Jocelyn, the girl sitting in the desk in front of Hailey, spun around and said, “Gross!” She had curly dark-red hair and freckles.

I checked my sleeve and saw that a few smooshed rice grains had dried and stuck to the fabric. Embarrassed, I tried to peel them off. “It’s just rice.”

“Are you sure they’re not bugs?” Jocelyn’s lip curled.

Hadn’t they ever seen rice before?

Instead of leaving the classroom, Jocelyn and Hailey continued to stare as I picked at my sleeve. The longer they sat there, the hotter my face grew until I wished I was as invisible as Miv. When it came to dealing with real people, my imagination always failed me. I was only good at pretending to be brave.

“You’re not going to eat it, are you?” Hailey asked when the rice finally came off between my fingers. She leaned away, like she thought it might grow legs and start moving. I imagined myself throwing it at her and shouting Boo!

Jocelyn smirked. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Have you seen what she brings for lunch?”

The two friends laughed. I looked down. My mom usually packed me and Matt leftovers from whatever we’d had for dinner the night before. That could mean anything from cold rice and boiled chicken to tofu and greens or instant noodles. It wasn’t exactly the Nutella sandwiches and fruit snacks the other kids brought.

Miv leaped from my desk to Hailey’s shoulder. He’d been the size of a kitten for as long as I’d known him, but like all spirits, he could choose when to be solid and when to be permeable. Aside from me, though, people couldn’t sense spirits in either state, so Hailey didn’t flinch when Miv gave a low growl and pounced at her head.

Drawing courage from Miv, I raised my eyes and met Hailey’s blue ones. Just leave already, I thought. I usually hung around the empty air-conditioned classroom to wait for Matt. He had a third class, so he wouldn’t be out for another forty-five minutes.

Everyone was gone by now except for us and a fourth girl who appeared in the doorway. Hailey and Jocelyn must have been waiting for her.

The girl had short brown hair and pretty gray eyes. I didn’t recognize her. She’d probably overheard everything. Ugh.

I expected her to taunt me the way her friends had, but she only frowned at them. “You’re being mean. Different people eat different things.”

Hailey rolled her eyes. “It was a joke, June.”

“Not a very funny one,” she said.

“This is boring. Can we go now?” Jocelyn got up and moved toward the classroom door.

I was ready for them to leave, too, but the new girl, whose name was apparently June, looked at me and asked, “Are you by yourself? You want to come with us?”

The question surprised me. I searched her face for signs of a trick, but she only smiled, revealing a full set of braces. She seemed earnest, but the last thing I wanted was a pity invite.

“Why?” I asked.

Really? Miv draped himself over Hailey’s shoulder, poking the tip of his tail into her ear. Someone just asked you to join them, Pahua. No one ever does that!

My insides squirmed. He didn’t need to remind me. When I said before that Miv was my best friend? It’s more like he was my only friend. So he got the title of best by default.

“Uh, I m-mean,” I stammered, “where are you going?”

Hailey groaned, but June said, “To some old bridge in the woods nearby.”

My stomach flipped, like that feeling you get when your mom drives over a hill a little too fast. “Why would you want to go there?”

Hailey laughed. “Look at her face. She’s scared.”

I twisted the hem of my shirt in my fingers. “I’m not scared.” Totally not true. “I was just asking a question.”

“Why don’t you go home and play with your brother?” Jocelyn said by the door, sounding impatient.

“Yeah, he’s the only one who will play with you,” Hailey added. “And that’s just because he has to.”

I stuffed my fists into my pockets and tried to hide the hurt that pinched my chest.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” June scolded them, surprising me again.

Miv dropped from Hailey’s shoulder and wove through June’s legs. This one seems okay. You should go with her.

“Whatever.” Hailey stomped off toward Jocelyn.

Jocelyn let Hailey leave first and then called over her shoulder, “Come on, June!”

June lifted her eyebrows quizzically at me. At her feet, Miv mimicked the look. The idea of hanging out with Hailey and Jocelyn made my skin itch, and I wasn’t exactly dying to go to that bridge. But still, June had stood up for me, and she didn’t think I was a weirdo just because I didn’t look like everyone else.

To be honest, even though I loved my brother and Miv, I wanted a real friend. This could be my chance. Would I simply let Hailey and Jocelyn ruin it?

I glanced at the clock on the wall. There were still forty minutes until Matt got out of class, and the bridge wasn’t far.

Before I could change my mind, I said, “Okay.”

June and I left the school, following Jocelyn and Hailey across the playground toward the hiking trail in the woods.

As we continued down the shaded path, the air grew cooler, and the soft earth muffled our footsteps. Dandelion spirits with tufts of frothy hair emerged from the weeds to trot at my heels, trailing silver fluff. Tree spirits peered out from the hollows of trunks. They had bark for skin, stiff, spindly arms and legs, and nests of leaves and moss for hair.

“Your name is Pahua, right?” June asked. Miv was perched on her head now, doing his best impression of a hat.

“Yeah,” I said, surprised. She even got the pronunciation right—Pah-HOO-ah. “How’d you know?”

She smiled, flashing her braces. “I pay attention. My dad says I’m good at remembering little details.”

I winced at the idea of my name being a “little detail,” but she probably didn’t mean it to sound rude.

“Are you new here?” I asked, eager to change the topic.

“Yeah! We’re from Chicago. My dad is the new manager at Merdel Trucks. They make military vehicles for the army and stuff. Not tanks, though. That would be cool. We’ve only been here like a month. It’s so much quieter than in the city. Our old apartment was next to this bar that played local bands every Saturday, and my dad and I would dance….”

She kept going, and I tried to listen—honest, I did—because I wanted her to like me, but I could tell by the way my stomach grew heavier and heavier that we were getting closer to the bridge.

Almost everyone I knew had a story about this bridge being haunted. To be fair, I didn’t know a lot of people, and most of them were adults, like our neighbor Mr. Taylor, who always smelled like wet dog food. Also, the bridge looked like it should be haunted, with crooked wooden boards that had black mold and nails eaten through by rust. There was even a sign warning people away. But I was probably the only person in the whole town who could say with absolute certainty that the stories were true.

Yeah, unfortunately, I can see human spirits, too.

All human spirits are creepy—at least they are to me—but most of them are harmless. The recently dead, waiting for the funeral rituals that would release their soul into Dab Teb, the Spirit Realm, just sort of mope around looking depressed. Not that I blame them. The older spirits who, for one reason or another, were never released mostly keep to themselves, scaring the locals only on rare occasions. I don’t blame them, either. If I was stuck in one place for all eternity, I’d find my fun however I could, too.

But then there are the genuinely scary ones. They’re literally the worst. My guess was that the bridge spirit was one of those. I’d never been close enough to the bridge to find out for sure, but I’d always gotten a bad feeling whenever I walked anywhere near it. My mom had warned me to stay away from there, and before today, I’d obeyed.

The sensation gnawed at my insides, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and filled me with a cold so intense it burned. People who are attuned to spirits can be affected by them even if they can’t see or hear them, and I’m especially sensitive.

I was picking it up already, the awareness of something very old and very angry.

According to folks around town, the spirit who haunted the bridge was a kid who’d died there after her parents abandoned her in the woods. Judging by how I was feeling, I could believe it. I shivered, rubbing my arms where goose bumps had risen.

We’d caught up to the other girls. Hailey glanced at me, her nose wrinkling like she’d smelled something bad.

“Are you cold?” June asked, giving me a funny look. It was the hottest part of the year, and all four of us were in T-shirts and shorts.

“No,” I said, dropping my arms. “Maybe…Maybe we could just hang out here?” I gestured to an old tree that had snapped in half last spring. It rested at an angle, propped up by sturdier neighboring trees. It would have made a perfect ship, or fallen tower, or drawbridge—

“If you don’t want to come with us, then leave,” Hailey said.

Jocelyn smirked and whispered loudly, “She’s definitely scared.”

Of your face, I thought. Miv’s whiskers twitched, like he knew what I was thinking.

Even though June gave them both an annoyed look, I could tell she was disappointed in me. That made me feel worse than anything Hailey or Jocelyn was saying. Maybe we weren’t meant to be friends. It would be easy to just turn around and go back. By the time school resumed in the fall, June would understand that I didn’t fit in and would never try to invite me anywhere again.

But she had invited me. And she’d stood up for me—twice! No one but Miv and Matt ever did that. So I stayed.

As we walked, the cat spirit settled onto my shoulder, tucking his head beneath my ear. I put my arms behind my back to hide the way my skin prickled as the chill spread inside me.

Maybe Pahua Moua, eleven-year-old nobody, was scared of a bridge, but I didn’t have to be her right now. I’d pretend to be someone braver—a warrior princess setting out to vanquish an evil sorcerer. Or a secret government experiment, part machine and part vampire bat, bent on destroying the mad scientist who’d created me.

My imaginings broke off when we reached the bridge. The trees ended at a steep bank studded with rocks. The tree spirits had gone quiet, and the dandelion spirits had peeled away some time ago. I told myself all that was normal. Lots of earth-based nature spirits didn’t like water spirits, which were particularly nasty.

The cold inside me became a sick, sinking feeling, like the ground beneath my feet had turned to quicksand. There was something here that wasn’t right, something that was not to be disturbed.

Like an idiot, I ignored it.