American Girl: Can't I Just Be Chloe?

On the morning on November 8th, I woke up to find that both my parents were gone. Since today was Election Day, I knew that they had to go vote my mother back into office. All throughout my school day, I wondered whether my mother was going to be voted back into office. Since it was about two months until my sixteenth birthday, I definitely couldn’t, but everyone I knew and was close friends with—excluding Frankie and Victoria—was and would probably be voting for my mother. I’d have to ask them later.

After school ended, I headed over to see Betsy. There was no need to worry about Frankie showing up; he was off at a concert and so were the Jonas Brothers. All four of the Jonas boys would be out. So, I figured that Betsy might want some help in watching over Garrett, Madison, Jason, and Greg. Teddy let me in as he was leaving, which was probably a bad thing. “Hey, Betsy,” I said, walking in and dropping my bag there since I didn’t exactly go home.

Betsy looked up. “Oh, good, you’re here.”

“And, why exactly would that be a good thing?” I asked, sitting down on the couch in utter confusion. It made no sense that the first thing Betsy would say upon seeing me was Oh good, you’re here. At that moment, I wondered whether Amanda was here. I knew of her ghost and was the only one who knew that Frankie was aware of the truth.

“I need your help with something, Chloe. It’s something that I can’t exactly explain; you’ve just got to trust me,” Betsy said, being extremely vague about what was going on.

I’m not really sure why I did, but I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head. “This is about Amanda, isn’t it?” I asked, unintentionally. It was probably the wrong thing for me to ask since Frankie was the one who told me, and I was technically the only one who knew that Frankie was aware of Betsy’s ability to speak to her dead sister’s ghost.

Betsy laughed. “So you know, huh?”

I nodded. “I heard you guys talking about it once, that you can speak to ghosts…well, your sister, at least.” I decided to leave Frankie out of the equation. Betsy didn’t need to know that Frankie was the one to tell me. It wasn’t even like he was going to vouch for me, anyway; he was far too busy being another victim of the Video Girl Syndrome.

“That makes things easier then. I asked Amanda if she would keep an eye on Frankie for the past few days to start getting the visual aid of the Video Girl references to prove to Frankie what the girl he’s been dating has been doing to ruin his best friend’s life. She’s really the only one who can do this since I’m the only one who can see her. Therefore, Frankie and Victoria won’t know that they’re being spied on and we can make this list,” Betsy said as she set a sleeping Greg in the playpen that had been set up in the corner. “So, I’m going to need you to watch over Greg and the triplets for me for awhile while I talk to my sister about what she’s seen so far in regards to Victoria and her Video Girl ways.”

“Sure,” I nodded as Betsy stood up and walked into the other room. If it meant helping to get the Video Girl proof, I was going to do it. I needed to convince Frankie of the truth in a way that I wasn’t telling him. Not speaking to because of the broken promise had ultimately caused a rift to grow between us. That rift would continue to grow so long as Victoria threatened to tear us apart. As I held onto Greg and kept a close eye on Garret, Madison, and Jason to make sure that they weren’t fighting and bothering their aunt as she was attempting to communicate with Amanda about Victoria’s Video Girl qualities.