My mother isn’t an award-winning television news journalist for nothing, you know.

“Suze?” Doc sounded concerned. “Your mom told me about…what happened. Do you want me to come home?”

I flopped back down on my pillows. “Home? No, I don’t want you to come home. Why would I want you to come home?”

“Well,” Doc said. He lowered his voice as if he suspected someone was listening in. “Because of Jesse.”

Out of all the people I live with, Doc was the only one who had the slightest idea that We Are Not Alone. Doc believed…and he had good reason to. Once when I’d been in a real jam, Jesse had gone to him. Scared out of his wits, Doc had nevertheless come through for me.

And now he was offering to do so again.

Only what could he do? Nothing. Worse than nothing, he could actually get hurt. I mean, look at what had happened to Dopey that morning. Did I want to see Doc with a faceful of bugs? No way.

“No,” I said quickly. “No, Doc—I mean, David. That isn’t necessary. You stay where you are. Things are fine here. Really.”

Doc sounded disappointed. “Suze, things are not fine. Do you want to talk about it, at least?”

Oh, yeah. I want to discuss my love life—or lack thereof—with my twelve-year-old stepbrother.

“Not really,” I said.

“Look, Suze,” Doc said. “I know it had to be upsetting. I mean, seeing his skeleton like that. But you’ve got to remember that our bodies are simply the vessel—and a very crude one, at that—in which our souls are carried while we’re alive on earth. Jesse’s body…well, it doesn’t have anything to do with him anymore.”

Easy for him to say, I thought miserably. He’d never gotten a look at Jesse’s abs.

Not that, if he had, they would have interested Doc much, of course.

“Really,” Doc went on, “if you think about it, that’s probably not the only body Jesse’s going to have. According to the Hindus, we shed our outer shells—our bodies—several times. In fact, we keep doing so, depending on our karma, until we finally get it right, thus achieving liberation from the cycle of rebirth.”

“Oh?” I stared at the canopy over my bed. I really could not believe I was having this conversation. And with a twelve-year-old. “Do we?”

“Sure. Most of us, anyway. I mean, unless we get it right the first time. But that hardly ever happens. See, what’s going on with Jesse is that his karma is all messed up, and he got bumped off the path to nirvana. He just needs to find his way back into the body he’s supposed to get after, you know, his last one, and then he’ll be fine.”

“David,” I said. “Are you sure you’re at computer camp? Because it sounds to me like maybe Mom and Andy dropped you off at yoga camp by mistake.”

“Suze,” Doc said with a sigh. “Look. All I’m saying is, that skeleton you saw, it wasn’t Jesse, all right? It has nothing to do with him anymore. So don’t let it upset you. Okay?”

I decided it was high time to change the subject.

“So,” I said. “Any cute girls at that camp?”

“Suze,” he said severely. “Don’t—”

“I knew it,” I said. “What’s her name?”

“Shut up,” Doc said. “Look, I gotta go. But remember what I said, will you? I’ll be home Sunday, so we can talk more then.”

“Fine,” I said. “See you then.”

“See you. And Suze?”

“Yeah, Doc—I mean, David?”

“Be careful, okay? That Diego—the guy from that book, who supposedly killed Jesse?—he seemed kind of…mean. You might want to watch your back or…well, whatever.”

Whatever was right.

But I didn’t say so to Doc. Instead, I said goodbye. What else could I say? Felix Diego isn’t the half of it, sonny? I was too upset even to entertain the idea that I might possibly have a second hostile spirit to deal with.

But I didn’t even know what upset was until Spike came scrambling through my open window, looked around expectantly, and meowed….

And Jesse didn’t show up.

Not even after I called out his name.

They don’t, as a rule. Ghosts, I mean. Come when you call them.

But for the most part, Jesse does. Although lately he’s been showing up before I even had a chance to call him, when I’ve only thought about calling him. Then wham, next thing I knew, there he was.

Except not this time.

Nothing. Not a flicker.

Well, I said to myself as I fed Spike his can of food and tried to remain calm, that’s okay. I mean, it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he’s busy. I mean, that was his skeleton down there. Maybe he’s following it to wherever they’re taking it. To the morgue or whatever. It’s probably very traumatic, watching people dig up your body. Jesse didn’t know anything about Hinduism and karma. At least, that I knew of. To him, his body had probably been a lot more than just a vessel for his soul.

That’s where he was. The morgue. Watching what they did with his remains.

But when the hours passed, and it got dark out, and Spike, who usually goes out prowling at night for small vermin and any Chihuahuas he can find, actually climbed onto my bed, where I sat leafing sightlessly through magazines, and butted his head against my hand…

Well, that’s when I knew.

That’s when I knew something was really, really wrong. Because that cat hates my guts, even though I’m the one who feeds him. If he’s climbing up onto my bed and butting his head against my hand, well, I’m sorry, that means the universe as I know it is crumbling.

Because Jesse isn’t coming back.

Except, I kept telling myself as my panic mounted, he promised. He swore.

But as the minutes ticked past and there was still no sign of him, I knew. I just knew. He was gone. They’d found his body, and that meant he was no longer missing, and that meant there was no need for him to hang around my room. Not anymore, just like I’d tried to explain to him last night.

Only he had sounded so sure…so sure that that wasn’t it. He had laughed. He had laughed when I first said it, like it was ridiculous.

But then where was he? If he wasn’t gone—to heaven, or to his next life (not to hell; there’s no place, I’m sure, for Jesse in hell, if there is a hell)—then where was he?