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  "Four!" he'd announce, counting the skips. Or, "Eleven! New record!"

  My eyes darted around, expecting to see a ghost at every corner, but all I saw was darkness, a hint of phosphorescence in the waves, the odd beam of light from the enormous homes looming above the rock wall.

  Finally, Duncan spoke. "You said you weren't going to do this anymore."

  "They didn't give me much choice," Delilah said. "And anyway, I refused to do the séance."

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  "But you used to do them?" I asked. No wonder she'd been so casual about the figures in my photographs: ghosts were no big deal to her.

  "Not that much," she said. "Just a few times in eighth grade. Mostly I read minds and told futures."

  "You read minds?"

  "Oh, sure." She stopped walking and studied me. "Let's see...you're worried about what people think of your hair and your clothes."

  My stomach began to hurt.

  "And you like Duncan."

  My face grew hot.

  "But you're not sure where things with him are going to lead."

  My knees grew wobbly. I had a sudden urge to flee, to get as far away from Delilah as possible. What else did she know about me?

  When she saw my expression, Delilah laughed. "You suck," Duncan told her.

  "Can you see my future?" I asked, unsure if I wanted to know. "Oh my God," Leo said, rubbing a flat rock between his fingers.

  "Tell her," Duncan commanded, with an edge I'd never heard before.

  "Sorry, Madison, I was kidding," Delilah said. "I thought you realized."

  I shook my head with confusion. Out beyond the waves the moon shone fuzzy white, a fog blurring the edges.

  "I'm just good at reading people--you know, their expressions

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  and body language," Delilah admitted. "But I can't read minds. Or communicate with ghosts."

  "Or tell the future," Leo added.

  "And you can't read palms, either," Duncan said.

  She pointed her index finger at him. "Now there you're wrong. Anyone can read palms. You just have to know which line is which."

  Back at the wide public beach, the bonfire glowed orange. Ahead of us, there was darkness, rocks, churning surf. And Delilah couldn't see anything supernatural. But could my camera?

  "Why did you pretend, then?" I was pretty annoyed. "They all think you're psychic."

  She crossed her arms. "Bunch of sheep. They'll believe anything. You can't imagine how often they send me on these ridiculous ghost hunts. Someone in a beach house walks near the rocks with a flashlight, and all of a sudden it's a message from beyond."

  "Cats," Leo said.

  "Oh, yeah," Delilah said. "I get sent after cats a lot: the glowing eyes, the rustling in the trees. Raccoons, too. Those are really scary."

  "So--those people aren't your friends?" I thought of all the people crowding around Delilah at the bonfire. Was she really that fake?

  Delilah sighed. She wandered over to the rock wall and pulled herself up, settling down next to a keep off rocks sign. The three of us followed and arranged ourselves on the boulders like barnacles. Duncan sat just above me and to the side, stroking my hair.

  "Sixth grade was a tough year," Delilah said, finally. "That's

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  when we moved onto Main Street and opened the shop. Before that, my mom just worked out of our apartment, calling herself a spiritual healer. For some reason, that was okay--New Agey but not full-out weird, you know? I was always kind of different, I guess, but until then, the other kids didn't seem to notice."

  The fog held us in a kind of cocoon. The waves hissed gently. I forgot, for the moment, about ghosts.

  Leo broke the silence. "Everyone thought I was different right from the start."

  Our laughter was a relief.

  "Kids can be mean," Delilah said, her voice cracking a little. "Some of them said my mother was a witch. Others said she was a fake. Nobody wanted to eat lunch with me or even be seen with me. They made fun of me and my mother and--" She stopped dead.

  "It doesn't bother me," Leo said. "Really." He wasn't entirely convincing.

  Delilah found a loose pebble among the boulders and flung it out to sea, but we didn't hear it land.

  "The summer between sixth and seventh grades, I tried to convince my mother to homeschool me," Delilah said. "She refused."

  Leo snorted. "You'd be better off home-schooling her."

  Delilah said, "But she said the most amazing thing: 'They're just saying that stuff because they feel bad about themselves.' It was total crap, of course, but it gave me an idea. On the first day of school the next year, this nasty girl named Avon said something inane about me casting spells or eating toads or something. I stared at her for, like, twenty seconds. And then I whispered,

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  'Oh, my God.' Delilah covered her mouth and widened her eyes in mock horror.

  "And she's all, 'What? What?'" she continued. "And I'm all, 'I can't tell you! Just--be careful.' She begged me to tell her what I'd seen, but I said I couldn't."

  "Unless she coughed up some cash," Leo broke in.

  Delilah sighed. "I didn't feel bad about taking her money. Such a poor excuse of humanity..."

  "What did you tell her?" I asked.

  "Nothing right away," Delilah said. "I tortured her for a couple of weeks. Every time I saw her, I stopped dead and stared. Then I'd hurry away like whatever I'd seen had frightened me."

  "Brilliant," I said.

  "Plus, I started doing it to a couple of other offenders," Delilah said. "And then the word spread, and the demand grew and..."

  "She had a nice little business going," Leo said. "Not as good as the eBay stuff, but at least we didn't have to get up early on Saturday mornings for the yard sales."

  "What did you tell that girl?" I asked. "What was it--Avon?"

  Delilah smiled. "I said that something bad was going to happen to someone she loved--or maybe to someone close to someone she loved. I threw that in to cover my butt. I said I couldn't see the picture clearly, but I thought it was going to happen outdoors."

  "Did it?" I asked.

  "A month later, her cousin had a car accident."

  "Oh, my God." That was kind of creepy. Delilah made a little waving motion. "She was fine. And I'm not sure Avon even loved her. But it was enough to establish my

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  reputation." She slid off the rock. We all followed, Duncan helping me down with both hands, being super-careful even though I was, like, two feet from the sand. "Do you still tell fortunes?"

  She shook her head. "I gave it up when I started high school because it was wrong--and also because I wasn't charging enough. I mean, five bucks a reading? Ridiculous."

  "So you don't have any psychic abilities?" I pressed. "Because I've heard they can be genetic."

  Delilah leveled her gaze. "Madison. Get real. No one has psychic abilities. My mom is a loon. There are rational explanations for all supernatural phenomena."

  "What about ghosts?" I asked.

  "No such thing," Delilah insisted, brushing a bit of sand off of her overalls.

  "But my photographs..." I said.

  Delilah sighed. She sounded like an exasperated adult talking to an especially irritating two-year-old. It annoyed me.

  "Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean it's supernatural," Delilah said. "That's the kind of thinking that once made people believe in rain gods and the man in the moon."

  We were quiet for a moment. Duncan squeezed my hand. I didn't squeeze back. I wanted Lexie. I wanted to go home.

  Leo tapped his chin, thinking. "The figures in Madison's photos have to be ghosts. It's the only thing that makes any sense."

  Delilah said, "Ugh," and rolled her eyes.

  "They could be," Duncan added.

  "Sure," Delilah said. "And I'm the Easter bunny."

  "Guess that explains the fuzzy coat," I said.

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  Delilah's mouth dro
pped open, I wished I could undo my words; Delilah wasn't the kind of person you talked back to. But after a moment she smiled. "Hey, Leo, let's walk back to the fire. I'm getting kind of cold."

  "So what's their deal?" I asked Duncan. We were at the end of the beach, where the rocks jutted into the ocean, just past the point where I'd taken the first creepy photograph.

  We took a few steps into the ocean. Foamy water scurried around our bare feet. Duncan had told me that stingrays swam out here during the day, but he was pretty sure they slept at night.

  "Whose deal?" he asked. He'd rolled up his jeans, but the bottoms were getting splashed anyway.

  "Delilah and Leo. And Rose. Especially Rose. How old is she?"

  "Thirty-one next month," he said. "It's totally freaking her out that she can be that old. Rose is great, but she can be a real drama queen."

  The numbers whirred through my brain. "So she had Leo when she was..."

  "Fifteen," Duncan said. "Delilah says that's why Rose is, like, emotionally stuck. But that's just the kind of thing Delilah says because Delilah acts like she's forty. Rose is cool."

  "What about their father?" I lifted my camera and snapped a random shot, as I'd been doing ever since Delilah and Leo had headed back to the bonfire. Duncan leaned over me, and we peered at the screen: no ghost.

  "They don't talk about it. Though Rose mentioned something about bad chakras."

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  "And what about your dad?" I asked. "How are his chakras?" I pictured Larry with his heavy eyebrows and bandannas. He and Rose seemed like a really weird combination.

  Duncan reached into the foam and pulled out a rock. He peered at it for a moment before tossing it far into the surf. It landed with a splash.

  He said, "Rose says my dad's magnetic field is all screwed up, which is why he can't stay in one place. We've been in Sandyland over a year. That's a record."

  "So you're staying?"

  He stared into the distance. "Nah," he said finally. "I think we'll leave soon."

  "Why?" Since I wouldn't be sticking around, either, that shouldn't have bothered me as much as it did.

  "My dad's getting restless. He'd stay if Rose was more into him, but he's asked her to marry him, like, four times, and she won't commit." He snorted. "She says she's too young."

  "How did they meet?" I asked.

  "Rose was visiting a meditation center in this town where we were living. My dad was working at a convenience store, which he hated because he likes to work with his hands, but it was the only job he could find. Anyway, Rose came in for a cup of herbal tea. Three days later we moved here."

  "Weren't you mad?" I asked. "I mean, having to leave your friends and stuff?"

  He shrugged--just one shoulder, like it was no big deal. "We'd only been there a couple of months. I didn't have any friends."

  "So...do you want to leave Sandyland?" I had to admit: tonight it seemed like a pretty nice place.

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  "No," he said simply. "I like it here. But--I kinda gotta go with whatever my father wants. He's the only family I've got."

  He reached into the surf and pulled out a shell. He held it up to the moonlight and then handed it to me. "It's a sand dollar. For good luck."

  I tucked the shell into the hoodie pocket. And then I aimed my camera toward the beach and snapped the darkness. We bent our heads over the screen. Half of me was afraid that another figure would appear, and the other half hoped that one would. But there was nothing there but water.

  Nothing says romance like an overlit parking lot, an open-all-night McDonald's, and the haze of freeway fumes. Still holding hands, Duncan and I stood within view of Home Suite Home on a tiny patch of grass by the curb, in the shadow of a mangy-looking pine tree.

  Duncan took my other hand and pulled me closer. He was only a couple of inches taller than me, which meant I could look straight into his eyes.

  "Can I buy you a Big Mac?" he asked. The golden arches (the real ones, not my mother's eyebrows) glowed behind him.

  I shook my head. It was almost midnight: my curfew back home. Did I have a curfew here? Did it matter?

  "Then can I kiss you?" he asked.

  The air between us felt electric. My stomach fluttered. Had I felt this nervous before Rolf had kissed me?

  I held Duncan's gaze. I wanted to kiss him so much, but it felt like I should know him longer or better. I didn't even know his last name. Come to think of it, I didn't even know his first name.

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  "Tell me your real name. Then you can kiss me."

  His mouth turned down at one corner. He frowned, thinking. Finally, he gave my hands a final squeeze--and dropped them. "Well, good night then."

  "Good night?" This was not going the way I had planned it.

  "I had fun."

  "Oh." I crossed my arms over my chest and thought about how much boys suck.

  He looked cold, standing there in the shadows. I yanked his sweatshirt over my head.

  "You can give it to me tomorrow," he said. "When we print out your photos."

  "I don't need it anymore." I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms.

  He nodded once and yanked the sweatshirt over his head. "It smells like you."

  "Sorry," I said. "No, that's a good thing."

  "Not always," I admitted.

  He touched my cheek and put his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie before pulling out something round and white. "You almost forgot your sand dollar."

  I took the shell. "Oh, yeah--for good luck." Fat lot of good it was doing me.

  "I'll wait here," Duncan said. "Till you get inside."

  "You don't have to." Across the parking lot, a faint light glowed in the window of my room.

  "I want to," he said. "So, I'll see you at the shop tomorrow? It opens at ten. And by the way, my last name is Vaughn."

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  ***

  My parents were both awake, lying in bed with the light on. My mother turned her head when I opened the door.

  "Did you have fun?" she asked quietly.

  I shrugged. "It was okay." (He didn't kiss me.)

  She was quiet for such a long moment, I thought she'd fallen asleep. "We're glad you're home," she said finally.

  "This isn't home." It just popped out.

  I walked toward the bathroom, but she stopped me just as I was about to turn on the light. "Madison, we have something to tell you."

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  14.

  Looking back on that moment when I stood in the bathroom door is like seeing another girl. I thought I knew who I was: Madison Sabatini, fifteen years old. Lexie's best friend. The newest yearbook photographer. A shopaholic with cute accessories and great hair. Well, maybe not so much anymore.

  I wish someone had taken my picture at that instant. I would have called the shot "Before."

  My father stayed lying on the bed. "I'm sorry, Madison."

  As a general rule, if someone says, "I'm sorry," for no apparent reason, you're screwed.

  "Okay," I said, thinking, Let's just get this over with. Were they getting divorced after all?

  My mother got out of bed and stood in the middle of the floor in her nightgown, arms crossed over her chest. She glared back at my father like she was waiting for him to say something--or at least open his eyes, which were closed now.

  I'd live with my mother, of course. Weekend visits with my

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  dad. They wouldn't make me choose.

  Finally, my mother spoke. "We lost the house."

  At first, I didn't understand. "But it's just where we left it," I replied stupidly.

  My mother shook her head. "Not that kind of lost. We have loans. A lot of them. For the house, the pool, the cars. We're six months behind on our mortgage. So now--the bank is taking the house."

  I shook my head. She wasn't making any sense. And did this mean no divorce? "So ask the bank for a little more time."

  "We did."

  "But why don't you just sell the house?
And then we can buy something smaller." I'd already kind of, sort of accepted that this might happen.

  My father finally sat up in bed and opened his eyes, though he still wouldn't meet my gaze. "We can't sell. The real estate market has gone down since we bought the house. We owe more money on it than it's worth."

  "What about your credit cards?" I asked, my stomach growing queasy. This couldn't be happening.

  "They're already maxed out," my father admitted.

  "But what about our things?" My voice cracked. Maybe this was all a big joke. Tell me it's a joke. Tell me they're getting divorced and this is their weird way of softening the blow.

  "Most of the furniture, the TVs--they were all bought on credit," my father said, still gazing at nothing. "The stores sent trucks to our house last week. Picked everything up."

  My mother cleared her throat. "Your father talked to the bank today. They're giving us one week to get everything else out. After

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  that, the sheriff will change the locks. Your father is going back on Wednesday to move everything into a storage unit." She blinked: must have had something in her eye. Tears were out of the question.

  She continued. "After that, the bank will auction off the house. The signs are probably out on our lawn already." Her voice cracked. With her two index fingers she wiped tears--they really were tears--from below her eyes.

  The bank was going to auction off our house? My mind began to whirl. What else did that mean? How long would it take before things got back to normal? How could they be so stupid?

  I held on to the doorjamb and tried to steady my breathing. I'd already considered that possibility of selling the house, but this just sucked. And it was kind of embarrassing. At school, I'd play it down. My mother was bored with the house. My father wanted to rent until the real estate market hit rock bottom.

  "Why a storage unit?" I said. "I mean, we're going to have to rent another house anyway--might as well find something now."

  My parents didn't answer. That's when it hit me.

  "We are going home, aren't we?" Still nothing. "Aren't we?"

  "I've spent months trying to drum up work," my father said.

  "You've spent months watching TV in your bathrobe," I said, not caring that I hurt him.