“That sounds awesome,” said Mark Spitzer, the only boy on both the soccer team and the math club.

“You always make the best playlists,” added Tina Brown, whose parents owned a restaurant Maria’s family couldn’t afford even on special occasions.

It seemed like everyone in seventh grade was in a contest to see who could kiss up to Claire the most. Everyone except Maria and her best friend, Derek — who, unfortunately for Maria, did not take honors English.

No one was mean to Derek, though. Everyone liked Derek because he made people laugh, even teachers. When it came to Maria, who couldn’t even make her own mom or brother laugh, people found it easier to side with Claire. It’s not like Maria really cared all that much. Grandma Esme said that all the most interesting people were misunderstood during their lifetimes.

“Oh my gosh, Maria, is that food on your shirt?”

Maria tried to look over her shoulder at the back of her T-shirt, the one she’d grabbed quickly while getting ready that morning. In the edge of her vision, there appeared to be a mustard stain — probably from when she’d helped Rafi make the hot dogs. Her face flushed with embarrassment as Tina and Mark and the rest of the kids around her snickered. Whatever Grandma Esme said, a lifetime was a long time to be misunderstood.

“You should just put another patch over it,” Claire said. “Or maybe a piece of duct tape? I’m sure the janitor has a spare roll you could borrow.”

“Wait, Claire, I think you have something on your face,” Maria said hotly. “Oh, no, sorry, that is your face.”

Claire scowled and opened her mouth like she was about to snap back, but thankfully the bell rang, and Ms. Wainscott stepped in from the hall.

“All right, class,” she said. “Let’s see how well you’ve been studying your vocab this week. That’s right — pop quiz. It won’t require any talking, thank you. You’ll just need one sheet of paper and a pen.”

Why had Maria thought her day couldn’t get any worse? She was starting to think someone was out to get her.

At lunch, Maria sat down and immediately pulled out her notes for her oral report, reading over them for the hundredth time. She was so nervous she felt like she had spiders in her stomach. She hated having to stand up in front of the class for anything.

Derek slid into the seat across from her, flipping his shaggy black hair, which was always falling in his eyes. He twirled a pen from one finger to the next.

“Oh, right,” he said. “I forgot we had those reports next period.”

“Please tell me you’ve got something prepared,” Maria said. In truth, she envied the way he could approach everything so calmly. He always said that if something made you nervous, it just meant that you were thinking about it too hard.

“Yeah, don’t worry. I’m going to do mine on my dad’s shop.”

Maria rolled her eyes.

“What?” Derek said. “It’s full of local history. That shop has been in my family for, like, seventy-five years.”

Derek’s dad owned a store called Vic’s Antiques. Derek always said he wished they’d change the name, since Vic referred to his great-grandfather, who’d passed away before Derek was even born. But Maria thought that made it the perfect name for an antique shop, especially one as full of the past as Vic’s Antiques. There were all kinds of knickknacks and oddities there. Like the seashell bracelet Maria was currently wearing, which had cost only three dollars after Derek’s dad gave her the family discount.

“Hey, do you want to come visit Grandma Esme with me after school?” Maria said. Derek was one of the few people besides her who thought her grandmother was cool, not weird.

“Sorry, can’t,” he said, now twirling the pen so fast it was hard to tell which fingers he was using. “I promised my mom I’d help clean up the house before my great-aunt Luellen gets here.”

“I forgot that she was coming this weekend. Well, I’ll tell Grandma Esme you say hi.”

“Yeah, thanks. You know I’d rather spend time at Grandma E.’s house than mine any day. Especially now, since I get the feeling from my mom that Aunt Luellen can be a little scary.”

“Why is she here?”

“I’m not really sure. Dad said it was something about visiting an old friend, but I don’t know who, because she’s never lived in Florida before. She lives up in New York with the rest of the Overton side of the family.”

“Weird,” Maria said. “But I’m sure she’s harmless.”

“Fingers crossed,” Derek said, stopping the pen mid-twirl in between his crossed fingers. “By the way,” he said, “I heard you told Claire McCormick her face was ugly.”

“Is that what’s going around?” Maria smirked. “Well, I didn’t use those words exactly, but I was definitely thinking them.”

“Be careful around her,” Derek warned. “That girl is frightening when she’s mad.”

“Claire McCormick doesn’t scare me,” Maria replied.

But she couldn’t look Derek in the eye as she said it. He always knew when she wasn’t telling the truth.

When the bus let Maria off at the end of Spinneret Street, she felt, as she always did, like she was stepping back in time. The houses on this street were some of the oldest in the city, although at this point they looked more run-down than historical. Still, Grandma Esme’s house was like Grandma Esme — it had character. From the uneven wooden pillars holding up the front-porch roof to the stained-glass windows depicting the sun and the moon, the house was almost like a personal museum.

Maria loved it.

She knocked three times using the big brass knocker, then waited for the sound of her grandma coming to the door. After two whole minutes of nothing, she tried the handle. The door was unlocked.

“Grandma? Are you awake?” Maria called, stepping inside.

Something was wrong. That was immediately clear. The house was always a bit of a mess, but once you knew the pattern to the chaos (and the location of all the secret shelves and drawers), you could find anything you wanted without much trouble. Today, there was no pattern. It looked like a tornado had swept over a yard sale right here in the living room.

“Grandma?” Maria called more urgently.

“Who is it? Maria, is that you?”

Maria exhaled. Grandma Esme appeared in the doorway that led back to the kitchen, her black hair disheveled, her cat-eye glasses askew. She was clutching one of her silver whistles to her chest, and she had a light in her eyes like she’d just seen her own ghost.

“Yes, it’s me, Grandma. Remember? I said I was coming over on Friday?”

“Oh,” Esme said, but she still didn’t smile. “Is it Friday already?”

“It is,” Maria said patiently. She motioned to the heap of odds and ends piled on the living room carpet. “Did you lose something, Grandma? Do you want some help finding it?”

“What? Oh, no, dear. I mean, yes. Yes, I want your help. No, I haven’t lost anything.”

Maria walked over to her grandmother and held her hand. Sometimes, when Grandma Esme was feeling forgetful, you just needed to spend a quiet moment with her before the memories came back.

Grandma Esme looked down at their hands. Her eye lingered on her black spider ring, which always seemed to catch the light just right.

“It’s the spiders,” Esme said. “The spiders have returned.”

“Which spiders? Do you mean real spiders?”

“Yes, real spiders,” Grandma Esme said. “Very real. Too real.”

Maria led Esme to the living room couch, guiding her around a few stray books and records along the way. Esme sat down and took a deep breath. This seemed to help.