The jogger huffed past with a little nod to me. It was past midnight, and we were at least a mile from my house. Normally a passing stranger would’ve given me a flutter of nerves, but nothing was normal anymore.
If anything, I was the one spreading jitters, dressed all in black, my hood up, hands deep in my pockets. It was the coldest night all winter, and steam curled from my mouth when I talked to my invisible friend.
“What was this place when it was . . . alive?”
“A school. It got torn down right after we moved here. Now it’s a vacant lot full of broken trucks and rusty school buses. Like that box in Anna’s closet where she throws stuff and forgets about it.” Mindy came to a halt. “But a lot of livers must remember this school.”
She was staring at the high fence that stretched along the opposite side of the street. Its chicken-wire pattern caught the streetlights, and a makeshift barrier of wooden planks leaned against the metal from the other side. Glittering thorns spiraled along the top.
“Do you see it?” Mindy asked.
“What? That shit-ton of razor wire I’m going to have to climb over?”
“No, behind that. Behind everything.”
I squinted into the darkness, but couldn’t see anything except the rusty yellow tops of school buses. “Sorry.”
“Here.” She took my hand, and a trickle of death traveled up my arm. Over the past week I’d gotten good at crossing over, with or without Mindy’s touch. But there was always a shiver of reluctance just before, as if I were about to dive into cold water. Something inside me didn’t want to cross over. My body knew the scent of death.
But I needed to practice using my powers, which meant getting over the whole death-is-scary thing.
I hadn’t called Yamaraj again. I didn’t want to be some floundering girl, needing him to show me the ropes. I wanted to demonstrate that he didn’t have to be afraid for me, that I belonged in his world, even if I didn’t know what to call myself yet. “Soul guide” sounded too wimpy. “Psychopomp” too psycho. “Reaper” too grim. I was still looking for something better.
As I crossed over, the moonlight shuddered around us, and the taste of metal filled the air. The sky above went from velvet black to flat gray dotted with red stars. Mindy’s hand grew solid in mine.
“See it now?”
I nodded, still breathing hard. Rising up behind the fence was a terra-cotta roof against the gray sky. The building was much smaller than my high school a mile up the road. Parts of the roofline were sharp and clear, but other sections had faded into translucence, like old paint wearing away.
A ghost building.
Mindy had explained that a lot of things had ghosts, not just people. Animals, machines, even things as vast as a paved-over forest or as humble as the smell of good cooking could leave traces of themselves behind. The world was haunted by the past.
“Come on.” I headed across the street. As we drew closer, the fence grew fainter, almost transparent. It hadn’t stood there in the old days, I guess, so it was only a ghostly presence here on the flipside. I walked up to the chicken wire and reached out. . . . My fingers passed through, then dipped into the wood behind.
“Sweet,” I said.
This was my first time using the flipside to pass through something solid, at least since Yamaraj had led me through the metal gate at the airport. Mindy ran by me like it was nothing, straight through the fence and across the school grounds. The school buses and city trucks, parked so tight they were almost touching, offered no resistance to her.
As I followed, the fence tugged at me, like a thornbush catching my clothing. But then I was on the other side, the school yard growing clearer before me, the buses and trucks fading.
It was like going back in time. The parking lot was tiny—I guess kids didn’t drive themselves to school back then—and there were no white lines, just hand-painted signs for a few teachers’ spaces. The ghost playground looked dangerous, with its ten-foot-high jungle gym over hard asphalt. Mindy climbed to the top, hooked her knees over the highest bar, and hung there, upside down and facing me.
The building itself looked more like a mansion than a school, with its tiled roof, stucco walls, and long front porch. The windows just looked wrong. They were empty rectangles, black pits that didn’t reflect the streetlights.
“Are there ghosts in there?” I asked.
Mindy swung her arms, her pigtails swaying. “Might be.”
“Isn’t that the point of ghost buildings? For ghosts to live in?”
“Don’t be stupid.” She reached up to grab the bar, unhooked her knees, and swung down to land on her feet. “Ghosts live in normal places.”
“Like my mom’s closet?”
“Closets are nice.” Mindy stared at the school in silence for a moment. “But a lot of ghost buildings aren’t. I don’t go inside them.”
“You don’t have to come with me.” I took a slow breath, tasting rust in the air. The ghost building shimmered before me, as if uncertain of its own existence. “But I need to know how this flipside stuff works.”
“It’s okay.” She took my hand and pulled me forward. “I’m not scared with you here. Just don’t leave me in there.”
“Trust me, I won’t.”
As we got closer, the school grew less shimmery. The front steps felt solid beneath my feet, and I knelt to place one palm flat against the painted concrete. It felt cold, just like stone on a cool night.
“It’s so real,” I said.
Mindy had stopped, unwilling to venture ahead without me. “That means everyone remembers this place. Maybe something bad happened here.”
“Or maybe everyone totally loved it.” I rose to my feet and climbed the stairs. “Whoa. How am I going up like this? I mean, these steps aren’t here anymore. So does that mean I’m levitating?”
“The steps are here,” Mindy said. “But the flipside is a here that livers don’t see, except for pomps like you.”
I sighed. “Pretty much every word of that answer was annoying.”
“Well, maybe you’re asking annoying questions!”
I bit back my reply. Mindy was gradually becoming my friend, even if she was a little odd. She was helping me learn about the afterworld, so I wouldn’t be as clueless the next time Yamaraj and I met.