Something had woken her again, and as usual, Cora didn't know quite what it was. Her room was absolutely blissful, in a too-perfect sort of way. The light from the window created a gorgeous, glimmery deep blue; the temperate air seemed to caress her exposed skin like a soft velvet cloth; the sound, even, was almost an imperceptible white noise, separating her from whatever was going on beyond her walls.

Every night she woke and felt the impossible quintessence of her room, and every night she knew it was entirely uncanny.

She'd lie there, pull Grandma Luce's afghan around her, and attempt to convince her mind to drift back into its slumber, and she usually managed within a few minutes, but tonight, a good amount of time passed before she began to slightly panic. If she didn't get back to sleep in a reasonable amount of time, she'd be too tired in the morning to get it together, and she had three tests tomorrow, and—

A sudden jarring sound caused her to sit up so fast she pulled something in her neck. On her dresser rested a small box shaped like an indigo blue crystal, like a huge piece of dark quartz found in some mine. The thing had a small hinge at the back, and when its top half tipped open, a haunting melody emanated from a tiny metal comb held against a turning wheel in its interior. It was this that had made noise--the top of the box had opened and was chiming its tune, like so many tiny bells, a ballet for a spider lifting its delicate legs.

For a moment, Cora stared at the box, which had been a gift from her mother last year. How it had opened was a mystery, and yet beyond the initial shock, the event wasn't entirely unwelcome. The melody was lovely--eerie, but lovely. She hadn't listened to it in quite some time, mostly out of anger toward her mother for their move, and she sat in the strange light of her room, listening until the mechanical wheels slowed to a stop. When the silence suddenly fell once more, Cora recognized the volume of her own breathing. She'd moved somewhat into a trance and had to shake herself awake a little. The girl looked at her blankets swirling around her, slipped out of them, placed her bare feet on the floorboards, which warmed at her touch. Her pajamas consisted of black shorts and tank with little moons and stars scattered across them, the phrase "Sweet dreams, starlight!" weaving across the chest; catching sight of herself in her mirror across the way, Cora suddenly felt her attire was childish and looked away from her reflection.

She stood and went to her dresser, lightly touched the music box to close its lid, and stayed there, uncertain as to why. The back of her neck prickled, and she turned, slowly, to find nothing and no one else in her room, as expected. And yet, the feeling that something was off wouldn't fade. Cora noticed her closet door was ajar. Normally, she would've thought nothing of it, but she had a distinct memory that she'd closed it last night after throwing Ben's llama in there and slamming it. He'd infuriated her--Ben--had grown too insistent about the sorts of pictures and comments he wanted her to send him--and she'd been having none of it. Whatever feelings she thought she'd had for him, they were gone, now, and she'd been unable to bear the sight of that stupid stuffed animal.

But there were a few inches between the door and its frame, now. It could've just popped open, but Cora stepped toward it anyway, reached out a firm hand (there were no shivers, she was not afraid), pulled the door gently toward her, and out rolled the llama at her feet.

What perplexed her, gave the girl pause, was not the door being open or the llama tumbling out but the fact that in place of its head was white batting, frothing from its torn neck. The head was gone. Cora crawled into the closet and searched in vain for it.

When she at last fell back to sleep, she felt, besides perplexed, a strange sense of justice.

"I think you're right," Cora told Brian the following Sunday afternoon. He didn't have to work Saturday nights, so Sundays were usually the best time to hang out with him. During the week, because he worked nights, he slept most days, and Saturdays he still had his little parties, in spite of claiming to dislike them. In fact, Brian often ended up leaving his own gatherings to see what Cora was up to. He'd never come up to her house; he'd text and draw her out, and they'd walk down the street and chat, or she'd sit on her porch swing while he stood at the bottom of the hill, or they'd just send messages back and forth to satiate their boredom. But Sunday afternoons were better. They could sit in Brian's backyard without all the others and just talk.

Cora liked Brian's dad. He was a blunt, attractive-for-an-older-guy sort of person, and he always brought them food. The man actually baked really well. There would be cookies and pie, cake and bread--things Cora knew some parents made but had never actually experienced. His name was Alan, and she called him Alan. Brian even called him Alan. Cora didn't ask why; she didn't care why.

"Right about what? I mean, besides everything?" Brian sat across from her on a sort of rocking loveseat. The air was chilly, being early October, but they'd gotten a fire going in the firepit, and that made the cold more than tolerable. In fact, the fire's glow and warmth against the clouded day made the cold absolutely delightful.

Brian wore his hair loose, a thick sweater layered over a red thermal, loose jeans and boots. His eyes were mellow but had a playfulness about them. Cora herself was uncertain, still, as to why he'd kept wanting to talk to her. She was far more sarcastic than he was; in fact, sometimes she wondered if she went too far with him. But Brian never seemed to mind her acerbic humor. In fact, he tended to encourage it with his smiles, his deceptively innocent responses. Cora had learned some about him; he liked to read big dark novels, some of it high-brow, much of it not--Stephen King, Russian stuff, thirty-book detective series, and the like. He enjoyed writing, himself, he'd told her at one point, but he'd stopped short of showing her anything he'd written. She'd told him she wrote poetry, but she'd also declined to offer it for viewing. When Cora had asked him why he hadn't gone to college, why he was working at a gas station, she'd realized it was a sore subject; Brian had immediately brushed it off, diverted the conversation. But he had secrets. Even as Cora sat there, slyly scrutinizing him, she wondered whether he had ulterior motives in befriending her. They were such an unlikely pair.

"About the house," she replied at length. "Something's definitely going on with it."

Brian sat up a little straighter, became suddenly interested. "Really? You believe me?"

"Some weird things are going on in there. None of them are particularly worrisome, though," she hurried to add. "Just weird things, like my music box started playing in the middle of the night, and there's this one cabinet that everything keeps falling out of." She didn't know how to explain the walls and floors and feeling in her room without sounding weird, and the llama thing--that was hers to keep. Cora had actually, in a weird sense, appreciated it. It'd been almost as if some presence--ghost or whatever--had agreed with her about Ben, was showing that agreement. She hadn't yet found the llama's head, but it didn't matter; the thing had gone into the trash.

The boy across the flames didn't answer her at first. Cora struggled to read the expression he wore. Brian was an anomaly, really. He presented himself as nonchalant and lazy, but he wasn't either of those things, and the girl sensed that he enjoyed his camouflage as well as the occasional surprise he evoked when he didn't live up to others' expectations.

"I went in there, once," he admitted at last, his voice quiet as he stared into the fire. "A few years back. It's how I know."

"But no one's been in it for fourteen . . . ooooh. You mean you broke in."

"I was--it was--"

"A good way to impress girls."

Brian glanced at Cora, saw her raised eyebrows. "Yeah. Well."

Cora watched him fidget, knew she'd made him feel foolish and enjoyed it. But then his face fell; he looked troubled.

"I saw something in the basement. I . . . heard it first. Thought it was a joke, but I went toward it, shone my light—there it was, just lying there naked in the corner, on the concrete floor. And before I could even decide if or how to help it, it was gone, but the sound wasn't. The girl ran off before I did, and it was just me down there with it while it kept crying and crying, until I ran out."

"What was it?" Cora asked, unsure whether to believe him but swayed by his aura of severity and rather gratified that he'd opened up so quickly, as if he'd just been waiting for the opportunity, as if he trusted her entirely.

Brian sat back, looked at her. "I just told everyone it was a ghost, you know, at school and everything. I've never said what it really was. But—I swear to God, Cora—it was a baby."

"A baby?"

He shook his head as if hardly believing it himself. "I know, I know. Sounds crazy. It's why I never really said what it was. And that girl I was with, she didn't even remember anything but being freaked out, so it's not like I would've had anyone to back me up on it. And Alan was pissed. He was afraid the cops might get involved. You know, breaking and entering. So he just told me not to talk about it."

Cora looked hard at Brian. She slouched on a cushioned chair, legs pulled up, arms wrapped around, her hands white as snow against her dark attire. After a moment, she asked, "Did it work?"

Brian frowned. "Did what work?"

"Was that girl impressed?"

For a moment, the boy appeared unsure whether to be amused or annoyed. "You'd have to ask her, I guess," he ended up saying. Then, thinking, sighing, he added, "You don't believe me, do you?"

Pushing some of her short hair behind her ear, Cora shrugged. "Well, the whole basement does smell like baby powder. Like, really smell like it. I don't like going down there because it smells so strong."

"Baby powder?"

"Yeah, that's weird, right?"

"I guess."

Cora repositioned herself a bit, reached over to a little table next to her and picked up a thermos. Alan had poured her hot cocoa in a mug. She sensed he liked her, probably more than whatever other friends Brian had. Sipping the cocoa, making sure it wouldn't burn, the girl asked, "But a baby wouldn't commit suicide."

"Huh?"

"You said someone committed suicide in my house, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Brian confirmed. He picked up a metal rod and poked at the logs in the fire; they crackled and hissed, spit up little bits of glowing ash. "That's the rumor, anyway. Don't know if it's true."

"But then why would you see a ghost baby? If the house is haunted, wouldn't it be by the person who killed theirself?"

"So you believe in ghosts, now?"

"No. Not really. But I do believe there's something weird about my house." She held the mug in her hands to warm them, thought suddenly of that ugly headless llama sitting in the trash, said to her own surprise, "I broke up with my boyfriend." He hadn't been a boyfriend. He hadn't been much of anything.

"Yeah?" Brian's response came off as entirely unaffected.

Cora felt stupid for saying it, suddenly, didn't know what to add.

Brian added instead. "Why?"

Why? Ugh. She didn't want to explain. "The distance, you know."

"Right. Better to find someone close by."

Whether he'd meant it to sound the way it did, Cora didn't know, but she felt her own cheeks warm and wondered whether it were the cocoa or the fire that'd done it; she didn't know. "Will you go in my house again, explain what happened? Show me where you saw the baby?"

Wherever his thoughts had been, they hyperfocused on her words. "I--I don't think so."

"I'm in there every day. It's not like anything will happen to you. We can go during the day. Or when my mom is there, too, if you want."

Brian met her eyes. She could tell that he really didn't want to do it but was wavering. "I'll think about it."

At that moment, Alan came out and sat with them, chatted about the weather and asked what Cora was doing in school and what her mother was up to. But the girl could think only of the house, of the baby and whether or not she believed it, whether or not it even mattered if she did. Her feelings--about the house and maybe about the boy across the way--were tangled.