“Would you like to tell us a real ghost story, then?” Mr. Joe went on, and all at once I deeply hated him for forcing the subject. He didn’t understand at all; if you had a real ghost story, you probably didn’t want to tell it to a whole bunch of people who were only going to laugh at you if you believed it.

Cora opened her mouth and then closed it. She looked over at me, then, for general support or maybe something more specific. I didn’t know how to help her, though, so she glared back into the fire. “I don’t have any real ghost stories to tell, Mr. Joe. Yours are fine. You should tell us some more of them.”

Her flat tone was utterly lost on our counselor, who needed only the barest hint of permission to make a further spectacle of himself. He happily began a new tale, and as he talked he stuffed another unfortunate marshmallow onto the end of his unbent coat hanger.

Cora let out a sigh of relief and uncrossed her legs.

“He’s stupid,” I whispered—and I’m good at whispering, so he didn’t hear me. “Don’t worry about it.” Then, because I wanted to establish to her that I ‘got it,’ and that she could tell me if she wanted to, I added, “If you’ve got a real ghost story and you want to tell it later on, I promise I wouldn’t laugh at it.”

Cora rubbed her toes into the dirt and stared into the flames. “Yeah,” she said, but I wasn’t sure what she meant by it, so I just said, “Okay” in response, and we didn’t talk about it anymore for a while.

That same night, I heard her humming to herself. I want to say that she was doing it in her sleep, but I don’t think that was the case. I think she was afraid, and she was singing to herself all quiet, the way people do sometimes. Some people pray, and I imagine it has about the same effect. It gives you something else to think about, something else to dwell on besides what you’re afraid of—but not something so complicated that you can’t spit it out by heart if you get too scared to think on it. Having a strand of words to string together helps.

I rolled over on my mattress and faced her bunk, straining to listen. There was a beat to her breathy muttering, but no melody that I could discern. Must be a rhyme, I thought. Maybe it was a child’s prayer, or a verse repeated so the familiar sound is a comfort.