Going the Marley way meant crawling through the hole we dug under our wooden fence; sprinting full speed through the yard of the haunted house next to ours; hopping over Miss Sherry’s chain-link fence; marching through the cluster of trees in her yard; shimmying under the hole we made on the other side, the one we couldn’t get quite deep enough, and that always made our clothes filthy; pressing against the wooden planks of the next fence to keep from getting scratched by the shrubbery forming a perimeter around Marley’s yard; jumping over Marley’s gate; taking the walkway between her house and the one on the corner, and following until it spit us out on Arbor Street. A complicated path that had become an exact science once upon a time, well-worn from constant use.

As we emerged onto Arbor Street, we headed toward Harrison’s. His house was across the intersection, on the other side of Albany. Out of Old Mr. Jimenez’s sight.

Nick lived diagonal from Harrison. Through many different distractions—skipping and jumping and humming and being a generally annoying little sister—I’d taken care to keep Aidy from remembering this fact. It was easy to do. We’d all gotten very used to ignoring the entire idea of Nick Cline. He went to his different school. He lived on a different schedule. Even though he was only a block away, he was more of a ghost to me than Marley would ever be.

“Do you want Mr. Jimenez to catch us?” Aidy whisper-yelled as we sprinted across Arbor.

“Oh, please! He’s so old; he can’t hear anything anymore!” I screamed back.

We skipped up onto the sidewalk. My eyes were on my feet, watching as I toppled off the tips of my toes. Aidy’s steps fell out of sync with mine. She’d noticed something across the street.

Nick.

He kneeled in his driveway, pumping air into the tires of his old bike.

Our sister rhythm slowed. I quit humming. Aidy took a sharp left into Harrison’s driveway. I turned right.

“Ollie,” Nick said as I walked up, genuine surprise in his voice.

My hands dug into the pockets of my jean shorts. There was stray change in the left side, along with a pen that had dried out. The right had bits of shredded paper. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“I didn’t hear from you yesterday,” he said. “I was gonna ride over to your house.”

Uneven heat spread through me, overcooking my center. I suppressed a smile. I wanted to look at him, but out in the open like that, I couldn’t bring myself to add any time toward taking in his face. “Good thing you didn’t. We’re under house arrest.”

Nick laughed. “Seems to be going well.”

“Old Mr. Jimenez is supervising. Can’t get anything by him.”