Final Girl by Michelle Schusterman (beach books .TXT) 📕

Here’s another thing Roland told me my first day: The reason people are drawn to Sam Sumners is that he’s haunted. And you know what I realized? We’re all haunted by something. You probably are, too, if you’re a fan of a ghost-hunters show. We all have secrets, skeletons in our closets, things that follow us no matter how hard we try to forget about them. Maybe they’re paranormal and maybe they’re not, but to the person they’re following, they’re real. Sam knows this, and that’s what makes him such a great medium. It’s not really about communicating with spirits. It’s about listening to people who are ready to talk about who or what is haunting them. And it’s about believing them, even if they don’t have “proof.”

That’s what I’ve learned since I joined Passport to Paranormal. And I’m looking forward to helping more people—and ghosts—move on next season, and telling you all about their stories right here on The Kat Sinclair Files.

Whether or not you believe is up to you.

OSCAR and I filmed the video for my last blog post of the season the day after the Ryang investigation. Dad approved it right away, and I published it. Then I closed the laptop and spent the rest of the afternoon with Oscar.

We went back to the market and bought “Heart and Seoul” T-shirts for Jamie and Hailey. We drank two giant bubble teas each, then found an arcade with Dance Dance Revolution to help us burn off the sugar rush. We spent almost two hours walking on the stone path of the beautiful old fortress just a few blocks from our hotel, talking about summer, Oscar’s next therapy session with Roland, my mom, his dad, Trish and Mark, Thiago, and basically anything other than the Thing and what had happened in room 313. Until we found a little bench overlooking the small park inside the fortress and sat, and Oscar said:

“I knew something was wrong this time.”

I glanced at him. “This time?”

“Yeah, in room 313.” Oscar exhaled, and I could see his breath in the chilly air. “After I left you in there, I was almost to the stairs when I felt . . . déjà vu. Like I was back in Daems, right before Emily jumped out of that cell. Except this time, I knew something bad was about to happen.”

“Oh.” I waited, watching him squeeze his gloved hands into fists, then flex his fingers, over and over. Squeeze, flex. Squeeze, flex.

“So I ran back to the room, and . . .”

“Found me on the floor,” I finished. “You were right.”

“No.” Oscar shook his head. “I mean, yes, I was right. But you weren’t on the floor.”

“What?”

He looked at me. “You were standing in the corner. Really, really still, like a statue. It freaked me out, so I called your name, and . . . and you started falling over. You almost fell into the shelf, but I caught you.”

My mouth fell open. “Seriously? That’s . . . I don’t remember that.” I paused, picturing the scene he’d described. “Do you think . . . do you think all of that stuff in the other room 313 happened in my head?”

“No.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oscar, come on. You don’t have to pretend—”

“Your camera,” he interrupted. “I saw you taking pictures right before I left, then five seconds later I came back in and you weren’t holding it anymore. And there’s those cuts on your hands, too. Maybe when I walked back into room 313, it was right when you walked out of the other one. I don’t know. But whatever happened, you went . . . somewhere.”

I pulled off one of my mittens and studied the bandages on my palm, remembering how hard the Thing had shoved me, the way the shelf had rocked back and forth, sending the bottles crashing down on me. Then I looked up at Oscar.

“I could have really gotten hurt,” I told him. “If you hadn’t shown up, and I’d fallen into the shelf—the real one. It could’ve been a lot worse than a few cuts on my hands.” When he shrugged, I nudged him with my elbow. “No, seriously. You said you keep replaying the Emily thing because you should’ve reacted faster when she attacked us. Like you should’ve known something was wrong before it happened. And this time . . . you did.”

Oscar smiled a little. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Thank you,” I said. He rolled his eyes, but I could tell he was pleased.

“You’re welcome.”

Once the sun had set, we headed back to the hotel and arrived just as Lidia and Roland showed up carrying several bags of takeout. We went up to Lidia’s room and spread out a buffet on the desk: different kinds of spicy pork and chicken, sticky rice, pickled vegetables, and tons of kimchi. Mi Jin put on Return to the Asylum, and Grandma entertained everyone with her commentary, inserting behind-the-scenes anecdotes and adding inappropriate punch lines whenever her character spoke. Jess kept giggling at Dad, who struggled with his metal chopsticks and finally gave up, using one like a fork to stab his chicken. Sam loved the movie, to Grandma’s delight, and she immediately put in the DVD of the prequel when the first one was finished.

We were almost to the part where Grandma’s character knocks out a nurse and steals her uniform when Dad caught my eye and pointed to the clock on the nightstand. “Almost nine,” he mouthed, and I nodded.

Oscar followed me out, but neither of us spoke until we were in the hall. “The first one was good, but I don’t know about the second one,” Oscar said as we headed to me and Dad’s room. “How can she play the Warden? The Warden was the villain who killed her character in the first movie!”

“Yeah, a lot of people really hated that,” I said with a grin. “It only makes sense if the first movie was all a hallucination in the Warden’s head.”

“So weird.” Oscar shook his head, following me into the room. “Hey,