“They were people with problems,” his mom said. “I looked it up. They couldn’t walk and were left to sit on a porch all day, and cruel people called them names and they defended themselves the best they could. And now they are all dead. End of story.” Then she drove him through the cemetery and they both sat on the lap of the dead woman who looked like the music teacher. Harvey told her how they say if you kiss her you will die, and she said that was why they were there. To prove to him that that was nonsense.

“See?” his mama said, and before Harvey could stop her, she kissed the woman’s hard face and he really wishes she had not done that.

Then they drove out to the Dog House but Harvey didn’t feel like eating. His mama said it seemed wrong that the place was still open, even though the people who owned the business couldn’t help that a bad person had gone in there and murdered that girl. Harvey watched the upstairs window the whole time, because if her ghost was there, he knew that was where she would be. And if only Super Monkey had been there that night the mean doctor came. “Please, Mr. Doctor, don’t kill her,” he would have said. “She has a little boy. She makes people happy with hot dogs. She can make you a hot dog, like a Chihuahua or a Collie. She won’t tell nobody you were about to do a bad thing and then you can maybe do a good thing instead.”

Harvey’s mama says, “It’s okay, Harvey,” and he wants to believe her, especially when it’s just the two of them and he hears their ghost coming in the back door. He knows the ghost has been in his room too and he wants to open his eyes but is afraid to, because what if it got mad? Then what?