When she tells Mint all of this, he says nothing. He trusts her to figure something out.

He says, “Stay with me. Never leave me.”

He says, “I’ll never leave you.”

That night she decides she might as well go and see Mint. They’ve never spent the night together. Anyway she can’t fall asleep. Maybe the time is right. They can lie on the couch together, and then she can fall asleep with her head on his shoulder. She can wake up in his arms.

It’s bitterly cold. Immy, on her bike, coasts down empty streets. No one sees her go by. She could sneak into a house. Cut off a lock of someone’s hair while they’re asleep. Pour drain cleaner in a fish tank or put salt in a sugar jar. What couldn’t she do? She could go places. Have adventures. Cause all kinds of trouble.

The You-Store-It after midnight is a palace. A mausoleum. Gothic, satiny black, full of other people’s secrets. But her secret is the best.

When she gets to the storage locker, she hears voices. A voice. Someone is talking. Mint is talking. Mint is talking to someone. She recognizes everything that he’s saying.

“I love you. Only you.”

“I love only you.”

“Stay with me. Don’t ever leave me.”

“We’re together now. I’ll never leave you.”

“I love you.”

It’s peculiar, because Immy set Mint to Spectral Mode. And who is he talking to, anyway? Everything that he’s saying, it’s everything he says to Immy. All of this is wrong. Something is wrong.

She unlocks the door, lifts it up. And something is definitely wrong, because there is her Ghost Boyfriend, standing in the dark, in Embodied Mode, and there is her Ghost Boyfriend in Spectral Mode. Except the ghost isn’t her Ghost Boyfriend. It’s a girl. Barely there, less there than Mint ever is. The beam of Immy’s flashlight pins the ghost girl there in the air. Holes for eyes. Light hair.

The ghost’s hand is reaching out to Mint. Her fingers on his mouth.

Immy may be an idiot, but she’s not an idiot. She knows, instantly, the mistake she has made. The mistake she has been allowed to make. Those three lengths of hair, the two black pieces and the yellow. Apparently Immy isn’t the one who gave Ainslie’s Ghost Boyfriend a real ghost—she’s the one who gave Ainslie’s Ghost Boyfriend two ghosts.

No one is in love with her. She isn’t anyone’s girlfriend.

This isn’t her love story.

She goes right up to the Ghost Boyfriend, Mint, whoever he is. And that other girl. That dead girl. Who cares who she is, either. It’s not like she can do anything to Immy. But Immy can do something to her. Body or no body.

“Immy,” Mint says.

“Shut up,” she tells him. And she sticks her fingers right into his traitor’s mouth.

He bites down. And then his hands are up and someone’s fingers are around her throat. Mint’s fingers.