What a waste of paper. Barbara Steiner has written some quality books, and some not so quality books, The Phantom is one of the poorly written ones. It was bad from the first word to the last.
Amelia spends much of the story either trying to console her friend Jilly, or getting mad at Jilly for being unable to move past her former boyfriend's death.
Things kick off in September, Reggie Westlake died 10 months prior. Jilly HAD apparently managed to move past his death until the first day of school, then she was back to not being past it. I was a little confused as to why school starting triggered a setback for Jilly, Reggie died the past November, meaning Jilly had attended school for 7 months after his death before summer
break.
At any rate, Jilly spends much of her time crying and carrying on about Reggie, she can't live without Reggie. Somehow she had managed to live for nearly a year, but suddenly, just in time for the book, she couldn't.
The remainder of the story focused on people thinking they are seeing Reggie's ghost all over town. There was also a bit about one character's name. His name was Garth, so the kids at school nicknamed him Vader. I would have gotten the joke if Garth's last name had been Vader, you know, Garth Vader...but I don't recall that being Garth's last name. The kids were just calling him Vader because Garth rhymed with Darth...the whole thing didn't make a drop of sense.