By the time I was deemed fit for returning to class, it was lunch time. I wandered around the quad outside until I found my new friends. Cautiously, I approached them. On my short walk I had been able to come up with no believable explanations for my emotional out pouring.

Julia and Luke were sitting on a large square bench. Luke was eating a sandwich and Julia was scribbling furiously in her portfolio with what looked to me like a black crayon. I stood just to Julia's left and looked at the ground, willing myself to spit out some form of communication.

Julia shoved something red towards me without speaking. It was an unopened can of Coke, followed by a bag of chips. Not only were they waiting for me, they got me something to eat! Beyond grateful, I took her offering and sat down to join them.

"Sorry, I normally wait until at least after lunch to let my freak flag fly," I stated as I popped open the can which opened with a fizzy mass of bubbles that I sucked up quickly to keep from making a huge mess. Everyone laughed, even me. I peeked over to see what Julia was drawing; it was tall skinny tree with no leaves, reaching its branches to the sky. It looked stark and desolate standing alone on the page. There was something eerily disturbing about it but I couldn't place my finger on what exactly made it seem so.

The rest of the school day passed by easily, and ghost-free.

At home, I wasn't so lucky. I opened the front door and stepped inside my new home. It felt strange like I didn't belong there yet. I half expected to find a different family living there every time I walked in. Everything was quiet. My dad was not yet home from work and I knew my mother was most likely in bed. She had spent more and more time in bed since the incident - that's what my parents called my sister's death now "the incident." I couldn't even get my mother to mention Molly's name out loud, eventually I gave up trying. Every time I spoke her name my mother looked at me as if I'd slapped her face. She'd shake her head and mumble something about not talking about "that." My dad would at least listen to me talk about her but he wouldn't engage much in the conversation himself. I suppose that's what helped them make it through the day. My dad now focused all his energy on making sure that I was safe. He watched me for signs of danger, removed sharp objects from view and locked up all the medications in the house. Even aspirin was under lock and key. I was supposed to be going to therapy as well but usually I refused.

I sat my book bag on the kitchen table and opened it up. While removing my books and homework the slightly crumpled blue pamphlet from that morning fell out as well. I picked it up and smoothed it out. Rusty appeared beside me, looking over my shoulder.

"Teen suicide, very sad Vivian, very sad indeed. This is deep stuff for a first day at school. I was expecting . . . world history. What kind of school has classes about teen suicide?" Rusty's voice was loud inside my head. He smiled his crooked smile, head half cocked, looking past me. The ghosts looked at objects, they even looked at other people in the room, but they never looked straight at me, even when they talked to me.

"It's not a class, it's a statement of authority," I said as I crumbled it back up and tossed it from across the room into the trash can. I missed. "They want me to know, I don't know, that they intend to help me maybe. That they think they can meet my special needs. Difficult, since they have no idea what I see and hear every day."

I didn't get a reply. Rusty was gone already. He couldn't have gone far though; I could hear him humming an outdated hotdog commercial jingle in my head. Instead of pretending to do my homework I decided to go up to my room and take a nap.

My room still wasn't decorated but at least I had managed to unpack all of the boxes. I wasn't able to just collapse onto my bed as I had hoped though. Sitting cross legged in the middle of the bed was the smallest and most pathetically sad little ghost you could imagine. Her blond hair was long and straight, hanging down to her tiny waist. She had thin fingers which were folded under her little chin. Her saucer shaped eyes were constantly watery as if she were about to cry at any moment. Sitting on my king sized bed, surrounded by large fluffy pillows, she looked even smaller and sadder than ever.

"Miranda? What's wrong?" I asked as I sat down on the bed near her. She was hardly frightening and yet it was her visits I dreaded the most. It was heartbreaking to talk to the young dead girl, forever trapped in innocence and youth. She died in a car accident with her mother and father. She once told me that she saw a long hallway with a silvery light at the end of it, and she knew she was supposed to go somewhere, but she was so scared and couldn't find her parents so she walked the opposite direction. She searched for them but the farther away she walked the darker it got until she couldn't find her way back to where she started. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was thinking; that she didn't see her family because they had lived and she hadn't. She hadn't lost them, they had lost her. I knew she was scared and lonely all the time. I tried to be nice to her, even on days like today when I had certainly had my fill of the supernatural.

"Katrina yelled at me. She says I'm not allowed to talk to you anymore. But I like talking to you, you're my friend. "

I was a bit taken back. All this time I thought they couldn't see each other, didn't know about each other.

"You talk to Katrina? Do you talk to Rusty too?"

Miranda shifted her weight on the bed. The bed didn't respond. It didn't move or creek beneath her, since she wasn't really there. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling and took a large breath. She was trying not to cry, trying to be a big girl.

"Yea, I do. They usually ignore me though. Katrina calls me a baby."

"Why don't they want you to talk to me Miranda?" If she were alive and there with me for real I would have taken her hand in mine, but I knew if I reached out there would be nothing but air.

Miranda closed her eyes and lowered her voice to a hush. "They think I'll tell," were the words, barely audible, that sounded only in my head.

"Tell me what?" I asked but she was gone. "Tell me what!" I yelled, not caring if my mother heard from down the hall. There was no answer from Miranda, but I did hear the door to my mom's bedroom open briefly, and then close again.

I thought about Molly. I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything I had seen earlier that day. I thought about Molly's pale figure at the door, moving back and forth and touching an object that wasn't there around her neck. The necklace! I got up and opened the drop drawer of my dress and pulled out the gold chain with the coin on it. Still having no idea what it meant, I put it around my neck.

Who were the liars in Molly's message to me? Could they be Katrina and Rusty? And what were they lying to me about? I clasped the coin with one hand and said a silent prayer that I was doing the right thing by putting it on.