“Remember when Dad left?” Margot says. “That first month, we all walked around like we’d lost a toe. Off-balance. We had to, like, relearn all our routines. Figure out how it all worked without him in the frame.”
“Dad didn’t die. He didn’t have some tragic accident. He’s touring the country with a bunch of other middle-aged dudes.”
“No, but you know what I mean. We figured out how to live around his absence. And it was smaller, because we could still call him or see him, but it’s the same, isn’t it? There’s a Harper-sized hole”—Margot reaches out, pokes a finger into my chest—“and instead of trying to live around it, you curled up inside it and got comfortable.”
I give her a long look.
“The world kept moving, Jo. Maybe you should start moving with it.”
Ten
The front lawn of ourhouse has seen better days. Apparently, my uncle was the one who took the initiative to drag the old lawn mower out of the shed and spend Sunday mornings tending to the yard. Now that he’s gone it’s overgrown, with weeds and sunflowers spilling across the tall grass. It’s been on the to-do list since we moved in, and though voluntary chores aren’t my favorite pastime, it gets me out of meal prep for this week in the kitchen with my mom and Paige.
Two hours in, my knees and hands covered in dirt, and I’ve barely made a dent in the weeds. The yard is more weeds than grass at this point. If I knew how to use the lawnmower and wasn’t afraid I’d somehow manage to chop off a finger or toe, I’d drag it out.
Alas, I take the traditional route, using a tiny, rusted shovel to coax the intruders out of the grass.
I could never be accused of having a green thumb, but I can admit there’s something meditative about it. Like dishes afterdinner or inventory at the store. It’s mindless. Find the weed, dig out the base, toss it into the ever-growing pile to my side, and move to the next.
I pulled the radio off the kitchen counter and propped it on the top step of the porch. The sad, slow ballads that only I like waft around me.
I hum along to the hearty voice of a man singing about a lost love, jumping when the radio lets out the static that comes when someone changes the station. Without turning, I call, “Touch that dial and die a second time, Finn.”
The static stops. The low sad song returns. But Finn’s voice doesn’t follow.
I toss a weed aside and turn.
Not Finn. Two girls stand on the edge of the porch. They share the vaguely translucent quality Finn does, though. More occupants of the house.
My stomach claws up my throat and I make a choked sound. I never considered myself jumpy before. Moving into a haunted house is quickly changing that.
The girl bending over the radio straightens. She’s around Margot’s age, maybe fifteen, pale and lanky. Her hair is light, a contrast to the oversized dark tee and big black biker boots she wears. The other, maybe twelve, has the decency to look embarrassed at being caught. She wears a T-shirt with a drawing of an atom and the wordsYou Matterprinted across it, and the pink beads at the end of her long cornrows clack softly against her dark skin as she moves.
I recognize them from their posters, but like Finn, the girls look a few years older than they were when they dissappeared. The blond girl places her hands on her hips. She says something, but Ican’t hear it over the pounding of my heart. It takes a good ten seconds to wrangle the fear into something manageable.
“This isn’t happening,” I say, more to myself. “Not again.”
I turn away, willing the apparitions to disappear. One figment could be attributed to a lack of sleep or long-lingering effects of a concussion that should have healed months ago. They say the brain heals on its own timeline, so it isn’t far-fetched.
I push off my hands and knees, sitting back on my feet and swiping the dirt onto my leggings.
“I can see you,” I say. “You’re…”
“Sloane,” says the blond girl. She jerks a thumb at her counterpart. “This is Aisha.”
“Are you really here?” I ask. Again, it’s a question to myself. A hallucination isn’t likely to try to assuage me.
“I’m not sure on the technicalities of that,” the older girl, Sloane, says.
I shake my head. “Please, don’t.”
She lifts her hands in surrender.“You process this however you need to process it.”
“How am I supposed to process this? You’re—you’re dead. And you’re standing on my porch.”
“You’ve seenParanormal Activity,yeah?”
“You’re not helping, Sloane,” the younger girl says. Aisha. She has the smallest trace of a lisp.
