“Please don’t die on me, baby,” Gwen whispered as she pulled to the side of the road.

The ’74 Blazer shuddered as it slowed and Wake jerked to attention. He’d nodded off about a mile back, just after they passed a zoo.

“Big cats,” he’d murmured with a dopey grin, focusing his pinpoint pupils out of the window instead of on the map he was supposed to be studying.

Gwen had reprimanded him then. “Wake, pay attention! What street is that? Do I turn or keep going?”

“First Avenue, I think,” he’d said, squinting through the windshield, miraculously able to read through the thin fog outside and the thick one clouding his brain. “Keep going until Harlem, then left, north …” He had trailed off, head drooping over the map, and Gwen hadn’t had it in her to rouse him. She was already dealing with too much—the unfamiliar road slick with drizzle and the nineteen-year-old truck, which had started to lose power, forcing her to get off the highway. Accelerating slowly and evenly to keep the engine from misfiring took all of Gwen’s concentration, and much as she needed him, Wake was no good as a navigator in his state.

In fact, she realized he was useless. The road had come to a T a little ways past the zoo, and the street she turned on was called Des Plaines, not Harlem. She’d gone left anyway, sighing angrily, and Wake still hadn’t stirred. He’d taken something in the bathroom of that gas station while she’d been looking at the engine; she was sure of it. He claimed he’d only been taking a piss—and stealing the Chicago area street map that would get them the rest of the way to her uncle Jimmy’s without the highway—but before he went in there, he’d been fidgety, and after, so stupid-calm he could barely read the map. And map-reading was supposed to be his thing. He loved his atlas as much she loved her dad’s old Blazer. It was another way they complimented each other perfectly—like how her voice sounded with his guitar. But now he’d found the drug he loved more than maps or music … and possibly even her.

“Wha … Why you stoppin’? Is this … Are we there?” Wake stammered as he came to awareness.

“No, we’re lost, but maybe she can give us directions and we can give her a lift depending on where she’s going.” Gwen pointed to the girl standing at the side of the road a couple yards ahead. She was clad in a lilac dress and swaying—not like the drunks on Bourbon Street, but like Gwen did at concerts, or when she was cold, which the girl had to be, outside without a coat in early April.

Wake forced himself to blink a few times. “Wait,” he said slowly. “That’s a hitchhiker and you’re going to give her a ride?”

“Yeah. I don’t think she’s a serial killer or anything. She looks our age. Besides, that lady in Missouri gave me a lift to the service station when we needed coolant. It’s bad karma not to return the favor.” Gwen didn’t want to think what might have happened if a cop had stopped to help them instead. A simple I.D. check would have revealed that they were both under eighteen and from out of state. And then there was the matter of Wake’s stash … Determined to fulfill her karmic obligation, she waved to the girl, motioning her over to them.

Wake smiled at Gwen and kissed her cheek. Her stomach still cartwheeled like it did the first time they kissed last summer, though it sunk a bit when he slurred, “Tha’s why I love you, babe.” Then he clambered over the console between them and onto the bench seat in the back. He moved like all of his limbs had fallen asleep after his five-minute nap. “I’ll let ’er sit up front. This big ol’ truck is prolly scary enough. If she sees my ugly mug and then has to sit with this mangy mutt, she’ll run screaming.”

Despite the unwashed, choppy hair that hung almost to his shoulders and the patchy stubble on his chin, Wake’s smooth pale skin and enormous blue eyes made him look angelic. Several of the Jackson Square tarot readers had commented on this.

Gwen rolled her eyes and said, “You know you’re not ugly and Grover’s definitely not mangy.”

“No, he’s not.” Wake lifted Grover’s head and sat it on his lap.

The Shepard/Lab/Who-Knows-What-Else mix barely opened his eyes at first. Even though they were on the road, he knew it was late at night or too early in the morning to be awake. Then, the chocolate-colored fur along his back bristled. He lifted his head, bared his teeth, and barked sharply, causing Gwen to jump.

“It’s okay, doggie,” assured a musical voice.

Both Gwen and Wake’s heads snapped toward the passenger’s seat. The girl from the roadside smiled at them as she delicately crossed her legs and smoothed the fringed skirt of her drop-waist chiffon dress toward her knees.

Gwen couldn’t even say anything at first, too blown away by the girl’s beauty. She had skin like a porcelain doll, rose-colored cupid’s-bow lips, and bobbed hair the same shade as Grover’s fur. It was finger-waved perfectly despite the rain. Gwen’s naturally curly hair would have frizzed and left her looking like a dandelion gone to seed if she cut it that short. But this girl had the poise and elegance that Gwen couldn’t even dream of possessing—she managed to open and close the heavy truck door without a sound, even though its hinges almost always whined.

Wake just stared at her, too. Grover growled and flattened his ears, then lowered his head.

“Sorry about Grover,” Gwen finally managed to say. “He don’t mean any harm. I think you just spooked him. He’s a sweet old guy, I promise.” As if to prove his companion’s point, the dog buried his face between Wake’s thigh and the seat.

“You named your dog after a former president?” the girl asked with an incredulous laugh. Its bell tone matched her voice perfectly. She seemed the embodiment of a sweet, old song.

“No, after a muppet. Sesame Street,” Gwen added when the girl’s brows—or more accurately, the dark lines she’d drawn in just below where her brows had been—knitted together. “I got him when I was six and Grover was my favorite.” She reached back to run a hand over the dog’s soft fur, stirring the decade-old memory of the squirming pup in her dad’s arms.

Gwen let herself visualize his face—the ever-present Marlboro Red dangling from his lips, the thick brown mustache that tickled her cheek when he kissed her goodnight, the hazel eyes that matched her own—and remembered him saying, “Grover’s a damn fine name.” But, she had to slam the door on her past. Otherwise, she’d hear the argument that ensued as soon as her mother had gotten home: how could they afford a puppy when they could barely pay rent? Of course, as much as her parents fought about money, they always managed to keep themselves in cans of Dixie and bottles of vodka to fuel their battles.

“I’m Wake and this is Gwen,” Wake said, pulling Gwen back from the brink of her worst memory: coming home to the sight of two-year-old Grover curled in a tight, furry ball, blocking the closed bathroom door.

Gwen forced a smile as the girl shook Wake’s outstretched hand and introduced herself as Lulu.

“Hi, Lulu,” Gwen said, sliding her palm off of Grover and offering it to the girl. She took it, her grip light and her skin cold as Gwen imagined snow to be. “Jeez, you been standing out there all night?”

“A very long time,” Lulu replied. “Thank you for stopping.” She turned back toward her door and stared out the window with the same look of confusion she’d worn at Gwen’s mention of Sesame Street. “I thought there would be dancing,” she added sadly.

“That looks like a rec center, not a Goth club,” Wake commented. Though Lulu’s dress was colorful, she had the same pale skin and kohl-smudged eyes as the kids who hung out at a certain nightclub on Decatur. Kids who smoked clove cigarettes and danced to haunting keyboard melodies until just before dawn when they stumbled back to wherever they slept the daylight away. They’d come to New Orleans dreaming about the kiss of a vampire, a vampire to transform them from drunk and lonely teenagers into fearsome and beautiful children of the night.

Apparently he’d misjudged her, though. “A what?” Lulu asked, glancing back at Wake and slowly blinking her long, false lashes.

“You know, a Goth club. The Cure, Bauhaus. Lots of people in black velvet doing macabre versions of the hippie swirly dance.” He raised his hands up in the air and fluidly brought his fingertips together as they drifted down in front of his face.

Gwen couldn’t help but laugh. Wake might have passed for a grungy Goth kid if it weren’t for the three-inch blond roots in his dyed-black hair and the punk patches that covered his hoody. Lulu still seemed puzzled.

“I guess Chicago has moved on from the eighties,” Wake said. “Good for y’all. Don’t get me wrong, I like some Goth bands, but there’s so much great stuff coming out right now. We should ride that wave, you know? Like I can’t wait for the new Nirvana album. Should be way less polished with Steve Albini producing it. Hey, he’s a Chicago guy. You heard Big Black?”

Lulu shook her head. “The eighties. Time, it just keeps …” She swallowed hard and faced her window again. “Melody Mill. I was looking for Melody Mill. The dancing there is the best. They have live bands—”

Wake immediately jumped on that. “Live bands? What kind of music?” He was probably hoping to score a gig, even though he and Gwen weren’t technically a band, just two people who had co-written a handful of songs.

“Jazz, of course.” Lulu brightened as she toyed with the silver beads sewn to the fringe of her dress.

There were plenty of jazz clubs in New Orleans, too, but Chicago must do it differently, Gwen thought. From the look of Lulu’s outfit, it seemed they had a real twenties-revival scene. Even though Gwen only wore T-shirts and jeans—or tank tops and shorts when the heat got unbearable—she had spent her fair share of time gazing in the windows of New Orleans’ best vintage shops. She’d think maybe, when she and Wake were ready to perform at some place other than a street corner, she’d buy something swanky—the kind of dress Billie or Ella might have worn. But Lulu’s dress was even older, from the height of the flapper age and Gwen had never seen one so detailed and authentic—decorated from top to bottom with salmon pink, baby blue, and silver glass beading. Maybe it was a really good reproduction since it was hard to imagine something so flimsy holding up for more than sixty years.

“Well, that’s definitely no jazz joint,” Wake said, gesturing at the neatly kept grounds of the community center. “Do you think you got the street wrong?”

“No. If it’s not here …” Lulu grew flustered again. “I really want to go home.”

“Of course,” Gwen told her. “We’re happy to drop you off if you aren’t going too far, and um, maybe you can help us figure out how to get where we’re headed? We were supposed to get off the highway at Harlem and take it to Roosevelt, but then the car … Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

The engine had died while they were making small talk. It turned over when Gwen tried to start it, but as soon as she let go of the key, it cut out.

“It’s okay, babe. You’ll get it,” Wake said, putting an encouraging hand on her shoulder. He picked up the map that had slipped between his seat and the console. “Take a deep breath and try it a couple more times. I’ll show Lulu where we’re going.”

Gwen nodded, clenching her jaw. It was bad enough that the radiator cap had been loose and the truck had nearly overheated in Missouri. Now she was kicking herself for not tuning it up before they left. She’d thought it would be fine because she’d only gotten it running a few months ago. But of course, every time she’d thought that during the year-long repair process, she discovered that it needed another part.

Please don’t need a distributor cap now. Or an ignition coil. She turned the key again and it cranked. And cranked and cranked, but didn’t fire.

“Oh, you mean Harlem and 12^th Street, I know where that is,” Lulu told Wake. “My house is just a few blocks north of there. If you’ll take me, I’ll direct you.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Gwen said. “As long as I can get this thing started.”

Please, Daddy, she thought. The day he died she’d stopped believing in God and started praying to him instead—even though he was usually as unreliable as God. But for once, he was listening.

“Yeah!” she cheered when the engine finally roared to life. “Now where am I headed?”

“Just keep going down this road,” Lulu instructed. “Where are you two from anyway?”

“New Orleans. Well, I am at least,” Gwen replied.

Before Wake could chime in, Lulu exclaimed, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans.”

She pronounced the second part of the city’s name with three syllables, “OR-lee-ans,” like the old women who came into the restaurant where Gwen worked as a hostess. It was strange, but at least she hadn’t said, “Or-LEANs” like all the tourists. However, Gwen still responded the same way she did whenever they gushed about how great her hometown was. “I can see why it’s an amazing place to visit, but I guess since I grew up there, I’ve always wanted to leave.”

 “Not as bad as I wanted to leave South Carolina,” Wake objected. “Nothing’s worse than that.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror, Gwen noticed that he’d pulled his guitar case out of the back of the truck. There was a little tan pouch inside of it. She had once threatened to throw it into a field on the side of the road in southern Illinois. She should have done it. He’d begged her to let him ease off instead of going cold turkey. But if he already needed another taste, he wasn’t easing off. And was he really going to do it now? In front of Lulu?

“I’ve always wanted to go to the Carolinas, too,” she was saying. “I imagine they’re pretty as that song, ‘Carolina Moon.’”

“Trust me, they ain’t. I do love that song, though.”

To Gwen’s relief, Wake took out his guitar and set the case in the back again.

Lulu’s brown eyes got wide. “Can you play it?”

“Yeah, but it was one of the first songs I learned, so I might be a little rusty.”

Wake either knew or could figure out how to play any song upon hearing it. He always warned he would be rusty, but he never was.

Lulu rocked side to side in her seat as Wake played, joining him in singing, “Oh Carolina moon, keep on shining, shining on the one who waits for me. Carolina moon, I’m pining, pining for the place I long to be.”

Gwen recognized the song then. Before Wake had come to New Orleans, he used to sing it to her over the phone, substituting Louisiana for Carolina.

Lulu broke into gleeful applause when Wake finished. He met Gwen’s eyes in the rearview mirror and smiled at her as he went into another tune, one she knew from the first chord. He teased her for liking Blind Melon, a band he thought was “too sunny and hippie-ish,” but he got what “Tones of Home” meant to her. It was a song about waving goodbye to a place that doesn’t understand you and finding a real home—something they’d been talking about doing since they were paired as penpals in fourth grade.

“Wake has a beautiful voice,” Lulu said to Gwen, interrupting her thoughts.

“Yeah, he’s really talented,” she agreed.

“I thought you were brother and sister.”

Gwen felt Lulu staring at her so intently that she instinctively tugged on her hair, pulling it toward her face like a curtain, a nervous habit she’d had since childhood. “Really? I mean, I guess maybe we have the same natural hair color,” she mused, studying the dirty blonde strands that tangled between her fingertips. “But other than that …” Other than that Wake was all sharp angles and Gwen was soft curves.

“I guess I’m just seeing your intertwined fates.”

“What?” Gwen glanced over at her.

Lulu, facing forward, gestured at the stoplight, which was in the process of changing from green to yellow. “I said, at this intersection, keep going straight.”

“Wow, I really need sleep,” Gwen muttered, accelerating just enough to get them through the light. She felt the truck shudder, its engine misfiring again, but she didn’t want to risk it stalling if she stopped. The faster she got Lulu home, the faster she got to her uncle’s couch.

“I’m really cold,” Lulu remarked.

“Oh, sorry. I turned off the heat and the radio when the engine started acting up.”

“May I borrow this?” Lulu picked up the jacket Wake had left in the seat. It was olive drab with a U.S. Army patch above the left pocket, and one that read Deveraux above the right. Gwen’s father had worn it in Vietnam.

Gwen swallowed hard, not wanting to be rude, but she’d only let Wake start wearing it a couple months ago. “I guess,” she replied stiffly.

Lulu slid it over her milky, white shoulders. “Oh, it belongs to a ghost.”

“What?” Gwen snapped again.

“It’s a little cold,” Lulu said, offering a friendly smile. “The fabric. But it will warm me up. Thank you.”

Gwen nodded woodenly, returning her focus to the road, which was beginning to curve.

“Are you staying in Chicago or just passing through?” Lulu asked.

“It depends,” Gwen started to explain, but Wake stopped playing and spoke over her.

“We’ll visit with her uncle a couple days, but we’re going to Seattle. I don’t mean to knock your scene or anything, but theirs is amazing right now. We could really make something happen out there.”

“If you don’t die,” is what Gwen heard Lulu say, but before she could question her for the third time, Wake made it obvious that she had misheard.

“Oh, believe me we’ll do more than try. You should hear Gwennie sing. Her voice is a billion times better than mine.”

Lulu turned to her expectantly. Gwen glanced in the rearview mirror, trying to silently tell Wake that she wasn’t up to it now. She felt even less like singing when she saw him bring his pinkie nail to his nose and inhale the powder he must have scooped out of his pouch when she wasn’t looking. He sniffed and pinched his nose twice.

“Allergies,” he mumbled to Lulu when she followed Gwen’s gaze.

“God bless you,” she said as he started to strum his guitar again.

He didn’t sing this time and didn’t seem to notice that Gwen wasn’t either.

Lulu took a deep breath. They were flanked by cemeteries on both sides. Gwen wondered if she was superstitious like Mina, Gwen’s mother’s best friend, who earned—or scammed, Gwen thought—her living as a psychic advisor. Mina always held her breath when they drove past graveyards so as not to inhale any lost souls.

But then Lulu spoke. “Almost home. Maybe if I make it you will, too.”

“Do I smell burgers?” Wake asked. “I’m hung—hmm.” He nodded off mid-sentence.

Gwen tried to cover for him. “More sleepy than hungry apparently.”

“Bad medicine. My uncle had a problem with it when he came back from the war.”

Gwen’s father had, too, in addition to the alcohol. It was why she’d made Wake walk away the first time someone in the Quarter was smoking heroin out of tinfoil. “Was your uncle in ’Nam?” she asked.

“No, he was in France.”

“Oh.” Gwen was confused, but she supposed there were soldiers stationed everywhere. Then she noticed that Lulu had doubled over, clasping her right side. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” the girl said through her teeth. “Would have given anything for my own dose of morphine that night, but—”

“What?” Then the engine more than shuddered. It started to choke. “Shit, I’m going to have to stop here.” Gwen pulled off the road onto a small driveway—an entrance into the cemetery blocked during off-hours by a large rusty gate.

“No,” Lulu howled. “We’re so close. Keep driving!”

“I can’t!” Gwen slapped the steering wheel in frustration.

The noise woke Grover, who began to bark. As Gwen turned her head toward him, she realized that Lulu had vanished—with her father’s jacket. “Dammit!” she cried, fumbling with her seatbelt and looking around frantically.

She scanned up and down the road, but there was no sign of Lulu. Did she run into the cemetery?

Suddenly Grover leapt over the console into the passenger’s seat and began to paw at the window, his nails clacking against the glass.

He stepped on Wake in the process, causing him to groan, “Grover, what the hell?”

Gwen grabbed his hand before he could pass out again and dug her nails in. “You have to stay awake and help me. That girl disappeared wearing Daddy’s jacket.”

“Okay.” Wake forced his eyes wide open and pulled his hand away, rubbing it.

Grover whined, still pawing at the door. Gwen slid toward him. Their house hadn’t had a fence, but Gwen would just open the back door and let him run out because he always came back to her. Gwen’s father was the only person he’d ever been more loyal to. That’s why he’d gnashed his teeth and growled at Mama when she tried to get past him into the bathroom that day. Of course, he might have been trying to protect Gwen, too.

Gwen was still hesitant to let the dog out of the truck, though. They were on an unfamiliar road. Daybreak was approaching, but if she lost Grover and Daddy’s jacket on the same night …

Grover whimpered again and looked at her. His big brown eyes seemed so human, like he was trying to tell her, I couldn’t protect you from what was behind that door, but I can do this for you now.

Gwen reached around him for the handle and heaved the door open. Grover leapt over her arm and charged toward the cemetery gate. Then he veered right. There was a two-foot gap between the brick column that the gate was hinged to and the chain link fence that extended down the road to the next gate. A bush covered it slightly, but the dog plowed in, no problem. All Gwen would have to do to follow was go through sideways. Grover must have seen Lulu go the same way.

It might have been her eyes playing tricks on her, but while trying to keep Grover in her sight, Gwen thought she glimpsed pale purple fabric and even paler legs in the distance.

Wake had slumped over again, so she whipped a cigarette lighter at him and shouted, “Come on!” as she scrambled out of the truck.

In the hope that Wake would follow, Gwen didn’t shut the door. She barreled ahead toward the bushes, which scraped the backs of her hands as she pushed through them.

Grover barked and she followed the sound, her sneakers pounding against the wide and uneven asphalt road.

Gwen wished she’d spent the past year smoking less and exercising more. The cold air stabbed at her lungs and she felt her side cramping. Like Lulu’s, she realized. How could a girl in such pain get so much farther ahead of her even if she’d had a head start?

She squinted into the distance. There was clearly a busy road on the other side of the cemetery. Bright lights from a strip mall cut through the fog like a dozen small lighthouses, but they weren’t close enough to illuminate Grover or Lulu.

Fortunately, the sky was more gray than black, and she eventually spotted a shadowy dog shape. Gwen zigzagged around the graves and nearly slipped in the damp grass several times before she reached him.

Grover was sitting still as a statute, his ears perked and lip pulled up to reveal his teeth. He didn’t move when Gwen called his name. She placed her hand on top of his head, weaving her fingers through his fur. His warmth assured her that he was real. Nothing else felt like it was—maybe because of the fog, the bite in the air, and the eerie surroundings. Her adrenaline rush had subsided. She now realized how scared she was.

“Let’s go, bo—” She stopped herself mid-whisper when she realized what Grover was staring at.

Her father’s jacket lay in a heap the way Gwen’s mother’s clothes always did when she came home drunk. Relief flooded Gwen’s aching limbs as she hurried forward to snatch it, but she nearly dropped the jacket when she noticed what it had been covering.

The tombstone was engraved simply—a name and two years, not even full dates. The name, however, was Lucille Frendenberg, whose life had spanned from 1912 to 1931. If Gwen hadn’t known instantly that Lucille called herself Lulu, the oval-shaped photograph affixed to the right side of the marker in what looked like an oversized locket, would have given it away. The metal piece that slid over the picture, protecting it from the elements was missing, so the full-length shot of the girl had faded considerably in sixty-two years. She wore a white dress that was barely discernable from her pale skin and the background behind her. The shadow between her side and the crook of her arm along with beading at her hips and the bottom of the dress, a few inches above her black shoes, were the only things to give her shape. Her facial features were blurry as well, but her dark, chin-length curls distinguished her.

A low growl from Grover startled Gwen. She looked up from the picture into the actual eyes of the dark-haired girl standing in front of her.

Lulu was a few yards away in front of a mausoleum. Like in the photograph, her limbs nearly blended in with the white-washed stone behind her, but her colorful dress stood out. “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” she said softly. “I just wanted to go home. I hoped you could get me there.”

“Haven’t I?” Gwen gestured to the gravestone.

“That is where my bones rest, but it is not home.”

Gwen stepped to the left, hugging her father’s coat to her chest to counter the chill that ran through her when she realized that she was standing above Lulu’s body.

“Home isn’t far from here,” Lulu continued. “We almost made it.” She winced and squeezed her side. “Just like that night. Almost there.”

Gwen knew this was crazy, talking to a spirit in a cemetery. She knew she should put her daddy’s coat on, grab Grover by the collar and walk back to the truck, to Wake. She draped the army jacket over her shoulders for warmth—the sweat she’d broken into while running had completely evaporated—and instead of turning away, she asked, “What happened?”

“I went out dancing. Mama told me not to. She said I spent too much time at the Melody Mill, but I snuck out after she went to bed. I walked to Des Plaines and hitched a ride. As soon as I got there, I started to feel sick and ignored it. There was a great band playing and all I wanted to do was dance. After the last song, the young man I was dancing with offered me a ride home. I gave him directions, but we only made it a few blocks when the pain …” Lulu stopped, doubling over and sucking in air through her teeth like she could feel it all over again.

Gwen cringed for the girl, her fingertips flying to her mouth. “You’ve been reliving that for the past sixty years?”

Lulu straightened. “Is it … has it really been?” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Time moves differently for me and honestly at first I didn’t care, just like my mother used to say.” She furrowed her drawn-on brows and mimicked a heavy Eastern European accent, “‘Lulu, you not care if you live or die as long as you get to dance.’ And I didn’t,” she said sadly. “But three times now I’ve tried to go to Melody Mill and I couldn’t find it. It’s gone and if I can’t dance, I …” She swallowed hard and dabbed at a tear, which Gwen noticed did not affect her makeup. “I just want to go home, but when I try …”

“When you try, then you relive it,” Gwen finished for her as she watched Lulu’s hand drift to her side.

Lulu nodded. “I knew it wouldn’t work, but I just had to try.”

“Funny, you want to get home so badly and Wake and I just want to get as far away as we can.”

“Funny,” Lulu echoed, though the hollow look in her eyes said it was anything but.

Gwen stuck her arms through the sleeves of her father’s jacket, growing colder by the second. “You don’t think we’ll make it. That stuff I thought I heard you say about our fates, about us dying … You really did say that, didn’t you?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you thought it and that’s all that matters,” Lulu stated. The old woman she would have been shone out from her kohl-lined eyes. Though her lips had initially reminded Gwen of old Betty Boop cartoons, there was nothing playful, soft or sweet about Lulu’s face anymore. She looked like an icy phantom.

There’s no such thing as ghosts, Gwen tried to tell herself. She’d spent all of her childhood believing—or at least from the age of eight onward—that hauntings, voodoo, hoodoo, tarot, crystal healings, psychic readings and such were bullshit. They were just part of the New Orleans tourism industry. If they didn’t keep people blind drunk and convinced that the city had magical qualities, they might see it for what it truly is—hot, dirty, and full of poor, struggling people.

“What are you running to? What do you think you’re going to find out there?” Lulu asked. Though the happiness that permeated her voice when she talked about dancing had vanished, her tone wasn’t cold or judgmental, more measured and curious.

She’s not real. You’ve slept, like, three hours in as many days. You’re hallucinating. Just go back to the truck and try to start it. If you can’t, you’re probably close enough to walk to Uncle Jimmy’s by now.

“Do you think you’ll actually find your uncle at that address? The number was out of service when you tried it yesterday.”

Gwen gaped at the ghost flapper. Was she psychic or was Gwen so tired she’d started babbling aloud? To herself—because Lulu couldn’t be real. But, if this is really happening, might as well respond to the question, she decided. “I’m sure that was just … He didn’t pay the bill or something. He’ll be there. He’ll help me fix the truck. Maybe get us some gigs at the music club down the block from his apartment—he wrote about it in my birthday card last fall.”

“Maybe he’ll offer to let you stay as long as you want. Maybe Wake will be so excited about the gigs that he’ll forget about Seattle and agree to it,” Lulu recited the reasons that Gwen had thought about, but never told Wake. He hadn’t even wanted to stop in Chicago. He hated the city because his mother had left him to follow a man there. A year ago, when Gwen had written him a tearful letter about Jimmy’s plan to move there, Wake had expected her to loathe the city and her uncle, too. Jimmy needed a fresh start, though, and Gwen got that. She also trusted that Jimmy would understand that she and Wake needed one now. Especially Wake.

The crackle of a match snapped Gwen out of her thoughts. Lulu had produced a matchbook, a slim black cigarette holder, and an unfiltered cigarette from somewhere. She inhaled deeply and then released the smoke slowly from the corner of her mouth—sultry, like an old movie star. “Maybe,” she said after she finished exhaling, “Uncle Jimmy fell off the wagon again and he isn’t going to be around to help you. Maybe he was lying every time he said he’d be there for you when he called or wrote. After all, wasn’t he supposed to be there to help you fix up that truck?” She motioned toward the road with her cigarette.

“He taught me enough before he left.”

Weekends in Jimmy’s backyard restoring the old wrecks he spent too much money on, had been Gwen’s only comfort besides letters from Wake. When her daddy’s Blazer broke down for the millionth time and her mom was going to junk it, Jimmy convinced her to give it to him. He promised Gwen that they’d fix it up for her sixteenth birthday. Since they didn’t finish before he left, Jimmy had the truck towed back to Gwen’s house and her mother spent a solid year bitching about it while Gwen tried to repair it with the advice her uncle gave her over the phone. After she finally got it up and running last fall, Mama kept threatening to sell it since she was always short on bill money. The day Gwen found a “For Sale” sign on her truck was the day she convinced Wake to leave.

“I can fix it. Even if …” Gwen couldn’t bring herself to admit that her uncle might not be here. She hadn’t heard from him since Christmas, which wasn’t a good sign, but she didn’t want to say it, not even to a ghost. “Wake didn’t want to stick around here anyway. I can figure out what part we need and we’ll spare-change for it if we have to. Wake’s good at that.”

He had a cardboard sign in his guitar case. “Traveling, Broke & Ugly,” it read. He’d used it on his way from South Carolina to New Orleans and he’d kept using it in the French Quarter to raise the money that Gwen’s mom insisted he give her if he was going to sleep on their couch. She hit up Gwen for rent money, too, even though she never made her own boyfriends pay. After Wake had been in New Orleans six months, he told Gwen that he thought it was time to make a new sign since he wasn’t traveling anymore.

“No, we are going to leave,” Gwen insisted. That had been the plan all along. They’d been talking about running away together since fourth grade, but when Wake had been shunted into another foster home last summer, he’d written her saying he had to get out. For real. So she’d invited him to New Orleans, but it was only supposed to be temporary, until the truck was up and running. Of course that took longer than expected and then she needed to save money from her job since Wake spent what he didn’t give to her mother on pills and powders that the Quarter had introduced him to.

But now they were out and they weren’t going back.

“So you’ll spare-change your way to Seattle. Then what?” Lulu punctuated her question with a delicate puff of smoke.

Wishing she had her own cigarettes, Gwen patted the pockets of the jacket out of habit. Miraculously, she felt the familiar rectangular shape on the lower left side—Wake’s Reds! Buoyed by this discovery, she answered, “We’ll play until we make it.” Staring into Lulu’s artfully smudged eyes, her own gaze strong and determined, Gwen added, “As long as we’re playing music we’ll be okay.”

“That’s how I always felt about dancing,” Lulu said wistfully. “I just wanted to dance. That’s what I remember saying when the pain got unbearable. ‘Please stop. Please just let me keep dancing forever.’”

Gwen barely heard her, distracted by what she’d found in Wake’s cigarette pack. There’d been one smoke left in it. His lucky. He always flipped a cigarette upside down when he opened a fresh pack and smoked that one last, saying, “Time to make a wish,” before he lit it. Gwen had started doing it, too. Might have been a silly superstition, but she needed all the please-let-us-get-out-of-here wishes she could get, and once they had found a dirty twenty-dollar bill on the street after lighting a lucky.

Something else came out with the cigarette when she tilted the pack toward her open palm, though. Powder wrapped in cellophane. Another secret stash. She shoved it back into the cigarette pack and crushed it in her hand.

Before she could whip it against the damp grass with all her might, Lulu said, “You know he can get more. Here. In Seattle. The weather will be different and the music—but will anything else really change?”

“Yes,” Gwen maintained, jabbing the cigarette between her lips and fumbling in the pockets again, this time for a lighter.

“What if it doesn’t? What if your worst fears come true? What if one day you open the bathroom door and—”

“SHUT UP!” The cigarette fell from Gwen’s lips and she dropped to her knees to retrieve it. She groped at the damp grass blindly, her eyes filling with tears.

But they didn’t stop the memory from replaying. Grover sat in front of the door and he growled when Mama approached, but she nudged him out of the way with her foot. She had to piss because she and Mina had been drinking cheap vodka with a splash of sweet tea while Gwen played with Mina’s niece, Tonyel. She didn’t really like the girl, who constantly bossed her around and made Gwen play dolls when she would rather be digging in the dirt; but at least Tonyel’s parents didn’t scream at each other all night. Gwen was supposed to sleep over at Tonyel’s—they’d have a girl’s night and so would Mama and Mina. Except Gwen had gotten sick out of the blue. She barfed her macaroni-and-cheese lunch into Tonyel’s toy baby carriage and Tonyel screamed. Mama came running and cursing. She put her drink in a plastic to-go cup and drove Gwen home.

“This is my night,” she kept saying as she swerved down the road. “Daddy’s gonna have to take care of you ’cuz I’m goin’ back out.”

If she hadn’t had to run in to pee, Gwen would have been the one to find him. Maybe. If she’d been able to coax Grover out of the way.

She still saw. Mama had dropped to her knees and there was Daddy. She hadn’t understood immediately why Mama was wailing like a banshee. Yeah, it was weird that Daddy had fallen asleep in the bathroom all slumped up against the old clawfoot bathtub, but at least he was smiling.

Gwen didn’t notice the needle in his arm that had killed him. An accident, her mother swore up and down so she could collect the tiny sum of insurance money that she burned through within a year.

“He quit that shit when your mama got pregnant with you,” Uncle Jimmy had drunkenly told Gwen when she was thirteen. “Cold turkey. Woulda quit the booze, too, but there’s only so much a man can handle in a lifetime. ’Specially a man who seen the shit your daddy saw.” Gwen knew that he’d seen a lot because Jimmy had been telling his big brother’s war stories repeatedly for years. They’d given her a few nightmares, but it wasn’t nearly as upsetting as when he told Gwen, “If he picked up that needle again, he was using it to check himself out.”

Uncle Jimmy took it back the next day. In fact, he felt so bad about saying it to her that he started going to AA meetings. When Gwen wrote Wake about it, she said that she knew it was true. “A drunk tongue speaks a sober mind,” she’d printed in tiny neat letters.

What does a ghostly tongue speak? She wondered.

Then she felt a cold hand on her wrist. Grover growled from behind Gwen, but didn’t move from his spot.

The ghost girl held out the cigarette Gwen had dropped with one hand and attempted to help her up with the other, but Gwen jerked out of Lulu’s grip, seized the cigarette, and pushed herself upright.

She continued riffling through the jacket pockets for a lighter. Then she remembered that she’d thrown Wake’s lighter at him on her way out of the truck. Not that it made a difference. He hadn’t snapped out of it to follow her and Grover. He’d left her here to face this ghost.

And she’d said something just like that to him a week ago when he’d nodded off while they were watching a movie.

“Every time you do this you make me face my dad’s ghost,” she’d told him after shaking him awake. She stared over his shoulder at the bathroom—a different bathroom, but still. To keep from crying, she’d bit her lip so hard she drew blood.

“I’m not … I don’t mean to. I’ll never use a needle,” he’d assured her like he always did. Like that made a difference.

She reminded him as she had done for months, that it was still lethal and that she was so scared to lose him like she had her dad and uncle. He was as angelic as those girls in Jackson Square said. They’d done that stupid penpal project three months after her dad died and she’d mentioned it in her letter. Her teacher had frowned and said it wasn’t “very light and friendly” to say, “How was your summer? Mine was hard. My dad died and I miss him.”

Gwen refused to rewrite it because it was the truth and she didn’t really care if her penpal wrote her back anyway. But he did and he said, “I’m sorry. I know how that feels. My dad is in jail.” His teacher had also chided him about this. Honesty won out over banal politeness, though. Wake and Gwen were the only kids from their classes to keep in touch through the end of the school year.

And they’d kept writing. They fell in love with horror stories and punk music together.

They fell in love with each other.

But he didn’t love her enough to stop smoking and sniffing junk. “It just blocks out the noise in my head,” he told her. “I spent so much of my life angry and hurting. It feels good to be numb.”

“Does it feel better than playing guitar?” she asked. “Or than kissing me?”

He’d said no, but hadn’t met her eyes.

The cigarette pack with his stash was still in her hand. Gwen crumpled it even tighter and shoved it in her pocket.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” Lulu said, offering Gwen her matchbook. “I was okay when I could go dancing, but now that Melody Mill’s gone, I just really want to go home.”

“And since you can’t, you decided to torment me?” Gwen wanted to yell at Wake, but he wasn’t there, so she took out her anger on the ghost who’d stirred up her memories instead.  

“No, I just thought maybe I could convince you that it would be better to stay here than to keep running.”

“Here?” Gwen scoffed, looking around at the old tombstones marked with creepy old photos of their occupants. “Is there some ghost clause that if I stay, you get to go home or to heaven or whatever?”

Lulu bowed her head, an inscrutable mixture of hope and sorrow on her painted face. “You should go,” she told Gwen. “Keep running if that is what will make you happy.”

“Music makes me happy. All I want is to play, to sing the songs that he writes. I don’t care where. I’ll play on that street corner forever,” she said, pointing in the direction of the intersection that the truck had broken down before they could reach. “As long as I’m with Wake and Grover and we have a guitar, I don’t care. That’s home.”

“Home,” Lulu repeated with a sad sigh. Then she sparked a match and held it out to light Gwen’s cigarette.

Make a wish, Gwen thought, placing the cigarette between her lips and leaning toward the flame. She closed her eyes and sucked deep.

She heard Lulu whisper, “Thank you.” When she opened her eyes, the match lay in the grass at her feet, a wisp of smoke curling up from it. The girl in the lilac dress was gone.