You aren’t supposed to wake a sleepwalker, but I couldn’t leave her out here alone at night either.
“Hey? Can you hear me?”
The girl didn’t move, gazing at me as if she could see my features in the darkness. An empty feeling unfolded in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to look at something else—anything but her unnerving stare.
My eyes drifted down to the base of the cross.
The girl’s feet were as bare as mine, and it looked like they weren’t touching the ground.
I blinked hard, unwilling to consider the other possibility. It had to be an effect of the moonlight and the shadows. I glanced at my own feet, caked in mud, and back to hers.
They were pale and spotless.
A flash of white fur darted in front of her and rushed toward me.
Elvis.
I grabbed him before he could get away again. He hissed at me, clawing and twisting violently. I dropped him, my heart hammering in my chest as he darted across the grass and squeezed under the gate.
I looked back at the stone cross.
The girl was gone, the ground nothing but a smooth, untouched layer of mud.
Blood from the scratches trailed down my arm as I crossed the graveyard, trying to reason away the girl in the white nightgown. Silently reminding myself that I didn’t believe in ghosts.
CHAPTER 2
Scratching the Surface
When I stumbled back onto the well-lit sidewalk, there was no sign of Elvis. A guy with a backpack slung over his shoulder walked by and gave me a strange look when he noticed I was barefoot, and covered in mud up to my ankles. He probably thought I was a pledge.
My hands didn’t stop shaking until I hit O Street, where the shadows of the campus ended and the lights of DC traffic began. Tonight, even the tourists posing for pictures at the top of The Exorcist stairs were somehow reassuring.
The cemetery suddenly felt miles away, and I started second-guessing myself.
The girl in the graveyard wasn’t hazy or transparent like the ghosts in movies. She had looked like a regular girl.
Except she was floating.
Wasn’t she?
Maybe the moonlight only made it appear that way. And maybe the girl’s feet weren’t muddy because the ground where she’d been standing was dry. By the time I reached my block, lined with row houses crushed together like sardines, I had convinced myself there were dozens of explanations.
Elvis lounged on our front steps, looking docile and bored. I considered leaving him outside to teach him a lesson, but I loved that stupid cat.
My mom bought him for me one day after I came home from school crying. We’d made Father’s Day gifts in class, and I was the only kid without a father. Mine walked away when I was five and never looked back. My mom had wiped my tears and said, “I bet you’re also the only kid getting a kitten today.”
Elvis had turned one of my worst days into one of my best.
I opened the door, and he darted inside. “You’re lucky I let you in.”
The house smelled like tomatoes and garlic, and my mom’s voice drifted into the hallway. “I’ve got plans this weekend. Next weekend, too. I’m sorry, but I have to run. I think my daughter just came home. Kennedy?”
“Yeah, Mom.”
“Were you at Elle’s? I was about to call you.”
I stepped into the doorway as she hung up the phone. “Not exactly.”
She threw me a quick glance, and the wooden spoon slipped out of her hand and hit the floor, sending a spray of red sauce across the white tile. “What happened?”
“I’m fine. Elvis ran off, and it took forever to catch him.”
Mom rushed over and examined the angry claw marks. “Elvis did this? He’s never scratched anyone before.”
“I guess he freaked out when I grabbed him.”
Her gaze dropped to my mud-caked feet. “Where were you?”
I prepared for the standard lecture Mom issued whenever I went out at night: always carry your cell phone, don’t walk around outside alone, stay in well-lit areas, and her personal favorite—scream first and ask questions later. Tonight, I had violated them all.
“The old Jesuit cemetery?” My answer sounded more like a question—as in, exactly how upset was she going to be?
Her posture stiffened, and she drew in a sharp breath. “I’d never go into a graveyard at night,” she responded automatically, as though it was something she’d said a thousand times before. Except it wasn’t.
“Suddenly you’re superstitious?”
She shook her head and looked away. “Of course not. You don’t have to be superstitious to know that secluded places are dangerous at night.”
I waited for the lecture.
Instead, she handed me a wet towel. “Wipe off your feet and throw that away. I don’t want dirt from a cemetery in my washing machine.”
Mom rummaged through the junk drawer until she found a giant Band-Aid that looked like a leftover from my Big Wheel days.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.
“Just someone from work.”