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My first thought is that there’s a burglar behind me, someone with a knife or a gun, breaking into the house. I look over my shoulder, but the kitchen is empty. I turn back to Mom, who’s sitting in the passenger seat of a car, not our minivan but some sedan I don’t recognize. Maybe Aunt Pauline’s? Someone else is driving, a guy with short hair. Maybe the minivan is in the shop and this is someone from the dealership giving Mom a lift home. But where is Missy? And what’s wrong with Mom?

She’s whimpering now, with her arms behind her head, like the brace position they show on the airline safety cards that Missy studied religiously that one time we flew to Florida. I told her that if you had to assume the brace position, chances were that you were already a goner. But Missy insisted that some people survived plane crashes and that they could be the ones who’d studied the card. “Sometimes, the line between living and dying is that small,”

my weirdo sister told me.

The driver opens the car and out steps not a guy, but a girl my age with very short, very blue hair. She has on pants with a wallet chain and chunky black boots.

Is she why Mom’s freaking? Is Mom being carjacked?

“What did you do to my mom?” I demand.

As soon as I speak, Mom’s whimpering stops. She stumbles out of the car, her knees buckling. I go to help her—maybe we’re sick with the same bug?—but as I move toward her, she rears back, falling on her butt.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

The girl with the blue hair comes around and lifts Mom from under her arms, whispering something into her ear.

“Is she sick?”

I ask the girl.

“I don’t think so.”

She turns back to my mom and tells her, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It is so not okay. She’s freaking out!”

“Call . . . call nine-one-one,”

Mom says in a choked voice.

“I’ll do it,”

I say, but Mom isn’t asking me. She’s asking the blue-haired girl, who’s pulled a slender phone from her pocket. She taps at the screen a few times and puts the phone to her ear. She performs this entire operation without taking her eyes off me.

I can hear the operator answer: “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

The blue-haired girl is wearing a shirt with bowling pins and a name. I squint and read the lettering. It says Carl. Is her name Carl? She holds the phone out at Mom. “What should I tell them?”

Mom says nothing.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

the voice repeats.

The blue-haired girl looks at Mom. Who says nothing. Her face is frozen, mouth open, like that famous Scream painting.

“Sorry, pocket dial,”

the blue-haired girl says.

“What is going on?”

I ask again. “Why is she like this? Who are you?”

“.”

It jolts me to hear this stranger say my name. “It’s me.” She taps herself on the chest.

“Who are you?” I repeat.

“Who. Are. You?”

Mom demands, her voice a guttural growl.

It’s a spring day but the cold invades my bones like it’s the dead of winter. I start to really shake now.

“What do you mean? I’m . I just got home from school.”

“How?”

she gasps.

“How? On my bike, like always.”

“What bike?”

“Why are you being like this? My bike.”

I walk to where I left it and wheel it into the garage. At the sight of my bike, Mom drops to her knees again, closing her eyes. “No,”

she says. “This isn’t real. None of this is real.”

“But I see her, too,”

the girl says.

“It has to be some kind of hologram or something—someone’s idea of a twisted joke,” Mom says.

“Mom, look,”

the blue-haired girl says. She points to the bike’s license plate. , it reads. “Remember how Aunt Pauline said she had to special order it?” She starts to pull it off.

“Don’t touch it!”

Mom shrieks. “Don’t touch it, Melissa.”

Melissa?

It can’t be. Melissa—Missy—my little sister, is nine. This girl must be around my age. “Who are you?”

I ask her a third time.

The girl steps forward, her hand hovering a few inches over the bike’s saddle. “I’m your sister, ,”

she says. “I’m Melissa.”

“No, you’re not. Melissa is nine.”

I pause, remembering. “About to turn ten.”

“That was seven years ago.”

She pauses. “Seven years ago when you died.”