Dead Air

what your mother’s up to, maybe it’s time you start taking her calls.”
She didn’t say it meanly, but I reeled a little bit. Grandma reached out to pat my hand, and I jerked it away.
“Never mind,” I said shortly. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’ve got to finish packing.”
Without looking at Grandma, I hurried back upstairs and closed my bedroom door. My oversize, must-weigh-less-than-fifty-pounds megabackpack was propped up against my wardrobe, stuffed with T-shirts, jeans, and hoodies. Most of my other stuff was in boxes for storage, although my furniture was staying put. That was the nice thing about having Grandma as a landlady—she would just rent this place to new tenants until Dad and I came home, so I didn’t have to say good-bye to the house I grew up in.
Although to be honest, a small part of me didn’t care if I ever saw it again.
I knelt down next to one of the storage boxes. This one was filled with sundresses I hated. The Thing crouched next to me, radiating disapproval as I taped the box closed. I ignored it.
I’d almost told Grandma about the Thing probably a hundred times, but I knew she’d never believe it existed. In The Monster in Her Closet, Grandma played a girl whose childhood imaginary friend Edgar was terrorizing her neighborhood, and no one believed her.
The Thing was kind of like Edgar. I couldn’t prove it existed. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
For a few minutes, I tried to distract myself by taping and labeling boxes. It didn’t work, though. There was no way Trish had mistaken someone else for my mom—we’d grown up in each other’s houses; she knew what my mother looked like as well as I did. And her hair—our hair, I guess—was pretty hard to miss. The superlong thick braid suddenly felt heavy against my back.
It was the only feature Mom and I shared. She was pale in winter and fake-tanned in summer, with Grandma’s dark blue eyes and tiny nose. My skin and eyes were the same shades of brown as Dad’s, and our noses were both a little on the longish side. But Mom and I had the same slightly coarse, brown-black hair that fell in waves down to our waists. Two summers ago at the beach, I’d begged her to let me chop it off, but she’d said I’d regret it. What I really regretted were the hours I spent trying to get out all the saltwater knots and tangles.
Grabbing the scissors, I cut a strip of tape a little more viciously than necessary and slapped it on a box of dressy shoes. Then I marched over to my dresser and set the tape and scissors down next to the Elapse.
It really was an awesome camera. But I didn’t want to be a photographer anymore.
My fingers tightened around the scissors.
Maybe I didn’t want long hair anymore, either.
Suddenly, my heart was pounding loud and fast in my ears. With one hand, I pulled my braid over my shoulder. With the other, I held the scissors to it at about shoulder level. Then I slid them an inch higher. And then another . . . and another.
Then I started cutting.
It took longer than I expected, probably half a minute of hacking away. When I finished, I set my braid down on my dresser and stared at it. It was weird, kind of like looking at my own severed arm (but obviously not as gross). Then I looked in the mirror.
My hair was short. And slanted, since I’d cut it over one shoulder. I used a comb to part it down the center. Then I trimmed the left side until it was as short as the right and examined my reflection.
It was about chin-length, and really choppy. My head felt a lot lighter. I liked it.
I went back to packing, whistling the Passport to Paranormal theme song as I worked.

CHAPTER TWO
THE CURSE OF THE STALE MUFFINS
From: acciopancakes@mymail.net
To: trishhhhbequiet@mymail.net
Subject: Re: DON’T LEAVE ME!!!
Trish,
Am at airport. Guessing Plan Frogpocalypse was a fail. Also a fail: waking up at 4 a.m. Our cab came at 4:30, and me and Dad were both still asleep. Oops.
Kat
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sinclair. This is more than a pound over the limit.”
“No problem.”
Dad’s talk-show host smile was going strong this morning. The airport check-in lady smiled back and watched, along with me and the approximately four zillion people behind us in line, as he unzipped my bulging megabackpack and started rummaging inside.
“Dad—”
“I got it, Kat,” he said. “It’s all just a matter of weight distribution.”
I glanced at the line. A couple of blond girls, both younger than me, clutched the handles of their bright pink suitcases. Their parents were right behind them, the mom balancing a little boy on her hip.
“Mickey!” the kid shrieked, and his mom smiled.
“Mickey!” she agreed, stifling a yawn. “We’re going to meet Mickey tomorrow!”
“Assuming we actually make this flight,” her husband grumbled, shooting Dad a dirty look.
Family of five kicking off fall break with a trip to Disney World. How lovely for them.
I turned back around to face Dad, who was holding up my puffy blue parka in one hand and a giant baggie stuffed with underwear and socks in the other. A green plaid bra was pressed up at the front like a kid’s face smooshed in a candy-store window.
“Dad!” I hissed, and he tossed me the parka.
“Don’t know what I was thinking!” Kneeling, he unzipped the already-stuffed duffel bag at his feet and crammed the baggie inside. “Jackets don’t count as carry-ons; we can just take them on board with us.”
Dad pulled his own black parka out of my backpack (he’d run out of room in his), and we watched the scale drop from 51.2 to 50.5.
“Almost there,” the check-in lady said encouragingly. Behind us, Blond Dad groaned.
“Sorry, folks.” Dad beamed at the line of bleary-eyed travelers, and a few smiled back feebly. “Just another second.”
He started groping around the backpack again, and the check-in lady cautiously peered