Miss Flora Mae said Joe would be picking up her letters on Monday afternoon, so once Dad has run out to give someone a quote on a paint job and I’m sure my mom has left for the office, I head over to Miss Flora Mae’s.

During the day, this place is still totally weird, but a whole lot less creepy than it was at night. The 100-percent-dead cat is still sitting there on the mantel, and I decide, Heck! If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. “Hey, Bette Davis,” I say to the cat. “You haven’t moved an inch since the last time I saw you.”

Now, if she had, that would be something to completely freak out about.

I head back to the sunroom where Miss Flora Mae keeps most of her plants and find a stereo so old it’s bigger than the giant printer in the attendance office. Taped to the side is a faded piece of paper with a few favorite radio stations penned in Miss Flora Mae’s handwriting. I turn the thing on and am hit with a wall of static.

“Yowza!” I screech and clap my hands over my ears.

I flip through the channels until I land on 109.8 Soul Food. The station is on a commercial right now for a cell phone repair shop, but I pipe up the volume so even the plants on the screened-in front porch can hear.

After grabbing a can of ginger ale from the fridge, I walk around to the little door that leads out to the porch and sit down at Miss Flora Mae’s desk in front of her pea-green typewriter. I open the drawer and find an old pair of bright-red cat-eye glasses with the lenses missing. I examine them for a minute before putting them on. Feels right.

Over the speakers, a man with a deep, smooth voice says, “Welcome back, my lunchtime angels. Let’s settle into this noon hour with a classic from the queen herself, Miss Aretha Franklin. This one’s dedicated to all you out there workin’ for the man. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, baby.”

And then I begin to type. The music sinks into my bones, and the song sounds a little familiar, like I might have heard it in a movie or something. But this Miss Aretha lady feels every word she sings. She feels it so hard that I do too. I get why Miss Flora Mae calls her the queen. Her voice makes me feel like I’ve got fire in my toes, spreading all the way up to my chest.

Typing my handwritten letter to Kiera so that it looks like it came straight from Miss Flora Mae takes a little while. I think I’ve heard about six or seven songs before I’m done. I definitely hit the wrong keys more than twice and have to start over, because there’s no backspace button on this dinosaur. Reloading the paper is a little tricky, but eventually I get it right.

When I’m done, I check on the plants once more and turn the radio off, even though I actually think I could sit here for a while longer, just listening, especially to Miss Aretha Franklin.