“Well?” Liesl demanded. Her hands were shaking, and she heard her heart go womp-womp-womp painfully in her chest as she waited for the ghost’s answer.
“You didn’t say hello,” Po said.
“What?”
“You said that people on the Living Side always say hello to each other,” Po said, and Liesl could tell from the way it faded that it had been offended. “But you didn’t say it.”
“I forgot,” Liesl said sharply. She would have strangled the ghost, if it had had a head or neck or body. “We had a deal, remember? You promised you would look for my father.”
“I remember,” Po said, and didn’t say anything more.
Liesl took a deep breath. She realized if she lost her temper, the ghost might simply go away. She tried to start again, from the beginning. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” Po said.
“How are you?”
“Tired,” Po said. It had been across incredible distances; it had covered vast, unimaginable tracts of time since it had last spoken with Liesl the night before. It had been across eons that stretched like deserts across the universe: places where time was as water in the Sahara—gone, drifting to dust. It had been into cold, black seas where souls huddled together, and into dark tunnels burned straight into the center of existence, which led forever away, away, away.
But it could tell none of this to Liesl, so it just repeated, “Very, very tired.”
“Oh?” Liesl dug her fingernails into her palms. She was itching to ask about her father again, but she forced herself to remember her manners. “Did you have a long day?”
For a second she swore the ghost laughed. Then she thought the wind had only blown in through the attic window for a second, rustling the papers on her desk. “Longer than long. It took forever.”
Liesl did not know that Po meant this literally, and thought it was a stupid thing to say. But she stopped herself from saying so. “I’m very sorry to hear you are tired,” she said stiffly, her inside voice screaming: Tell me what you know about my dad! Tell me now or I’ll kill you again! I’ll make you a double-ghost!
“What does that mean? What does it mean to say you’re sorry?”
Liesl groped for words to describe it. “It means—it means what it means. It means that I feel bad. It means that I wish I could make you untired.”
Po flipped upside down and then righted itself, still obviously confused. “But why should you wish anything for me?”
“It’s an expression,” Liesl said. Then she thought hard for a minute. “People need other people to feel things for them,” she said. “It gets lonely to feel things all by yourself.”
Po appeared next to her. And suddenly she felt Bundle around her, a pile in her lap, a bare outline in the dark. The ghost-pet had no warmth or weight, but still she could sense it. It was hard to describe: as though the darkness beside her had texture, suddenly, like a deep drift of velvet.
Po asked, “Did you remember the drawing?”
Liesl had drawn Po a train with wings attached to its side: great big feathery wings, like those of the sparrows she saw perched on the rooftops directly across from her window. She passed the drawing to the ghost before remembering that the ghost had no hands with which to grab the sheet of paper. Instead she held it out, and the ghost looked at it thoughtfully for a minute or two.
At last the ghost seemed satisfied and said, “I’ve found your father for you. He is on the Other Side.” Bundle made a mewing noise in the back of its throat.
Liesl did not know whether to be relieved or unhappy, so she felt both at the same time: a terrible feeling, like two sharp blades running through her in different directions. “Are you—are you sure? Is it definitely him?”
“I’m sure,” Po said, and stood again, drifting like a mist to the middle of the room.
“Did you—did you speak to him? Did you speak to him about me?” Liesl’s voice was a bare squeak. “Did you tell him I miss him? And did you tell him good-bye?”
“There was no time,” Po said, and Liesl thought she heard something in its voice. A sadness, perhaps.
Po was sad, because the ghost knew that in the vast oceans of time that surrounded it endlessly on either side, somehow there was never enough time for the very things you needed to say and do. But it would not tell Liesl that.
Liesl’s eyes were bright. Even when she was sad, she seemed full of hope. You could see the hope shining off her: It made its own glow, as though inside of her a lamp was illuminated.
Liesl was silent for a minute. “What does it mean?” she said finally. “That he is there, on the Other Side? I mean, why hasn’t he . . . gone Beyond?”