From the corner of my eye, I shot a regretful look at the dark hallway leading out of the kitchen. If only I’d had the foresight to hide outside, maybe even to crawl underneath Joshua’s car, before this woman had seen me.

I glanced at Joshua and saw him blanch. His eyes darted several times between his grandmother and me.

“Grandma,” he asked, his voice shaking, “what’s wrong?”

Joshua was speaking directly to her, so it stood to reason that Ruth should have looked at her grandson while she answered him. Yet her eyes remained locked onto mine. She held them as she spoke.

“Who is that?” She pronounced the words carefully, enunciating their consonants in a way that made me flinch with each sharp sound. I tried in vain to blend into the cabinetry while Joshua answered her.

“Who is who?” he said, and laughed. But he sounded too jumpy, too obviously aware of her odd behavior. His eyes flickered to mine for the briefest moment before refocusing on Ruth. “Are you sure you’re okay, Grandma?”

At the sound of her grandson’s nervous laughter, Ruth finally pulled her eyes away from me. She looked up at Joshua with nothing less than a furious glare.

“Don’t be condescending to me, Joshua. Tell me what made you think you could bring something from High Bridge into our home?”

“Grandma, I didn’t—”

“Don’t.” Ruth cut him off immediately. Joshua frowned, but she went on, her sharp eyes darting in my direction every few seconds. “Don’t say you ‘didn’t,’ because I can obviously see you did. I told you to stay away from that bridge—I’ve told you since you were little. But you go and wreck your car there and then bring this into our home? When I’ve tried so hard to protect you all from things like this?”

Her eyes fell fully upon me as she spoke the last phrase. I couldn’t help but shiver and then shrink farther back, toward the hallway.

“Come on, Grandma.” Joshua laughed again, although he seemed to have given up on masking the tension in his laugh. “All the stories about the bridge are just . . . stories.”

“Yeah, Mom,” Joshua’s father called from behind us, sounding pretty nervous himself about his mother’s behavior. “You know those stories are just made up to scare kids away from an unsafe bridge.”

I looked back to see Joshua’s father cast his eyes around the kitchen at the rest of his family. Like him, they all stared at Ruth in disbelief. As if they were afraid their matriarch—the family “pit bull,” as Joshua had called her—was losing it, taking her little ghost hobby way too far.

Ruth, however, shook her head, her cheeks now blooming a violent, angry red. “I know no such thing, Jeremiah. What I do know is that bridge has a bad history. The kind of history that can change a place. Make it attractive to certain . . . things.”

“Grandma, you know I don’t believe in—”

Ruth laughed mirthlessly, cutting Joshua off again. “Joshua,” she all but whispered, her eyes locked once again onto his. “I’m pretty sure you do believe. At least you believe now.”

A soft, thoughtless yelp escaped my lips.

I slapped my hand to my mouth. Ruth, however, didn’t look at me. Instead, she remained focused on her grandson.

Maybe she hadn’t heard me yelp? And maybe I was being hypersensitive, imagining that she saw me, too? Imagining that she referred to me as one of those “certain things” associated with High Bridge?

Maybe. But it didn’t seem very likely anymore.

And I didn’t want to risk it. In fact, I suddenly felt trapped. The need to run began to burn in my limbs. I threw one more longing glance at Joshua before I crept several paces backward.

Joshua followed my movements from the corner of his eye. “Don’t—!” he started to protest, but then clamped his lips down and gave his grandmother a tight smile.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, hovering at the entrance of the hallway. “But I think I’d better get out of here.”

He frowned, still staring at his grandmother, who had yet to drop her eyes from him. I looked back and forth between Ruth and Joshua, gnawing on the corner of my lip. At last my gaze fell on Joshua. I looked down at the hand closest to me and watched him clench and unclench it, like he’d done outside his math classroom today.

Despite my fear, this little gesture made me smile. It emboldened me, if just a tiny bit.

I drew a deep breath and then said, “Meet me at your school tomorrow, okay? At lunch, in the parking lot?”

Joshua gave me just the slightest nod, and my grin widened. The grin shrank, however, when Ruth’s eyes darted once more to mine. If I didn’t know better, I would have believed that a gaze like that could kill me again.

“Help me get out of here, Joshua,” I whispered, as if my hushed tone would somehow make Ruth less aware of me. I spun around and bolted down the hallway before I had the chance to find out.

Once I reached the end of the hallway, I nearly shrieked in frustration. The screen door stared back at me, shut tight against my useless, dead hands. I almost collapsed with gratitude when an arm reached past me and shoved the door open, wide enough for me to pass through it. I crossed onto the deck and spun back around with a wide smile of relief.

“Thanks, Joshua, I really—”

The words died on my lips.

Ruth stared out at me from across the threshold, her hand still clenched to the doorframe, standing only inches away from me.

She was alone in the hallway.

I couldn’t seem to pull my eyes away from Ruth’s. Watching her, my vision blurred, and I could swear my head actually started to ache.

Finally, with an almost nightmarish slowness, I looked away from her. I began taking uncoordinated, fumbling steps across the deck and then down its stairs.

From behind me, I thought I heard something—a soft murmuring, almost like chanting. But I didn’t look back at Ruth. Instead, I dashed through the yard and toward the driveway, intent on escape. Before I could flee, however, the sound of Ruth’s voice froze me one last time.

When Ruth spoke, she whispered. But this time she did so loud enough for me to hear her, even from across the yard. The very sound of it prickled, icy and cruel at the back of my neck.

“You weren’t who I expected,” she hissed into the dark, “but whoever you are—leave. And don’t come back.”

My first impulse was to drop to the ground, curl up into the fetal position, and pray for a nightmare. For a good old disappearing act.

My next impulse was to cry out Yes, ma’am; of course, ma’am and promptly obey her orders.

My final impulse was a little less familiar. A little out of my character, as I’d come to know it since death. Following this last impulse, I didn’t acknowledge Ruth’s edict in any way except to stand as straight as I possibly could and cast my head back.

Then, after this meager act of defiance, I followed at least part of Ruth’s instructions and ran, fast, into the blackness of the night.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Chapter

Eleven

I have no idea how long I wandered after I left Joshua’s house. One hour, four—who knew? All I knew was that the night had darkened into a sinister black. Unlike the one in the flash I’d experienced earlier, the sky above me didn’t glow with stars. Instead, a sickly looking moon provided the only light. It was a ghost itself, so dull and weak it appeared out of place in the sky. As if it didn’t belong.

Like me, I thought bitterly. I don’t belong here, either.

Well, maybe I belonged here, on the desolate stretch of road upon which I now walked. But certainly not in the place I’d just visited. The place from which I’d just been unceremoniously banned.