I turn around, accidentally bang my hip against the edge of the sink, and knock my phone to the ground, which brings the screen back to life. But now it’s just me and the bathroom wall. No broken boy, no face. I clap my hands over my eyes and crumple to the floor.

“Please,” I beg. “Show me something. Anything that will tell me who you were!”

He’s not going to show me in here; I already know that. So does Miles; he told me in his text. It has to be in a “high-activity space.” The upstairs door or—

I hear the pluck of the harpsichord key from the sewing room and know immediately that’s what woke me up. That’s where he wants me.

I can’t wait for Miles. I know I should, and I want to, but it’s now or never. The broken boy is here, and this is the moment. I force myself to my feet and march to the living room. I try activating the flashlight on my phone, but nothing happens.

“No,” I breathe. “Not now.”

Yes now. I’d been so busy checking my phone for messages that I hadn’t noticed how quickly I’d been draining the battery. Now it’s completely dead.

“I can do this,” I say. “I can do this. I’ve done it before. This ghost is just like all the rest.”

Lies. Just so many lies. They’re all lies I’m telling myself, but if the broken boy wants to hurt me, at least tonight, it’ll be because I was brave.

Even if I am on my own. Even without my protectors. I’m sure that’ll make me feel better as I’m being eaten.

The SoundMaxx is still lit up in the living room, its red light blinking away in the dark. It must run on some sort of battery backup, which is lucky considering it would be useless for recording what I’m about to do otherwise.

Before I reach the sewing room, I know the boy is here. I can see his shadow, his strangely bent angles crouched near the open door of the closet. He’s holding the silver medallion in his palm again, the one he must have taken from the hat rack. I didn’t know to ask him about it on that first night, but I do now.

“What is that?” I manage to choke out. The heavy air is clogging my throat, but I keep pushing, clutching the SoundMaxx to keep it from rattling against the doorway. “That charm, was it from a family’s business, the, uh, brewers, or boarding house, or . . . d-dentist?”

Slowly, his shadowy figure rises from a crouch and slinks into the darkness of the closet, dropping the charm to the floor with that same pinging sound. Unlike the first night I arrived, he wants me to follow him. I know because he leaves the closet door open.

When I enter, it feels like the sewing room swallows me. I feel like I have to fight against an invisible hand pushing me toward the open mouth of the closet. I manage to unfold and prop the SoundMaxx in the opposite corner of the room; I set it down as quietly as possible by the harpsichord. Hopefully, it’s close enough to pick up whatever the broken boy has to say, if he finally decides to say anything.

The medallion catches the moon’s light as if winking at me from the floor. I pick it up, thinking maybe I could offer it to the boy as a kind gesture, returning to him what he lost.

When I reach the closet, my nose opens enough for me to smell pine. It’s the scent of Rhodi Island and steamed biscuits, but moldier, and there’s more—bodies pressed together, damp wool, rancid food, burned sugar, coal fires, and manure. I try to breathe through my mouth, but clouds of white air crystalize in front of my face, making my eyes puffy and water.

I want to keep the closet door open, but it closes on its own as soon as I step inside, the last bit of light disappearing with a click! as darkness overtakes us.

In the light, the closet is maybe the size of a tool shed. With the door closed, it could be any size; space is endless in the dark, and the boy could be anywhere. He could be as far away as I want to imagine, or he could be inches from my face.

I wrap my arms tight around my trembling body and focus on keeping my teeth from chattering. Eventually, I see the boy’s puff of air exhale a few feet away. I listen hard for his breath—for that horrible death rattle he’d been unable to hide the night he came downstairs and lunged at me on the porch. This time, his exhales are silent. I’m in his world now. All I hear is the pounding of my own heart in my ears as my little white puff of air appears, then disappears, and his appears, then disappears.

I wait. He does nothing.

I slowly tuck my knees up under my chin, careful not to disturb the stillness of the closet. He’s not going to make the first move. He’s going to make me do it.

“Who are you?” I whisper. I can barely get the words out. “Help me understand.”

I can’t expect him to speak, but if I can provoke some sort of reaction (hopefully the nonviolent type), maybe I can get somewhere. It’s worked before.

A little white puff appears across the closet, hangs in the air, and then dissipates.

“Are you Felix?”

Nothing this time. Not even a puff. I swallow to wet my throat, but it dries too fast.

I press on. He isn’t leaving me much choice. “Do—do you want to h-hurt me?”

The little white cloud reappears, disappears.

My voice drops. I can hardly hear it myself. I fight to steady it, but it’s impossible: “Do you want to kill me?”

Nothing. No little cloud. This time, I hear a tiny shuffle.

The smells in the closet shift. Damper wools and mustier musts. I’m shivering harder, but I don’t feel as cold. It’s almost humid now. The space has shrunk.

I exhale, letting the words form in the tiny dewdrops of thick, moldy air.

“How did you die?”

Now his breath is inches from me, hot and damp in my ear. The death rattle creeps in, pushing and pulling its way through what’s left of his throat, reaching its tendrils into my soul, stealing the life from my rushing blood.

To my horror, he croaks his answer into my ear.

I scream loud enough to burn my throat. I shoot to my feet, expecting to hit the boy, but all I feel is thick, vapory air. I feel around for the doorknob. When I finally find it, I twist, but it won’t budge.

“HELP! Let me out! Help!!”

But who’s going to help me? I pound on the door. I grasp the doorknob with both hands, wringing it like a rag until my fingers cramp up. Then, I feel a pair of hands close 
over mine.

I freeze, the cold of their touch painful. I can’t move. I can’t speak. The boy has me where he wants me. Except . . . are these . . . ? These hands don’t feel like his. No jagged nails digging into my skin. No fearsome grip squeezing off my blood circulation.

My brain is a blur of panic, but suddenly, in one swift motion, the doorknob turns. The hands disappear as the closet door swings open and the sewing room appears before me.

I don’t dare turn to see who or what opened the door. Instead, I run so hard I hit my shoulder on the corner of the wall rounding the hallway. I sprint into the foyer, ready to skid to a stop, but before I can, the world goes fuzzy, then—

When I open my eyes, Miles is holding up fingers and demanding I count them and asking why I’m screaming and somehow blaming me and apologizing to me at the same time.

“Gus, what the—why didn’t you wait—Your mom’s outside flipping the fuse in the breaker box. The lights went out. Don’t worry; she didn’t ask why I drove and not my dad. I’ll find the SoundMaxx. Don’t move!”

A minute later, Mom appears over me, her hands cupping my head.

“What in the name of—” she says, feeling my forehead for some reason.

I squint up at the ceiling and see the ornate chandelier twinkling dimly above me.

“Why am I on the floor?” I groan.

“Let me get you a pillow. Stay there,” she says, like I’m about to get up and run a marathon.

“Can’t I go to bed instead?” I ask.

“Miles,” I hear her say from the kitchen, “you can go home. It’s okay.”

Mom’s voice keeps fading in and out, and so do the cracks in the living room ceiling, because somehow I’ve made it from the floor in the foyer to the sofa. The clip-clop of Mom’s boots echoing off the floors is ringing in my ears, and before that I was in the closet in the sewing room, and suddenly I can’t seem to control how fast I’m breathing, and I think I’m going to—oh yeah, I’m definitely going to barf.

“Put your head between your knees,” Mom says, pressing a cold cloth against the back of my neck.

I do as I’m told, and soon my breathing returns to normal. The nausea starts to pass now that Mom is with me. Or because I’m not sitting in a closet with a ghost whispering in my ear. It could be that.

She waits another few minutes before interrogating me. “Miles found you on the floor. He thinks you fainted?”

“Must have,” I say.

“Fry,” she says slowly, “was it another panic attack?”

I haven’t had one in months. I thought I was done with them for good.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she reassures me when I don’t answer her.

“I know,” I say, and I really do. Dr. Frankputter helped me understand that. I just wish . . .

I look at Mom, at the worry plastered all over her face. Maybe this is it—this is the time to tell her. Maybe all the hiding about the ghosts can finally stop. Maybe she’ll finally believe me.

“Mom, I think I need to—”

“I’m calling a doctor,” she says, and stands abruptly to retrieve her phone from her purse.

“Wait—why?”

“You might’ve hit your head. You could be concussed. I’ll see whether Toby or Ricki know of one I can call out here.”

But the joys of living on a small island keep serving unexpected challenges. I hear Mom talking on her phone in the kitchen.

“Ricki, he’s a kid, not a dog.”

Then a pause.

“I suppose that’s true, but I’d really rather not wait until the morning.”

Another pause. Then a sigh. I know that sigh. Mom hates admitting defeat, but she knows when she’s been beat. As she returns to the sofa, she fakes a smile.

“Someone will stop by first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, you sleep upstairs in my bed tonight. I’ll take the floor.”

“Mom—”

“Don’t argue, Fry.”

After she’s tucked me in like a baby and I pretend to hate it, I try to fall asleep, but images of white clouds of breath and the feeling of hot air in my ear haunt me, so I keep Mom awake with me for a while longer.

“How was tonight?” I ask.

“It was good,” she says, smiling from the floor. “Nice to revisit my wild early days.”

“Wild days?” I ask her, feeling a twist in my gut.

Mom rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Not really. “That Raj guy seems . . . nice.” I watch her face and expression closely.

A slow smile spreads across her lips as she stares at the floor again. “He’s an old friend.” She reaches up to pat my foot. “Now go to bed.”

Tomorrow, when the sun is out and my head is clear, I can answer the texts Miles has been sending, probably coded in case Mom sees them first. I can catch Tavi up on all the action. I can let the horror of what happened in the closet tonight come back to me piece by little piece.

Right now, I’m glad to be not-sleeping next to Mom, even if it is across the hall from the tiny arched door, because at least it isn’t near the sewing room. I can feel the cool metal of the medallion pressing against my leg, still in my pocket from when I picked it up, reminding me every time I flinch of the putrid air in the closet.

The hands that closed over mine. The clouds of white air.

The words the broken boy hissed into my ear, even though not a single ghost has ever spoken a word to me before tonight:

He said, “LET ME OUT!”