“[...] Mom’s not keeping me out because it’s a dead friend, she’s keeping me out because it’s a dead sixteen-year-old girl with no clothes on’‘And that’s officially the creepiest thing you’ve ever said,’ said Lauren. She stopped typing, and then grimaced and shivered, like she’d just eaten something disgusting. ‘Seriously – yuck.’I smiled. ‘I’ve got a live girlfriend – what do I need a dead one for?’[…]Lauren folded her arms. ‘How do I know you’re not just trying to get her out of the house for your own nefarious purposes?’I smiled. ‘What kind of trouble am I going to get into? The dead girl doesn’t get here until tomorrow.”

“she was just…beaming at me, and I thought she’d won the lottery or something, her smile was that big. I asked what happened, and she said…” Park swallowed again. “She said, ‘You’re here.”’ He blinked at Tess. “‘You’re here.’ That’s all it was. That big goofy smile just because I was there. Nobody ever smiled like that at me before.”

“Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.”

“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?”

“She’s really not my kind of girl — most of them have tattoos or nose rings — but there’s something about her smile. She smiles like she’s in love with whoever she’s looking at. She smiled at me a few months ago. I’ve been trying to get her to do it again ever since.”

“Yes, fine," I say, feeling dead inside. They don't know what they're in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who'll nod and smile and take her tea who isn't really here.”