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Walt managed to bake enough gingerbread brownies to keep Mr. and Mrs. Brown occupied for at least one full day. Hollis’s parents headed out to set up shop a couple of hours before Hollis and Walt were supposed to arrive with Annie and Yulia.

Annie came over early, tapping her acrylics against his screen door until he rolled out of bed to let her in.

She was already bundled up warmly, dressed for endurance not fashion, in thick sweatpants and multiple sweaters with earmuffs under her hat.

Annie peeled off all her layers and stood in the foyer, huffing and sweaty.

“We have about a half hour before we go; you’re going to have to put all that back on,” Walt said.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Annie scowled.

She followed them upstairs into Hollis’s room and sprawled out on his bed like she owned it. Socked feet dangling off the edge, arms spread out wide.

Hollis searched his room for cash. He had about $30, but that wasn’t enough for all the gifts he was planning to buy.

“Can I ask you a question, Walt?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you think you’ll stay here with Hollis after graduation? Or are you guys going to try to move away?”

Walt stopped rummaging through the pant pockets from their pile of dirty laundry.

“To be truthful, I’m not sure. You askin’ ’cause you wanna keep track of me?”

“No, she wants to know if we’re going to disappear and she’s never going to see us again,” Hollis clarified. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “We haven’t talked about it. But I’m not going to just not visit you when school’s out.”

Annie sighed. “Yulia is almost done with that stuff you asked for. You guys should probably sort out a bunch of things before you head over to Rose Town. She told me what you said about what you guys want to do with the land, and it just doesn’t sound realistic to me.”

Hollis pulled a few more singles out of a pair of unwashed jeans and tucked them into his wallet.

“It will be hard to pull off, sure. But we have the raw materials. It’s one thing to try and use that land to make money exporting goods to people not from here. It’s another to use it to subsidize what people here need.

“We only have about ten thousand people who live in this town. Half of them have their own places where they grow and preserve things; the other half have important skills. The rest of them work construction and wish they could work closer to home. Subsistence isn’t glamorous, but it’s an old way to live, and it works .

“We already know how to share, and we’re already working hard. This’ll just—I don’t know. But it would be so much better if Rose Town could help us instead of haunting us all the time.”

Annie sat up and folded her hands in her lap.

“And if Walt isn’t there to help you?” she said bluntly. “What if you do this exorcism or whatever and he dies for real. What then?”

Even the thought. Just the thought , made them curl close, hand against their chest like they were trying to hold themselves in. Annie didn’t comment on it, terribly kind.

“I... ,” Hollis started. “I would leave, make some money and then come back and try on my own. Someone has to. We would be the only ones who knew things were safe, that the haunting is over. Me and you and Yulia.”

Hollis stood and tugged an extra sweater over their head. Started getting ready to leave.

“It will be fine,” Hollis said, to both of them. To himself. “Even if it takes a few years, I think it will be all right. It’s the right thing to do. I... I’ll be all right.”

I love you.

Tell me again later when I can do something about it.

Annie watched him dress for long minutes.

“You’re really brave, Hollis,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve said that yet.”

He shoved his feet into thick winter socks.

“I wish I was as brave as you.”