It begins in the heat of summer, in the long stretch of days with no plans, no obligations. The kind of days where time drips slow, pooling in the creases of laughter, dust kicked up by running feet.

You find her at your front door, barefoot, a popsicle stick hanging from her teeth. “Come on,” she says, already turning, already expecting you to follow. “Let’s go make bad decisions.”

So you do.

—

There is a creek, just past the baseball fields, where the water runs low and clear and the rock bed is soft under your feet. She claimed it the same way she claims everything – without hesitation. It belongs to you two now. No one else.

She crouches on a fallen log, tossing pebbles into the current. “Do you think,” she muses, “if I was a rock and you threw me in, I’d sink or float?”

You smirk. “You’d cause a tsunami.”

She cackles, throwing a twig at you.

The sun slants through the trees, making patterns on the water, catching in her hair, in her grin, in the way she doesn’t just exist in the moment—but makes it her own.

—

Midnight comes and you find yourselves on the front stoop of your home.

A bag of stolen pastries from the gas station sits between you, a trophy from an adventure neither of you will take accountability for should the authorities ask. The night air is thick but soft, the pavement still warm beneath your feet. A car rolls by, headlights flashing against the street signs, against the dark outlines of houses where people are already asleep.

But not you.

Not her.

“If you could go anywhere in the world right now,” she asks, licking powdered sugar off her fingers, “where would it be?”

You shrug, tearing a piece of croissant between your teeth. “Here’s fine.”

She looks at you for a long time. Then she nudges your knee with hers. “Yeah. Here’s fine.”

—

Eventually your eyes fall heavy and your minds grow tired and you whisper – “Do you want to sleep over tonight?”
And she’s helping you up before the words are fully out of your mouth.
You both head inside, past the garage, past your mother’s room, down the hall and into your bedroom.
And you draw the curtains against the rising sun, and crawl into bed, and lay there together staring at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come.
“Kat?”
“Mm?”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
She turns in the bed and her hand falls on you thigh.
“Always,” she smiles at you through the dark.
I don’t know what it is you want to tell her, but I can see the way you’re wrestling with it.
She waits for you to work through it, to find the right words, and for a moment the only sound in the room is your breathing.
And then you say something I don’t expect.
Something I could never see coming.
“Kat,” you pause, and inhale, and your eyes drift away from her, and up to me, pressed into the corner of the room, where the ceiling meets the walls, and you say:
“I think I’m being haunted.”