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Lindy had been a performer her whole life.
Her whole life. Whether it was sticking a smile on her face to hide a bad grade, a break-up, or when she acted like someone happy at work.
Acting. That’s all it was.
She’d also been a performer her whole death.
It wasn’t a surprise, really, that she kept the cheap smile and the upbeat rhymes even after she’d gone to purgatory.
It wasn't a bad eternity, she supposed. The other ghosts in the house were, well, not nice – but they didn’t hate her. Not really.
And now – after all these years – a real, live, flesh-and-blood human could see her! And a girl, too! Someone she could really be friends with, and someone who knew (albeit vaguely) of her fame!
Kate didn’t even seem like the type to–
Lindy’s thoughts were interrupted by a hushed laugh from the room next to her.
“God, sounds like a bit much, Kate.” Sean, Kate’s boyfriend, chuckled, surely talking about the whole ‘seeing Ghosts now’ thing. “You sure you can handle her?”
Her? Oh.
He must mean Miranda, she was the resident drama queen, or maybe–
“Right?” Kate chuckled back. “I mean, who thought you’d be able to stay that… lively in death. She really is a lot.”
Oh.
Oh okay.
It wasn’t– It wasn’t an insult. Just… not entirely flattering. Which was fine. She was a celebrity. She could handle criticism.
“Those tapes did seem… weird, though, now that I watch them again,” Sean mumbled, his tone laced with a hint of nostalgia and mixed with something less pleasant. “Really self-degrading. Are you sure that’s like, what she wanted to do?”
Kate kept talking. Lindy stopped listening.
His words echoed in her head as she walked the other way down the hall, the lights flickering a little as she got more upset.
Of course that was what she wanted. What girl didn’t want to be a celebrity? An attractive, fit, desired celebrity, with money and fame and–
…And so much missing from her life.
She hadn’t liked breakfast TV, either. Everyone there thought she was a joke, or a slut, or a ditz, or whatever else they called her.
The others in the house called her stuff like that, too, in their own ways.
Well, Miranda called everyone stuff like that, didn’t she? Somehow, that made it less offensive, knowing it wasn’t personal.
Satan (Brian, though nobody called him that unless they really needed his attention) didn’t say stuff like that to her, though. He didn’t actually insult people at all, really, at least when compared to everyone else.
There was a certain kinship between the two of them.
He wasn’t an actor or anything like that – but Lindy could tell he was putting on a performance, the same way she was.
And he couldn’t break his, either. Because then people would see too deep, and know too much, and all the hard work building up a persona to stop that happening would be useless.
She knew he’d already broken the performance once. Only once, as far as she could tell, after Kate had gone to the hospital. He convinced almost everyone that Sean was the one crying, and they believed him – why wouldn’t they?
But, still, Lindy could tell that it had been him. She knew how it felt to have done something you didn’t mean to, or want to, just to keep up the act of being yourself.
Even playing a fragile, stifling, almost painful caricature of yourself was an easier thing to be than authentic. Lindy understood that.
Maybe she would take him up on his offer to be friends.
After all this time, someone should get to see what hid under her whitened, ever-cracking smile.
Maybe he wanted someone to see under his mask, as well. Not like he’d ever be able to admit it.