Don’t ask me why I even cared. Maybe because in a weird way, Jack reminded me a little of Doc, my youngest stepbrother, the one who is away at computer camp. A geek in the truest sense of the word, Doc is still one of my favorite people. I have even been making a concerted effort to call him by his name, David…at least to his face.

But Doc is—almost—able to get away with his bizarre behavior because he has a photographic memory and a computerlike ability to process information. Jack, so far as I could tell, possessed no such skills. In fact, I had a feeling he was a bit dim. So really, he had no excuse for his eccentricities.

“What’s the deal?” I asked him. “Don’t you want to learn how to swim and throw a Frisbee, like a normal person?”

“You don’t understand,” Jack said, not very distinctly, into the carpet. “I’m not a normal person. I—I’m different than other people.”

“Of course you are,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We’re all special and unique, like snowflakes. But there’s different, and then there’s freakish. And you, Jack, are going to turn freakish, if you don’t watch out.”

“I—I already am freakish,” Jack said.

But he wouldn’t elaborate, and I can’t say I pressed too hard, trying to find out what he meant. Not that I imagined he might like to drown kittens in his spare time, or anything like that. I just figured he meant freakish in the general sense. I mean, we all feel like freaks from time to time. Jack maybe felt like one a bit more often than that, but then, with Rick and Nancy for parents, who wouldn’t? He was probably constantly being asked why he couldn’t be more like his older brother, Paul. That would be enough to make any kid feel a little insecure. I mean, come on. Heidegger? On summer vacation?

Give me Clifford any day.

I told Jack that worrying so much was going to make him old before his time. Then I ordered him to go and put on his swimsuit.

He did so, but he didn’t exactly hurry, and when we finally got outside and onto the brick path to the pool, it was almost 10:00. The sun was beating down hard, though it wasn’t uncomfortably hot yet. Actually, it hardly ever gets uncomfortably hot in Carmel, even in the middle of July. Back in Brooklyn, you can barely go outdoors in July, it’s so muggy. In Carmel, however, there is next to no humidity, and there’s always a cool breeze from the Pacific….

Perfect date weather, actually. If you happened to have one. A date, I mean. Which, of course, I don’t. And probably never will—at least with the guy I want—if things keep up the way they’ve been going.

Anyway, Jack and I were tripping down the brick path to the pool when one of the gardeners stepped out from behind an enormous forsythia bush and nodded to me.

This wouldn’t have been at all odd—I have actually gotten friendly with all of the landscaping staff, thanks to the many Frisbees I have lost while playing with my charges—except for the fact that this particular gardener, Jorge, who had been expected to retire at the end of the summer, had instead suffered a heart attack a few days earlier, and, well…

Died.

Yet there was Jorge in his beige coveralls, holding a pair of hedge clippers and bobbing his head at me, just as he had the last time I’d seen him, on this very path, a few days before.

I wasn’t too worried about Jack’s reaction to having a dead man walk up and nod at us, since for the most part, I’m the only one I know who can actually see them. The dead, I mean. So I was perfectly unprepared for what happened next….

Which was that Jack ripped his hand from mine and, with a strangled scream, ran for the pool.

This was odd, but then, so was Jack. I rolled my eyes at Jorge, then hurried after the kid, since I am, after all, getting paid to care for the living. The whole helping-out-the-dead thing has to play second fiddle so long as I’m on the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort time clock. The ghosts simply have to wait. I mean, it’s not as if they’re paying me. Ha! I wish.

I found Jack huddled on a deck chair, sobbing into his towel. Fortunately, it was still early enough that there weren’t many people at the pool yet. Otherwise, I might have had some explaining to do.

But the only other person there was Sleepy, high up in his lifeguard chair. And it was pretty clear from the way Sleepy was resting his cheek in one hand that his shutters, behind the lenses of his Ray-Bans, were closed.

“Jack,” I said, sinking down onto the neighboring deck chair. “Jack, what’s the matter?”

“I…I t-told you already,” Jack sobbed into his fluffy white towel. “Suze…I’m not like other people. I’m like what you said. A…a…freak.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I assumed he was merely continuing our conversation from the room.

“Jack,” I said. “You’re no more a freak than anybody else.”

“No,” he sobbed. “I am. Don’t you get it?” Then he lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and hissed, “Suze, don’t you know why I don’t like to go outside?”

I shook my head. I didn’t get it. Even then, I still didn’t get it.

“Because when I go outside,” Jack whispered, “I see dead people.”

chapter

two

I swear that’s what he said.

He said it just like the kid in that movie said it, too, with the same tears in his eyes, the same fear in his voice.

And I had much the same reaction as I had when watching the movie. I went, inwardly, Freaking crybaby.

Outwardly, however, I said only, “So?”

I didn’t mean to sound callous. Really. I was just so surprised. I mean, in all my sixteen years, I’ve only met one other person with the same ability I have—the ability to see and speak with the dead—and that person is a sixty-something-year-old priest who also happens to be principal of the school I am currently attending. I certainly never expected to meet up with a fellow mediator at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.

But Jack took offense at my “So?” anyway.

“So?” Jack sat up. He was a skinny little kid, with a caved-in sort of chest, and curly brown hair like his brother’s. Only Jack lacked his brother’s nicely buff shape, so the curly hair, which looked sublime on Paul, gave Jack the unfortunate appearance of a walking Q-tip.