Rules for Ghosting by A. J. Paquette Page B

plush carpet, which was coated in a thick layer of dust. Clearly Mrs. Day had not yet made her way into this room, though several boxes labeled BOOKS were stacked just outside the door. Scooting toward the curtained wall, Dahlia drew up alongside the heavy velvet window drapes and started tugging. It took her four or five tries, and more than one accidental plunge through the wall into the outside, but finally she made Contact and managed to pull one of the curtains open a few inches. A fat beam of sunlight slid in from outside and set the dust motes sparkling.
    Mrs. Tibbs turned from where she had been examining a bookshelf, and lifted her eyebrows. “Are you seeking illumination, my glum gollywog?”
    Dahlia kept tugging. “A little light, yes. It’s awfully gloomy in here! I’ve always hated these curtained-in rooms. And nighttime too, all that darkness everywhere. I don’t like it one bit. I know I’m a ghost and I don’t need to sleep, but you know, most nights I would just curl up on my own recliner and go to sleep till morning!” That made Dahlia think of her cubby, which made her start to feel soggy inside, but all of that skipped right out of her mind when she suddenly noticed … “Why, Mrs. Tibbs! You’re glowing!”
    The Liberator had drifted away from the books and now hovered in front of an ornate standing lamp, and at first Dahlia thought the lamp had been turned on. But no: a gentle core of light was gathering inside Mrs. Tibbs, growing and filling her all the way up in bright white light.
    â€œMrs. Tibbs,” Dahlia breathed. “You’re like some kind of star! It’s so beautiful! Can I … can I do that too?”
    â€œOf course,” said Mrs. Tibbs. “It’s simply a matter of drawing on the hidden particles inside matter, and turning them around to display their unseen core.”
    â€œUh …” Dahlia hadn’t caught any of that.
    â€œHere,” said Mrs. Tibbs, grabbing Dahlia’s hand in her own. It was warm as well as bright, and as their fingers connected, the yellow-white glow slid into Dahlia’s hand and up her wrist. And she understood—she felt the particles of darkness all around her, saw the pinpricks of light at their core, and could see how to tease out the buried strains of light, pulling them all the way inside her until she too was glowing like a miniature furnace.
    â€œI want to rocket through the sky like a shooting star!” she crowed. “But not right now. Thank you for teaching me this, Mrs. Tibbs—it’s positively amazing.” In the light of their two glowing bodies, Dahlia turned all the way around and surveyed the library, sweeping her eyes over the shelves. Could there be something in here? Some clue to her past?
    She hadn’t spent much time in this room as a ghost, and her memories from early childhood didn’t fit here at all. But something about the room still felt somehow familiar. Closing her eyes, Dahlia let her body tell her where to move, let herself drift back to a time when she had been floor-bound and needed to walk to get anywhere. She swept across the floor and when she opened her eyes she was standing in front of a small, friendly-looking bookshelf. Dusty, faded volumes cluttered the low shelf, and Dahlia’s eyes passed over the titles:
Jackand Jill. Pippi Longstocking. Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
. She used to read these. These were her books. This was her shelf.
    She crouched down and ran her fingers over the spines, but after the first thrill of excitement, she felt nothing. There were no tingles, no tug of energy. Not even a nasty-smell feeling, like she’d felt from that closed-up attic room. Nothing. Just dead pages, bits of her old life that had been left here to fall apart in dust and ruin.
    Dahlia gathered herself up. “Let’s go.”
    But Mrs. Tibbs was on the other side of the room, drifting in a zigzag pattern