“You go around telling people you can clear out ghosts. You already seem like a fraud.” Mom serves Grandma some lasagna then serves herself. “If you don’t want rude women with small dogs making assumptions about you, maybe don’t offer to be the brown woman they bring in to spiritually clean their house.”

Grandma frowns at Mom. “We’re not a stereotype.”

“Mom, you’re a bit of a stereotype.”

“It was a cute dog,” Shelly says loudly. “A ghost dog would make a good pet, don’t you think? You wouldn’t have to buy food or take it to the vet.”

Mom and Grandma both turn to look at her.

“You can’t keep ghosts hanging around like that,” Grandma says. “Everyone has to move on eventually—maybe in their own time, but it’s not fair to hold someone captive.”

“She knows, Mom,” Shelly’s mother said, plainly amused. “While I support a pet that costs no money, you’re around death more than enough as it is, Shell. Nobody in this house needs haunting. The dead are dead, and that’s the way it should be. Leave them alone.”

“They’re dead, but sometimes they need help passing over,” Grandma says. “Then we’ve got a responsibility to help them move on.”

That’s how it is most of the time. Mom worries about money and whether Shelly will get nightmares. Grandma keeps calm and steady—more sure of herself than anyone else Shelly knows.

2

Shelly is the only person in the sixth grade who knows, deep in her bones, that ghosts exist. She knows that because Ms. Flores assigns the class a presentation about what they want to be when they grow up—a teacher or an actor or a chef—and drops them off at the school library with Mrs. Hogan, the librarian, to do research.

“My dad’s a professor, so I’m going to write about being a physicist,” Isabel says, while she and Shelly are searching the non-fiction section for books. Isabel and Shelly aren’t friends, exactly, but their desks are beside each other and Shelly likes Isabel. She’s Korean and wears her long, dark hair loose like she’s not afraid of what might get caught in it. Isabel dresses in bright colors and always has new clothes. She’s nice though—some of the other kids single Shelly out for being brown, for being the only Indigenous kid in their class. Isabel doesn’t. Isabel tells them to knock it off. “I don’t really need a research book to write about it.”

“My grandma is a ghost hunter,” Shelly says. “I’m going to be one, too.”

Isabel gives Shelly a skeptical look. “Ghosts don’t exist. My dad’s a scientist. I think he’d know if ghosts were real. Someone serious would be studying them.”