And when I saw how much trouble they’d gone to, to make the room feel like home to me – or at least to some excessively feminine, phantom girl . . . not me. I had never been the glass-topped dressing table, princess phone type – how Andy had put cream-coloured wallpaper, dotted with blue forget-me-nots, all along the top of the intricate white wainscoting that lined the walls; how the same wallpaper covered the walls of my own personal adjoining bathroom; how they’d bought me a new bed – a four-poster with a lace canopy, the kind my mother had always wanted for me and had evidently been unable to resist – I felt bad about how I’d acted in the car. I really did. I thought to myself, as I walked around the room, OK, this isn’t so bad. So far you’re in the clear. Maybe it’ll be all right, maybe no one was ever unhappy in this house, maybe all those people who got shot deserved it . . .

Until I turned towards the bay window, and saw that someone was already sitting on the window seat Andy had so lovingly made for me.

Someone who was not related to me, or to Sleepy, Dopey, or Doc.

I turned towards Andy, to see if he’d noticed the intruder. He hadn’t, even though he was right there, right in front of his face.

My mother hadn’t seen him, either. All she saw was my face. I guess my expression must not have been the most pleasant, since her own fell, and she said with a sad sigh, ‘Oh, Suze. Not again.’

Two

I guess I should explain. I’m not exactly your typical sixteen-year-old girl.

Oh, I seem normal enough, I guess. I don’t do drugs, or drink, or smoke – well, OK, except for that one time when Sleepy caught me. I don’t have anything pierced, except my ears, and only once on each earlobe. I don’t have any tattoos. I’ve never dyed my hair. Except for my boots and leather jacket, I don’t wear an excessive amount of black. I don’t even wear dark fingernail polish. All in all, I am a pretty normal, everyday, American teenage girl.

Except, of course, for the fact that I can talk to the dead.

I probably shouldn’t put it that way. I should probably say that the dead talk to me. I mean, I don’t go around initiating these conversations. In fact, I try to avoid the whole thing as much as possible.

It’s just that sometimes they won’t let me.

The ghosts, I mean.

I don’t think I’m crazy. At least, not any crazier than your average sixteen-year-old. I guess I might seem crazy to some people. Certainly the majority of kids in my old neighbourhood thought I was. Nuts, I mean. I’ve had the school counsellors sicced on me more than once. Sometimes I even think it might be simpler just to let them lock me up.