The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie Page B

my room. “ Seriously? ”
    â€œI need some peace and quiet, and it’s quite clear I’m not going to get any with you around. Go to your room,” she repeats.
    â€œFine,” I answer. I gather up the photos—who knows what condition they’d be in in the morning if I left them down here with her—and stomp upstairs. I even slam my door behind me.
    Alone in my room, I shuffle through the photos, looking at them one after the other. The shadow is still there, clear as daylight, and Mom couldn’t see it. And she yelled at me—she’s never yelled at me. Anytime we disagreed it always ended in adiscussion. And I mean, don’t get me wrong, those conversations could get heated, but it never ended with me being sent to my room like a naughty child in a Victorian novel, banished to her room without any supper. This isn’t like her. This isn’t like us.
    I put the photos on my desk and turn to face my bed. The checkers game is waiting for me, so I make my next move, sliding a second checker forward, then climb into bed, careful not to disturb the game.
    I turn off the lights. Lightning flashes outside again, and this time the thunder follows almost immediately; the storm is practically directly on top of us. In the flash of light I see that the ghost has already made another move: it’s my turn again. I press another checker across the board and wait for another flash of lightning. The mildew smell in here is stronger than ever; maybe the rain brings it out.
    Or maybe the ghost has something to do with it, I think, remembering the wet bathroom: the soaked tiles and the damp towels, the water dripping from every surface.
    A few flashes of lightning go by, but the ghost doesn’t make her next move. “Your turn,” I say out loud, but another flash of lightning reveals that the checkers haven’t moved since my last turn. The mildew smell fades, just a little. Carefully I lower the checkerboard to the floor so I won’t disturb it in my sleep. I guess she’s done playing.
    For now.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Home Alone
    Mom is called back to the hospital for an emergency in the middle of the night. She wakes me up to let me know she’s leaving, and I consider begging her to stay, but I kind of think it won’t do any good. After all, she doesn’t think there’s anything worth staying for. And it must be a real emergency, if she’s being called back to work at this hour.
    â€œI hope everything will be okay,” I call out to her before she leaves. She smiles at me; I guess that means our fight is over, at least for now. I have to concentrate to hear the sound of her car backing out of the driveway and turning on to the street over the thunder, wind, and rain. The thunder and lightning are simultaneous now; the storm has settled on top of us with such force that it feels like it will never stop.
    Instead of falling back to sleep, I go over the evening’s events in my head: Is Mom really incapable of seeing what Nolan and I saw? Does that mean Nolan and I are both crazy and the shadow is some kind of joint hallucination—or is Mom crazy,because she can’t see it? Or is there something to this magic that you can’t perceive it above a certain age or something? Like maybe you have to be young and pure of heart, like in all those movies and fairy tales about children who slip into enchanted worlds without adult supervision?
    I shake my head. No —a photograph is a photograph, and Nolan and I haven’t known each other long enough to have some kind of shared delusion.
    Thunder crashes, and Oscar jumps onto my bed, curling himself up beside me the same way he did our first night in this house. “What’s the matter, buddy?” I ask, stroking the soft spot between his ears. He loves being petted like this; if he were a cat, he’d be purring right now. But instead, he’s shaking, trying to hide his face beneath my