Dead Air - Michelle Schusterman (the read aloud family txt) 📗

at it apprehensively. Dad and Jess held their flashlights up, and Mi Jin lifted the camera. Then the flickering stopped, and the bulb stayed on.

Lidia slumped over, and Roland and Sam both reached for her. “It’s fine, I’m fine . . .”

“Get her upstairs and get the front desk to call a doctor to check her out,” Jess ordered Roland, who nodded as he helped Lidia to her feet. Jess turned to Dad. “Can you take Kat and Oscar to their rooms? I’ll bring these two up and tell Thomas what’s going on. Jack, Roland, Sam, Mi Jin—meet back down here in an hour.”

“No, please let us stay!” Hailey cried. “We won’t leave the cell, I swear!”

Jess shook her head, her face tense. “Sorry, kiddo. We don’t want any of you to get hurt. I’m sure your dad will agree.”

Hailey opened her mouth angrily, but Jamie put his hand on her arm and shook his head.

“I want the doctor to check Kat and Hailey out, too,” Dad said tersely. “Mi Jin, as well. They were all pretty . . . out of it there for a minute.”

“I just got dizzy, it’s not a big deal,” Hailey muttered, and my cheeks started to feel warm. At least she and Mi Jin hadn’t thought they’d seen Sonja. Maybe I had a concussion or something.

Jess nodded in agreement. “I’ll be in to check on Lidia as soon as I talk to Thomas,” she added to Roland. Her face softened when she turned to Lidia. “Sure you’re okay?”

Lidia smiled weakly, her eyes downcast. “Same old, same old. I’m fine.”

Same old, same old? What, did she regularly turn into centuries-old dead women? But I kept my mouth shut. I was still light-headed, and the whole experience already seemed so distant and dreamlike . . . Had I really seen Sonja?

I tuned out the chatter as we all headed back up to the theater. In the hotel lobby, I waved good-bye to Jamie and Hailey before Jess herded them off to their room, promising to bring the doctor around to each of us. As the elevator doors slid shut, I watched Roland ring the front desk bell impatiently while Sam guided Lidia to the sofa. “I’m fine, stop making a fuss,” she said lightly. “You know how this goes, Sam . . .”

The elevator lurched, then started to rise. Dad stared straight ahead, a tiny muscle twitching in his cheek. I knew what that meant. Grandma called it his “patience timer.” When that twitch started, it meant his patience had just about run out.

I swallowed. “Is Lidia really okay?” I asked Oscar, just to break the silence. He nodded, though he looked a bit shaken.

“Yeah. This happens sometimes.”

“What is this, exactly?” I asked carefully. “I mean, what happened to her back there?”

He glanced at me. “Seizure. Wasn’t it? You were there, not me. You saw her.”

“Um . . . I guess, yeah.”

The doors opened, and we followed Dad off the elevator. “I’m sure they’ll be sending Lidia up soon,” Dad said as Oscar swiped his key card. Oscar glanced at me, opened his mouth, closed it, and shut the door in my face.

“Well, good night to you, too,” I muttered. Dad stayed silent until we reached our room. The door clicked closed behind him, and he turned to face me.

“Kat . . .”

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “I know you said to stay there, but I—”

“Snuck off anyway,” Dad interrupted. “Want to give me the short version of what happened?”

I swallowed hard. “I saw a light and . . . I guess I thought it might be Lidia or Sam. I wasn’t going to go any farther than the end of the tunnel, I swear. But then I, um . . .” I couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t tell Dad I’d seen Sonja Hillebrandt. “I tripped and hit my head and fell into that cell,” I finished lamely.

“Okay.” Dad eyed me in a way that suggested he wasn’t buying my story. “We’re filming until five. You’ve got my cell number?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll talk about this more tomorrow,” Dad said. “And we’ll come up with a set of new and improved ground rules that, if you’re lucky, won’t involve me hiring a bodyguard to shadow your every move.”

I sighed. “Sure.”

“Kat, look at me.”

Steeling myself, I lifted my eyes to meet his.

“If this adventure of ours is going to work,” Dad said, “I need to know I can trust you.”

My throat suddenly felt hot, so I just nodded.

“Good night, Kat.”

“’Night.”

As soon as the door closed, I flopped back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. My eyes ached with exhaustion, but no way was I sleeping tonight. Not after I’d seen a ghost. Or hallucinated that I’d seen a ghost. I wasn’t sure which thought was more alarming.

Now that the fuzziness in my head had faded, I went over every detail in my mind. Lidia’s sweater and jeans. Sonja’s soft smile. Sonja’s features were smaller, delicate. Lidia’s were more angular, more defined. They didn’t look alike. I’d seen Sonja clearly, zoomed in on her face, the locket around her neck—

Gasping, I shot up off the bed and jammed my hand in my pocket. The camera!

My fingers trembled as I flipped the Elapse on and started to scroll. There was Lidia’s locket with the engraved L, and after that, the image of Sonja standing on the other side of the bars . . .

I held the camera close to my eyes in disbelief. The clarity wasn’t great, but it was enough for me to see that the woman was definitely, absolutely, without a doubt Lidia.

Had I really somehow hallucinated Sonja? Was this all part of the “entertainment”? I had no idea how Lidia could have done all that, with the light and her floating hair and the static electricity . . . It was hard to imagine the crew pulling off that kind of hoax.

I stared at the photo for nearly a minute before I noticed what was next to Lidia. A sort of shape in the air next to her, a strange blur . . .

My heart pounded in my ears. It was faint, but unmistakable—and on a computer screen, it