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If you had to make a list of most douchey things Charys Murphy has ever done, Rea Marshall was probably at the top of that list.

The truth was, Charys was haunted by a ghost who didn't even exist. Sidra Winters' reproachful face watched her in the mirror when she brushed out her hair, or dabbed her ear tentatively with hydrogen peroxide so that it didn't fall off and get gangrene thanks to Lieutenant Obsidian. Sidra Winters watched as she pulled on her socks in the morning, and wrapped her iPod around her neck. "Do you know where I am?" she asked. "You know, I'm probably. With the General-King. Getting tortured. If I'm not dead already -- I could be dead already, Charys. Did you think about that?"

"Yeah, I did, actually," said Charys back to her mirror, examining her eyebrows. Still blue. Charlie liked to stare at them and her eyelashes just in case he could find some evidence that she dyed, as he still hadn't given up. "Yep. Was on my to-think list."

"I gave myself up so that you could live," said the ghost of Sidra.

"Just like Jesus," said Charys. "I never asked you to."

"You'd never ask anyone to do anything," she said, "because you hate anyone asking you to do anything."

"God, Sid, just hate me," she said, "just please ******** hate me."

She was cracking up, because she was talking to things that weren't there.

But Rea -- Rea was, like. Epically douchey. Supremely assholish of her. She was reserved and clamped down tightly, and looked at Charys in the way that Charys knew she was being charmed despite herself -- probably the first time anyone had charmed her, nobody had bothered to try to charm her before. She was like the model of what a Crystal Academy girl should be: reserved, polite, totally kind of gay. She was feather-light, delicate. All the s**t Charys had found out she liked.

So she flopped on her the moment she found her at the carnival, Rea staring away at something in the middle distance, herself still covered in bandages, one wrist still locked in plaster of paris and covered in doodles, a pile of cotton candy clutched in her fingers. "Hey, open wide," she said, by way of hello. "Cotton candy's gross if you don't like, eat it immediately, it turns into sludge. Aaaah. Come on, unicorn."

"Thanks, I thought I looked kind of like Rambo," said Charys, and immediately bit down on the part that Rea hadn't bit from -- obviously cooties were not the kind of thing that Charys Murphy worried about. It never looked as though Charys worried about a lot. Her nose was healing up nicely, and the bruises were fading bruises -- fading bruises looked incredible, a technicolour rainbow of green, yellow and dark purple, but Charys didn't seem to care. That was another Charys thing -- she never seemed to care about anything.

She was plucking more at the ball of cotton candy, popping wads of it inside her mouth. "So, you know, our last kind of date was interrupted by your completely cute friend Eve-O and a monster, so, you know, not your fault. FML. However, we kind of ditched all the Facebook hi, how are you, tell me stuff."

Charys flipped a beeping cellphone out of her pocket, texted something so fast that her bruised thumb was a blur, and slid it back inside her jeans. "So. Crystal girl. Do you ride a white pony to class each day, I gotta know."

"Holy s**t," said Charys, obviously pleased. "You think I'm the type of girl who has a motorcycle. Nope. I ride my eco-friendly me-powered bike to school -- mainly to show off my mudguard stickers, because I live like, two blocks away. That and walking sucks. Nah, no motorbike. I don't have a leather jacket either. Like, I own an a*****e hat, but I'm too hipster to do the leather jacket thing, I guess? Whatev."

She plucked another wad of cotton candy and held it out for Rea, obviously brooking no complaint or non-compliancy where the cotton candy itself was concerned. Charys did not look as though she lay awake at night. However, Charys did look as though she'd had a fight with a bus and the bus had won, so there were other things to worry about in terms of Charys.

" -- Oh my god, chintzy-a** horse."

The bluenette was immediately drawn to one of those shooting games; she slapped over a dollar before Rea could object, handed Rea the cotton candy, and picked up the gun. It looked as though steadying it with one broken wrist and only one good hand was going to end in tears, and certainly the carnie behind the counter looked amused -- but then Charys tilted her head down and effortlessly shot each target. Carnival games were probably the pinnacle of Charys' existence: stuff that required a certain amount of know-how mixed with a certain amount of street-smartness, all dumped together in the pot of "talented up to a point."

The 'chintzy-a** horse' turned out to be a large white horse soft toy, replete with horn and a HURP DURP expression that kind of ruined everything. Charys took back the cotton candy, said "Happy birthday," and dumped it in Rea's arms. "Come on, name it."

"Hemanea," said Charys, poking the Hurp Durpicorn, which sounded too much like 'hernia' for comfort. "I don't actually a** all over horses, you know. I wasn't that kind of kid. You know the kind who was like, 'wow I'd give all my allowance to clean out a stable'? Yeah. Not me, dawg."

She looked and squinted out over the screaming, loud, popcorn-and-cotton-candy smelling carnival in front of them. "Tilt'o'hurl, nah," she said. "Merry-Go-Round, too creepy. Seriously. The horse faces give me the Blair Witches. Let's ironically ride the ferris wheel, okay?"

They got in line for the ferris wheel to 'ride it ironically', though what this really meant Rea didn't know. Hemanea the Hurp Durp Unicorn was still casually poised in her arms. Charys kept on leaning against her, one arm on her shoulder.

"So," she said, as they waited. "Yep."

"Yeah, bu~uuut," Charys drawled, "if I wanted to bring along more people, I would have brought along more people. That's the type of girl I am: the type who would've brought along more people only she totally didn't want to, okay?"

The wheel slowly turned around -- and stopped at the top, which prompted people to dutifully scream, as nobody ever acted surprised when the ferris wheel stopped. It was a ferris wheel thing. The girl next to Rea had her hands in her pockets. "I mean, dude, max and relax here," she said. "Chillax. I don't care if you're a shitty conversationalist. You're fine, all right? I can conversationalist for both of us. Me and Hemanea."

The ferris wheel eventually made its way back down to them, and they were pushed through to the next batch of hopeful ferris-wheelers -- Charys plopped herself in the seat and crooked her finger at Rea and her horrible plushie unicorn as she did her maximum lounge thing. Charys always sat as though she was entirely, utterly comfortable. The ferris wheel seat was pretty hard, really.

"Your ironic ferris wheel tour begins here," she said.

"Because we're not actually riding it sincerely," said Charys. "We're riding it as like, an ironic self-reference to our childhoods. We have an ironic carnie toy. This thing is being operated by classic guys with no back molars who still believe Reagan's president. Definitely can't get more ironic than us riding this ride."

She whipped her feet up to lean them on the front of the ferris wheel seat. Whatever made Charys happy; it looked and felt like a completely normal ferris wheel ride, but obviously for Charys it was something completely different. They swung up in the air as the ride started: it wasn't exactly scary when you now made your living jumping from roof to roof.

"Know what else is ironic?" she said, as the carnival stretched out in front of them in a field of harsh electric lights and the far-off fried smell of hot dogs. "Prom, in this day and age. In this day and age, I ask you, man. So: you're going with me, right?"

"I can't declench Latin verbs," said Charys, and did a pristine arm-flop -- usually people only slowly snaked their arm around the back of a seat and around somebody's shoulders, but her forearm was talented. She crawled her fingers at lightning speed around the old, squeaky back of the ferris-wheel seat, noogied Hemarea and let her arm lounge there lightly somewhere behind Rea's shoulders. Not quite around them. Definitely somewhere in the vicinity though. "I don't think 'declench' is even the right word, sucks to be me."

One finger tapped at Rea's shoulderline. "I mean, assuming we don't die before prom," she said. "Could make it a goal; no dying before prom. Text me what colour you're wearing and I'll totally get you a ghetto corsage. I mean, I'll make it a step up from 'grandma's garden tinfoil at the end', but otherwise your corsage is going to be pretty ghetto."

Apparently prom was also about ghetto corsages. Maybe it was a Meadowview thing. Eve was that girl: and now Rea was launched into the odd, strange bubble of also being that girl, including that girl who got a crappy stuffed animal at the carnival. "Lemme text," she said, and her cellphone was whipped out again as she tapped furiously: a couple seconds later she said, "Okay, so, it's 'declension', but my man-pal Oddy says that he doesn't know what the hell a 'declench' is, so the More You Know."

And that was Charys too: so casual she could fall over. "Wear something cute," she said. "Don't get all obsessed over like, neck to ankle like a Victorian lady. You are so the neck to ankle Victorian lady type."