The flight of a winnowed sugar maple leaf across Townhall Park ended in a big, sloppy kiss - when it slapped right against the pink cheeks of a sluggish Amy on the swing.

Brushing the taste of wet dirt from the side of her mouth, she yawned and continued her conversation with Gemma on the phone. "They were pretty upset that I sneaked out but then Leigh showed them a video of me pulling Natasha from the edge of the roof and they had to reconsider my punishment."

"So, you're not in trouble?" Gemma asked.

A relieved scoff came from Amy's frozen vocal cords. "Jury's still out on that but hey, at least I'm not grounded."

"That party's gonna gain cult status in a few years and I'm just glad that we experienced it," said Gemma. She was visiting her cousins in Atlanta for Thanksgiving weekend. "Any updates on your hot secret ghost boy?"

Amy's eyes wandered toward the sounds of jubilant shrieks and giggles in the distance. A little game of dodgeball was afoot. Leigh was running around trying to avoid getting hit but she needn't have put in a lot of effort. A tall, pleasing figure interfered whenever one of her sister's bullies lugged the ball too hard in her direction; it would mysteriously ricochet off the unsuspecting kid standing next to Leigh instead. With his floppy raven hair, flushed cheeks, and vigilante smirk, Caleb never looked so radiant.

"After barely two hours of sleep, Caleb dragged me to the ruined church near Burke's End and we spent most of the afternoon searching for his body," Amy answered, another great yawn garbling most of her speech. Only her best friend could've understood what she was trying to say.

"Let me guess, you found nothing," Gemma said, sucking her teeth.

With only a surviving red-brick tower and a crumbling perimeter wall along the ambulatory, all of which was overrun with poison ivy, Our Lady of Undying Sorrow fit its name like a glove. Caleb and Amy had returned home with nothing to show for it except an unshakeable feeling she kept to herself - that all the while in the unsettling quiet of the forest, they were being watched.

And the question that Amy let embitter her mind.

"I've been saying this like a broken record but you need to find a supernatural solution to this thing," said Gemma. "Go to a psychic or voodooist -"

"Yeah, like I'll find those on Yelp -"

"Well, I used to go to Mrs. Wigmore but obviously I can't now," Gemma continued with a touch of asperity. "I'll ask Henry if he knows anybody."

Amy snorted. Despite the fantastically illogical week she had endured, a part of her still believed that there was a scientific justification for Caleb's condition. "His grandma didn't leave a ghostly referral?"

"Laugh all you want but your nerdy crap has failed."

Gemma was right; maybe Amy needed to think outside the box. Before she could say anything, Amy spotted Henry Wigmore in the parking lot of Greenbriar's - the local shopping center. "Speak of the devil, I think I see him -"

Because he was helping his mother load up an enormous turkey into their hatchback, it took Amy a few minutes of rigorous waving to get Henry's attention. But when their eyes met, he quickly looked away.

"What happened?" Gemma asked, static breaking up her voice.

"He ignored me!" Amy sounded a bit too affronted, but to be fair not all of Slaymy had left her system. "What is his problem?"

"Henry's been acting weird since he saw you last night. I barely got a word in before I left." Gemma took a beat on the line. "Did you guys fight?"

"Not that I recall. He pranced out right after I came."

"Is it like the anniversary of you breaking his nose or something?"

"Gemma."

"He told me to stay away from you for some time," Gemma murmured.

A great gloom settled in Amy's gut. When Henry and Gemma first started dating, he had been against their friendship, claiming that Amy was too violent. Something tugged at her memory, and though she said the words, her conviction did not lie with them. "Not this again."

"You know how I hate conflict and having to pick a side..." Gemma droned on but Amy's focus had shifted. A chubby-cheeked boy in a trapper's hat, frustrated with Leigh's magical luck, had viciously aimed his next throw at her head. Caleb dived to protect the little girl; the ball sailed across the playground and into the gaping maw of a T-rex that formed part of the giant, dinosaur-themed jungle gym.

A tween next to the bully roared, "Min-ho! Look what you did!"

"It's her!" said Min-ho, jabbing a finger toward Leigh with the air of a village elder accusing someone of witchcraft. "She's doing something weird!"

"No, I'm not!" Leigh defended. "It's the wind."

"Maybe you're an airbender!" Meena, Leigh's classmate, said in awe.

With jazz hands and a twinkle in his eyes, Caleb shot a smirk at Amy.

"Just get the ball," a girl in pink glasses told Min-ho.

He folded his doughy little arms and refused in a nasty voice. "Tell little miss know-it-all to. I'm not going anywhere."

"Earth to Amy?" Gemma said through the phone.

"Just hold on."

After a bit of kerfuffle, the children reached a consensus. They didn't consider that Leigh was mortally afraid of dinosaurs ever since she had seen Jurassic Park, and elected to send her.

They banned her from playing in the future as well.

Amy was about to tramp up to those kids and give them wedgies they would never forget when Leigh turned around and called out, "Amy! Ball please!"

Sighing, she turned towards the large metal reptiles and said, "Gem, I'll talk to you later."

"Ugh fine, but don't forget to call me -"

"Don't worry, it's my fault. I'll get it," Caleb chimed, jogging past Amy. On all fours, he climbed into the stegosaurus' stomach, seemingly forgetting again that he wasn't quite capable of playing fetch. Sure enough, a muffled moan that no one else could hear, came from the scaly beast. "Amy?"

"Now, I really gotta go. Love you, bye!" Amy said, hanging up, and making her way toward the realistically painted jungle gym. Could've chosen Barny, but no.

Inside the frigid steel cylinder, Amy's breath turned foggy as she crawled, and soon she reached a relatively wider space with peepholes on both sides. Twilight rays turned dust motes into diamonds around Caleb. He sat with the bright yellow ball between his outstretched legs, right under the neck of the stegosaurus. Amy figured it must've fallen through the tyrannosaur and landed there.

"You called, mister?"

With his finger stuck to his temple, Caleb mimed moving the ball using telekinesis. "My powers are useless inside this metal monstrosity."

"Allow me," said Amy, lifting the ball in a smooth motion. She opened the latch above his head that served as a tiny trapdoor facing the park and saw Leigh's anxious visage staring up at her.

Amy chucked the ball into Leigh's waiting hands. "I'm coming right out, Sleighbells. Don't let those kids get to you."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Leigh sang as she scampered off, looking like a goofy kleptomaniac princess who had abandoned her knight after the dragon was slain.

Shaking her head and wishing that Leigh would never grow up, Amy shut the real world out and made herself comfortable in the land of blue-eyed spectres inside dinosaur bellies. Her shoulder burned with a painful heat as she slid next to Caleb.

But Amy didn't move away.

Deep-set eyes that held a lost midnight ocean dared her to withdraw. "I miss who I used to be. Leigh reminds me of Emma when she was that adorable. I would spend days making up new games she could beat me at."

"I envied how you could make anybody laugh," Amy reminisced, before giving him a side glance. She didn't dare meet his eyes again. "Often at the expense of others."

Caleb bit his lips to subdue a grin. "You messed up those lyrics on your own."

"All of middle school it was, 'Hey Amy! Let's go kick the dancing queen'."

Amy was surprised that he remembered. It was years ago at their sixth-grade talent show and her mother had found out that the judge that year was a huge ABBA fan. Anne Irvine swore - like many mothers do when they actually know very little - that she knew the lyrics to Dancing Queen by heart when she taught Amy how to play that song on the ukulele. She did not.

The dam of restrained laughter finally broke and Caleb quaked with glee. "That is not on me."

Amy pulled her woolen bucket hat over her eyes. "You were the one who told everyone the actual words!"

Happier times.

"I wish we'd met when things were different," Caleb said, nudging Amy's boots with his sneakers. If he were normal, Amy would've bent to him like a hyacinth seeking the sun. Instead, she was Icarus, flying perilously close.

"What went wrong?" Amy ventured. "How did we end up here?"

"That mean hoe pitched the ball so hard at Leigh -"

"Caleb."

He gave her his patented pout but Amy did not relent. "How did you get so tangled up in all the drugs - Anaxan," she asked, her hands pummeling the air, "- this whole bad-boy-fuck-everybody shtick?"

Caleb was so close, Amy could've counted each freckle on his cheek, and made a star map for safekeeping. His voice was a low hum, barely rising above a whisper. "When my dad left us, things at home were really horrible for a while. Ma was so out of it, she wouldn't cook, she wouldn't eat, take care of Emma - nothing. She refused to take her pills so they would just pile up next to her bed. One day, I took a bottle and sold it to Jude Presley and his buddies."

Amy could hear her own blood pounding in her ears.

Caleb's eyes hardened as if he wasn't really seeing her. "It was easy money at first - the bills were paid, the mortgage wasn't unbearable, we started having dinner again... Ma figured out what I was doing but didn't say anything. I thought I would do it till Dad came back. But he never did." A sound bereft of hope arose from his throat. "Turns out it's much harder to get out than you'd think."

When Amy spoke, fear and love danced on her tongue. "Why Anaxan though?"

"I didn't know how bad it could get," muttered Caleb. "It was the newest thing, everybody wanted it. I tried it once and it wasn't any different from the regular stuff - apart from the scar." His hand stroked the faded mark on the underside of his wrist.

"Things only got messy with Broad," Caleb said deliberately and held her gaze. "Do you believe me?"

His tone threw Amy off. Caleb had staked his life on those words.

"Does it matter?" she asked.

"Something has changed. Nothing from my past matters more than you now."

Heat rose in Amy's cheeks as a knot unraveled in her heart, but her subconscious cruelly conjured up Natasha Boynton's tear-stained face from last night. Things were far from over.

Amy wanted some distance between them but somehow her body inched closer. "You have a second chance now, Caleb. A clean slate." She heard herself promise in a moment of weakness, "Besides, I will protect you."

"You will?"

If only that final forcefield between them disappeared for a second, their lips would touch, and galaxies would start spinning the other way.

She closed her eyes.

But instead of her lips, Amy's forehead felt the painful burn she had been bracing for. "Ouch!"

Caleb had flicked her forehead. He scrunched his gorgeous nose and said, "You need to set your own house in order first, Irvine."

"What do you mean?" Amy leaned against the cold wrought iron handle on her right, trying to assuage the hurt skin.

"Why does Leigh need counselling?"

It was only fair, a soul bared for another. It was Amy's turn to converse in soft tones. "Leigh is smarter than kids her age by a mile. According to Dr. Abernathy, the downside of her gift is that her emotional sensitivity is very high. Just after New Year's, she - she tried to hurt herself."

Caleb's haunting eyes stripped away the last of her reluctance. She would never hold back from him again.

Amy sniffled, wiping her nose on her coat sleeve. "Leigh says that she only tried to cut her hair to get us to notice her more, but I saw how rough she had been, Caleb - I saw the blood on the floor." And at last, the cancerous thought that was ravaging her from within spewed forth. "And it was all my fault."

"How?" Caleb uttered, the word barely escaping his lips.

"I didn't care for her enough when she needed me the most."

"But I've seen you with her, Amy," Caleb said, trying to be reasonable. "You're the best sister anyone can ask for."

"Dr. Abernathy says -"

"Ah," Caleb sighed and shook his head. "You let that woman get in your head."

"But -"

"No buts!" Caleb cut her off with a commanding finger. "Listen to me, Amy - you need to tell your parents if Dr. Abernathy is trying to pin this on you. It is not your fault. You may have been a trigger but you are not the cause. Maybe the old cow was saying the same thing, though I doubt it knowing her toxic brand of therapy."

His stern voice rang through the stegosaurus. "It took me many sessions to learn how to sift through her tough shop talk. What has she actively asked you to do?"

It was difficult to think but Amy managed to get some words out. "Spend more time with Leigh."

"Well, that's it then. Just focus on that."

Amy couldn't believe it was that simple. "But she said that -"

"If it were up to me, I would've sacked her a long time ago. For some reason, older folks around town like the terribly unprofessional way she handles things."

"That's so messed up."

Caleb shrugged. "Life's messy, darlin'. You'll always find bad people at the top. Be grateful she isn't our school counsellor."

"We don't have one."

"Exactly," said Caleb. "Have you attended any sittings with your parents?"

Amy shook her head. How trivial he was making her woes seem; like how she would treat baby Leigh's boo-boos by wriggling her fingers and muttering some mumbo-jumbo incantations.

"Go with them next time. There's strength in numbers." Caleb winked.

"What if they agree with her? What if they think I'm a monster too?"

"They would never. Trust me," he swore. "You almost crashed their car and they gave you hot chocolate. You'll be fine."

Amy's heart had never brimmed with emotions before but now adoration, wonder, fear, and relief inundated her chest with warmth and hope. Caleb couldn't be the reason for her negative thoughts. He wasn't.

"Amy! Look who's here!" Leigh called, a safe distance away from the cretaceous creatures. "Maybe Georgie can see your friend too!"

Caleb chuckled. "I went into a pet store once, no response from anybody. Not even the cockatoos."

"Coming!" Amy said to her sister.

Before she could even form words of gratitude, Caleb smacked his kneecaps and scurried out of the jungle gym with a hasty, "We should get going."

The sun had dipped behind the historic clocktower and the playground was almost deserted. Amy wasn't as thrilled as Leigh when she saw Dr. Abernathy sitting on a park bench. The good doctor herself was out on a sunset stroll with her Great Pyrenees, Georgie, when she was called by her youngest patient.

"Hello, Amelia," Dr. Abernathy gave her a tight smile. "I'm glad to see you out with Leigh."

"Just enjoying the holidays," Amy said, as she scratched Georgie's neck while Leigh crouched to his level and gave him kisses.

The ball of white fluff whimpered and sniffed the air. His ears perked up. A booming bark echoed through the park.

"Georgie, heel!"

Dr. Abernathy's close-cropped silver hair shone blonde in the fading light as though a sepia filter had been placed on the scene. "I've already informed your parents that we'll have our regular sessions next Thursday. Will I see you there as well?"

"Sure," Amy replied.

"Splendid! I'm so happy to see you take initiative rather than hiding out in the car again. Leigh wants her family to be with her during the sessions and your refusal to comply with her wishes was not the wisest course of action..."

Caleb made a gagging motion behind the therapist's back. Amy bit her cheek in an effort to look serious. What a difference a single conversation with Caleb had brought! Last week this sermon would've sent her on a downward spiral of guilt and pain but today she could not only bear it - Amy could see herself working through it.

Incriminating Caleb on a circumstantial basis was unfair. He deserved better.

Dr. Abernathy craned her neck. "I thought you were inside that monster pen with a friend!"

Leigh spoke lightly, "She was on the phone with a boy."

"That's a relief!" the doctor clasped her bosom. "We wouldn't want any hanky-panky scandal hitting the town newsletter now, would we?"

"How I wish I could strangle her," Caleb mused. Georgie hadn't so much as moved a whisker acknowledging him and Amy believed that this made the spectre particularly sad.

"It's getting dark and we best be on our way," Dr. Abernathy said, running a smooth hand over her burgundy trench coat. "Give my best to Anne, dears. See you soon."

Leigh got to her feet. "May I tell you something, Dr. Abby?"

The switch in the doctor's demeanor was lightning fast. "Would you be more comfortable sharing this with me alone?"

"No, Amy can stay," said Leigh. "I think the bad thoughts have returned."

Dr. Abernathy held her hands together on her front, waiting for Leigh to elaborate.

"Though they are different somehow. They don't feel like my own. Like someone is whispering them to me."

Time slowed down and Amy's head was underwater again. In a stupor, she heard Dr. Abernathy ask Leigh whose voice it was but her eyes were on Amy - a look of vindication expressly reserved for the damned.

But the therapist was wrong because Amy knew whose voice it had always been, pouring sweet doom desires into every person around him. In a couple of long strides, Caleb was standing so close to her that she could see nothing but his frayed dark jacket. He tipped his finger under her chin and Amy instinctively looked up.

"What's wrong?" Caleb asked, eyes frantically skimming her face.

No matter how much she tried to fool herself, the boy slowly poisoning their minds was right in front of her. Whether Caleb knew what he was doing or not, would decide everything.

Amy would ask him tonight.

✧

A/N: They almost kissed! Near kiss? Too much? We would be in the honeymoon phase if Amy would just stop being so negative. What do you think Camy shippers, will the boat survive the iceberg?