Chapter Ten
Ten
The front lawn of our house has seen better days.
Apparently, my uncle was the one who took the initiative to drag the old lawn mower out of the shed and spend Sunday mornings tending to the yard.
Now that he’s gone it’s overgrown, with weeds and sunflowers spilling across the tall grass.
It’s been on the to-do list since we moved in, and though voluntary chores aren’t my favorite pastime, it gets me out of meal prep for this week in the kitchen with my mom and Paige.
Two hours in, my knees and hands covered in dirt, and I’ve barely made a dent in the weeds. The yard is more weeds than grass at this point. If I knew how to use the lawnmower and wasn’t afraid I’d somehow manage to chop off a finger or toe, I’d drag it out.
Alas, I take the traditional route, using a tiny, rusted shovel to coax the intruders out of the grass.
I could never be accused of having a green thumb, but I can admit there’s something meditative about it. Like dishes after dinner or inventory at the store. It’s mindless. Find the weed, dig out the base, toss it into the ever-growing pile to my side, and move to the next.
I pulled the radio off the kitchen counter and propped it on the top step of the porch. The sad, slow ballads that only I like waft around me.
I hum along to the hearty voice of a man singing about a lost love, jumping when the radio lets out the static that comes when someone changes the station. Without turning, I call, “Touch that dial and die a second time, Finn.”
The static stops. The low sad song returns. But Finn’s voice doesn’t follow.
I toss a weed aside and turn.
Not Finn. Two girls stand on the edge of the porch. They share the vaguely translucent quality Finn does, though. More occupants of the house.
My stomach claws up my throat and I make a choked sound. I never considered myself jumpy before. Moving into a haunted house is quickly changing that.
The girl bending over the radio straightens.
She’s around Margot’s age, maybe fifteen, pale and lanky.
Her hair is light, a contrast to the oversized dark tee and big black biker boots she wears.
The other, maybe twelve, has the decency to look embarrassed at being caught.
She wears a T-shirt with a drawing of an atom and the words You Matter printed across it, and the pink beads at the end of her long cornrows clack softly against her dark skin as she moves.
I recognize them from their posters, but like Finn, the girls look a few years older than they were when they dissappeared.
The blond girl places her hands on her hips.
She says something, but I can’t hear it over the pounding of my heart.
It takes a good ten seconds to wrangle the fear into something manageable.
“This isn’t happening,” I say, more to myself. “Not again.”
I turn away, willing the apparitions to disappear. One figment could be attributed to a lack of sleep or long-lingering effects of a concussion that should have healed months ago. They say the brain heals on its own timeline, so it isn’t far-fetched.
I push off my hands and knees, sitting back on my feet and swiping the dirt onto my leggings.
“I can see you,” I say. “You’re…”
“Sloane,” says the blond girl. She jerks a thumb at her counterpart. “This is Aisha.”
“Are you really here?” I ask. Again, it’s a question to myself. A hallucination isn’t likely to try to assuage me.
“I’m not sure on the technicalities of that,” the older girl, Sloane, says.
I shake my head. “Please, don’t.”
She lifts her hands in surrender. “You process this however you need to process it.”
“How am I supposed to process this? You’re—you’re dead. And you’re standing on my porch.”
“You’ve seen Paranormal Activity, yeah?”
“You’re not helping, Sloane,” the younger girl says. Aisha. She has the smallest trace of a lisp.
“This is a first for me too, you know,” Sloane says.
“You’re freaking her out,” Aisha says. To me, “You’re Jo, right?”
I nod blankly. “Just Jo,” I say. An instinctive hand snakes out for a shake, and I pull it back. Sloane’s lips twitch upward.
“This isn’t happening,” I say.
“Unfortunately, it is,” Sloane says.
“Are you…You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” The ridiculousness of such a question isn’t lost on me.
“What? No. Of course not.” Sloane clears her throat. Wiggles her fingers. “But even if we were, it would be more trouble than it’s worth. The lack of consistent fingers makes doing much of anything difficult.”
“You sure don’t seem to have trouble with them when you’re moving stuff around or hiding it. Or leaving creepy messages on my fridge,” I say.
Sloane scrunches her nose, suppressing a grin. “Guilty. For moving stuff. The fridge is all Finn. As for the hiding—”
“I swear I’ll put the books back,” Aisha says sheepishly.
The pair stands on the edge of the porch, waiting for something. The protocol for this is nonexistent, and I waver between wanting to pinch myself until these hallucinations vanish or call for my sister or family to verify that I am, in fact, losing my mind.
“We’d have introduced ourselves if we knew you could see us,” Aisha says.
“Yeah, we’re overdue for new company. Like, way overdue,” says Sloane. She inclines her head. “Are you…You should probably breathe.”
I’m staring, open-mouthed, and I’m not breathing. I inhale, bringing relief to my stinging lungs.
“I’m sorry. This is all so—”
All I wanted when we moved here was to be left alone. Apparently, the universe has a taste for irony. Escaping my family is one thing, but escaping a trio—I hope it’s only a trio and I’m not destined to find new faces in each room—of ghosts is another altogether.
“Weird?” Aisha asks.
“Freaky?” asks Sloane. “Impossible?”
“All of the above.”
“If you want us to go, we can,” Aisha says, but there’s so much sadness in her words, I bite back my agreement.
“No, it’s okay. You can stay.”
The girls settle on the porch steps. Sloane sprawls across the top step, long legs stretched out, boots hanging off the edge of the stairs. Aisha sits at the bottom, knees drawn up, following my muddy hands intently.
“I have a garden back home,” she says, voice quiet.
“I’d just planted squash and radishes. I didn’t have any seeds for the peppers.
Mom was going to take me to the nursery, but—” She stops.
Gives me a plastic smile through glittering eyes.
“Mom could kill a succulent. And Dad didn’t even know that everything has a season.
Those poor squash. I bet they never got water. ”
Sloane leans over, taps Aisha on the shoulder. Her smile for the younger girl is gentle. It reminds me of how Margot and I used to know each other’s moods like our own. A phantom ache pulses in my chest.
“You don’t know that. Maybe the garden is overflowing. More radishes than a person could want,” Sloane says, gesturing with her hands. Her nails are painted black, chipping around the edges.
Aisha smiles, but it falls as fast as it comes.
“Aisha,” I say, drawing her attention before the grief unfurling in her eyes swallows me whole, too. “Is there a better way to do this? I feel like my hacking-at-the-ground technique is probably not effective.”
Aisha hesitates, then comes to kneel at my side. It’s easy enough to get her talking again, and while I can’t say I’m all that interested in gardening strategies, within minutes, her stricken expression starts to fade.
She’s deep into a story about a tomato-planting disaster when the air shifts. My skin begins to tingle and my limbs go stiff. I feel more than hear or see the person approaching behind me. Boots scuff over the concrete sidewalk, up to where I’m kneeling in front of the porch.
I turn and find Oliver Holden standing above me. The shovel falls from my fingers, hand flying to my chest.
“Jesus,” I say. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Holden gives an apologetic smile. “That’s my bad, kiddo,” he says. He looks around, gaze skating over Sloane and Aisha on the steps.
Because he can’t see them, I force myself to act like I don’t either. It feels cruel, ignoring them, but the last thing I need is Holden going to my aunt and mom with concerns. “Who were you talking to?” he asks.
I frown, stiffening. “What?”
“You were talking to someone,” he says. Gestures to the yard around us. “Something about tomatoes?”
I clear my throat. Heat snakes up my neck and across my cheeks. I pray the sweat and flushed skin from the last hour’s work hides the blush. “Oh.” I flick a glance toward Aisha and Sloane. “Myself, I guess.”
Holden says nothing for a long moment. I’m sure he’s going to call my bluff or, worse, tell my mom and aunt I was out here talking to no one. But he simply shifts his weight, and says, “Is your aunt here?”
Relief flushes like a cold current through my veins. I nod quickly, jerking my chin toward the house. “Kitchen,” I say. The word comes out harsher and more stilted than I mean, but I don’t take it back, don’t soften it up once it’s in the air.
Holden doesn’t notice. “Thanks,” he says. “Good luck with the weeds.”
I nod, letting my chin fall, pretending to be interested in the growing pile of discarded plants at my knees.
“He lives across the street, right?” Aisha asks. Her gaze sticks to Holden as he heads up the porch. The girls slide out of his way so he doesn’t step on—or through—them.
Once I’m sure he’s far enough into the house not to hear, I answer. “He went to high school with my mom and Paige,” I say. “I’m pretty sure he has a big crush on Paige. You’ve probably seen him around.”
“Yeah. That makes sense,” she says. And it does.
It’s a small town, where everyone knows everyone—or, at the very least, has heard of everyone or seen them in passing.
But Aisha isn’t from town. According to her missing poster in the store, she’s from Albuquerque.
Her family was here on vacation when she vanished.
If she’s like Finn, Aisha has been stuck here since then. She’s bound to get to know the neighbors. Even if none of them will ever get to know her.