Dead Air by Michelle Schusterman (best books under 200 pages txt) 📕

“How’s the packing coming?” asked Grandma. I realized too late that she’d been squinting at me from under her baseball cap with her I-can-read-your-mind expression.

“I’m pretty much done,” I replied. “Dad’s got to weigh the bags, though—they can’t be over fifty pounds.”

Grandma leaned over and pulled something out from behind her armchair. “Well, I hope you have room for a little going-away present.”

She held out a stuffed, wrinkled gift bag with snowmen all over it, and I laughed. We’d been recycling that bag for all gift-giving occasions since the Christmas when I was nine. It looked really festive until you realized the snowmen were zombies and the snow was spattered with blood.

My smile faded when I peered inside and spotted the DVD. “Invasion of the Flesh-Eating Rodents? You know I’ve got this already!”

“It’s the latest special edition!” Grandma said defensively. “Not officially released yet. And there’s three minutes of never-before-seen footage. A guinea pig attacks me in the shower.”

Flesh-Eating Rodents was “Scream Queen” Edie Mills’s (aka: Grandma’s) seventeenth and final movie. At age six, I watched her play a butt-kicking veterinarian who saved the day when a rabies vaccine went horrifically wrong. I kept examining her fingers while the credits rolled, marveling that I couldn’t see all the chunks the hamsters had gnawed off.

She’d shown me her movies in reverse order over the next few years—as I got older, film-star Grandma got younger. My least favorite was Vampires of New Jersey (her hair looked freaking ridiculous). The best one was Cannibal Clown Circus (she played a trapeze artist whose safety net was gnawed to pieces by zombies halfway through her act). I saw her first movie, Mutant Cheerleaders Attack, on Thanksgiving when I was eight. Watching your teenage grandmother in a cheerleading uniform with oozing scabs all over her legs is best done after eating your cranberry-sauced turkey, not before.

“Anyway, that’s not so much a gift for you,” Grandma admitted, tapping the DVD. “I thought you might want to show it to Sam.”

I tried to glare at her and failed. “Grandma. No.”

“You never know, he might like what he sees.” She winked coyly, smoothing back her silver-streaked hair, and I laughed. “Now look back in that bag. I think you missed something.”

Eagerly, I reached in the bag again and pulled out something wrapped in tissue paper. I tore it off, and the smile froze on my face.

It was a camera. Specifically, it was the Elapse E-250 with a pancake lens, silver with a cool purple strap, the smallest and most compact digital SLR camera ever—and the exact one I’d spent most of seventh grade begging for. But that was last year, when I was still tagging along with Mom to every wedding or party she shot, drooling over all her cool professional camera equipment.

Then she moved to Cincinnati, and I stopped caring about photography.

Still . . . My hands gripped the Elapse, finger tapping the shutter button. Without really meaning to, I flipped it on and held it up to my eye. Grandma’s beaming face filled the viewfinder, and I lowered the camera hastily.

“This is way too expensive,” I blurted out. “I mean, thank you, but I know it’s—I mean, I don’t . . .”

Grandma waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t start with all that. Consider this a going-away-birthday-Christmas present, all right?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, but . . .”

But I’m not into this anymore. I don’t want to be a photographer. That’s what I kept trying to say, but I couldn’t.

“Listen to me,” Grandma said, and once again, I was pretty sure she’d read my thoughts. “You’re about to go traveling the world. Not only that, you’re going to hunt ghosts. You and your father keep calling this your big adventure, and I demand pictures.”

“I could send you postcards,” I said, flipping the mode dial with my thumb.

Grandma rolled her eyes. “What is this, the fifties? I’m not waiting by the mailbox. E-mail me. Hit me up with a text.” “Grandma,” I groaned. “Stop talking like that.”

“Of course, you won’t be able to text from out of the country,” she went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Still, you can put them on Facebook. Or . . .” Grandma’s eyes widened, and she clapped her hands. “I’ve got it.”

I held the camera up again, touching my finger lightly to the shutter button. “What?”

“You should start a blog!”

Click!

Lowering the camera, I made a face. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Grandma demanded.

I shrugged, examining the Elapse more closely. “I don’t like writing. And a blog sounds like too much work.”

“I’ll tell you what’s going to be too much work,” she said. “Repeating the same stories over and over again when you talk to me and your friends and your mother and everyone else who’ll want to know what the glamorous ghost-hunting life is like. This way you can just tell us all at once.”

“Eh, I’ll think about it.” I chewed my lip, flipping the mode dial back and forth again. “Hey, Grandma?”

“Yes?” She was reaching for the remote when the question I’d been dying to ask for weeks now finally came tumbling out.

“Is Mom back in Chelsea?”

Grandma’s hand froze over the remote, and her mouth pursed slightly. “What makes you think that?”

My stomach plummeted. I’d been hoping for No, of course not! “Trish,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Her brother said she was at the Starbucks by his school a few weeks ago. And she thought she saw her at the mall last weekend, too,” I added. Actually, Trish had been positive. “No one besides you and your mom has that crazy-long hair, Kat.”

Grandma rewound the grate scene, chewing her lip a little. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something else. Or maybe she was just stalling, trying to think of a lie. Not that Grandma would ever lie to me. Neither would Dad. They both knew better.

“Anyway, I thought maybe she came back to . . . say good-bye to us, or something,” I finished lamely. Sighing, Grandma settled back in her chair and looked at me.

“If you want to know