But the bright, expectant look in my mother’s eyes went out like a candle on a pitch-black night.
“She’s not coming,” she said, like it had just occurred to her. Her eyes traveled across the room. “She’s not coming … because she’s dead.”
My heart cracked in two. The strength went out of me. I sank to the floor, buried my head in my arms, and wept. Over and over the pain in my chest expanded and crested, like a wave hitting the shore, while the tears burned my eyes like acid.
When I was drained of tears, I raised my head to find that the lobby was nearly empty. The detectives were herding my parents out the front doors.
I ran to follow them, but the bolt latched with a decisive clank before I could get out. Without thinking, I went to open it.
My hand went right through the doorknob.
I didn’t try a second time. I slid to the floor, my back against the wall.
Silence settled around me like ashes.
“It’s because a door is a barrier. Like a wall or a floor.”
Jingle jingle.
I looked up. Eliza, the ghost in the silk pajamas, stood a few feet away, leaning against the stairway railing.
When she saw that I was listening, she went on. “Unless you want to pass through one, barriers will stop you, just like they did when you were alive.”
“But I did want to pass through it,” I said. My voice was hoarse and mumbly. “My parents are out there.”
She took a few steps toward me. “There are different ways of wanting something. I suppose what I mean is that you have to believe you can do it.”
I curled deeper into myself, my arms wrapped around my knees. I felt worn out, used up.
“Sorry, but I’m not going to talk to you.” My voice hardened. “I want you to leave me alone. All of you.”
“All of us? Like I’m the head of a committee?” She frowned. “You should try to be more friendly. It can get very lonely here.”
“Yeah?” I said, and felt a sudden spark of suspicion. “Is that why you pushed me out a window? Because you’re lonely?”
Eliza suddenly seemed brighter somehow—like her intensity had been dialed up. “Look at your hands,” she said coldly. “I suppose I pulled the metal screen out of the wall?”
I really looked at them, for the first time. They were covered in scratches and cuts—there was no blood, but there were definite signs of damage.
“Like I said before,” Eliza said. “I did my best. It’s not my fault if you couldn’t take a hint. Do you know how lucky you were even to have the chance to leave? The rest of us couldn’t. We were truly stuck here. You had the option to open the door and walk out, so don’t blame me if you didn’t take it.”
Then she pivoted in place and grandly walked away, straight through the wall, her silk pajamas billowing gracefully behind her.
Whatever. I was glad she was gone. I closed my eyes, determined to forget all about her. And the other one—Florence. I didn’t need some old-timey, know-it-all ghosts following me around dead-shaming me.
Besides, it wouldn’t be long before my family was going to pack up and leave this place, probably forever. And one thing about my plans definitely hadn’t changed: living or dead, I wasn’t planning to stay here a minute longer than I had to.
I was going home if it killed me.
Hours later, a pair of police officers came back inside, and I followed them to the superintendent’s apartment.
My family’s bags were still piled in the corner, so they had to come back. Even if they couldn’t bring themselves to sleep here, surely they would return to get their things. And through the window, I could see that the car was still parked outside.
All I had to do was wait. With a sigh of relief, I sank onto the sofa, half expecting to crash to the floor, but the cushions caught me. I found a good spot to sit and stare at the car.
The police officers left. When the sky began to darken, I realized I’d been in the same spot for probably ten hours. But I wasn’t hungry, sore, or cramped. I didn’t even have to pee. I found these revelations terrifying. Without the minor needs of day-to-day life, was I even real anymore?
Even though I understood on some level that I was dead, that hadn’t stopped me from also thinking of myself as somehow alive. After all, I could still walk, and talk, and think …
But I wasn’t alive, was I?
I could sit there, unchanged, for a hundred years, during which time every single person I knew and cared about would grow old and die. Even if I went home to live with my parents, I’d still have to watch the passing years suck the life out of their bodies.
Not only that, but I’d have to see them living every day in complete misery. I’d probably end up going to my own funeral, which would be weird and horrible. Would Landon even come? I pictured him sitting in the front row, sobbing remorsefully, then swearing off other women forever and joining a monastery, where he would spend the rest of his life pining for me.
Yeah, right. He would probably just bring his new girlfriend. The camp counselor, whose arms were probably weighed down by all the friendship bracelets she got for being tanned and athletic and pretty. No. Landon was, pardon the expression, dead to me.
But my best friend, Nic … Nic would be heartbroken.
For a while, anyway. But even she would forget about me eventually. There would come a time when she’d get through a whole day without even a fleeting thought of me or the amazing times we had together. Some other girl—maybe her college roommate (who, by the way, was supposed to be me) would be the maid of honor at her wedding. Nic would bring me up in conversation sometimes, and I would be this mysterious, tragic part of her past.
I didn’t want to be a dim anecdote from someone’s childhood. I wanted to be a person.
And what about my parents? Would they forget me, too?
I was wallowing in my own thoughts, melancholy and unfocused, when I suddenly noticed that everything around me seemed slightly … off. And not just the kind of “off” that happens when you’re dead. Off-er than that.
I snapped back to awareness.
The light in the room had brightened. The hills outside were washed in pale morning sun.
And my family’s belongings had disappeared.
My heart in my throat, I raced to the window, where I could see them in various stages of getting into the car: Janie fastening her seat belt in the backseat; Dad in the passenger seat; Mom standing just outside the car talking to a police officer; and my mom’s brother, my uncle James, lowering himself into the driver’s side.
I felt dizzy with confusion. What happened? How did I miss their return?
I ran to the door and spent a few seconds pawing uselessly at the knob before I remembered that I wasn’t going to be able to open it. I balled my hands into fists and banged on the door. It didn’t make a sound, and the door remained solid.
No. This couldn’t be happening. I wasn’t going to have to stay trapped in the house like an animal in a cage and watch my family drive off and leave me. That would be too brutal, too unfair. I had to get in that car.
I tried the door again. Nothing.
“Please!” I yelled, my voice rising in panic. “Please! Let me out! I need to get out!”
My chest ached, and tears sprang to my eyes. I covered my face with my hands.
I couldn’t do it.
Jingle, jingle.
“Eliza?” I snapped my head up to look around, but there was no sign of her …
Except that someone had opened the door.
“Thank you, thank you, wherever you are!” I called over my shoulder. “Good-bye!”
I reached the car just as Mom was getting into the backseat next to Janie.
Not willing to chance being left behind, I threw myself in next to them.
I landed hard, at first not sure what was happening—all I could make out was darkness. But when I stood up, I realized that I had somehow gone through the car. I was partly inside it with my famil
y, but my feet were still on the ground, and my head was up above the roof.
I tried to sit. I couldn’t. I fell to the ground, landing painfully on a tailbone I didn’t even have.
Uncle James turned to the backseat and said, “Ready?”
Mom nodded, then started to weep into her hands. Janie buried her head in Mom’s sleeve as the engine started up.
The car moved away, first filling my body with a strange scraping sensation and then leaving me seated on the driveway.
“What?” I said. “No, wait! Wait for me!”
The car jolted down the gravel path, and I started to run, thinking I’d never catch up—but after a moment, I felt the same lost, slippery sensation that had come over me when I’d been waiting for my parents on the couch. And then, suddenly—
The car stopped.
Relief overwhelmed me, as well as the comforting idea that they must have sensed their daughter’s ghost running behind them like a crazy person. I still didn’t know exactly how to get myself into the car, but if I had a couple of minutes, I was sure I would figure it out.
Then I noticed a new sensation—a weird, almost dragging pressure against my legs. When I looked down, a dirty fog seemed to hover off the ground. I could feel it like sandpaper, going through my body.
No, the fog wasn’t just hovering; there was a kind of slow movement within it. I saw a larger particle on a downward course and knelt to study it. Up close, I realized that it wasn’t fog at all. The large particles were gravel from the driveway, and the grit against my skin was dust and dirt kicked up in the car’s wake. Speaking of the car, when I turned back to it, I found that it had moved away from me—not very far, maybe a foot—but definitely out of my reach, where before it had been an easy arm’s length.
For a second, I was totally flummoxed by the fact that the car and gravel both seemed to be moving in ultraslow motion. Then I sort of understood.
Now that I was dead, time was unpredictable. Sometimes it would slide ahead and leave me stuck in a distant moment—like when I had completely missed my family coming back into the house to get their things. And sometimes it would skid to a halt and send me pitching forward in fast motion when the rest of the world was practically at a standstill. Like now.
I glanced back at the house, cursing myself for rejecting Eliza’s offer to teach me more about interacting with the world. Should I risk going back to find her and begging for help? What if time sped up again and I came back outside to find the dust settled, the driveway empty, and my family gone?
I couldn’t chance it. I walked back to the car, tried to step inside, and walked right through the metal frame. Then I stepped out and tried again.
But over and over, I got the same results. Finally, I walked back to stand in the shade of a leafy tree and watched the car. They’d gone about fifty feet in what felt to me like an hour. At this rate, they wouldn’t reach the end of the driveway for at least another day, so it seemed safe to take a little break.
And then a guy materialized beside me.
I was so shocked I almost screamed—and he didn’t look any less surprised to see me.
He backed a few feet away, his posture formal. He must have been near my age—probably a year or two older—and his skin was dark brown, his hair neatly cut close to his head. His eyes had the golden-flecked luster of rain on a bed of fallen autumn leaves.
He was obviously a ghost.
“Who are you?” I demanded, too flustered to attempt a polite introduction.
“Theo Hawkins,” the boy said, watching me warily. “Who are you?”
Theo was tall and thin, wearing a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and an untied bow tie that hung loose from his collar. His pants were dark gray trousers, held up by a pair of suspenders attached to their high waist, and on his feet he wore polished black boots with leather laces.
In spite of everything, I still had enough mental real estate to feel a little embarrassed about the comparative shabbiness of my appearance. If I’d known I was going to be stuck for all eternity with a bunch of ghosts off the best-dressed list, I would have opted for a pair of ballet flats and maybe done something else with my hair.
“I’m Delia Piven,” I said.
His eyebrows went up. “You’re not the Cordelia Piven who lives here.”
“Well, technically,” I said, “I am now. I’m her great-great-niece. I was named after her, but I just go by Delia.”
Theo frowned down at me. “And … how did you end up here?”
I didn’t know whether he meant “here at the house” or “here among the dearly departed,” so I started at the beginning. “Aunt Cordelia died and left this place to me. My family came for the summer to fix it up. We didn’t know what it was until we got here.”
“It’s not a good place.” Theo gazed back at the house, looking concerned, and then turned back to me. “But how did you get out here?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my patience wearing thin. “First I died, then I walked out the door.”
He stared at me.
“Why is that a problem?”
“It’s not a problem,” he said. “But you’re the only one who’s ever come outside.”
I stared at the looming stone facade of the institute, trying to figure out what he meant. “I don’t understand.”
“There are others,” he said. “Many others. But they can’t come outside.”
“They can’t?” I thought of Eliza and Florence. “What about you?”
“I died out here. I’m free to roam.” He glanced down at his shoes. “I worked for the government. Surveying the land. Ever heard of the Strategic Minerals Act?”
I shook my head.
He didn’t seem surprised. “We were scouting for land that might be worth mining. I was here, working, and I had an accident.”
“What kind of accident?” I asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer. “Unless that’s too personal.”
I got the feeling it kind of was, but he did his best to be polite. “I was coming across the property over to the west of the house—through the graveyard—and I fell,” he explained. “Ended up underwater somehow. Don’t remember much after that.”
My granddad’s twin brother got sucked into a ditch and drowned, the paramedic had said.
So that had been Theo.
“There’s a graveyard?” I asked.
Theo pointed off to the part of the grounds that would be visible from the day room window. “It’s well populated.”
“So’s the house,” I said.
He gave me a half smile. His still, quiet nature was like soothing balm on an itchy bug bite. I realized that by fraternizing with another ghost, I was breaking the pledge I’d made to myself. But Theo didn’t seem particularly ghostlike. He was just a normal person. And the opportunity to talk to a normal person was too tempting to pass up.
“I’m really the first one who’s come out here?” I asked. “Then who do you talk to?”
“I don’t,” he said. “Sometimes I see them through the windows, but we never meet.”
“Could you go inside the house?”
“I wouldn’t, even if I could.” He shot me a sharp look. “I have no interest in what lies there.”
“What?” I asked. “What lies in the house?”
“Many things,” he said. “None of them good.”
Even with my limited experience, that sounded like a fair description.
I glanced over at the car. While Theo and I had been making our introductions, Janie had turned to look out the window. The sight of her grief-stained face was like a thousand tiny pickaxes chopping at my heart. Feeling drained, I sat down on the grass with my chin on my knees.
Theo eased himself to the ground next to me. “You’re not from around here?”
“No,” I said. “We live in Georgia. What about you?”
“Born in Philly,” he said. “But since I started with the Geological Survey, I rent a place in Faust
, about ten miles from here … I mean, I did rent a place.” He shook his head. I wondered if ghosts ever got used to using the past tense. “I guess I’d be surprised if it even exists anymore.”
“When were you born?” I asked him.
“Nineteen twenty-one,” he said, which sounded crazy to me. So, so far away. “Died in nineteen forty.”
I thought back to history class, to what I knew of that time period. “So right before the war,” I said.
His brow furrowed. “There was a war going on in Europe when I died. Did we get into that?”
“In a big way.” I leaned back on my hands. “And there have been a lot more wars since then.”
“Too bad.” Theo hesitated, then leaned back, too. “The living don’t know what they have. They waste it. I know I did.”
His words hit a little too close to home. I glanced at the car again. It still hadn’t moved. If only I could get in there with them, if I could stay with them and be part of their lives. It might somehow make up for the things I said before I died—things that were too painful and horrid for me even to remember.
“Did you ever get to see your family … after?” I asked Theo.
“After I died? My twin brother came,” he said. “Once. But it didn’t go well. And he never came back. Dead now, I suppose.”
“Didn’t go well?” I asked.
“Long story.” He might as well have said, The end.
After that, silence grew like a wall between us. So I got up, brushed off my hands—out of pure habit, because they didn’t have a speck of dirt on them—and studied the side of the car, trying to reason out what could be the trick. It should work. A car was an object, not a barrier.
I turned to Theo. “Can you touch things? Make them move?”
In answer, he ran his hand over the grass, flattening it out. Because of the time slip, it didn’t spring right back up—it would rise gradually over the next several minutes, a fraction of a millimeter at a time.
“Teach me how to do it,” I said. Something about Theo made me feel more at ease than I had with Eliza or Florence. His spirit was calm and down-to-earth. I actually enjoyed being around him, I realized. If I weren’t leaving, maybe we could have been friends. “Teach me how to interact with things, so I can get in the car and go home.”