be laced with a curse, or it could have a spell that would get inside his head, or—Oh, forget it.
The phone was up to his ear before he could talk himself out of doing it. "Hello?" he said, shooting Kordelle a glaring eye roll without letting it affect his tone.
"Hola, hijo," a stentorian voice, definitely masculine and authoritative, said over the speaker. "You probably don't remember me, but I'm your father."
The world could have stopped spinning on its axis in that instant and Dude wouldn't have noticed at all. Was it just him, or was the ground starting to slope to the side right under his feet? "What—?" he whispered, gripping the tiny phone with two shaking hands. His body language contracted into himself, and he turned a little to the side to take Kordelle out of his main field of vision.
"My name is Ricardo, too—or did your mother change that after she took you from me?" the man on the other end of the phone wondered. "I've been anxious to finally meet you, hijo."
"N... NO!" Dude bellowed, taking the phone and spiking it into the concrete sidewalk. It shattered into hundreds of pieces with circuitry and shards of plastic radiating out in all directions. His breath came to him in ragged bursts, leaving spots to swim in front of his eyes.
When he whirled back around to stare Kordelle down, his black opal eyes had the sensation of a trapped, feral animal. "You—What the fuck did you just do?"
"You'll thank me for this later, Dude. He's not really as bad as I first thought he was," Kordelle said, his voice resigned and self-assured. He took a step back and to the left, vanishing behind a glowing tree before Dude could give into his urge to take a swing at Kordelle's nose.
That was how Camry and Saoirse found their friend a moment later: muscles tense, breathing sporadic, and with a cold sweat sparkling on his forehead. "Hey, there you are. You disappeared for a minute there, and we—Dude?" Saoirse started to say, but when they came into the glow of the tree's aura they were able to see that something was amiss.
"I... Wh—Why do I smell a-a-asphodel?" Camry stuttered, a raspy veil of panic swathing her words. She started to shake as her eyes darted in all directions, including up and down.
"He... He told him where we are," Dude croaked out as he turned to face his two best friends.
"Who?" Saoirse pressed, keeping an arm around Camry's waist to help her stay grounded as she panicked. Her recovery process, though commonplace to the three of them by that point, occasionally involved an episode of a PTSD-like break from reality complete with flashbacks and a panic attack.
"My... dad," he said, and with a complete 180 from numbness to aggressive animation, he grabbed the sides of his head and yelled, "He knows where we are!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, uh, do you guys hate me yet? All two of you who have been keeping up with this story? *nudge nudge*
Yeah, I'm gonna end this story here for now. My third year of college starts early tomorrow morning, and I wanted to finish this before it began :3 Woohoo, I did it! That's another book down!!
Also, as a little surprise, here's a commissioned picture that the wonderful Catherine Horne, AKA itty-bitties-posts on tumblr, drew of Camry and Dude dancing their Brotherswing routine!
Please leave a comment down below and a vote if you liked this story, and know that I always appreciate hearing from you wonderful readers! Have a great school year and study hard!
-Alex (BookBird1497)