"About what?" she asks, folding her arms.

"About how prom has been unreasonably fatal for the last eighty-five years or so."

"I don't like it when people die," Bella says.

"That's nice," she says sarcastically.

"It's true. What do you want?" Bella says. "What are you hanging around for?"

"I didn't like it when I died," she says.

"I don't like it that you died either," Bella says. "It was shitty. I'm really sorry that happened to you and I wish it hadn't."

"There's old newspaper articles," says Bella. "About what happened."

"Yeah?" She flickers again, then solidifies further. "What do they say?"

"They say your date strangled you and then drowned you in a sink. And then the ones after that say that people have been found dead one way or the other at prom, if they come alone, since then. Why would you do that? Why wouldn't you just go after the guy who hurt you?"

"I can't find him," she snaps.

"He's probably dead now," Bella says. "If he's not he'd be a hundred years old. You couldn't find him even then? Did it take a while for you to become a ghost?"

"He never came back to prooooooom," she wails, the word stretching out into an unearthly howl. "Do you know how infuriating that is? I get one night a year to walk around, and I can't even get far enough from where I died to go to the other end of the gym!"

"That sounds really stultifying," Bella says sympathetically, hoping her wince looks like it has more to do with the ghost's plight than with her wail.

"It makes me so mad," she grumbles.

"I bet. I'd hate being cooped up like that too. But he's never coming back to prom. Even if he's alive, he's been out of high school for many years now," says Bella quietly. "Can you - go on?"