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When she first heard of the ghost that was, like, a real live ghost fucking walking around in Hollywood, being chased by paparazzi and shit , Persephone calmly sucked her strawberry shake through her straw. She was used to Christine making up stories, like the time

she swore up and down she’d caught Ewan McGregor’s eye in an elevator and serviced him before they reached the lobby, or the

time a scout for the latest Tarantino film approached her at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and asked her to come

read for a bit part but she lost the guy’s card, or the time she healed her GERD with apple cider vinegar. Well, that story

was true—partially, anyway. But this time, apparently, Christine was absolutely telling the truth.

“Here,” she said, swiping frantically across her phone. She thrust the screen under Persephone’s nose. “Seph, just look.”

Persephone looked. A shaky video of asphalt and several pairs of sneakered feet. Shadows, sounds of jostling. A sunlit sidewalk

and a glass office building. Somewhere on Wilshire, it looked like.

“Keep watching.”

Three people walked out: an Asian (Korean?) girl with a bowl haircut typing on both an iPhone and a Galaxy at the same time; a young bow-tied Black guy carrying a leather attaché; a tanned white woman, razor-limbed and small-headed like a Balanchine principal—all that was missing were her pointe shoes—in a chic grey pencil skirt and white shades as she strode—was it.

.. yes. Hannah J?ger. They were followed by a ginormous white guy in a black suit.

And sandwiched between them, an ebony-skinned Black man who.

.. Well, the only way to describe it was that he sort of hazed at the edges.

Persephone bit down on her straw and bent forward. When the sunlight hit him directly, his entire body, clothes and all, went

golden but faded out, the way fog did when you shined a flashlight directly into it. She could still see him, but more than

anything she was seeing through him. But then he walked into someone’s shadow—the behemoth guarding him—and he looked normal.

Nearly.

“See?” Christine said gleefully.

People were arguing in the comments section. They argued that his existence proved this or that religion was real, or that

he was absolute proof that none of them were; the faithful were busy owning the atheists, while the atheists were busy owning

the idiots who actually didn’t understand that he wasn’t what he seemed at all. People argued he was actually alive but had

a skin condition or was wearing some special powder that bent light, some super-secret technology the government used to make

aircraft go invisible. People argued he was a psyop, or a hologram, maybe promotion for an upcoming film.

But somehow, Persephone knew this was the real thing.

They watched the video again. And again. They watched until Christine swiped the video away to input her shakes and fries

into a food-watch app. And finally, they left, but not before Persephone walked over to the condiments bar and slipped three

straws into her purse, which felt like an exhale.

2

“You sure you don’t want to come with?” Christine called from the driver’s seat.

Persephone closed the door of Christine’s beat-up seventies Cadillac, Bianca, and dipped her head. “I’m sure. I’m going to watch those acting lectures.” She’d had them bookmarked on her browser forever and somehow never managed to get around to them.

“You still haven’t watched? I did, like, five months ago. Twice.”

“Have fun for me, OK?” said Persephone. She preferred one-on-ones with her best friend and had no interest in hanging out

with Christine’s other friends, especially the lanky guy with straggly hair who was always trying to sell her X.

The Cadillac pulled off and Persephone made her way up the stone walkway toward a shaded two-story, the unevenness in her

gait announcing each time her wedges hit stone. Clop-CLOP, clop-CLOP. She’d been moving to this song for nearly half her life and it was annoying and sometimes still embarrassing, but it was

what it was. Persephone’s hip hadn’t healed perfectly and so she was gifted with a slight limp, her left leg being a bit shorter

than her right. Before she reached the steps to the house, she took a left and crossed mossy stones that led to the back,

across the expansive lawn toward the tiny guesthouse she’d rented. She loved the feel of the French lavender bushes as they

skimmed her legs, fully exposed in her usual denim short shorts. But she shivered a little and clasped her elbows. The property

was nestled in a glen, and the back, especially, looked as if it were being held in nature’s hand—that’s exactly what she’d

told Christine when she first laid eyes on it. The guesthouse was kind of cold in the mornings and at night, but it was cheap.

A friend of an acquaintance knew the old couple who lived in the house and was able to put in a good word, made it so the

couple wouldn’t demand the requisite credit check. It was Hollywood, just not the part of the Hollywood Hills people dreamed

about or saw on TV.

There was a lot about a lot that wasn’t the way you dreamt it to be.

When Persephone came to Los Angeles from Corpus Christi, fresh out of high school, she hadn’t needed much.

She had her dreams and a dose of blonde ambition; even better, a shitload of people and things she’d love nothing more than to leave behind, like her impossible-to-please mother and hopeless brother, as well as Clay, her ex-boyfriend, who would, over pillow talk with her ex-bestie Misty, probably toss around a few theories about her hasty departure.

One day they’d see Persephone’s fifty-foot face on a screen at the multiplex, and they’d know: she’d made it.

Persephone had played the moment over and over on the Peter Pan bus, which she boarded graduation night. Her mother would

be weeping and sorry, sinking into her seat with shame because she’d dropped Persephone as soon as it became impossible for

her to live up to previous expectations, but look, her daughter made something out of herself after all.

But it had been five years, and now Persephone was twenty-two. Definitely not a kid anymore and certainly not a film star.

That wasn’t to say she’d never gotten offers to do films , but they were the kind in which she’d have to think of some ridiculous pseudonym, a name that rhymed or maybe one that made

her sound edible and not the kind that would get her on set with Meryl Streep. Hardly the kind of progress worthy of the painful

path that got her here.

Persephone pulled out her laptop and found the video of the ghost man. Suddenly, the guesthouse felt less cozy and more cramped;

it felt less chilly and more dank. The vegetation surrounding the guesthouse and the entire property wasn’t lush and inviting,

it was slowly eating her alive. Persephone pressed repeat. This guy was allegedly dead and in LA probably all of one week,

and already he was on the fast track. The fast track to what, Persephone couldn’t say, but he sure as hell wasn’t sitting

in a dilapidated guesthouse with nothing but cold fries and OJ in the fridge.

3

“Saying you want to be an actor isn’t enough.” Delia Kramer raised her dignified, white-bunned head and tightened the crocheted

shawl around her bony body as she dramatically scanned those seated in the tiny auditorium. “Not all of you have the passion

required to take you to the next level.”

Persephone glanced at Christine, who threw her a sly look before crossing her eyes and poking out her tongue. Christine had wanted to be an actress since playing Juliet in her junior high play. She’d had two callbacks last month. She was getting somewhere in this town.

“One life,” said Delia, “can’t be enough for you. Living one life must leave you so impoverished, you must be insatiable with

even a multitude of skins to inhabit.”

Persephone understood passion. She knew what it was to be consumed by it, to feel desperately the need to let the energy of

life and love and possibility flow through to each fingertip, to her very toenails, to close her eyes and feel every limb

express the story she told silently as she spun and leapt for an hour only to look up and see three had gone by. To know even

as she nursed her blisters that this is what I was made for .

But those days were far behind her. She’d destroyed two things before leaving Corpus Christi: her last pair of ballet shoes

and her brother’s life.

“In this town,” Delia went on, “there are thousands just like you. Obsession. Discipline. That’s what you are up against.”

Delia’s speech was bad timing. Imagining hundreds of other girls sitting in their rooms for eight hours a day “being” Constance

Deleon ( 21, Latina, extremely hot but completely unaware of it ) wasn’t helping Persephone’s nerves for the callback this afternoon. First off, she was pleased she’d even gotten the callback

considering she wasn’t Latina and, with her hazel eyes and wavy blonde hair, didn’t look Hollywood Latina, either, which was

the stereotypically dark-haired, fiery, lusty kind of Latina Hollywood meant when they specified Latina in screenplays—but the role was complete bullshit and she’d told Christine so: How the hell is a twenty-one- year-old extremely hot but completely unaware of it?

It’s bullshit. Some jerkoff screenwriter’s wet dream of his perfect ingenue.

Christine had agreed, though all she had to contribute was a half-hearted shrug while looking not nearly offended enough.

But then Persephone’s rarely communicative agent called her back with the news that casting wanted a second look and Persephone’s