“Are you going to eat that now?” Stephen asked.

“I was eating when you came in! Besides, it’s not going to help her, letting my food get cold. What are you going to do now, exactly?”

“We’re going to explain,” Stephen said.

“Well, this should be interesting.”

“It wasn’t my decision,” Stephen said.

“She needs to know,” Boo cut in.

Their conversation spun around me. I didn’t even try to follow it. Callum switched off the television, and I was planted on one of the sofas. Boo sat with Callum, and Stephen got a kitchen chair and sat directly in front of me.

“What I’m about to tell you is going to be a little hard to accept at first,” he began.

I giggled. I didn’t mean to. Stephen looked over his shoulder at the others. Boo nodded to me encouragingly. Stephen turned back and took a deep breath.

“Have you recently had a brush with death?” he asked.

“They should really include that question in job interviews,” Callum said.

Boo elbowed him hard, and he shut up.

“Think,” Stephen said. “Have you? Has anything happened to you?”

“I choked,” I said after a pause. “A few weeks ago. At dinner.”

“Since that incident, you’ve been seeing people . . . people that other people don’t see. Am I correct?”

I didn’t need to answer. They already knew.

“What’s happening to you is a rare but far from unknown condition,” he said.

“Condition? Like a disease?”

“Not a disease . . . more of an ability. It won’t hurt you in any way.”

Callum was about to interject again, but Boo reached over and punched the underside of his bag of fries.

“Shut it,” she said.

“I didn’t!”

“You were about to.”

“Both of you,” Stephen said, more seriously this time. “Stop. This isn’t easy for her. Remember how it felt.”

Callum and Boo stopped tittering and tried to look composed.

“What you’re seeing—”

“Who,” Boo cut in again. “Who she’s seeing.”

“Who you’re seeing . . . those people are real. But they’re dead.”

Dead people you could see. That meant ghosts. He was saying I saw ghosts.

“Ghosts?” I said.

“Ghosts,” he repeated. “That’s the usual term.”

“I know lots of people who say they can see ghosts,” I said. “They’re all crazy.”

“Most people who claim to be able to see ghosts can’t. Most of the people who claim they have seen ghosts simply have very overactive imaginations or are easily suggestible. But some people can, and we are some of those people.”

“I don’t want to see ghosts,” I said.

“It’s brilliant,” Boo said. “Really. The woman you saw on the street. She’s dead. She’s a ghost. But she’s not scary. She’s lovely. She’s a good friend of mine. She died in the war. She’s so amazing. Her name is Jo.”