4

A TREE-LINED SUBURBAN STREET slowly comes into focus. I would know it anywhere even if it is blanketed in a layer of fresh snow.

How did I magically teleport—ghost-a-port?—to my street?

I chalk it up to my ghostly powers, which I seem to have absolutely no control over. I pass a beige ranch house and turn to face the yellow two-story house across the street.

The mailbox my mom hand-painted with daisies and happy vines looks like it could collapse at any moment with the weight of snow on top of it. My mom is always trying out things like that to warm up our Midwestern existence. Her new sky-blue Beetle is parked crookedly at the end of the driveway with skid marks behind it in the snow. It’s the kind of parking job she makes when she’s late, which is almost never.

Inside, Joules’s figure skating crap is piled on the stairs. I step over it even though I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have any problem passing through it. At the end of the upstairs hallway, I stop in front of my bedroom. The door is cracked open just enough that I can get inside.

I lie on my bed and shove my head under my tie-dyed pillow—if that’s possible—refusing to believe any of this is real. Now that I’m home in my own room everything can go back to normal. I can wake up from this tripped-out walk-down-memory-lane dream and forget all the morbid parts at the morgue and the river. I stay in bed with my head hidden until I hear frantic voices across the hallway. My parents’ bedroom door is closed, which muffles their actual words, but their conversation is quickly replaced by sobs.

My ten-year-old sister pushes open my door and stands with her mouth hung open like she forgot what she was going to tell me. Joules’s blue eyes rove my bedroom, pausing on insignificant items like my black wrap sweater hung on the corner of my full-length mirror and my dance bag overflowing with crumpled tights and leotards that I’ll never wear again. Before I realize her face is flushed and tear soaked, she’s gone.

From the hallway I hear, “Joules, honey, what are you doing awake?” Mom’s voice is jerky and full of sniffles.

“I was just waking Cassidy up.”

What’s left of my heart rips right down the middle: half comfort—Joules has been playing backup alarm for me since she started kindergarten—and half anguish.

Mom replies, “Waking her up? Joules, you can’t … Oh, honey.” The sobs are full volume outside my door. I’m indescribably grateful I can’t see through walls the way I can walk through them.

“She’s still in there, Mom.” Not the thing to say. Mom breaks into hysterics.

Dad’s soft voice attempts to comfort her, and they must go downstairs because the scene fades to silence. Deafening silence. The kind of silence you hear at a rock concert between sets. It doesn’t fit because it’s a rock concert; it’s supposed to be loud. Whenever Mom and Dad talked, for the past few months at least, it was like Metric was holding a sold-out show in our living room. It’s weird hearing their quiet murmurs to each other now.

Joules is standing in my doorway again.

“Morning, Cassidy-dee.” She whispers her standard wake-up call in a voice too low to be my little sister’s. “Mom says everyone’s staying home tomorrow. No school the entire week.”

One time we missed school—for Dad’s great-aunt Meryl’s funeral—and Joules was so thrilled you’d think we were going to Disney World, not Mueller’s Funeral Home. But she doesn’t sound happy about the time off now.

She looks right at me. A tiny sprig of hope takes root inside me.

“Jouley … can you see me?” I hold my breath—or press my lips together the way I would if I had breath to hold—and wait.

Joules tries to smile a little, then leaves.

I sit up and look around my bedroom. Everything looks exactly as it did when I left for Aimée’s yesterday, right down to the pile of rejected outfits next to my closet. Maybe Mom crying in the hallway was part of my dream and I’m finally awake. I flex and point my toes; they feel real enough. I do the same with my fingers, then start to pinch my arm again, but I stop myself and decide to go all out. I punch at my alarm clock. I’ve always wanted to smash the incessant killjoy anyway. My fist goes straight through the entire nightstand and I almost fall off my bed with the momentum of the empty punch. My shoulders slump as my sprig of hope shrivels.

When I look up, I notice I left the top drawer of my dresser open. I wonder how long it will stay frozen like that, with a polka-dot sock dangling off the corner. I wonder whose responsibility it is to take care of my socks, my furniture, everything in this room that has been mine since the day my parents brought me home from the hospital. Sadness wells in me, thick and agonizing, knowing that it will not—cannot—be me.

I stare at the spot my sister just vacated. Why am I here? I keep repeating that question, but it never gets any easier to answer. This being-a-ghost thing sucks. If I don’t figure things out soon I’m converting to poltergeist.

I think back to the countless trite ghost movies I’ve seen. It takes more effort than it should to recall them. In almost every one there’s a reason the ghosts stay on earth, unfinished business of some sort that no one else can accomplish. And it’s usually from the day they died.

I focus every ounce of my energy on remembering the birthday party Madison and Aimée threw for me last night; it comes back to me in waves of sounds and smells and sensations.

The bonfire warms my legs, but my feet are cold because I’m standing in two inches of snow. I hear laughter and water rushing, then buzzing silence that vibrates between my ears.

I rake my hands through my hair, shaking my head to clear the piercing sounds.

Ethan’s face appears behind my eyes. He looks so mad or sad, maybe confused. I want to race back to his house, but Joules just walked into my bedroom and sat in the center of my sun, moon, and stars rug. I can’t leave her. She sets her Hello Kitty backpack down and pulls out her math book. She opens it and unfolds her assignment, staring blankly at the page.

I slide off my bed and sit cross-legged next to her. “Why are you doing homework? You should be honoring my memory by eating an entire carton of Mooney’s blue moon ice cream or something.” I laugh a little even though what I said isn’t funny in about twelve ways.

Joules gets a determined look on her face and starts where she left off on her assignment. Her pencil keeps poking through my knee as she taps it on the corner of her book.

I point to number three and say conversationally, “You forgot to carry the one,” forgetting how unseen, unheard I am. Her pencil stops working on number five and she reworks her answer for number three.

“Jouley!” I put my hand on her arm. She doesn’t seem to notice as it slides right through her sweatshirt.

An intense tingling sensation numbs my arm—it’s the same pain I felt when I walked through my dad at the morgue. The deeper my hand sinks into her arm, the harsher the tingling pricks become. I jerk my hand back, leaving behind a trail of glittery dust in the air between us. I lift my hand to marvel at the dust and realize the dust is my hand—or was. I grasp at the tiny particles, desperately trying to retrieve them. They slowly settle into whispers of lines until I can see my fingers again. I gape at my re-formed fingers, turning my hand over to make sure they aren’t going anywhere.

Joules moves her hand so it’s in my lap, and I flinch as it sinks down to the rug. My eyes fix on her fingers underneath my leg as she taps her thumb in the center of one of the yellow stars on the rug. My floaty flesh surrounds her solid limb like water capturing a stone. I ignore the stinging pain for a moment, but it quickly grows too harsh to bear and I have to scoot out of her way.

She starts singing the song we made up on the car ride to Mammoth Caves National Park when I was eleven and she was four. My parents always took us to “educational” vacation spots like that. Mom said she wanted us to visit all fifty states together. “The Haines family takes over the country one vacation at a time.” So corny. So Tessa and Rodge. The car rides were always the best part. Joules and I used to share a seat in the back of the minivan and stick Post-its on the forehead of our older brother, Shaw, while he slept. Girls versus the only boy.

I made it through fourteen states. This year was supposed to be Iowa. My chest clenches at the thought of them going without me, and then tightens further when it dawns on me that they’ll probably cancel the trip.

I hear crying again, this time from downstairs. Joules resets her determined face, stands, and walks to my closet. She rummages through the pile of clothes I’d decided not to wear to Aimée’s and picks up my red cardigan. She holds it to her chest and runs her fingers over the sequined trim. It’s way too big for her. She’s always been small for her age. We both have willowy frames thanks to Mom’s side of the family, but since Joules is so short it doesn’t work quite as well for her. She has the same auburn hair I do but hers is curlier.

One side of my mouth inches up as she presses onto her toes and does a small pirouette. She looks like a younger me when I used to try on Mom’s cocktail dresses.

Mom. I haven’t seen her yet.

I instinctively move for the door, but the memory of my dad crying at the morgue stops me.

The windows do that subtle whoosh thing they do when the front door is slammed. “Mom, Dad?” Shaw’s deep voice carries up the stairs. He arrived home from college on Thursday just in time for my birthday dinner. He must have slept at one of his friend’s houses last night like he usually does when he’s visiting for a weekend.

Joules snags a tissue from my dresser and dabs at her glistening eyes, surprisingly grownup-like. She folds my cardigan into a small square, stuffs it into her backpack, and hurries out of my room. I follow too.

At the bottom of the stairs, Shaw wraps Joules up in this full-body hug that lifts her off her feet and makes the whole room seem safer. I rush down the stairs to be near him.

“Where were you?” Joules asks.

“At Jay’s,” he answers. “Where’s Mom?”

A muffled cry-hello sounds from the couch in the living room. Shaw doesn’t set Joules down as he walks toward Mom. “My phone was on vibrate, sorry. What’s going on? What’s the emergency?”

Mom doesn’t answer him. She’s looking fixedly at the flat screen mounted above the fireplace; it’s not even turned on. Shaw looks with her, as if the black rectangle holds some infinite wisdom, until Dad comes in from the kitchen. He spills the tea he’s made for Mom all over the coffee table when he sets it down.

Shaw asks again, “What’s the emergency? What couldn’t you tell me over the phone?”

Dad folds and unfolds his arms, then stuffs his hands into his pockets. He pulls them back out as he clears his throat and says, “Your sister”—his eyes flick to Joules for a second—“our Cassidy, is gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?”

Dad averts his eyes. “She … she’s dead, son.”

Shaw sets Joules down and looks between her and Mom and Dad. He doesn’t start bawling like Mom or get the shakes like Dad. He just stands there. Total disbelief on his face. Then he asks his newly downsized family, “How?”

Silence. Rock-concert silence, again.

I feel like I’m the one who should answer his question, but my voice won’t work. My mind isn’t circulating information on that topic at this time. All systems failure.

“She fell,” Joules says. Shaw doesn’t ask any questions about where I fell from or how high it was. He’s perfectly silent. Everyone is.