While he was gone, I used the solo time to jump my highest yet, even doing a few quick air splits, hoping that no one could see me, wishing Colette and Frankie were here because the splits were pretty good. When I heard the back door open again, I stopped pretending to be a cheerleader, and by the time Izzy got back to the trampoline, I’d sat down.

He crawled across the surface, rolled me a water bottle, and flopped onto his back. “I’m sweaty.”

“Me too.”

“Sweet air splits.”

“You saw that?” My cheeks burned.

“Yeah,” he said with a laugh.

I lay back on the trampoline and looked up at the clouds.

“Um, so,” Izzy began, not looking at me either. “I don’t always think about superheroes, you know. I don’t even like them that much. I mean I like them, but not . . .” He took a deep breath. “I’m saying I think about other things . . . like sometimes you.”

“Oh,” I said quickly, eyes wide, surprised by the confession. Was this what boys did when you went to their houses? I so desperately wanted to text Colette and ask her because she’d been to a boy’s house before.

Say something! the voice in my head shouted at me.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.

Why would you ask him that?

“I . . . uh . . . no?” Izzy asked back. “Maybe? I don’t know. Why?”

Well, now what are you going to do?

“Oh, no reason,” I said, my face turning red. “It’s dumb. Never mind.”

“No really, why?” he asked genuinely.

Don’t say it. DO NOT SAY IT!

“I sort of kind of think maybe I’ve had some ghost experiences this summer.”

Ohmygod, you said it.

Izzy was horrifyingly quiet, so I quickly added, “I’m totally kidding.”

“Too bad. I was thinking that was cool,” he said.

“It wasn’t cool—it was scary!” I shouted, making him laugh.

“Oh, you were kidding, huh? Doesn’t sound like it.” He nudged me with his knee and said, “You can tell me. I’m not going to judge you or anything.”

And I guess that was all it took, because I told him everything, from being freaked out every time I went under the animal overpass to the ghost touch in South Pass City to feeling like I was being watched at the water fountain and the steam message at the aquatic center to the creepy old man who matched my ghost story and tapped when I was near him and told me a girl was coming back—a girl I thought maybe was my dead best friend.

“Did you just tell me that stuff so you wouldn’t have to say anything about me saying I like you?” Izzy asked, still as a corpse next to me, face toward the sky.