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I reached for one.
WANT TO DEVELOP YOUR CHARM AND INNER BEAUTY?
JOIN THE SUNSHINE CLUB!
There was a big cartoonish drawing of a gri
“What’s this?” I asked.
“The Sunshine Club,” Adrie
“Why just women?” I asked, ignoring my sister’s warning glower.
“Because it’s only for girls!” Adrie
“Well, thanks,” I said. “But I’m kind of busy this year.”
“We’re going to do really cool stuff!” she said. “Like study groups. And makeovers.”
I basically had to bite a hole in my tongue to keep from reacting. If Adrie
But then I looked at her, and noticed that her outfit wasn’t as wacky as usual. She wore a pair of jeans and a nice shirt. Nothing fancy, but a huge improvement over her typical ensemble.
I mean, look. I’m not going to win any awards for personal style. Some people, like Megan, could look at a closet full of clothes and put together a great outfit without even trying. Even Kasey was pretty good at it—she’d only been home a week, but she was already the more stylish sister.
I admired Adrie
While Adrie
When the pitch was finished, they all looked at me.
“Um, great,” I said.
“We’re going to put flyers up at school on Monday,” Adrie
Surrey High didn’t have metal detectors or anything, but it wasn’t really the type of place where kids are on the lookout for the next wholesome activity to devote their afternoons to. I felt bad, thinking how disappointing it would be when nobody joined.
“Good luck,” I said. “It sounds really fun.” And really pathetic, I didn’t say.
But you can probably imagine how much I was thinking it.
The next Friday night, we celebrated Megan’s ungrounding with a much smaller version of the party she’d pla
Megan’s house was like a cross between a hunting lodge and a corporate boardroom. Heavy wood furniture held cutting-edge electronics. An iron candelabra kept watch over Mrs. Wiley’s three cell phones at their charging station.
Megan’s grandmother was the CFO of an investment brokerage. She was queen of all she surveyed, and she demanded perfection and faultless obedience—from her interior decor, her two secretaries, and her granddaughter.
Mrs. Wiley adopted Megan after her mom died. And she was among the scariest people I’d ever met in my life. You just didn’t mess with the woman. And everyone—Megan included—knew it.
Our conversation had been doddering along when Pepper turned to me. “I forgot to tell you,” she said. “Did you know our sisters are totally friends again?”
“Really?” I waited for a sarcastic smile or something, some signal that she was joking.
“Yeah,” she said. “Weird, right?”
Forgetting even the broken arm and the cafeteria incident on Kasey’s first day, Kasey and Pepper’s sister were as incompatible as…well, as a drill team dancer and a person who ate lunch with Lydia.
I turned away, studying the seam of the armrest. Carter took my hand and bent my fingers like they were poseable toys.
I mean, yes. Kasey having friends was a good thing. A couple of weeks ago, if you’d told me the most popular girl in ninth grade wanted to hang out with her, I would have been thrilled.
But my sister, goofy Adrie
Or maybe it was. What did I know? I was a former Doom Squad member with a prep boyfriend and a cheerleader best friend.
I felt a tapping on my leg. “Oh! I forgot to tell you!” Megan said, her eyes wide. “Earlier, when I said I thought Emily had a doctor’s appointment? She didn’t. She ate lunch with your sister and Lydia.”
“With the Sunshine Club,” Pepper said.
“That’s your sister?” Carter asked, his nostrils flaring like he’d smelled something bad. “I’ve seen their pos- ters…I thought it was a campaign stunt.”
“Emily likes everybody,” Pepper said, waving it off. “She gets around.”
“Not at lunch,” I said, feeling oddly territorial. “Is she with them tonight?”
“Maybe,” Megan said. “She never texted me back.”
There was an unsettled silence. For Pepper and the other girls, it was probably more about the unexpected mixing of the social groups than anything else.
Carter’s chest heaved with a sigh, and he let go of my hand. Megan was staring at the ceiling fan, chewing her tongue like it was a piece of gum. Her fingers lightly drummed on the coffee table.
As for me, I was trying to scold myself back into a rational line of thinking.
So my sister was making friends across the established boundaries. That wasn’t cause for alarm. All it said about her was that she was open-minded, friendly. What did it say about me that I instantly jumped to the conclusion that she was mixed up in something bad?
But the more I tried to talk myself out of it, the more convinced I was that there must be something going on under the surface. To make a single friend in eighth grade, Kasey had to befriend a horrific vengeful spirit. Then she hits high school and immediately rounds up a posse of BFFs—by poaching my friends?
Look on the bright side, I told myself. It might not be ghosts. Maybe it was just drugs. Or blackmail.
But ghosts? It couldn’t be.
Because Kasey knew better than to go flirting with the dark side again.
Immediately, a pair of twin headaches blossomed at the back corners of my jaw.
After last year’s episode, we’d been visited by a woman in a nondescript gray suit driving a nondescript car (the woman, not the suit) and looking like she worked for a nondescript insurance company. But her name was Agent Hasan, and I don’t mean “insurance agent” Hasan. I still have no idea who she works for, because her business card only lists her name and a single phone number. But she took care of talking to the police, getting Kasey booked into Harmony Valley, and getting us moved out of the old house. She combed through the rubble and left with a thin, sealed envelope.
And she gave us her card with a “strong suggestion” to call if there were any other incidents “of interest.” That was how she talked—using words that seemed harmless but were actually bursting with ominous meaning.
Before she left, I cornered her and asked what would happen if it wasn’t over—if Kasey wasn’t cured.