Harper couldn’t tell if Cleo was annoyed with her. They were playing dodgeball in PE, which always had a strange effect on Cleo: she had no fear and never held back. She may even have aimed at Harper a few times, though it was hard to tell if there was anything behind it, like how rude Harper had been when Cleo had knocked on the library window.

While Harper stood on the side in the out row, she remembered something. When they were little, Cleo had an imaginary friend called Bumble. Liz advised Harper to go along with whatever Cleo said about Bumble so she didn’t get upset. This had included giving Bumble her seat and, once, her biscuit—which Cleo had eaten after it had sat in front of Bumble for a few minutes. Strange, Harper couldn’t think of when or how Cleo had stopped referring to Bumble.

Straight after dodgeball, Harper went up to her, said ‘Hey!’ to check that Cleo wasn’t angry with her. Cleo was all pink in the cheeks after beating everyone in dodgeball, and there was no sign that she was upset. Though she did ask what Harper had been doing in the library. All Harper had to do was shuffle the truth from the other day—Mr Glass had let her in to do some tidying.

Harper wanted to tell Cleo the real truth. But the consequences were too unpredictable. Cleo might go along with it to save Harper’s feelings, or she might see her differently in way that Harper would never be able to change. She might take her word for it, get too excited and tell other people. That was a Cleo sort of thing to do.

They’d been apart so long this year. She didn’t know if Cleo was still hers in the way she’d always been, or if lockdown had flattened their friendship into something less special.

Harper was in a different maths group to her friends, which made it easier to spend the lesson researching William Park.

His house was still there—she found it on a real-estate website. It was lovely inside: bright white walls with cool furniture and zingy cushions on the couch. It had a big extension. There was a courtyard with fake grass, a table set with colourful glasses and plates, and an outdoor fireplace. Someone had bought it for more than a million dollars.

The house must have looked so different when Will lived there. Pokier, with harder furniture, and nothing white. Six of them in two bedrooms; washing hung in the bare stone courtyard; an outside dunny. The real-estate site called it a workers cottage. That made sense because Will had told her his dad worked in a shoe factory.

When Harper typed the name of the road and all their names, only one thing came up: a funeral notice for Will’s youngest sister, Elsie, in 1919, not many years after Will died at Gallipoli.

Will must already know that all of his family would have died by now. But Harper didn’t want to tell him that Elsie had only been six years old.

When she searched for his friend Vince who’d joined up at the same time, nothing came up apart from Facebook pages: dozens of Vince Lyonses who lived now, not then. She needed to be more specific, and give more detail for the search engine. She tried Private Vincent Lyons Gallipoli and that was enough: he was on the War Memorial website under Honours and Awards. Vince Lyons had won a Military Medal. Will wasn’t on the list so she supposed he didn’t get one.

‘Harper, that doesn’t look like maths to me,’ said Mr Kumar.

‘Sorry, I was just quickly checking something for a history project.’ She swiped the page away and tried to think about fractions.

After lunch, Mr Kumar was reading aloud from a book that Harper already knew, so she put her iPad on her lap and did some more searching. Will had mentioned Hector so she looked up: can dogs see ghosts? There was an article that said dogs could detect everything from cancer to changes in weather. Hector often growled at things that she and Lolly couldn’t figure out. The article also said that dogs were better at seeing movement than humans are, especially in low light conditions—the lights in the library were usually off. Dogs also had a better sense of smell than humans. Maybe that’s what had drawn Hector to the library, the smell of smoke.

Cleo whispered, ‘What are you doing?’ trying to see Harper’s lap. Harper quickly clicked on a cute photo of a dog and showed her.

Then Misha’s nose started bleeding, and Mr Kumar called on Harper to take her to sickbay. Mr Kumar couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

After she’d left Misha in the tiny room and told Barb about the nose bleed, Harper went back outside. She stopped dead when she saw Will in the distance, leaning against the library wall. Right there, head to toe, no focus trick or flickering. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking at the sky.

It was as if now that she’d learned how to see him once, it came naturally to her. As she walked closer she wondered if he could feel that wall behind his back, or the ground under his boots, or the wind or sun. They made eye contact and he looked surprised too.

‘Righto, you can see me then?’ said Will.

‘I wasn’t even looking for you that time.’ Harper adjusted her glasses. ‘I think these must be yours, don’t you? Do you mind that I’m wearing them?’ She’d only just thought that he might resent her having them.

‘They’re better on you. I only had them for schoolwork and I was never any good at that. Or anything at school, apart from cadets. Where did they come from?’

Harper shivered when he said the word cadets, thinking of the badge, but she kept quiet about it.

‘My grandma found them. She’s a finders-keepers kind of person. See that garden up towards the other building? She made that. There was a tree there before—do you remember it? The glasses were tangled in its roots.’

He shook his head and looked confused. Perhaps the tree had been planted after he left Riverlark and removed before he returned. That was a strange thing to imagine when she thought of how tall and thick the tree was, how permanent it had seemed and how long it had taken to get used to it not being there any more.

‘Can’t think why my glasses would be in tree roots. They were at home last time I saw them.’

Harper was about to tell Will what she’d found on the internet about his house, his family, and his friend in the regiment when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

‘Who are you talking to, freak?’

She froze. It was Corey.

‘No one,’ she said.

‘I heard you. I’ve been right here listening to you talk to the air. You’re cracked.’

‘Get lost, Corey.’

‘Who’s this?’ said Will. ‘And is it all right if I kick him from here to next week?’

Harper couldn’t help smiling, even though she was a pacifist.

‘What are you grinning about, you loony-tune?’ said Corey. ‘You’ve always been a sad case. Your friends found something better to do so you had to get yourself an imaginary friend.’

‘Touch your nose if I can give this nobody a fright,’ said Will.

Harper saw the look of hate in Corey’s eyes and there was no doubt in her mind. She brushed her nose with her finger.

Corey yelped as his feet left the ground for a second. It only looked like he’d tripped but it was enough to scare him. He looked around his feet trying to work out what had happened.

‘What was that?’ Corey looked scared, but he tried to laugh it off.

‘Blink twice and I’ll make it happen again,’ said Will. Only Harper could see and hear him. This was fun. She blinked twice.

Corey was even louder the second time. There was a tiny gap under his feet as if the ground had repelled him. He looked as if he’d been hooked from above. For only a few seconds but it was enough.

Harper saw a teacher coming out of the office, and shook her head at Will.

‘Righto, but that was fun,’ he said.

‘Are you okay, Corey?’ said Harper, only pretending to care.

Corey sprinted towards the toilets. The teacher walked past and didn’t say a word. But too quickly, the fun of it turned into worry.

Will must have seen it on her face. ‘Don’t look so guilty. He deserved that.’

Harper chewed her nail. ‘What if he tells everyone and they believe him?’

‘What could he tell them?’ said Will. ‘Would you believe it if you hadn’t seen it?’

Misha came out of the other building with a large wad of tissues.

‘Thanks, Harper. You didn’t have to wait for me.’

‘Oh, that’s okay.’

Harper felt bad. She was only there because of Will, not because she was being a nice friend. ‘Is your nose okay, Mish?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine. Let’s go.’

Misha looked past her towards the library. When Harper turned to see what she was looking at, Will was gone.

That night, Harper felt suspended between two worlds: one where talking to a ghost felt natural and exciting, and the other, the real world, where she watched herself do all of the usual things like walking the dogs, hanging out the washing, eating dinner with Lolly, watching TV, doing her maths homework, reading a book, taking a shower.

In odd moments, the real world seemed unreal compared to what had happened today.

Later, in her room, Angus’s wi-fi didn’t show up in the list on her iPad. She couldn’t dig any deeper into Will’s life. But tomorrow she’d tell him what she’d found out so far.

Staring at the bedroom ceiling, she imagined what hundreds of ghosts at Riverlark would look like, but she could not think why they might have been there, or where they were now.

There was only one ghost she had to know more about. And that was William Park.

She remembered how quick she’d been to let Will scare Corey. And how much she’d liked the fear in his eyes.