We’re meeting Professor Guzmán at the church tomorrow to learn more, but he claims his séances have been really successful. Some of his students have been so frightened by Brunilda’s ghost that they’ve stopped participating entirely. Personally, I can’t wait to meet her. Friday night, the whole P2P cast is joining Professor Guzmán in the catacombs to contact Brunilda. But Oscar and I don’t want to wait that long, which is why we’re taking Mi Jin’s Ouija board to the church tomorrow. Stay tuned for another episode of our new web series, Graveyard Slot, on Sunday at midnight!
THE cathedral was gorgeous: jewel-colored stained glass windows; tall, castle-like towers; pointed arches with intricate carvings; dark gray stone that glittered slightly in the sun; and wicked-looking gargoyles with gaping mouths. “Very Gothic,” I observed, much to Dad’s delight. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t mean “Gothic Revival” in the architecture sense and more just, well, “goth.”)
The inside was just as beautiful, although not as peaceful as it had been when we first visited yesterday, thanks to a large tour group. Most of the P2P crew had decided to wait for Professor Guzmán outside, but I was taking pictures of the vaulted ceiling and the images in the stained glass windows (some were impressively gory) while Oscar, Jamie, and Hailey sat in the back pew. They fell silent when the group entered, the tour guide talking loudly in thickly accented English.
I watched them shuffle slowly up the aisle, wondering if it would be rude to take photos of them. Mom always said this was tricky for professional photographers: You didn’t want to try and be sneaky about it, but if you asked people if it was okay, you’d never get natural-looking shots because they’d be too aware of the camera. Her rule was to only ask permission if she wanted a close-up of someone’s face. Otherwise, she took the pictures she wanted to take and stopped if people seemed uncomfortable.
So I moved to the front near the altar, held my camera up, and waited a few seconds. The tour guide, an older man with salt-and-pepper hair, glanced over his shoulder and smiled at me before turning back to the group.
Click! Click! I got several shots of the whole group, then started focusing on individuals. Two gray-haired women wearing backpacks and sneakers. A girl with dreadlocks and a killer camera that was probably about fifty times more expensive than my Elapse. Two bored-looking girls around Hailey’s age, whose parents reacted too enthusiastically to every sentence that came out of the tour guide’s mouth. Six or seven people all wearing the same red T-shirts that said Tapaculo Adventures. And, in the back, a boy and a girl who weren’t paying attention to the guide at all.
I studied them through my viewfinder, zooming in a little. They were both teenagers, and the girl looked like a junior or senior in high school, while the boy was probably a year older than me. Brother and sister, I guessed, seeing as they had the same sun-streaked dark brown hair, brown skin slightly lighter than mine, and noses that bent slightly to the left. No bags or cameras or any touristy stuff, either. They were whispering, heads were bowed together, and the girl kept glancing back at the entrance in a nervous sort of way.
“Hey.”
Startled, I lowered my camera to find Oscar at my side. “What?” It came out more clipped than I intended, and he sighed.
“Seriously, you’re still mad at me about the Graveyard Slot thing? I said I’m sorry.”
I stepped aside as the tour group began moving up closer to the altar. “Are you, though?”
Oscar’s scowled. “What?”
“Never mind.” I didn’t feel like getting into it now, especially when Oscar would just deny it. Besides, it seemed wrong to have an argument in a church. But I knew he didn’t regret anything. I said no to the web series, but he’d gone and told Jess about it anyway. Then stupid Shelly Mathers had given him the perfect opportunity to seal the deal during their interview. He knew I wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone by backing out, and his plan had totally worked.
“Kat . . .”
“Forget it, Oscar. I’m not mad.” I zoomed in on Jamie and Hailey in the last pew, heads bowed over Oscar’s iPad, probably still researching places to feature in Graveyard Slot. But my hands were really starting to sweat, so after just a few shots, I flipped my camera off and took a deep breath. After a couple of seconds, my heartbeat started to slow.
“Are you getting sick or something?” Oscar asked. “You’re really sweaty.”
I shook my head, wiping my palms on my shorts. This morning when I’d logged into my blog to approve the new comments, I’d been greeted by another dozen messages from kbold04. He was getting meaner, too. If Dad knew the stuff this person was saying to me, he’d probably flip out and delete my whole blog. So I’d deleted the comments—but not before getting a screenshot of each one. Any time I had a spare second, I pulled out my phone and flipped through them. My stomach had been churning with anxiety all morning, but I couldn’t stop reading those horrible things about me.
But I definitely did not want to discuss any of that with Mr. TV Celebrity at the moment, and the tour group had stopped at the front of the aisle, within earshot.
“This lovely circular window,” the guide was saying as he gestured behind him, “provides a . . . a magnified focus for the exterior design, as you will soon see from the courtyard. And there was just as much focus on decorative and romantic features on the inside as the outside . . .”
Oscar was watching one of the guys in Tapaculo Adventures shirts closest to us, his eyes narrowed. The guy’s shoulders shook with silent laughter every time the guide said focus. Probably because with his
