I wiped away the tear, and then gave a little laugh. “If it’s raining, it must be lunchtime,” I said.

“Huh?” said Jasper.

“Oh,” I said. “It’s an old thing my dad used to say. He swore that summer storms always happened exactly when he was about to leave work for a lunch break. He said it was a curse in Georgia—that it always rains here at the worst possible moments.”

“Really?” said Jasper.

“Of course not really,” I said. “It was just my dad trying to be funny. He used to be the king of bad jokes. Dorky TV-show dad, like you said.”

Jasper didn’t laugh. “Leah, I’m sorry I opened that door. . . .”

“It’s really okay,” I said. “I promise.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think it was. I didn’t mean to do that. I never would have. . . .”

“It’s really, really okay,” I said. “It’s just a door, Jasper. You opened it. That’s what doors are for. I think it’s actually a good thing. Maybe.”

“Seriously?”

I nodded and looked her straight in the eye. “I swear, Jasper. I mean it.”

“I believe you,” she said. “But I’m still sorry.”

“You know what?” I said. “I hate it, the secret. If that’s what it is. I hate how things are here. I hate the door being shut, and that my mom and dad don’t talk about it. Him. Sam. They’re silent. They closed the door, and turned into ghosts. So we don’t talk about anything real. I’ve forgotten how, I think. To talk. Not just to them, but to everyone. At school, I was a ghost too, the last year. Like I floated along and couldn’t find a way to speak or be with anyone. It’s hard to talk about it, with people who knew him, and also hard not to.”

“You don’t seem like a ghost now,” said Jasper.

“The thing is . . . ,” I said, “when it happens, death, people actually stop making eye contact with you. Did you know that? Your friends, even your best friends. Like with my—with Tess, whose house we walked past, remember?”

Jasper nodded. “Yeah.”

“It wasn’t like she wanted to ditch me. I don’t think she meant to do it. It was just like she didn’t know how to talk to me anymore. After being friends all our lives. Nobody did, nobody who’d known Sam. Even your teachers stop calling on you in class. It’s like they’re afraid the sadness could rub off on them, or something. As if that could be true. As if there’s any way that talking to someone for a few minutes, and acting normal, could do . . . this to a person.”

“Wow,” she said. “That’s . . . a lot.”