Her voice was gentle. “What do you really think?”

What did I think? “I think…she’s possessed.”

“I’ll help you,” Megan said immediately.

She grabbed my arm and started toward the parking lot.

“I want to know everything that’s happened,” she said. “And we need to go to your house. Whatever it is, it’s probably there.”

I looked up at the squad, almost done with their first lap. “Don’t you have to tell someone you’re leaving?”

“They’re smart girls,” she said, not stopping. “They’ll figure it out.”

A sarcastic reply made it all the way to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it right before it slipped out. I grabbed my sweatshirt and hurried to catch up.

“So what happened?” Megan asked.

“She cut the brake wires in my mom’s car,” I said. Might as well lay all the cards on the table. “She was going to frame me for it, but somehow she convinced the police it was an accident. And she has some weird plan. She said something about midnight tomorrow.”

Megan led me to an ivory VW New Beetle. She was the only sophomore I knew who had her own car.

I glanced back at the entrance to the school. The double door began to open. Carter walked out. “Hold on,” I said.

Carter saw us, did a double take, then waved and headed straight over. “Where’ve you been?” he asked.

In spite of everything, I couldn’t keep a tiny smile off my lips.

Carter glanced at Megan questioningly, but didn’t ask. Instead he lowered his voice and looked right into my eyes. “Is everything okay?”

I shook my head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, touching my wrist lightly. The brush of his fingers against my arm would have made me melt in my shoes if Megan hadn’t been staring at us impatiently.

“You guys are going to have to do this later,” she said, flipping her cell phone open to check the time. “Alexis and I have things to do.”

Carter looked bewildered. “Where are you going? I’ll come.”

“No, you can’t,” I said, pulling my wrist away from him.

“You really can’t,” Megan said, turning toward the car. “Sorry. Come on, Alexis, let’s go.”

There wasn’t time to explain the whole situation. My

heart ached—I longed to be wrapped in his arms again, pour out my troubles, make everything feel okay, even if it wasn’t.

“Call me,” Carter said, reluctantly taking a half step back.

“I will,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Get in,” Megan ordered from the driver’s seat. I sat down in the passenger seat and let my bag slip to the floor as Carter walked away.

I guess I sighed kind of melodramatically or something, because Megan gave me a sideways eye roll as she backed out of the parking space. I noticed how delicately her slender hands moved the gearshift, the way her fingers grasped the steering wheel, and I felt like a clumsy, galumphing oaf. As we drove away from the school, I glanced back to see Carter’s car pull out of the parking lot and turn in the other direction.

“How long have you two been…?” Megan said.

“What? We’re not. Nothing’s going on.”

“The way he was looking at you…that’s definitely something.”

“I guess Pepper thinks so too,” I couldn’t help saying. “Pepper? She likes him, but he doesn’t seem to be into her.”

“She came to my locker and had a talk with me.” “What did she say?”

I recalled the dejected look on Carter’s face, and Pepper’s words came back to me. Already I was bringing him down, hurting his feelings, leaving him on his own. “Nothing.”

“Right,” Megan said. “Because Pepper’s famous for saying nothing.”

I didn’t respond.

“Now tell me everything,” she said. “How long has the weird stuff been happening?” “Since Tuesday night,” I said. “And is it just your sister?”

Interesting question. Dad was safely tucked away in the hospital—well, perhaps “safely” wasn’t the right word. And Mom? Sure, she was distant and detached, but that was just Mom being Mom.

“Yeah, just Kasey,” I said.

“Now skip to the part about me.”

I’ll spare you the gory details, but it wasn’t long into my little story that Megan had to pull the car over to the side of the road so she could devote all of her attention to staring at me in indignant disbelief.

When I reached the part about Kasey showing up at school that morning, I hesitated. Megan was glaring at me so fiercely that I couldn’t concentrate.

“If I’d known this was going to happen, I never would have—”

She raised a finger in the air and closed her eyes. I took it as a very clear way of saying, heave me alone for a minute or I will push you out of my car.

A few seconds and some deep breaths later, she spoke. “Okay, Alexis,” she began, “I’m not going to pretend I’m happy about being cast as an evil villain in your stupid little fairy tale.”

“Megan, I didn’t know—”

“Quiet,” she said. “Let’s just put the past behind us and not worry about it.” She exhaled. “For now.”

She put the car in drive and pulled back onto the road, shaking her head.

“Well…it’s convenient,” I said at last.

“What is?”

“If it had been about somebody who didn’t believe in ghosts…” I said, but I didn’t know how to finish. A sour, empty ache growled to life in my stomach. My arms felt weak, and I closed my eyes.

“So…what changed your mind? Why did you suddenly decide you needed my help?”

“Oh God,” I said. I hadn’t even talked about what had happened at the house, Kasey’s evil hoodoo.

So I told her. As the story went on, I felt more and more ridiculous. My thirteen-year-old sister cops an attitude and I run for cover.

I waited to hear what Megan would say.

“Tomorrow at midnight…What’s Friday? Is it an important date—her birthday or something?” “No.”

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s cool that you kept her talking. You never know what she might have done otherwise.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way. The weak place in me felt a little stronger.

For the first time since we’d gotten in the car, I wondered where we were going. We were driving past the new developments where houses as big as museums were being constructed on lots so small that they hardly had space for a front or backyard. (Dad makes faces and calls them McMansions. Mom keeps quiet, which I assume means she wouldn’t mind living in one someday.)

“We’re going to my house,” Megan said. “I need to change out of my cheerleading clothes.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Listen. My grandmother might be home. If you say even a single word about this to her, I’ll be grounded until college.”

“All right,” I said, instantly certain that I would somehow slip up and ruin everything. Hi, nice to meet you! Your granddaughter and I are just going to mess with the Dark Side for a while. I love those flowers, are they violets? “She doesn’t believe in…it?”

“That’s the problem,” Megan said. “She does believe. Very much. So she tries to keep me away from it.” “But she knows you’re interested, right?” “Yeah.”

“How did you start believing in the first place?” Interest in the paranormal wasn’t really the “in” thing at Surrey High. It’s not the kind of thing you’d chat about during lunch.

Megan turned down the radio. “Do you believe in angels?”

Uh.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Does anyone?”

“Um, yeah, a lot of people do. And once you believe in good things, it’s not that hard to believe in…bad things.”

“So you believe in angels?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I mean, not the harps and feathers kind. But I know something happens to good people when they die.” Her cheery tone thinned. “People like my mom.”

I was desperate to turn the conversation away from Megan’s mother, so I said, “How long have you lived with your grandmother?”

Which, as a changing-the-subject tactic, was a complete failure. It was just another way of calling attention to the fact that Megan’s mom was dead. Way to go, Alexis.