“I can’t,” I said, tugging at my hair as I paced the small space of his attic room. “I can’t sleep here.”

Jack propped himself up on his elbow, rubbing his eyes. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“The sheets.” I continued to pace. “And the crumbs.”

Jack laughed. “The crumbs?”

“Don’t laugh at me,” I whined. “I can’t handle it. First the sheets, then the crumbs.” I flicked on the light, and Jack shielded his eyes. I pointed. “And your toenail.”

Jack was smirking, his pupils constricted, adjusting to the light. “My toenail?”

“Your toenail,” I repeated. I felt weak even recounting the incident, but we were both smiling.

Jack pushed the covers off, pausing momentarily in a seated position over the edge of the mattress, and stretched. He then began to pull on his pants that had been in a pile on the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Come on, Princess and the Pea.” He was on his feet, hugging me to his bare chest. I let my cheek press against his skin. I didn’t cringe. “Let’s go to your place.”

Chapter 10

“Father.” The word shakily escaped me as I stood in the doorway of my parents’ room. “There’s a little girl in my room.”

It was the middle of the night and I had woken with a chill. I opened my eyes to find a little girl, translucent and barely there, adorned in white, sitting at the edge of my bed. Her hair was chestnut brown, twisted into two braids, each tied with a ribbon.

Startled by the sight, I curled myself into a seating position. I blinked ferociously, rubbing my eyes with the backs of my hands.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“I’m Charlotte,” the girl replied.

I clutched the corners of my blanket, yanking them over my head. “Go away.”

When I uncovered my head, she was gone. I switched on my lamp. An immediate and harsh light illuminated my lavender room. I hopped up and ran down the hallway to my parents’ bedroom.

I knew who she was.

Our neighbour, Mr. Butler, had come to visit one day. We were sitting together on the front lawn, and when my mother went inside to pour him a glass of lemonade, he’d told me the story of the family who’d lived in our house before us.

“Their daughter died of leukemia when she was around your age,” he explained, sitting in a deteriorating wooden chair. He was the oldest man I had ever seen. He wore his beige pleated trousers high above his hips, and a baseball cap loosely perched on top of his head.

“What’s leukemia?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“It’s a disease. A bad one.” He adjusted his thick glasses, his eyes shrunken beneath them.

I was squinting from the sun. The smell of fresh-cut grass wafted through the breeze as I listened to the faint noise of a lawnmower in the distance.

“About a year later, the girl’s mother was standing in the doorway and a gust of wind took her.” Mr. Butler’s hand flew through the air. “She fell and bashed her head on a rock.”