“There’s no park around here,” Shelly says. “Why don’t you come with me? I’ve got someplace better for you to stay. Someplace not by a dumpster.”

Gavin tilts his head, looking at Shelly like he doesn’t understand what she’s asking of him, but he nods anyway and lets himself be caught up in her hair.

• • •

“Another one?” says Estelle, when Shelly snips Gavin out of her hair later that day. “This is getting ridiculous.”

“Oh, hello,” says Diya, to Gavin. “I don’t suppose . . . I’m just not sure where . . . Hello.”

“I was in a park,” Gavin says. “I was in a park and then suddenly I wasn’t. I don’t understand. Where are we now?”

“Another excellent conversationalist, I see,” says Estelle. “Where’s that book of crossword puzzles, kid? I need something to do with my time and they’re not exactly riveting company.”

“They needed someplace to be,” Shelly says. They don’t deserve to fade away and be forgotten. They deserve to be noticed. Shelly can provide that. “This can be their home now.”

“This is my home, too,” Estelle says. “Do I really have to share it with them?”

“You like the cat now,” Shelly points out. “You’ll get used to them, too.”

Gavin loses track of where he is and who he’s met and who he hasn’t all the time. Diya can’t seem to hold on to a thought until the end of it, but they’re nice and they do their best to reply when Shelly talks to them. They’re nice in a way that Estelle isn’t, even if neither of them is as aware of their surroundings as she is.

Estelle complains about the company Shelly’s making her keep and the lack of things to do. She complains even when Shelly buys a book of crossword puzzles and leaves it out for her. “I can’t lift a pencil,” Estelle says. “How do poltergeists do it? Teach me more about that, kid. I want to haunt something properly.”

“You’re a ghost,” Shelly says, annoyed. Estelle is never satisfied. If Shelly teaches her about poltergeists, things will just get worse. “Anywhere you are is properly haunted.”

“You know what I mean,” Estelle says. “I want to see what I can do.”

Shelly isn’t afraid of ghosts, but she’s never had one haunting her bedroom before. Estelle needs a distraction, so Shelly does the one thing she can think to do—she goes ghost hunting again.

She doesn’t go downtown or to Zhou’s or to her mom’s work. This time she goes to the thrift shop. Sometimes when people throw out old things, ghosts go with them on their way to find a new home—confused spirits Shelly and Grandma used to snip off objects and bundle up to set free later.