Seaport Middle School is 102 years old, and it has the ghosts to prove it. A handful of dead children float up the hall, yelling so loudly, I can barely hear anything else. A translucent teacher in a long dress shushes me as if I’m the one being loud. A ghost custodian is lying on the hallway floor.

The crowd of living parents and kids meandering through the hall and buying their tickets and fundraiser candy is oblivious to all of it. They walk right through the ghosts, discussing dinner and grades as luminous shades of the past surround them.

I try to paste a look of indifference onto my face, as if there’s nothing unusual to see. It’s especially hard when the dead custodian lying on the ground turns his head and smiles at me, and his head nearly comes off. How strange it is that the world goes on as usual—with announcements and basketball tryouts and algebra—when the past circles all around us. I walk faster, my mom shuffling along behind me.

I catch a glimpse of Germ as we make our way to the bleachers. She looks out at me as she climbs the stairs to backstage, then glances at a ghost boy who’s being particularly loud, and rolls her eyes, exasperated. She’s pale and putting on a brave front. In fact, she looks panicked.

“I’ll sit over here,” my mom says, gesturing to some folding chairs in the far corner of the room. She likes to be away from people—the noise upsets her, and she doesn’t know how to make small talk because she has nothing to say. I hurry over to Germ.

“I feel like I’m gonna barf,” she says. “Do you think I caught something from Eliot Falkor?”

“I think you’re nervous,” I offer.

“You’re right,” Germ says, nodding, her eyes wide and dazed with fear. She blinks at me for a moment, then shakes her head and shoulders, as if trying to shake off the nausea. “What did you find out?” she asks.

I tell her about the birth certificate, and the abandoned hospital, and what the ghosts said about the Murderer. Her eyes widen.

“I wonder what he knows,” she says. And then a voice calls her from backstage, and she whips around to listen, then turns back to me.

“I gotta go get dressed.”

With that, she hurries up the stairs and disappears through the doors.

I sit beside my mom, looking around. There’s a dead referee down on the court, blowing his whistle. And after a few more minutes of waiting, the curtain goes up.

I start a little in surprise when I see that the first two performers are Germ and Bibi, standing there beside each other on the stage, looking very small while they wait for the crowd to go quiet.