My father explained to me that when I was growing up I had "imaginary friends." They thought it was just a phase but I never seemed to grow out of it. My new psychiatrist explained to me the phenomenon of childhood schizophrenia which caused hallucinations, delusions and irrational behavior; all which seemed to fit me perfectly. They gave me pills and a group therapy schedule. It was Miranda, however, that came to me with a startling confession that made me question everything.

I had been transferred from the medical hospital to a place called "Edgewood Youth Mental Health Facility." Due to my age and the fact that I was still considered unstable and maybe a little dangerous, I wasn't allowed any visitors besides family. Of course the hospital staff couldn't stop the ghosts from materializing in and out as they pleased, at least not yet. It had been three days since Luke and Julia announced to me that Molly wasn't real to anyone but me. Three long and devastating days that inched by with a cruel slowness.

It still hurt too much to think about for long periods of time. My brain kept bouncing from rational facts (like there being no pictures of me and Molly together in our house) to irrational thoughts (vivid memories of the two of us staying up all night, talking about boys or playing Barbies). If Molly wasn't real, then what of Rusty and Miranda or that bitch Katrina? Real or not real? The only way to find out was to sit back and take all my prescribed medication that was meant to quiet the restless spirits of my imagination. Sit back, and wait to see if it worked.

I had a heavy dose of anti anxiety medication and tranquilizers to keep me from having any more dramatic outburst and I remained on 24 hour a day suicide watch. I couldn't even shower alone.

I sat passive and mute across from my father who came to visit me every day, usually without my mother. I looked at the ground and concentrated on remembering to breathe in and out while he spoke.

"I always wanted to take you to see a doctor about Molly and the other things you talked about seeing, but your mother refused to believe that anything was wrong with you. Just a difficult child she insisted. The farthest I ever got was getting you on some depression and anxiety medication. It caused a lot of awkwardness and a lot of trouble for you at school. But it was the first time you tried to kill yourself that really we were forced to admit that something was not right."

I looked up slowly. He wasn't looking at me. I took a moment to watch him; his tired face looked gaunt and more aged than the last I remembered. I looked back at the floor quickly before he noticed I was paying attention.

"Your mother found you on the bathroom floor. I could hear her screaming from outside the house. I raced inside and we called 911. You hadn't been taking your medicine for a while; you saved it all up for that day and took it all. Even though we were able to get you to the hospital in time, your mother acts as if you died that day. She became depressed, sleeping all the time, quit her job . . ."

Tears filled my eyes but I would not let them fall. Everything he was saying made sense. Of course it made sense; it was the rational explanation for all of this. Part of me wanted to just give in, believe every word, take my medicine and get better. I was so incredibly tired of willful ghosts taking over my body without my permission, messing with my life. Maybe being crazy was preferable.

I was busy contemplating my new glamorous life as a resident of Edgewood, not haunted, but insane. I could wear a bathrobe all day and take up a few conspiracy theories. Maybe I would spend lunch time making mash potato art and no one would care because I was certifiably nuts.

". . . she was always a little cold to you because of that and I'm sorry. She tried her best. Maybe adoption wasn't the best answer after all but I am really really glad that we found you . . ."

That snapped me back to attention. "What did you say?"

My dad lurched into perfect posture, startled by the sound of my voice. "I was saying I was sorry, about not telling you earlier that you were adopted. But it really doesn't matter because you are my daughter, always have been and I really want you to know . . ."

Without saying another word, I stood up and walked out of the room. I left my 'dad' alone in the visitation room looking stunned and sad. Good, whatever. I couldn't stand any more new information. Adopted! Maybe I shouldn't talk to anyone else for the rest of my life, because the next person I talk to might tell me I'm an alien and that my home planet was destroyed by meteors. Why couldn't someone show up and tell me I was secretly a princess and they wanted to take me to my kingdom and teach me how to be a Queen? Why couldn't I be Ann Hathaway and have a princess diary? Uh uh, not me. I got to be an orphaned girl that either saw ghosts or had succumbed to schizophrenia - the jury was still out on that.

I stalked down the nondescript hallway and pushed open the heavy door to my room. I threw myself down on the bed with gross dramatic flair. Sighing loudly I rolled from my stomach to my back and stared at the little camera in the corner of the ceiling, and gave it the finger.

A small giggle filled my head, its infectious rattle distracting from my rage. I looked to my right and there was Miranda in all her translucent glory. She was standing by my bed, covering her smile with her hands. "That's not nice," she laughed.

"Yes, well, I'm not feeling very nice today Miranda. You're not supposed to be here."

"I'm not?" Miranda glanced around, as if looking for someone. "Why not?" she whispered, innocently.

"Because I'm supposed to be a normal run of the mill crazy person, and I have drugs now. Through the miracle of modern science you and all your little pale pals were supposed to go 'poof' and never return."

Miranda plopped onto the empty bed next to mine, arms crossed and bottom lip pushed out in a perfect pout. "You want me to go away?"

"Well, not to be rude, but yes. In fact, I need you to go away. I need all of you to go away. In case you haven't noticed, Miranda, my life is basically unraveling before my eyes."

I shivered as the room got colder than I had ever experienced. My warm breath puffed out in front of my face, swimming in the chilly air. Miranda started to cry. The sound of her sobs growing louder was the only thing I could hear.

"We can't go away," she explained between sniffles. "We are anchored to you. We were lost and alone and then we found you. Now we can't go away, not even if we wanted to."

"Why?" I had no idea Miranda knew so much about this and I wasn't about to let her go without answering some questions.

"I don't know exactly. I just know that I can't go very far away from you, I've tried. We all have tried. It's painful sometimes, to watch the living. We would go if we could."

"Miranda? Why does Katrina hate me so much?"

"She doesn't really, she just wants what we all want, to move on. She's just, well, not very nice about it."

"I'll say! She tried to kill me - twice!"

"More times than that really. . .," Miranda muttered quietly.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. It's my fault that she's trying to kill you Vivian. I'm sorry! I shouldn't have told her about the necklace. I didn't know all this would happen! I'm sorry!" Her little voice was getting higher and faster reaching a fevered pitch that hurt my head. The more upset she got, the colder the room grew. Ice crystals started forming at the corners of the one little window high up on my wall.

"Calm down, Miranda, you're hurting my head. This necklace?" I asked, holding up my tarnished golden coin on a chain.

"Yes," she whispered meekly, putting her little hands over the one she wore as well.

"What the hell is it? I've been wearing it ever since Molly gave it to me; at least, I thought Molly gave it to me. Hey, did you ever actually see Molly?"

Miranda took a deep breath and held if for several long quiet seconds. "I never saw Molly, only you could. But if say she's real then she's real Vivian. I always believed you, honest!"

"Great, so I am insane after all. Insane and haunted! If you're really real, that is. There is a very good chance that I'm in this room all alone ranting at nothing like a crazy person!"

"I don't think you're crazy at all cupcake and I think it's about time someone let you in on all these little secrets." Rusty appeared behind me. Circling the bed he stopped right in front of me. Instinctively I leaned back. I didn't trust them anymore, any of them.

I had never seen more than one ghost at a time, until recently I didn't even think they knew about each other. Turns out they do, they just don't really happen to care about each other's existence all that much. Rusty sat down across from me, next to Miranda. The bed didn't move as you would normally expect it to when new weight was added.

"Miranda is right, we couldn't leave you even if we wanted to and some of us do want to Vivian, trust me."

"Not me!" Miranda pouted.

Rusty looked at her with eyes full of compassion. Even if he was a little bit nutty, I found myself wishing I had known him when he was alive. He was tall and dressed in trousers and a button down shirt, half way dressed up, as if he just got off work. Back in the day Rusty had been a raising star in the real estate world and a very eligible bachelor. He had died in his late 20's almost 40 years before I was born. That is a very long time to be wandering around lost in the dark, no wonder he was a little 'off'.

"Katrina, specifically, wants to break free of you. Being connected to you means having to watch the world of the living and not being able to participate. She can't stand it. Not only that but she has grown terribly jealous of you as well. She tried to just take over your body but it's tiring and she couldn't do it for long periods of time so she became depressed. She wanted to get tossed back into the deep dark nothingness."

"That's why she wants me dead? If I'm dead then, what happens to you all?"

"We aren't really sure. We assume we will go back to wandering the ethereal plains alone but really any number of things could happen. The white light could appear again, we could get a second chance to move on. No way of knowing really, but Karina doesn't really care anymore. To her, anything would be better than the current state. After her failed attempt at getting you to over dose, she spent a long time sulking and for a while I though she had given up. Then she found a new angle."

Rusty stopped and gave a sideline glance at Miranda who ducked her head back down and started crying again. "I said I was sorry! I didn't know! Katrina never talks to me and when she suddenly did I got scared and just blurted everything out!"

Apparently, Katrina noticed the necklace I had started wearing and remembered that she had seen it before - around Miranda's neck. She stalked Miranda for days, scaring the daylights out of her and tricking her into confessing all that she knew.

Rusty took over the explanation since Miranda had vanished into thin air, too embarrassed to be in the same room with me anymore. "The necklace insures safe passage from this world to the next. The gold coin pays the Ferryman who transports souls. Who ever gave it to originally must have thought you were in danger of dying unexpectedly."

Visions of a demony fellow in a long dark cloak rowing a little wooden boat flashed before me.

"And you actually believe this Ferryman stuff? Who would have given me the necklace?"

"Many cultures believe, but from the looks of you I would guess you have a Romanian ancestor or two, maybe Gypsies. And it doesn't matter if it's true or not, I told you, Katrina is willing to try anything."

"I wouldn't know about Gypsies; I was adopted. Another new mystery to unravel."

"You're full of mystery Vivian, always have been. Anyway, Katrina is now convinced that if she possesses you and then you die with that necklace on that she can hitch a ride with you to the other side for sure. Rubbish if you ask me, I wouldn't risk your life for it, that's for sure."

I was trying to puzzle everything out in my head but all the new information was swirling around, mingling with the tranquillizers and becoming one big mish-mashed blur. "Then why would Molly give it to me in the first place. . . I mean. . . . why would I give it to me. Wait . . . that doesn't make sense either."

"Well, you weren't supposed to wear it, idiot!" Molly's familiar voice made me jump. She appeared before me looking even more ragged and tired than usual. She could barely hold herself upright and swayed back and forth as if standing in the wind. Now that I could see her and Rusty side by side there was something unmistakably different about their appearances. Molly looked more like a flickering light, a holographic image that I could presumably reach right through. Rusty was pale and translucent but there was a white misty thickness to him that made him seem more solid. "Take it off!" she demanded. Her voice was punctuated by heavy pauses as if it were incredibly hard for her to say each word to me.

Numbly, I obeyed; my hands shaking as I gingerly undid the clasp. I let the coin and the gold chain pool together in the middle of one palm and then clutched it tightly. Molly closed her eyes and rested. It was clear that she wanted to say a lot more but something was preventing her. Before her light flickered out she made one last request, she told me to locate my adoption file.

"Rusty," I asked, "did you see her? Did you see Molly? She was just here."

"I'm sorry kiddo." He shook his head. "I'm glad you took that necklace off though, I think it will lower Katrina's temptation to kill you off, at least for a little while."

I took off the offending trinket and stashed it underneath some clothes in my tiny hospital dresser. If I was going to survive I needed to gain some control. Information could be a powerful weapon and so far I was being bulldozed by those who had it before I did. I needed to take matters into my own hands and find out for myself, once and for all, just what the hell was going on.