“To be fair, I never thought there was a ghost.”

I heard a sigh of disgust on the other line and immediately feared I lost all chances with him.

“Honesty is good, but good is overrated,” Dex lectured. “I appreciate a straight shooter—fuck knows I don’t have enough of them around me— but don’t admit the thing is fake.”

“It’s not fake!’ I exclaimed. “You were there!”

“Anyway,” he said, ignoring me, “I, Declan Foray, and my boss, Jimmy Kwan, want to ask you if you would be interested in joining me in filming a demo for the website about our ghost-slash-weird encounter. Kind of like a TV show pilot. If it’s good and you look good, then I look good and Jimmy will want to pick it up as an actual show for our network…netsite. Web thing. But it’s all riding on you. I’m pushing for this show because to be honest here—and I mean let’s keep this between you and me—I can’t stand another day of shooting Wine Babes. I need something different and I just think this could be really, really cool. Now it’s your turn to say something.”

I was taken aback, to say the least.

Amazing. Awesome. Cool. Fantastic. Stupendous. Crazy. Too good to be true. I wanted to say all of those things. But I could only manage to squeak out:

“OK?”

“That’s the spirit! Now we are cooking with gas!”

“You’re not drunk right now, are you?”

“Not really, why?”

“I just hope this isn’t something that you’ll forget about in the morning.”

“I don’t think I will,” he mused.

“It’s just this might be the coolest thing that has ever happened to me and I really don’t want to get excited about it until I know for sure.”

“In that case, don’t get excited. Sorry, but you…I…we must remember that this is just a demo. For all I know it will totally suck balls.”

“You have a way with words. Are you sure you aren’t a writer?”

“You’re the writer. And the star. Now here’s the plan. I’m going to drive down from Seattle on Saturday morning, pick you up and together we will go to the lighthouse. We’re going to need your uncle’s permission, of course. And we’ll go on Saturday night and shoot the shit out of it. I drop you back at home on Sunday and then I go and edit it until its worthy of a Kubrick film. Hopefully, by mid-next week, Jimmy will be pleasantly surprised with our piece de resistance, or else I’m back at Wine Babes and you’re back to whatever the hell you do.”

“I’m a receptionist,” I muttered.

“Fun!”

There was something so terribly abrupt and hazy about this whole ordeal.

“Now, wait a minute,” I started, “how do I know that this is legitimate? I mean, you could still be a bald-headed meth addict hobo I stumbled upon in the lighthouse.”

“I’m not bald yet,” he said.

“And,” I continued, “there could be no show. I’m not going to go off with some stranger to a lighthouse. I mean, where are we going to sleep anyway? I’m not sleeping with you.”

He chuckled, “Don’t flatter yourself, kiddo. I’ll be staying in a motel in Tillamook. We don’t really have a budget, though, so I would appreciate it if you could stay at your uncle’s place. If he needs to talk to me about all this, by all means, get him to call me.”

I still wasn’t convinced. I told him that.

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “I guess I could see how this might all seem a bit random and sketchy. Especially with how we met. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t win you over but I guess the lighting wasn’t very flattering in that lighthouse anyway. Do yourself a favor and don’t commit to anything tonight. Go on the internet. Check out Shownet.com. We’ve got MySpace pages too. Twitter. Add me to your Facebook. Dex Foray. F-O-R-A-Y. In the morning, call me, email me, whatever, and let me know what you’ve decided. Got it?”

“Well, OK.”

“I’ll be hearing from you.”

Click. And just like that, he was gone.

“What on earth was that about?” my mother asked coming over to me.

I slowly hung up the phone. I had no idea.

“Perry?”

I looked at my mom. She would get extremely excited about it if I told her, but I didn’t want to say anything until I knew exactly what was what.

“Yeah, well…” I started for the stairs. “Listen, Mom, I’m not sure what it was about. I’ve got to do some research and I’ll let you know soon.”

I ran up the stairs to my room. I heard my mom call after me, “Is yours a fashion blog too? Because I wouldn’t trust anyone interested in your fashion tips.”

I rolled my eyes, heading down the hall. The door to Ada’s room swung open—she was obviously waiting for me—and she poked her head out.

“Perry, I need to talk to you!” she hissed.

I kept going, calling over my shoulder, “Busy. I’ll come see you in a bit.”

I slammed the door to my room and scampered over to my computer. Time to find out the truth.

The first website I typed in was Shownet.

It was a nice looking site, simple with a slightly cheesy tone to it. The shows were all listed in a sidebar.

I clicked on Amanda Panda’s Animal Friends—it sounded the most interesting, OK?—and it took me to a page with a sleek video in the middle. I clicked play and was blasted with the craziest children’s music I had ever heard. Fast-paced, lots of trumpets and kids singing in falsetto. It was catchy though.

The show wasn’t. It was like Lamb Chop’s Play-Along on acid but without the endearing weirdness of acid. Just a terrible low-budget children’s show with badly dubbed animals that seemed to have been shot in a petting zoo. I didn’t know if Dex was the cameraman on this show but I hoped not.

Next I decided to give Wine Babes a shot because I knew he was filming that one. Last week’s episode took place in the vineyards of the Niagara Region. The week before that, it was finding the best sherry in the UK. I was immediately jealous of Dex and the fact that he obviously got to go to all these places. Why on earth would you want to quit a job like that?

There was obvious eye candy too. The show wasn’t called Wine Babes for no reason. The hosts were impeccably charming and gorgeous. Jennifer Rodriguez was tall with slick, washboard abs that were always peeking out from her low-cut jeans. She had that exotic quality to her with tawny, glowing skin, full lips and dazzling green eyes. Her hair wouldn’t have looked out of place on Jennifer Aniston’s head.

The other girl, Rebecca Sims, was also tall (damn them!) with a Dita Von Teese look about her: A carefully crafted raven coif, merlot-matching lips, and smooth, slim limbs.

I immediately hated both of them. Not only were they hot, but they had the best job in the world: Gallivanting around the world, drinking wine and dumbing it down to appeal to a whole generation of young men. They even had a segment where they paired wines with microwavable and fast food. Why didn’t I think about that idea before?

I couldn’t watch much of it due to my increasing envy, but I did note that the camera-work was stylistic and sharp. In the show’s credits I found Dex’s producer, cameraman and musical score credit. It was official. Dex (Declan) Foray was honest-to-God who he said he was.

A smile crept across my face until I was flat-out beaming. Now that I knew it was real, I realized what it all meant. That could be me! I could be a Wine Babe!

Of course, I wouldn’t be. I couldn’t even be Ghost Babe. Unless I highlighted my hair. Got a better tan. Covered up the freckles. Perhaps get a slight nose job. Obviously tone up and slim down. Maybe hire a celebrity personal trainer?

And just like that I started fantasizing about everything that couldn’t be.

Nope, I wasn’t going to be Ghost Babe. But I could be Ghost Blogger and at the moment that sounded a gazillion times better than Failed Receptionist.

I clapped my hands together with glee. It was time to log in to Facebook and add Dex as a friend.

I hadn’t been on it since noon and as soon as I logged in I was inundated with twenty notifications and twelve friend requests. I scrolled down the names and so far it was just people saying they liked my blog and my video and asking if they could they be my friends, until I came to the last request: Dex Foray.

I guess he had already sent me a friend request earlier that day. For some reason, I was slightly apprehensive about clicking on it. I couldn’t explain why but it had something to do with seeing photos of someone you’ve already built up in your mind. I didn’t think I had given Dex too much thought these last couple of days, but it was obvious, especially now after the phone call, that I had.

Interestingly, his profile picture was one of Crow T. Robot from Mystery Science Theatre 3000, one of the most hilarious and obscure TV shows out there. I felt an immediate kinship with him.

Once on his page, the first thing I looked for was his birth date and relationship status. Like many people, his was blank. His birth date read August 18 but had no year date.

His wall was scrawled with people commenting and posting videos and funny links. He didn’t strike me as the type of person who would be on Facebook all the time, as the posts were a few days apart. I went for his info section.

Here is what I found about Dex Foray:

Activities: Music, filmmaking, video games, making up stuff on Wikipedia, booze, more stuff

Favorite Music: Metal, rock, alternative, and everything that’s missing from pop culture

TV Shows: BBC

Movies: Stuff YOU probably don’t like

Books: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Catch-22...all the stereotypes

He didn’t have a college listed under his education but he did have his high school: Bainbridge High School ‘96

Quick calculations in my head placed him at thirty-two, ten years older than I. I don’t know why I was expecting a younger guy. I hoped he realized how young I was and wasn’t banking on someone he thought was older. I know youth is revered all over but sometimes I feel like my age does me more harm than good, like I’ve been around much longer than I have and should be taken more seriously. Then again, I was only twenty-two, so what did I know?

Next, it was time to spy on his photos. I felt a tinge of creepy voyeurism as I clicked on the area, though you would think that after years of Facebook I would be desensitized to the overall ick factor of spying on people.

There weren’t too many tagged photos of him. But enough.

I clicked on the first picture, him at a bar holding up a beer in a “cheers” gesture.

He had on a brown-collared, short-sleeved shirt and a few silver Celtic-looking rings on his fingers.

And, in plain flash photography and not in some creepy derelict lighthouse, I could in fact see what I remembered of him was correct. He had a nice face (and that was putting it mildly). There was a bit of a smartass smirk to his smile, which I now knew was expected. His dark eyes, wide mouth and expressive brows were totally on par.

I clicked to the next photo. My heart lurched in an unfamiliar way. It was a photo of him in a vineyard, his arm around Jennifer Rodriguez. You know, from the wine webcast? The Wine Babe? I couldn’t tell if it was just a friendly crew shot or what because as she was smiling her supermodel gums at the camera, he was pursing his lips, head titled up and making a gangsta face.