Page 23 of All Her Ghosts

Shit—too honest. I wince, but Bas just laughs, head tipped back, flipping damp gray hair off his forehead.

“Well, that’s new. Not used to being a good thing.”

“Really?” I sneak a glance at the inviting curve of his smile in the setting sun, try not to think about kissing him again. But Bas looks at me and I’m not hiding anything. I swear he already knows. “What are you usually?”

He grins, shrugs.

“I’m the harbinger of death,” he says, perfectly serious, and holds out his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman. I take it, looping us together at the elbow. Even through his hoodie, his heat envelops me, closer than a kiss. The ache of an un-memory pulses where my heart should be, a clear bell echoing—

(Home, home, home)

Slipping his free hand into his pocket, Bas hits play on a new song.We dance to it between gas lamps, making up the steps between fireflies, a parade of hungry sparks trailing in our wake until our ragtag procession glows bright enough to cast shadows on the houses, on the ratty sign that reads GoldenFieldsPrivateCommunity.

We pause there, fingers tangled.

“I see you,” I whisper, into the deepening dark.

It feels like a coin down a wishing well, silence after a long fall. Too little. Too late.

Bas doesn’t say anything, the silence grown too heavy to break. He just offers me a smile, soft and a little sad.

When his hand leaves mine, the ghost parade goes fluttery and vague again. Many of them dissolve into the night, fragmenting back to wherever their death loop started. Hollowed out and aching, I watch them and him go, a cold wind threatening winter rustling through my hair, heavy with the ozone scent of dead things—leaves and little ghosts caught in the current, tissue paper fragile, clogging up the gutters.

My eyes sting. Feeling like a lone mourner at an unfinished funeral, I whisper good night to Bas and walk away. It takes me a whole block to outrun the feeling that I’ve left a crucial part of my own body behind. Another block for me to get my head on straight, start running tactics for the coming battle. I walk the third block to my house—an identical house in a sea of oatmeal boxes distinguishable only by the ancient RV rotting in the driveway—taste-testing plausible lies. By the time I walk up the driveway, I’ve steeled myself. I’m ready.

Unfortunately, as with most battle plans, it all falls apart on contact with the enemy.

CHAPTER 7

Playlist: Pastel Melodies for Rotting

“There’s Not a Step We Can Take That Does Not Bring Us Closer” by Jason Webley

Six houses in three years and Mom has neveroncebothered to come home before the streetlamps. Not enough hours in the day, she claims, and I can’t help noticing those hours are never spent onme. I fall off the bottom of every to-do list. Yet today, the second my boot hits the porch, she flicks the lights on, glaring at me through the living room window. I guess I ranked up in priority today.

Not that she bothers to unlock the door. Her thoughtfulness only extends so far. I insert my key by flimsy sunset seeping through the brewing storm clouds, thunderheads knotting in sync with the anxiety rolling in my gut. By the time I get the door open, my face burns, a warning thunder rumbling in my ears. I step inside the living room and into an ambush, my mother prowling so long she’s flattened a trail through the carpet.

Mom stops, staring at me. Shutting the door, I turn the dead bolt and stare back. Normally, this is where we’d start screaming at each other. But there’s something stranger about me now, an ocean in my empty chest—and maybe my mother can hear it crashing against myrib cage, because she watches me with her arms folded tight against her chest, almost wary, eyes roving every little detail.

“What,” she says, through her teeth, “in God’s name did you think you were doing?”

Ironic, coming from her, when the only place she worships is at the altar of science. My fingers tingle, impending numbness threatening my party trick. I curl them into fists.

“Skipping school. What’s it matter? They were going to send me home anyway.”

Her eyes flare. She heaves a whistling breath through her teeth, dramatic, as if I hit her.

“Youran away. I had no idea where you were, who you were with, if you were safe—”

“Only because you don’t listen! I told you where I was.”

“Oh, because you’re such a paragon of good judgment?” She aims a finger at me, shaking like a loaded gun. “I am criminally disappointed in you.”

“Yeah?” My lip curls, stomach churning. “Join the club. We meet on Tuesdays.”

“Do you think this is a joke? Do you see me laughing? You know this is going on your permanent record.”

“Who cares about that?”