I blinked at her. "Rick? Who's Rick?"

"The lifeguard," Cee Cee said with exasperation. Apparently, while I'd been unconscious, everyone had gotten to know one another. "That's why he had them hang out the yellow flag."

I squinted and peered up at the flag that now fluttered from the top of the lifeguard's chair. Usually green, except when riptides or extreme undertows were reported, it flew bright yellow, urging beachgoers to use caution in the water.

"I mean, look at Michael's neck," Cee Cee continued. I looked obligingly at Michael's neck.

"Rick says when he got there, there was something around my neck," Michael said. He couldn't, I noticed, seem to meet my gaze. "He thought it was a giant squid, at first. But that couldn't be, of course. There's never been one spotted this far north before. So he thought it must have been a man-of-war."

I didn't say anything. I was quite certain that Rick really did believe that Michael had been the victim of a Portuguese man-of-war. The human mind will do whatever it must to trick itself into believing anything but the truth – that there might be something else out there, something unexplainable … something not quite normal.

Something paranormal.

So the rope of seaweed that had been wrapped around Michael's throat became the arm of a giant squid, and then, later, the stinging tentacle of a jellyfish. It certainly couldn't have been what it had appeared to be: a piece of seaweed being used with deadly intent by a pair of invisible hands.

"And look at your ankles," Cee Cee said.

I looked down. Around both my ankles were bright red marks, like rope burns. Only they weren't rope burns. They were the places Felicia and Carrie had grabbed me, trying to drag me down to the ocean floor, and to certain death.

Those stupid girls needed manicures, and badly.

"You're lucky," Adam said. "I've been stung by a man-of-war before, and it hurts like a – "

His voice trailed off as he noticed Gina listening intently. Gina, who had four brothers, had certainly heard every swear word in the book, but Adam was much too gentlemanly to utter any in front of her.

"A lot," he finished up. "But you guys don't seem to have been hurt too badly. Well, except for that whole drowning thing."

I reached for my towel, and did my best to wipe off the sand that seemed to be coating me all over. What had that lifeguard done, anyway? Dragged me through the stuff?

"Well," I said. "I'm okay now. No harm done."

Sleepy, who'd followed me over along with everybody else, went, exasperatedly, "It is not okay, Suze. Do what the lifeguard tells you. Don't make me have to call Mom and Dad."

I looked at him in surprise. Not because I was mad about his threatening to rat me out, but because he'd called my mother Mom. He'd never done it before. My stepbrothers' own mother had died years and years ago.

Well, I thought to myself. She is the best mother in the world.

"Go ahead and call them," I said. "I don't care."

I saw Sleepy and the lifeguard exchange meaningful looks. I hurried to find my clothes, and started to wiggle into them, pulling them on right over my damp bikini. I wasn't trying to be difficult. Really, I wasn't. It's just that I totally could not afford a trip to the hospital just then, and the three-hour wait it would entail. In those three hours, I was fairly certain the RLS Angels were going launch another attack against Michael … and I could not in good conscience leave him to their devices.

"I am not," Sleepy said, folding his arms across his chest, a motion that caused the rubber of the wetsuit he was still wearing to squeak audibly, "taking you home unless you let the EMS guys check you out first."

I turned toward Michael, who looked extremely surprised when I asked him, politely, "Michael, would you mind taking me home?"

Now he seemed to have no problem meeting my gaze. His eyes very wide behind his glasses – he'd evidently found them where I'd abandoned them on my towel – he stammered, "Of c-course!"

This caused the lifeguard to shake his head in disgust and stomp away. Everyone else just stood around looking at me as if I were demented. Gina was the only one who came up to me as I was gathering up my books and preparing to follow Michael to where his car was parked.

"You and I," she whispered, "are going to be doing some talking when you get home."

I regarded her with what I hoped was an innocent look. The last slanting rays of the sun had set her aura of copper-colored curls glowing like a flaming halo.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You know what I mean," she said meaningfully.

And then she turned around and sauntered back over to where Sleepy stood, regarding me worriedly.

The truth was, I did know what she meant. She meant Michael. What was I doing, messing around with a boy like Michael, who was so obviously not my one true love?

But the thing was, I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell her that Michael was being stalked by four ghosts with murderous intent, and that it was my sacred duty as a mediator to protect him.

Although considering what happened later on that night, I probably should have.

"So," I said, as soon as Michael got the car – his mother's minivan again; his car, he explained, was still in the shop – going. "We need to talk."

Michael, now that he was back in his glasses and clothes, wasn't nearly the intimidatingly buff male specimen he'd been without them. Like Superman when he was in his Clark Kent attire, Michael had turned back into a stammering geek.

Only I couldn't help noticing, as he stammered, how nicely he filled out that sweater vest.

"Talk?" He gripped the wheel quite tightly as we sat in what, for Carmel, represented rush-hour traffic: a single tour bus and a Volkswagen filled with surfboards. "W-what about?"

"About what happened to you this weekend."

Michael turned his head sharply to look at me, then just as quickly turned back to face the road. "W-what do you m-mean?" he asked.

"Come off it, Michael," I said. I figured there was no point in being gentle with him. It was like a Band-Aid that needed to come off: either you did it with agonizing slowness, or you got it over with, hard and quick. "I know about the accident."

The tour bus finally started moving. Michael put his foot on the gas.