CHAPTER 2 
My bedroom is something special, decorated for me by a mom I feel like I’ve never met. Long ago—before I was born—she painted it in bright beautiful colors, creating rainbows and guardian angels on the ceiling. There’s a window around which she painted the words “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness,” which—I found out later—is a quote from Anne Frank’s diary. I love the person who painted that on my wall. I dream of that person, but I certainly don’t know her.
I’ve added lots of my own touches over the years. For one, I’ve filled the room with all the books I’ve stolen from my mom’s room: fiction, histories, biographies, art books, piled on shelves, tucked willy-nilly wherever they aren’t supposed to fit, perched on my nightstand. (Other things I’ve stolen from her include a silver whistle engraved with a shell, a pair of silk slippers, and a matchbox from a restaurant she must have gone to once.) There is a second bed in the room, and a second set of blankets and pillows that my mom has stored in the closet, as if she’s always expecting company. I’ve made the bed a fort for all my old stuffed animals. There’s a loud, ticking old clock on the wall.
I’ve put lots of my own sticky notes on the wall around my bed. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. And Sweet dreams, sweetie. On the mirror: You look taller today, sweetie. And Those crooked front teeth make you look distinctive, sweetie. I try to encourage myself with things a normal mom or dad would say, because if I let myself feel sad about not having a normal mom or dad, I’d fall into a black hole and never climb out.
Now I sit on my bed and pull onto my lap the story I was reading to Germ.
I open my closet and take out the pile of others; there must be a hundred or more. My heart gives a lurch. These stories have always felt like they fill in a half of me that’s missing. (I don’t know whether it’s missing because of my mom, or my dad, or something else, just that it is.) They’ve always been my way of spinning my feelings into something comforting, like spinning grass into gold. I also retrieve, from my dresser, my lucky pen and my blank notebooks.
I shuffle them all together. Then I carry them down to the metal garbage can that stands outside the kitchen, off the patio, and dump them in. I know how to handle fires just like I know how to fix the refrigerator and reset the furnace and order everything I need on the computer with a credit card—after years of having to do things Mom doesn’t.
I get the garden hose unraveled and ready, to be safe. Then I take a match and drop it into the can, and watch the papers begin to burn. All those words I’ve spent so much time unfolding from my brain—tales of injured dogs that find their way home, elves who give the breathless new sets of lungs, stories about rescues against all odds and lights in the darkness—flame up into ash before my eyes and float away on the ocean breeze.
The firelight flicker illuminates the trees and burns like a beacon in the dark yard. I imagine it must look, from the water, like a miniature lighthouse, the lonely peninsula of Seaport tacked to the eastern edge of Maine like a lonely outpost. Above, the sky lies, cloudy and heavy, over the crescent moon.
I think again about how stories are how Germ and I met. On the first day of kindergarten, Germ laid herself at the foot of our classroom door, screaming for her mom. All the other kids steered clear of her—I guess because of the banshee-like wailing. I knew what it was like to miss someone, even though for me it was someone right nearby. So I sat beside the wild-eyed, wild-haired stranger and awkwardly patted her back and told her a story I made up on the spot about a bat who ate ugly old mosquitoes and burped out stars instead. By the end of the story, Germ had stopped crying and I’d won a friend for life.
Now I snap back to attention as the fire sputters out. I close the lid and go inside to get ready for bed.
I ache over what I’ve done. But Germ is right: my stories are fairy tales I don’t really believe in anymore—that anyone can just save the day. I’m too old, I’ve realized, to hope for things like this.
And despite the ache, I swell a little with pride. Because I think I’ve figured out the three main things about life:
- If the person you love most in the world does not love you back, you can’t keep hoping they will.
- If you are not loved (and if nobody cares about polar bears on the news), there is no magic in the world to speak of.
- If there’s no magic in the world to speak of, there’s no point to writing stories.
I am done imagining things differently than they are. I feel a distinct tingle behind my eyes and ears and in my heart—as if I have really changed—and I wonder if the tingle is a growing-up thing, and I hope it is.
Outside, the crescent moon glimmers for a moment through the clouds, then is swallowed up by them.
I get into bed and drift off to sleep.
I have changed my life forever. I just don’t know it yet.
I wake sometime deep in the night to the sound of someone talking. For a few moments I’m half in and half out of a dream, trying to make sense of what I’m hearing. Then my eyes flutter open and fear sets in.
There is a man whispering outside my door—his voice low and rumbly like sand being shaken in a glass jar.
“The nerve of her. I hate her. Hate her. It’s my place. MY PLACE!”
I lie still. The moon peeks out behind a cloud for a moment through the window, then disappears. I stay as stiff as a board, but my heart thuds at my ribs like hooves.
The voice moves off, as if whoever owns it is heading down the hall toward the stairs, though I hear no footsteps. And then, silence.
I wait and wait. Several minutes go by. I start to think maybe I’ve been dreaming, but my skin crawls. I wish I could get into bed with my mom, tell her I heard something strange. But those wishes have never worked out. I am the protector of this house; no one else is going to do it.
After several long minutes I force myself to silently slide out from under my covers, grabbing my Lumos flashlight from my nightstand as I go. I tiptoe to the door, pull it open silently, and peer out into the hall.
There’s no one there, but—with a jolt—I hear the voice, still there, though moving away from me and down the stairs.
I step out onto the threshold and peer in both directions as all goes silent again. I tiptoe down the hall and then descend the stairs, my heart thudding.
At the landing I step into the parlor and come to a stop. Because there, hovering in front of the door that leads to the basement, someone is watching me.
He is shimmery and glowing bright blue, frowning at me, his eyebrows low. He floats at least a foot off the ground.
He stares at me for a long moment, as if in surprise. Then he turns and floats through the door into the basement, and is gone.
I stand gaping for just a moment longer before I turn and run up the stairs, hurtling up to the attic. I slam the door shut behind me, then stand with my back to the door, trying to catch my breath.
Then I walk over to my mom’s bed, and after hesitating a moment, I shake her awake.
She blinks at me, groggy.
“Mom, there’s a ghost downstairs,” I whisper.
Mom squints at me, trying to wake up.
“I’m sleeping,” she says, annoyed. And then she covers her head with the pillow.
“Mom,” I whisper again, shaking her arm, my voice cracking. “Mom, I need your help.”
My mom reaches out from under the covers and gently bats me away. “Leave me alone,” she says, her voice cold and far away.
After a moment, I hear her breath get steady and even. I step away from the bed and sit down on the floor with my back to the door, watching her sleep, trying to steady my own breathing.
There’ve been so many times when I’ve had to do things on my own: comforting myself after nightmares, nursing myself through colds and the flu. One time a raccoon invaded our house, and I had to trap it in a towel and throw it out the front door. Still, it makes me almost breathless, the hurt. I feel starkly alone.
I listen in the dark, but all the noises of the house have gone silent.
I give myself a talking-to:
There’s no such thing as ghosts, sweetie, I tell myself. You’ve always had an overactive imagination. This is exactly the kind of thing you’ve decided you don’t believe anymore, as of this very night.
And then, when that doesn’t quite work:
If you can just make it to morning, you’ll be fine. Ghosts only come at night. I think.
I wish Germ were here. Together we would know what to do. Together it’s like we make one fully formed human. I just have to make it to the bus and Germ in the morning, and everything will be okay.
I sit staring out the window all night, until the sky begins to lighten above the horizon. And when the day grows hazy outside, I watch my mom get up from bed and pull on her robe and walk to the door, like a person in a trance. She doesn’t see me till she nearly trips over me.
She blinks at me a moment. And then she merely waits for me to get out of her way.
I follow her into the hall and peer downstairs.
The parlor below, the hallway, the kitchen, all seem quiet and normal.
I come to the bottom of the stairs and look at the closed basement door awhile. All normal at first glance.
And then I see the clock hanging in the parlor. I’m going to be late for the bus.