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her?”
    “She’s always hearing strange noises.  Back in our old apartment, she was convinced she’d hear someone walking around late at night.”
    “But you never heard anything?”
    “No,” Gavin replied simply.  “To be honest, I think the break-in traumatized her a lot more than she likes to let on.  She’s always had a crazy imagination.  As a kid, she would actually make imaginary friends for herself out of poster board.  She’d give them names, hometowns, back stories, birthdays, you name it, she thought of it.  I think now, because she imagines things so vividly, she thinks too hard about the break-in and scares herself into believing she hears someone walking around our apartment.  But what do I know?  I’m not a shrink.”  
    “It sounds plausible,” Michael agreed, reeling from the information that Kate knew, or at least suspected, that someone other than Gavin was living with her in the apartment.   The real challenge was going to be working that into a conversation without sounding, well, creepy.  
    “I don’t know.   I just hope she’s okay.  She’s been through a lot more than I have this year.”  
    “She seems happy,” Michael told him.
    “Yeah,” Gavin replied listlessly.  “Anyway, we should probably head on down to the pool before she sends a search and rescue squad to check on us.” 
    ~*~
    Down by the pool, Michael and Gavin were greeted by the tantalizing aroma of cheese, pepperoni, and sausage pizza.  The sun had almost set and the sky glowed a deep shade of violet.  The lights inside the pool illuminated the entire area, and someone had brought an old 1990s boom box that filled the night air with a popular country song that Michael recognized but couldn’t name.  
    “Ugh, this song is awful,” Gavin complained loudly.   “Someone change it to something good.”
    “Hey, I love this song,” Kate, who was already shoulder-deep in the clear blue water, called.   “Besides, it’s summer.  Summer time is country music time.”  
    “Yeah, well, it’s my birthday and I say it goes.”   Kate’s face fell into a playful pout.  
    “You’re lame,” she quipped before she slipped beneath the restless surface of the pool.
    About thirty minutes later, everyone was lounging around, eating, drinking, talking, and laughing.  By that point, Michael had all but forgotten that he was supposed to be on a mission to find out all he could about the ghost.  But , he reasoned with himself, he wasn’t there this time .  Maybe Michael had been wrong all along and the ghost hadn’t been waging some crazy vendetta against Gavin.  Maybe it was just a random haunting and he had left them for good.  Unfortunately, the rational voice in the back of his mind told him that probably wasn’t the case.  
    As they all gathered around to eat, Michael found himself in a small group that consisted of a very chlorinated Kate (he tried to pretend he hadn’t choked on his soda when she’d first climbed out of the pool in her dark blue bikini), a girl Gavin used to work with named Toni, her girlfriend Leah, and Gavin’s friend Alex, who’d annoyed Michael from the moment he decided to grace them with his presence.
    “Guys, watch this,” he’d announced, grinning stupidly as he took a seat on the pavement next to Michael.  “Hey, Kate, what color is the pool?”  
    “Hilarious, Alex,” Kate remarked.    
    “I hope you don’t wonder why you go home alone,” Toni told Alex, who stared at her like a deer in the headlights.   Michael decided that he liked Toni.  
    “So Michael, how about you?   Do you have a girlfriend?  Or a boyfriend?” Leah asked.
    “Um, no.   I’m single.”  He glanced over at Kate, but only for a moment.  Out of the corner of his eye, however, he could swear he saw her smile.
    Later on that evening, everyone gathered around a platter full of cupcakes, throughout which were placed twenty-six candles, and sang “Happy Birthday” to