The Girl in Acid Park by Lauren Harris Page A

his school tie.
    "Shit," he said. He set down his cup and crossed to his laundry basket. I giggled fiendishly as he fished out a towel, wiped his hands and face, and grabbed his tie.
    And then my brain turned off. Honestly, I'm not into suit porn. I'm not really even all that excited by the idea of strippers. But there is something about a guy slipping the knot of a tie loose, something about the sound of it pulling through the collar, that silences any girl with a preference for holders of the y-chromosome.
    My mouth went dry at the sound and there was a traitorous tingle somewhere South of the Border. Jamie chucked his tie in the basket, though I'm pretty sure those don't go in the washing machine. He tilted his chin and squinted, thumbing open the top button of his shirt.
    I'd stopped giggling and commenced staring. The second I realized it, I was desperate for something else to look at. Bed--no. Sink--no. Star Trek poster. Yes, good.
    "So, what does Satou think?" Jamie asked, dropping himself back into place on the navy bedspread.
    Well, there was a mood-killer. If he'd been doing the whole prep-school strip-tease on purpose, he'd just ruined it.
    "Uh-oh," he said, pausing mid-reach for his tea. "From that expression-"
    I sighed, tucking one foot under me. "I guess it's good all the gossip isn't going around school like herpes."
    "Your descriptions of things are so pleasant."
    "Hiroki and I are taking a break."
    He leaned forward. "From..." His voice had dropped in pitch.
    "From being friends? From hanging out? I don't know. He's mad at me for not being able to stop thinking about ghosts. I'm mad at him for abandoning me when I needed him to, well, help me look like I'm not just making up my--ugh, powers sounds so X-men..."
    "Ability," Jamie supplied. "So he doesn't know about the brick?"
    "No."
    "And you're just sort of...waiting out the storm?"
    I twisted the cup in my hands. "Also no."
    His mouth flattened. "I'm almost afraid to ask."
    My half-empty cup had lost most of its warmth. I set it down, fingers still playing with the handle. "I've been trying to figure out how to see ghosts again. Preferably without giving myself another concussion."
    "Oh!" A tone of pleasant surprise.
    I cocked my head at him. That had been a chipper 'oh' for someone as dispassionate as the Bishop. Next moment, though, he was reaching for the laptop purring at the end of his bed. "I--actually--did some research on that last month. You know," he waved a hand toward Aaron's side of the room. I nodded and stood up.
    "And you found something?"
    "Well," he bobbed his head to the side to waylay my expectations. "If you don't mind at least one of them being slightly illegal."

CHAPTER SIX
    A Joint Effort

    "This was a stupid idea," I said, staring at the plume of smoke Jamie blew into the wet darkness in front of us. I'd tried pot once before and it hadn't done anything for me besides encourage an extended trip to find fro-yo. Now, all I could feel was a slight tingling in my fingers, but that could have been caused by proximity to Jamie. Still, as we leaned back against the tailgate of his truck, staring up the gravel-strewn ruts of Acid Park, I found I didn't really care whether this worked.
    I'd texted, even called Hiroki, convinced some good, old-fashioned rule-breaking would get us over the tift, but he'd never answered. By the time Jamie and I had rolled off the main road, past the crashed VW, I was ready to do something reckless.
    The driveway back to the artist's farmhouse was long, with bends enough of its own to easily conceal a dark gray truck from both the road and the house at its end. Neither of us actually knew whether Bill's bro lived in the farmhouse now that the artist was gone, but that's not the sort of thing you care too much about when you're getting high at 2 a.m.
    Jamie handed me the rolled cigarette and I took it from him, pulled the smoke into my lungs. Pulled maybe too much in, because suddenly, my esophagus