he spoke again, it was softly. “And then . . . he sees it. Emerging from the fog. A low shape on the water. A boat. Just a rowboat, but it hasn’t got any oars. He draws up alongside it and looks inside. And he sees a little girl, curled in the bottom of the boat. So cold and so tired and so hungry that she’s lost even the strength to cry. He takes her back to shore, and bundles her up, and gets her help. If he hadn’t come upon her then, she would have died.”
“But she didn’t,” I said. My mouth was dry. I struggled to keep my voice even, the normal level of curious. “So it isn’t a ghost story after all.”
“I don’t know,” Liam said. His head tilted. “Maybe you don’t have to die to be a ghost.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking. And I didn’t know what my answer might be if he wasn’t. Was that what I was? A ghost? “Did it really happen?” I asked.
“Maybe?” Kenny said, but Liam looked thoughtful.
“There was this thing,” he said. “When I was little, Dr. Kapoor was a postdoc, and she was spending the summer here. When she got back, she was really . . . withdrawn, I guess? I was too little to know why, but I heard her talking with Mum once. I remember something about a girl, and I remember having the impression something bad had happened to her. That would have been . . . 2003?”
“That’s the year that storm happened,” Lily said.
“What storm?” I asked. As if I didn’t know.
“It was this awful accident,” Lily said. “Some idiots went out on the water during the mist, and the weather turned. The boat sank, or something? Three people died. They never even found the bodies. But I don’t remember there being a kid involved.”
“No one really talks about it,” Kenny pointed out. “Could be we don’t have all the details. The only people around from back then are Hardcastle and Kapoor, and good luck getting anything out of them about it.”
“Ah,” I said, as if that satisfied my curiosity, as if it didn’t really matter to me at all. A storm. Three people dead. Just a number, some faceless figures. But I knew their names. Joy Novak. Martin Carreau. Carolyn Baker. The coverage was obscure, the records thin, but I knew they’d been here. And then . . . they weren’t.
“Are you all right?” Liam asked.
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t ask me that,” I replied. I wasn’t all right. My nerves jangled, and a familiar vertigo swept over me, the prelude to the crash that always came after I pulled my little trick with unwanted emotions. I was out of time. “I’m just tired. I think I should get some rest,” I said. Was my voice too loud, too frantic? Liam frowned slightly, but the others looked unconcerned.
“You’re the third door on the left,” Lily informed me. “Bathroom’s at the end of the hall.”
“Thanks.” I stumbled as I stood, but I hoped they’d just pass it off as weariness from a long trip. I offered an anemic wave and hurried down the carpeted hallway, hearing my breath too loudly in my ears.
I barely got the door closed behind me before my knees went out. I sagged and slid, letting my bag fall to the ground beside me, as the fear I’d pushed away less than an hour ago slammed back into me.
I screwed my eyes shut. I shoved one hand into my pocket and wrapped it tight around my mother’s wooden bird, letting the sharp points of the wings bite into my palm. I sucked in breath after breath through my nose, and told myself I was safe, that there was no reason for this surge of adrenaline, this racing pulse, this wild, untamed fear.
I counted breaths. Fifteen. Thirty.
By forty-five, I was something approaching calm. I relaxed my hands, opened my eyes, and let my head loll against the door. That hadn’t been so bad. I hadn’t felt like I was dying. I hadn’t thrown up. And no one had seen.
I stood up shakily. The window threw my reflection back at me—hollow eyes, hair like a mass of briars around my face. I looked away quickly. I hated seeing my reflection. Especially after one of my crashes—that emotional collapse that inevitably followed after I’d shoved away fear or sorrow into that empty void-space. Though sometimes the blinding fear or anger or