Chapter 2

Remember the no shoes rule. Mom's playful voice echoed in the silent house.

We stood on the tiled squares inside our back door, and all of us had our muddy shoes off. I gripped my boots so tight, my fingers hurt. My heart's quick knocks hadn't slowed because every time I blinked, dead Sarah lurched behind my eyelids.

Should I tell Dad what I thought I saw or pretend everything was normal? But how could I do that when nothing was?

The house wasn't even normal because everything reminded me of Mom. The kitchen sink where she danced and did dishes at the same time, the curled seedpods she kept in a glass on top of the piano in the living room, the recliner she always sat in when she peeled off her hose after a day at work. All these objects seemed dead, too, and they seemed deader after the finality of Mom's funeral. The heart of the house had stopped beating, and we were expected to live inside an empty shell.

Dad and Darby shuffled their socked feet. All of us huddled by the door, brushing up against each other. Then Dad cleared his throat and braved the first step toward the living room.

"Dad?" Darby called.

He turned in slow motion. "Yes?"

Darby's mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Dad attempted a smile, but his chin quivered as if he was fighting more tears. "I have to change clothes." His voice wavered. He tugged at his tie and disappeared around the corner.

Darby looked up at me, blue eyes huge behind her glasses. Neither of us moved.

"Leigh?" she whispered.

I planted a kiss on the top of her blonde head. "Go change your clothes." Somehow the words squeezed through the knot clutching my throat.

She nodded, took a breath, and stepped toward her bedroom. A second later, I followed down the hall.

The silence in the house was too much. I needed noise, something to drown out the deafening hush. Even my chaotic bedroom, which Mom rarely entered since she'd given up cleaning it, felt empty. Her old Gibson guitar leaned against a wall in the corner. Punk rock band stickers from the seventies and eighties covered the blue finish. She was teaching me to play. Had been. Had been teaching me to play.

I dropped my muddy boots on the floor and dug my mp3 player out from under a pile of clothes and Stephen King books. The Lunachicks soon drilled into my head through my earbuds. Still wearing my black funeral dress, I collapsed onto my bed. The weight in my chest anchored me there.

I let my eyes close while the rebellious melody drifted into another rowdy song.

Bad idea. There was dead Sarah. Her mouth hung open, revealing the same gloomy black shadows that followed her. Her hands reached out to me.

I snapped my eyes open, but hands still reached for me.

"Oh, God!" I bolted upright. "Dad," I said, all breathy as I tore out my earbuds and looked up at him. "You scared me."

"Sorry. I was calling for you, but you didn't answer." He sank next to me, now wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

I held up my mp3 player. "I'm progressing my inevitable hearing loss."

"Hm." Another attempted smile. "Are you hungry? There's lots of food."

"I know, Dad. All of Krapper brought food over."

He actually did manage a small smile at my nickname for our boring town. "We won't ever have to go grocery shopping again." He flinched at his own words as if they had ricocheted off the air and back into his mouth to choke him. Grocery shopping with Mom had been the highlight of every Saturday since she could make even the monotonous thrilling. He swallowed. "Who could eat anyway?"

That was quite a thing for him to say. He was always hungry because he had the metabolism of a hummingbird. He looked like the real life, grown up version of Barbie's boyfriend, Ken, and his name really was Ken. But right then, he didn't look normal since his eyes were bloodshot and his face was locked in a frown.

Half of Darby appeared in the doorway. This was her way of asking me if she could come into my room. Maybe that was so only half of her would get rejected. I waved her inside.

"Can Merlin read to you guys?" she asked.

I could only nod. Merlin had always been a Darby-Mom thing, though I would listen in while I did my homework. I scooted over to make room for her and her fat Before Merlin's Beard book.

Dad tossed aside the pile of clothes on my armchair. "Do you remember where you left off?"

She hadn't read any since Mom died. But then again, they'd read the entire series together three times. Darby should have the whole thing memorized by now.

"Mm-hm," she said, plopping next to me. "The spiders told Merlin the fountain of youth was inside the wardrobe."

She opened the book to her purple mermaid bookmark and tossed her hair over her shoulder as if to prepare for a role in a Before Merlin's Beard movie. Her shoulders rose and fell with shaky breaths while she studied the place where she and Mom had left off. After a long moment, she began reading, and Darby wasn't Darby anymore. She gave each character a distinct voice and knew when to slow down or speed up at the suspenseful parts. The movies had nothing on her. She didn't quite have the British accent down, but hey, she was only nine.

Dad and I sat back and listened, him in my armchair, me in my bed. We were immersed in the story for who knows how long, but Dad's eyes couldn't fight gravity. His soft snores interrupted a dragon fight.

Darby stopped reading, marked her place with her bookmark, and rested her head on my shoulder as if her inner light bulb had gone out. She was Darby again. Her warmth made me drowsy, but I wouldn't close my eyes. Instead, I rested my cheek on her head and listened to Dad's snores.

Another storm rattled my window. Typical Krapper. The weather here was just as random as cards falling in fifty-two card pick-up. One minute was sunny and almost tranquil. The next, a tornado could rip through the front door. The nonstop wind made me want to punch someone in the face, just like I punched that kid in third grade when he introduced me to the stupid card game.

Wind mingled with Dad's snores to create a strange song while the light outside my window dipped into twilight. Between the broken harmonies of the coming storm and the snoring, there was another sound. Whispering.

I righted my head to hear better. Maybe it wasn't whispering. It sounded garbled, yet urgent. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't the wind. The wind here didn't whisper before a storm. It shrieked.

Tap-tap-tap.

The sound came from the window above my head. My heart jack-hammered.

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

I refused to look up so I buried my face in Darby's hair. How could she still be sleeping with the tapping and the whispering and my crazy heartbeat?

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap. And more whispering.

My body was as rigid as the giant tree in my front lawn. The tree that was far enough away from my window that it couldn't possibly be its branches reaching for me.

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

Could it be dead Sarah, her muddy face pressed against the glass, looking down at me, Darby, and Dad? Why hadn't I closed the stupid blinds?

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

I pressed my lips together so they would catch my scream.