“I don’t want help with her. I want help with my mom!”

But Joseph’s not going to help. He’s being stubborn. He sits on his grave and looks up at Shelly, a little sad and a little weary in the face of her outburst, and Shelly can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand being frustrated and trapped the way she is, even though he should because he’s stuck sitting on his grave day after day.

She turns on her heel and leaves—walking across graves in a straight line to the gates and out to the bus stop. If she wants to talk to someone who understands her, she needs to look elsewhere, and there is only one ghost Shelly can think of.

• • •

Shelly rides the bus into the heart of downtown. It’s getting late, but the sidewalks are still busy with shoppers and people heading home from work. They pay Shelly no attention as she walks among them, her pace slow and steady, and hunts for the dead.

There are all sorts of ghosts in the world. Old and young, all different races and genders and everything else. Some so faint they’re just smudges and some almost as solid as living people, ghosts you can only tell are dead because they have an uncanny quality that sets them apart—like Joseph and his eyes. There are all sorts of ghosts, but in the downtown core, where the living congregate in droves, Shelly can’t even feel a whisper of one.

The living are overwhelming. They take up space, they’re loud, and they don’t notice Shelly. They ignore her in a way the dead don’t because the dead are Shelly’s friends, no matter what Joseph says.

The hotel’s green copper roof stands out in a sea of glass buildings. Shelly uses the roof to navigate her way to the hotel and pushes her way into the lobby through a rotating glass door. When she’s working with Grandma, adults don’t pay Shelly much attention; they’re too focused on Grandma. And when Shelly’s alone, adults assume she’s on her way to meet her parents. It’s a kind of invisibility that makes it easy for her to slip past the concierge and head for the elevator.

Shelly remembers which elevator the boy rode in. She remembers the look of resigned frustration on the bellhop’s face when the boy ran his hand over the call buttons and slowed down the car. The living are always concerned about time, about running late and running out of it. Ghosts are hardly ever in a rush to get anywhere.