“Then why did you pass out?” Cody sounds bored. “Forget your lines again?”

“Not at all.” Amelia suddenly looks frightened. “I saw something. Up there.” She points at the rafters with a trembling finger. All I see are wood beams crisscrossing the ceiling. “It was…terrifying.”

“What was it, sweetheart?” Mrs. Hart asks, clutching her daughter’s hands. “Tell me, please!”

Amelia lets out a whimper. Suddenly, I know what she’s going to say even before she says it. “I-I think it was…a ghost.”

Chapter Five

“What should we order?” I stare at a list of menus on my iPad. “Chinese? Burgers? Tacos?”

“No tacos!” Aubrey declares, making a face.

“Right, right.” I’ve forgotten Aubrey hates tacos. “Can we agree on pizza, then?”

“Only if we can get it with pineapple,” Cody says.

“Grossest topping ever,” Aubrey mumbles.

“You can pick it off,” Cody tells her, and Aubrey throws a pillow at his head. The pillow misses, sailing straight out the tree house window and onto my lawn. Salmon, who’s prowling around the property, pads over to the pillow and sniffs it.

We’re in my backyard tree house, our safe space. Dad built it for me when I was nine, saying it was so I could have some privacy. The thing is, my house is plenty private already. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. All I have to do is close my bedroom door. So for a long time, I didn’t use the tree house much. But then Aubrey and Cody came along, and everything changed.

We first started coming up here shortly after becoming friends, using the tree house to practice lines and gossip about the set. We also play marathon sessions of Minecraft (my favorite video game) or Call of Duty (Aubrey’s). Even the delivery services know that when we place an order, they’re to deliver it to the tree house, not my family’s front door.

“I’m ordering.” I tap the screen and finalize the pizza takeout. Then, I flop back on a pillow that didn’t fly out the window. “I need food, after this day,” I say.

“Same,” Aubrey and Cody grumble.

We fall into troubled silence. Amelia’s ghost sighting delayed filming on Sadie Solves It for a while. First, security climbed up to the rafters to make sure nothing was up there. By the time we got the all clear, Paul had learned the “rumors” about Betty, and he sat us all down and explained that sure, Hollywood has lots of ghost stories, but they’re all just myths.

“It’s not real,” Paul urged. “There’s no ghost.”

I’d noticed Morton York standing behind him, listening. But Mr. York didn’t say anything to back Paul up. Maybe that was because he thought otherwise. Maybe it was because Betty the ghost ruined his show, and he was scared she was back.