- AHMED -

Saturday morning was bright beyond the windows, chirping birds serenading with the wind as I strolled through our home's foyer on my trek to the kitchen. Just as I was passing a twin set of woodframe paintings, the ding of the doorbell jingled out a few feet behind me.

I halted in my steps and turned, sliding toward the front door. I peeked through the peep hole, then unhitched the lock and swung the door wide.

"H—hi, Ahmed." The sheepish greeting was Irina's. We hadn't spoken since Thursday, when she dropped me off at my house after our trip to the cemetery. Come to think of it, I hadn't even seen her at school that Friday.

"Irina?" I gulped. "Uh, hey. What're you doing here?"

"I came to apologize. About Thursday. I just...well, I don't know what came over me, but I think you're right. This whole thing with Sam's got me suspicious of everyone, and I know that's not fair to him...or you."

I smiled back at her. "Thanks, Irina."

"So...am I forgiven?"

"Of course." I nodded.

"Great," she grinned. "Because I think we might have some digging to do."

"Digging? What kind of digging?"

Irina pulled a folded sheet of paper from her purse. "Remember how I said Sam never had a sister?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Well, neither did I, but look what I found this morning." She unfolded the page and held it up to face me.

"That looks like a...a report card," I puzzled.

At the top of the sheet, a single name was printed—Gravestepper, Georgiana Michelle.

"Whoa." My eyes grew wide at the name.

"And look at the date," Irina said. "These grades are from thirteen years ago."

"Wait, where did you say you found this again?"

"In my attic. I was helping my mom clean, and I found it in one of her old plastic bins, stuffed inside a green folder behind some pamphlets."

"That's so weird," I said in a low voice, rubbing my cheek. "And you've never heard your mom mention the name Georgiana?"

Irina shook her head. "Not even once. Before today, I didn't even know people still named children that."

"Maybe she was your cousin?"

"Not as far as I know. I've never heard of a cousin with that name. And even if I had, why would her report card be stashed away in our attic? Shouldn't her mom have it?"

I paused. "You're right. That really doesn't make sense."

Irina looked down. "Ahmed, what if...what if I have a sister and my mom's been keeping this from me?"

"Do you really think she would do that?"

Her eyes fell to the pavement beneath her feet. "Remember that time you came over to my house for pot pie?"

"Y-yeah, I remember."

"Remember that detective? The girl in that picture he showed us—the younger one—she was wearing my bow, I think. She must have been me...and what if the older girl who was with her was...what if she was my big sister?"

"...I guess that's possible," I began, "but don't you think you'd remember if you had a sister?"

"I don't know. I was like four or five in that picture. All I really remember from back then is playing in the sandbox during recess and running through the halls at snack time." Irina paused. "But you know, now that I think about it, there was this one big kid who would always give me skittles...but she couldn't have been my sister. If she looked the way I remember—the way I think I remember—then she would've been blond. And me and my mom and dad are a family of brunettes." She toyed with her dark-brown locks to emphasize her point.

I hesitated. "That girl, the one who always gave you the skittles...do you remember her name?"

"I'm...I'm not sure. Jane, maybe? Or...or Lane?"

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. "Maybe Sam remembers," I offered. "Should we call him and ask?"

Irina tensed at the mention of his name. "I...I don't know. I guess we could." She reached inside her purse and grabbed her phone. Fingers trembling, she unlocked her screen and dialed Sam's number. She held the phone to her ear, the dial tone humming at first until—

"Voicemail," she announced. "It went straight to voicemail."

"Oh," I said. "Maybe his phone's dead."

"We could always try Google," Irina suggested. "For the name, I mean. We could Google Search Georgiana's name."

"Good idea." I nodded quickly. "Why don't you come inside? Wifi's pretty crappy out here on the porch."

Irina followed me in through the front door, and the two of us plodded into the living room. We both took seats on the living-room couch, sinking into the golden-brown pillows.

She flipped open her laptop and typed in Georgiana Michelle Gravestepper the moment she'd navigated to Google. As she finished entering in the name, her index finger hovered over the Return key.

She looked up at me. "Ahmed, I'm...I'm scared."

I put my arm on her shoulder. "Irina, there's nothing to be afraid of."

"But what if..." she trailed off. "What if we find out that...that Georgiana was my sister? What if something awful happened to her?"

"Irina, we can't think like that." I reached for her hand, grasped it tightly inside my own. "Whatever pops up, we'll face it together. It's going to be okay."

She glanced downward at our hands, our togetherness. Then she looked back up at her screen and shoved her wavering finger down into the keyboard, launching the search.

In mere milliseconds, pages and pages of related articles popped into view. An advertisement for graveyard cleanup was the first link, followed by the company website for Michelle's Magical Mooncakes.

But it was the third search result that simultaneously caught my and Irina's eyes—a patient listing from Molding the Way Sanitarium and Correctional Facility.

"There's no way," Irina breathed. She clicked the link to open the page, her eyes ballooning the moment it loaded. It was a PDF document, or maybe a scanned image; most of the contents were marked out or scribbled over, but the name at the top of the file was unmistakable: Georgiana Michelle Gravestepper, Age 12.

"She was real," Irina breathed.

"Irina, wait a sec, okay? We don't know that this is your sister."

"Ahmed, read the bottom of the page." Irina pointed to the file's end, where a squiggly handwritten signature adjoined a singly typed line of text: "Myra Gravestepper," she read aloud, "Mother of the Patient."

My jaw dropped. "Irina, there's no way—"

"My sister was real." She swallowed hard. "...And my mom locked her up at Molding the Way." She tried clicking on some of the blacked-out portions of the file, but to no avail. "There's gotta be some way to find out what this is, what they're hiding."

I scanned the page for the date, spotting it quickly at the top of the document. "It looks like this report was filed in December of...whoa—twelve years ago."

Irina shook her head. "This is so frustrating. And all we have to go on is a report card and a scratched-out PDF. I mean, why can't we find anything about this girl that's not at least a decade old?"

"Well, we've only checked the first page of Google. Maybe if we tried more—"

"No need," she spoke up, her tone resolute. "We can dig through Web archives all we want, but..." She trailed off, an overture of silence seeming to truncate her words.

"But what, Irina?" I asked.

She exhaled, eyes closing briefly before snapping open again. "I have a feeling that the only way we're going to get any real answers is if we go there ourselves."

"Wait, go where?"

"To Molding the Way," she answered. "It's still open, you know. Although I'm pretty sure they pass it off as a mental hospital now rather than a preppy private school's alternative to juvie."

I gave her a puzzled look.

"I heard my mom talk about it one time. She said they used to send really bad kids there, kids who always made trouble and refused to behave in school. At least if those kids had parents who could afford it." She paused. "I just never would have guessed that...maybe my mom knew because she'd done it herself..."

"And...you really wanna go there?"

She sighed. "No, I really don't. But I have to know, Ahmed. If I have a sister, maybe she's still alive. Maybe she has some answers."

"Answers?" I asked. "Answers about what?"

"Why my mom never told me about her, why she freaked out when that officer showed her that picture of me...why everybody keeps dying all around us." Her eyes met mine fleetingly before plummeting to the ground.

I drew closer to her, grasped her hand and held tightly. "Okay, Irina. If you really wanna go, I'm on board."

She looked back up into my eyes, smiled.

"Let's do this." I smiled back.

****

"Good afternoon. Welcome to Molding the Way," said the receptionist at the gray check-in desk.

"Hi," I spoke up, doing my best to warm my words. "My friend and I were wondering if we could maybe visit one of the patients here."

"Sure," the lady replied. "What's the name?"

"Um, Gravestepper," Irina spoke up. "Her name is Georgiana Gravestepper."

The woman typed the name into her computer, then paused, squinting her eyes together as she scanned the screen. "Hmmm, that's weird. I don't see any entries for that name." Her lips bent into a frown as she clacked across the keys again. "This is very strange...I found one entry for Georgiana, but I can't seem to find a last name for her at all." She turned back to us. "I'm sorry. I only started working here two weeks ago, but...we're required to keep patients' full names in their records. This is so peculiar." She grabbed the phone off the edge of her desk closest to Irina. "Just one moment," she said to us as she dialed a number.

I glanced at Irina, and I saw her visibly shaking. She looked back at me, her hands fidgeting and tapping against the outer sides of her thighs.

"Hello?" The receptionist spoke into the phone. "Yes, this is Audrey. Sorry to bother you, but I can't seem to find one of the patients' info. Her last name is Gravestepper."

High-pitched chatter sounded on the other end.

"What?" Audrey continued. "Well, no I just figured—"

The high-pitched voice cut her off, more loudly this time and full of fire.

"Yes, yes, I understand," Audrey finally managed to get in a few words. After another ten or so seconds, she hung up the phone.

I shoved my hands in my pockets. "What was that all about?"

"My boss, she's basically impossible to please." Audrey sighed. "Look, apparently this girl, Gravestepper—she was taken off the visitation list a few days ago."

"Taken off?" Irina puzzled. "But why?"

Audrey looked left, then right, then back to me and Irina. "Screw it," she finally said. She opened her desk's top drawer and grabbed a yellow sticky-note pad that sat snugly inside.

Scribbling a room number in dark-blue ink, she tore off the topmost note and folded it. "Here. This is Georgiana's room number. My boss just let it slip during her little tirade on the phone with me." She looked around again. "I didn't give this to you, and I don't know who you are." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "Now, go, and make it quick."

Irina was still shaking, so I grabbed the sticky note and stuck it in my pocket, then wrapped my arm around Irina's shoulder to usher her forward. "Come on," I whispered in her ear.

Once we were through the double doors that divided the patient hallway from the lobby, Irina turned to me, grabbed my arm. "Ahmed, wait. I—I can't. I'm sc...I'm scared."

I twisted to face her. "Irina, come on. You've made it this far. We can't give up now."

Her left hand rose to her face, covered her eyes.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

She sniffled, and I saw a single tear course down her cheek past the shield of her left palm.

I placed my arm on her shoulder. "It's okay to be scared, Irina. I get it. Really, I do." I paused. "I just—I know how much this means to you. And if we don't do this now, who knows when we'll have another chance?"

She sniffled again, and this time a sob escaped her throat. She swallowed back another, gasping as she did. "Okay," she breathed at last, steeling herself as she lifted her head to meet my gaze. "Okay. I'm ready." She held my hand, followed me two doors down to room three-eleven.

The door was slightly ajar, and I rested my hand on the knob, pushing forward slowly. Peeking around the wooden frame, I saw her.

Sleeping.

Motionless.

She was a dainty girl, couldn't have been more than five-foot-four standing up straight. Her hair was dark brown—a very familiar shade. It was cut short, and it hung in a single wave that ended just below her shoulders.

Irina stepped inside behind me and gasped, stumbling backwards. "Th-that's her," she whispered.

"No doubt about that," I said back to her. "She looks just like you, Irina."

Georgiana's face was shaped the same as Irina's, but her nose was thinner, her cheekbones higher. And that glow Irina had, that glow I'd already grown so fond of seeing early in the morning or during lunchtime—it was nowhere to be found on Georgiana's face. Instead, as she slept there underneath Molding the Way's milky white sheets, there was a dull, almost graying pallor to her features, as if she'd been robbed of something precious.

Irina and I began slowly to inch inside, to draw closer to the girl swathed in bleached linens; and as we did, Georgiana's eyelids started to twitch, slowly fluttering open.

She drew a long, hushed breath. "Lane?" she asked. "Is that you? Weren't you here just yesterday?" Her voice's pitch refused to stay the same, surging from subdued whispers to breathy tenors without a moment's notice.

"Um, Georgiana—" Irina began.

"Ew, gross!" the girl yelled. "Lane, that's an old-lady name! You swore you'd never call me that again!" She crossed her arms, ruffling the bedsheets folded across her chest. "My name's GiGi." She stuck out her lower lip, pouting.

I glanced at Irina, her eyes genuinely confused as I simply shook my head. "Irina," I lowered my voice, "I don't think Georgiana is..."

"MY NAME IS GIGI!" the girl screeched from the bed. "I TOLD YOU MY NAME IS GIGI!"

"Okay," I held up my hands in defense. "GiGi it is." I moved toward the side of the mattress slowly, deliberately, Irina following my lead.

"So, um, GiGi," I tried, "how are you feeling?"

She combed fingers through her hair. "I feel fabulous," she announced, then turned to Irina. "Lane, I swear—Sam Irish was looking sooo hot yesterday."

Irina paused. "Um, GiGi, my name is Irina. Not Lane. I'm not sure if—"

"Lane, stop it," GiGi waved her hand in annoyance. "You're never gonna believe what Sam told me. He said he wants to come visit you today! He's coming with me and Irina!"

I froze. "GiGi...what did you just say?"

"I said Sam's coming with me and Irina when we visit Lane."

"And Irina is...?"

"My sister Irina. Like, hello." GiGi started combing her hand through her hair again. "Irina Zoey Gravestepper."

Irina gasped from behind me, and I turned to her, saw the fear in her eyes.

I swallowed hard before returning my attention to GiGi, who was now sitting cross-legged beneath the sheets and staring into space, short brown hair twitching at her shoulders as she bobbed her head whimsically.

"Uh, GiGi," I said, suddenly calling to mind my earlier conversation with Irina at my house. "Your friend Lane—what did she look like, exactly?"

GiGi smiled. "Well, she was super stylish, like always cute. And she had the prettiest hair of any girl at EdgeWay. Vanilla blond—that's what she called it. She got it from her dad. Her mom was a blond too, but not nearly as gorgeous, and way too frizzy to be attractive." Her voice grew hushed. "Don't tell anybody, but she's got such a big crush on Sam Irish. Like, huge. She's been bribing my sister with tropical skittles."

"Tropical skittles?" I asked. "Why would she—?"

"Irina loves tropical skittles. Lane loves Sam. And Irina's Sam's kindergarten buddy. Know what that means?" GiGi giggled to herself, covering her mouth daintily with her right hand.

"So, Lane liked Sam, and...and you and Irina helped her get him?"

GiGi giggled once more. "Naw, of course not. Sam's still totally clueless. And Lane thinks she blew her chance now that she got put in here."

I paused. "Put in where?"

"In Molding the Way! That's why me and Irina are visiting her, silly!" She patted the sheets next to her, then bent her body over the bed's edge and reached underneath, retrieving a small wooden box. "We hid everything. Those dummies at Molding will never know." GiGi opened the box and pulled out a silver flip phone from between a creased and browning collection of discarded church pamphlets. "Lane totally sneaked her cell in here. Now we can talk every night. Screw her mom for locking her up in this dingy old nut house!"

GiGi stuffed the phone back inside the box and closed it, placing it under the bed before looking up to the ceiling. She started tracing invisible lines with her tiny index finger. "He came and saw her, you know. Sam saw Lane in this bed, but he never knew her secret." She stopped tracing the air and held her finger to her lips. "Shhh! You guys can't tell anyone, okay? Sam's coming to visit her with me today. Maybe he'll propose to her!"

If I looked puzzled before, I must have looked insane by now. "GiGi, I thought you said Sam saw her here already. Did he visit before, or—?"

"No, he never saw her."

"But you said—"

"HE NEVER SAW HER!" GiGi's voice skyrocketed, then plummeted just as swiftly. "I saw her," she said, almost whispering. "I saw her. I biked here. I came through the hallway, and Glenn was there, and...no! No! Lane! Run! You have to get out!" GiGi tossed the bedsheets from on top of her and darted for the doorway. "I'm coming, Lane!" she screamed as she tore past me and Irina.

"GiGi, stop!" I called, racing after her. I sprinted out into the hallway and ambled to the left, eventually managing to catch GiGi and grab her by the arm.

She flailed her free hand, narrowly missing my eye. "GET OFF ME!" she screamed. "LET ME GO! I HAVE TO SAVE GIGI!"

Her head shook back and forth, tears springing to her eyes as she wailed. "MARISSA, PLEASE! GIGI'S DYING!"

She flung her free arm again, but I managed to catch it this time, pinning her to the wall with both my palms outstretched against her wrists. She tried to sling her leg into me, but raising it threw off her balance and she wobbled in terror upon a single, shaking foot. I held onto her tightly to keep her from falling as she scrambled to regain uprightness. "No," she wept. "GiGi, no. Please. PLEASE!" Her arms slid from between my grasp, and she fell to the floor, her knees crashing to the ceramic tiles.

I exhaled a deep breath, then turned to Irina, who stood several feet behind me with her mouth agape.

Thundering from down the hall, the rumble of footsteps clattered in the distance. "What is the meaning of this!?" croaked a hoarsely feminine voice from the end of the hallway. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

Irina and I spun simultaneously to face the tall and imposing lady in stiletto heels who stood with her hands on her hips—both of us far too scared to utter a single word.

"Get out," the woman said after a moment's pause. "Georgiana is not allowed visitors." She skulked angrily forward and grabbed GiGi by the shoulder, yanking her to her feet and glaring into her eyes. "Back to your room this instant!"

****