The Night Sister

From Piper’s vantage point on the little hillside between the woods and the empty pool, she could clearly see what was happening in there: Amy kissing Jason Hawke. Margot, just behind Piper, hadn’t seen yet.

“Margot, run ahead and scope out the trailer,” Piper ordered, her voice smooth but steely. “See if you can find a way in; just don’t go in until we get there.” Once her sister had skipped off, Piper approached the edge of the pool. Amy had a pair of binoculars around her neck. Piper realized with a rush of anger that they were probably the ones they’d found yesterday in Room 4—even though the plan had been to put everything back exactly the way they found it.

“Oh, hey, Piper,” Amy said when she looked up and saw her standing there.

Her voice was light and cheerful, like everything was perfectly normal. Like being in the pool kissing Jason was exactly where she was supposed to be. Piper said nothing. She didn’t dare open her mouth, worried a scream would come out. She shoved her trembling hands deep into the pockets of her jeans as Jason, bashful, smiled.

“What’s he doing here?” Piper said at last.

“He came to talk to me about something,” Amy said. “But he’s going home now. Right, Jay Jay?”

Jason looked confused and then wounded. “Huh? I…”

“I’ll see you around. I’ve got plans with Piper and Margot today.”

Amy was holding something in her hand. Something flat and square. A Polaroid picture.

Jason climbed the ladder out of the pool, but then he turned back to Amy. “Maybe I can stop by later?” he said. Amy looked at Piper and rolled her eyes in a dramatic, can-you-believe-him kind of way.

No, Piper couldn’t believe him. But what she really couldn’t believe was that Amy had kissed him again.

“I’m kinda busy all day,” Amy told him. “But another time. Totally.”

He nodded and sulked off.

“What was that about?” Piper asked, voice shaky.

“Nothing. It was nothing, Piper.”

“It didn’t look like nothing.”

“Well, it was.”

“Why’d you kiss him again?”

“God, what are you, my mother? The kissing police?”

“No, I…”

“Look at this,” Amy said, holding the photo out for Piper to inspect. “What do you see?”

Piper couldn’t see much. The picture looked all messed up, like the chemicals hadn’t developed right. “It kind of looks like a butterfly.”

Amy shook her head. “The ghost came back last night. I got a picture. This is proof!”

Piper squinted down at the photograph. “It’s hard to tell what it is.”

“Jason could tell what it was. He believes me,” Amy snapped.

Piper swallowed hard. So this was how it was going to be. “We should go catch up to Margot before she gets impatient and goes into that old trailer on her own,” Piper said. “The place is probably a death trap.”

—

The old trailer’s tires were flat, and the tall grass of the field behind the house had grown up around its sides. It must have originally been painted blue and white, but the colors had faded, and in a few patches had been scraped away to reveal bare, rusty metal. The windows were cracked and filthy, and a heavy padlock hung on the front door.

“I couldn’t see a way in,” Margot said. They had found her sitting on the cinder-block steps leading up to the front door. “Where’d Jason go?”

“Home,” Piper said, firmly. Then she turned to Amy. “So you’ve never been inside?” Piper asked, nodding at the trailer with the padlocked door.

“Nah. It’s always been really trashed. And I never found the key. But I think that if we break that window over there we can climb in. It’s pretty much broken already.”

“Do you think that old key we found in Room 4 could be the right one?” Margot asked.