Finally I went to my best counselor, the Internet. There I found a difference of opinion. Some scientists proclaimed that there was absolutely no evidence that shock can turn someone’s hair white. Other scientists said yas, yas, it really could happen. That a sudden shock could kill the melanocyte stem cells that determine hair color. One article I read said that actually happened to Thomas More and Marie Antoinette before they were executed. Another article threw shade on that, saying it was just a legend. In the end, it was like something Mr. Harrigan sometimes said about buying stocks: you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Little by little, these questions and concerns faded, but I’d be lying if I told you that Kenny Yanko ever completely left my mind, then or now. Kenny Yanko in his closet with a rope around his neck. Maybe not losing consciousness before he could loosen the rope, after all. Kenny Yanko perhaps seeing something—only perhaps—that had frightened him so badly that he had fainted. That he had actually been scared to death. In daylight, that seemed pretty stupid. At night, especially if the wind was high and making little screaming sounds around the eaves, not so much.

* * *

A FOR SALE sign from a Portland realty company went up in front of Mr. Harrigan’s house, and a few people came up to look at it. They were mostly the kind who fly in from Boston or New York (some of them on charter jets, probably). The kind who, like the business folks who had attended Mr. Harrigan’s funeral, pay extra to rent expensive cars. One pair was my first married gay couple, young but clearly well-to-do and just as clearly in love. They came in a snazzy BMW i8, held hands everywhere they went, and did a lot of wow and amazing over the grounds. Then they went away and didn’t come back.

I saw a lot of these potential buyers because the estate (managed by Mr. Rafferty, of course) had kept Mrs. Grogan and Pete Bostwick on, and Pete hired me to help out with the grounds. He knew I was good with plants and was willing to work hard. I got twelve bucks an hour for ten hours a week, and with the big trust fund out of reach until I was in college, that money came in very handy.

Pete called the potential buyers Richie Riches. Like the married couple in their rented BMW, they went wow but didn’t buy. Considering the house was on a dirt road and the views were only good, not great (no lakes, no mountains, no rockbound seacoast with a lighthouse), I wasn’t surprised. Neither were Pete or Mrs. Grogan. They nicknamed the house White Elephant Manor.

* * *

In the early winter of 2011, I used some of my gardening money to upgrade my first-generation phone to an iPhone 4. I swapped in my contacts that same night, and when I scrolled through them, I came across Mr. Harrigan’s number. Without thinking too much about it, I tapped it. Calling Mr. Harrigan, the screen said. I put the phone to my ear with a combination of dread and curiosity.

There was no outgoing message from Mr. Harrigan. There was no robot voice telling me the number I’d called was no longer in service, and there was no ring. There was nothing but smooth silence. You could say my new phone was, heh-heh, as quiet as the grave.

It was a relief.

* * *

I took biology my sophomore year, and there was Ms. Hargensen, as pretty as ever, but no longer my love. I had switched my affections to a more available (and age-appropriate) young lady. Wendy Gerard was a petite blond from Motton who had just gotten rid of her braces. Soon we were studying together, and going to movies together (when either my dad or her mom or dad would take us, that was), and making out in the back row. All that sticky kid stuff that’s so absolutely fine.

My crush on Ms. Hargensen died a natural death, and that was a good thing, because it opened the way for friendship. I brought plants into class sometimes, and I helped out cleaning the lab, which we shared with the chem kids, after school on Friday afternoons.

On one of those afternoons, I asked her if she believed in ghosts. “I suppose you don’t, being a scientist and all,” I said.

She laughed. “I’m a teacher, not a scientist.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I suppose, but I’m still a good Catholic. That means I believe in God, and the angels, and the world of the spirit. Not so sure about exorcism and demonic possession, that seems pretty far out there, but ghosts? Let’s just say the jury’s out on that one. I’d certainly never attend a séance, or mess around with a Ouija board.”

“Why not?”

We were cleaning the sinks, something the chem kids were supposed to take care of before they left for the weekend but hardly ever did. Ms. Hargensen paused, smiling. Maybe a little embarrassed. “Science folks aren’t immune from superstition, Craig. I don’t believe in messing with what I don’t understand. My grandmother used to say a person shouldn’t call out unless they want an answer. I’ve always thought that was good advice. Why do you ask?”

I wasn’t going to tell her Kenny was still on my mind. “I’m a Methodist myself, and we talk about the Holy Spirit. Only in the King James Bible, it’s the Holy Ghost. I guess I was thinking about that.”

“Well, if ghosts exist,” she said, “I’ll bet not all of them are holy.”

* * *

I still wanted to be some kind of writer, although my ambition to write movies had cooled. Mr. Harrigan’s joke about the screenwriter and the starlet recurred to me every now and then, and had cast a bit of a pall over my show biz fantasies.

For Christmas that year Dad got me a laptop, and I started to write short stories. They were okay line by line, but the lines of a story have to add up to a whole, and mine didn’t. The following year, the head of the English Department tapped me to edit the school paper, and I got the journalism bug, which has so far never left me. I don’t think it ever will. I believe you hear a click, not in your head but in your soul, when you find the place where you belong. You can ignore it, but really, why would you?

I started getting my growth, and when I was a junior, after I had shown Wendy that yes, I had protection (it was U-Boat who actually bought the condoms), we left our virginity behind. I graduated third in my class (only 142, but still), and Dad bought me a Toyota Corolla (used, but still). I got accepted at Emerson, one of the best schools in the country for aspiring journalists, and I bet they would have given me at least a partial scholarship, but thanks to Mr. Harrigan I didn’t need it—lucky me.

There were a few typical adolescent storms between fourteen and eighteen, but actually not that many—it was as if the nightmare with Kenny Yanko had in some way frontloaded a lot of my adolescent angst. Also, you know, I loved my dad, and it was just the two of us. I think that makes a difference.

By the time I started college, I hardly ever thought of Kenny Yanko at all. But I still thought of Mr. Harrigan. Not surprising, considering that he had rolled out the academic red carpet for me. But there were certain days when I thought of him more often. If I was home on one of those days, I put flowers on his grave. If I wasn’t, Pete Bostwick or Mrs. Grogan did it for me.

Valentine’s. Thanksgiving. Christmas. And my birthday.

I always bought a dollar scratch ticket on those days, too. Sometimes I won a couple of bucks, sometimes five, and once I won fifty, but I never hit anything close to a jackpot. That was okay with me. If I had, I would have given the money to some charity. I bought the tickets to remember. Thanks to him, I was already rich.