Outside, the sun is low and distant in the cloudy sky. Dusk will be here quickly, and Gram and I have both agreed that night is the best time, probably the only time, to see a ghost. Germ has to get home at the crack of dawn tomorrow for soccer practice.

“I guess we should get online and find out everything we can about warding off spirits,” I say. Germ nods.

“If we even see any spirits,” she adds, to manage expectations.

So we spend the next hours digging up information on charms and ghost repellents (ghosts don’t like silver, apparently) and exorcisms. Since exorcisms need a priest, and we don’t know any priests, we get a bunch of silver spoons from the kitchen and hang them from strings on doorknobs and wall hooks, making do with what we have.

In my room, Germ goes to my closet to get the spare pajamas she keeps on hand, and notices that my stories are missing from where they’re usually piled up on the floor. She turns to me quizzically.

“I burned them,” I say nonchalantly. “I’m finished with stories.” Her eyes widen significantly, but she doesn’t say anything. Tact is not really her strong suit, but sometimes even Germ knows when to keep her thoughts to herself.

“Now what?” she says.

“Now we station ourselves at the basement door. And wait, I guess.”

“You know you get low blood sugar,” Germ says. “You’re gonna need some snacks.”

In the living room, in a fort we have built from pillows, Germ and I sit and stare at the basement door while eating Little Debbie cakes and Twizzlers, and wait, our legs up the wall beside each other. We are having a burping contest, which is hopeless on my end, given Germ’s innate gift for burping. As the sun gets lower on the horizon, I grow more and more nervous, chomping the Twizzlers so hard that my teeth clack together, and even Germ has to tell me to slow down or I’ll go into a sugar coma.

Mom drifts through at one point and nearly trips over us. She stares down at us in surprise.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. And I wonder if she means here on the floor or in her life in general.

“We’re trying to see a ghost,” I say.

Mom nods as if I’ve said we’re doing our taxes, and circles past us to get a snack from the kitchen. Germ shrugs at me.

After a couple of hours we start to get bored. Eventually my mom goes to bed—I listen to her familiar shuffling tread in the hallways above, as if she doesn’t know quite where she’s going until she ends up there. We lie with our feet up the side of the parlor couch.