“What’s wrong with you?” Jessica asks when I get in the house. She sits in the living room, a show barely watched on the TV and her phone in her hand. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Her statement makes me pause. Have I seen a ghost? Is that what Rachel is now? Only, she seems solid enough. More than solid. She’s more than capable of taking me down.

“It’s nothing,” I say. I make my way to the stairs to lock myself in my room and try to figure out a way to get out of this mess, but Jessica’s voice stops me.

“Someone’s been calling for you,” she says from the sofa.

I pause, then turn around and stare at her.

“What?”

“Yeah. I told them to just call your cell, but they hung up. Then they called back. Like, a dozen times. You’re lucky Mom’s at yoga or she’d have a cow.” She gestures to the house phone without looking up from her cell. “I unplugged it. Sounded like some classmate of yours pulling a prank.”

“What did … what did they say?”

Jessica shrugs.

I take a few steps over.

“Jessica, what did they say?”

“She said that she hoped you could swim. Like, that’s all she said. On repeat. It was creepy the first time, but then it just got annoying.” She glances up at me. “You better tell whoever it is to stop calling. Mom and Dad won’t be happy if it continues when they’re home.”

“Did she say who she was?” I ask.

“Nope—believe me, I asked,” Jessica replies. She looks up from her phone then and truly looks at me. “Should I be worried?”

Of course that’s what she’d ask. Should she be worried. Like she’s the parent and I’m the child. She’s always the smart one, the good one, and I’m the one messing up. It makes me want to scream that my little sister thinks she has to take care of me.

Normally, I would have done just that, just to put her in her place. But this is far from normal.

“No,” I lie, trying to keep my voice calm. “Like you said, it’s just someone pulling a stupid prank.”

She nods.

I turn and head up the stairs, think that maybe if I face Rachel, maybe if I go on this boat trip, she’ll leave me alone. Or at least leave my family alone. I can’t imagine she’d want to hurt or involve anyone here. She always got along with my family. Heck, she was often the one trying to involve my sister in our tea parties or outdoor adventures. Rachel viewed Jessica as a sister, and I’m pretty certain Jessica wished Rachel was her sister in my place. I still remember the fight Jessica and I had when I learned she’d been texting Rachel behind my back, after our falling out. I’d made her swear never to speak to Rachel again.

No, Rachel never had any reason to be angry toward anyone else in my family. Just me.

I have to believe Rachel, or whatever Rachel’s become, will leave them out of this.

The moment my foot hits the stair, the home phone rings again.