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asked, though I suspected she already knew what I thought.
    “It’s nice,” I said, because my mother was paying her and she would expect me to be polite.
    Rose smiled. “That’s interesting. I didn’t peg you as a liar, but at least it’s refreshing to speak to someone with intellect.”
    I shook my head. “I’m sorry?”
    Her smile remained in place. “It’s easy to speak the truth. A lie, however, takes more thought, more intelligence.” She waited a beat, as though allowing me the time to process what she just said. “Now, I’m sure you want to ask about the ghosts. Most do.”
    I studied her. Was this lady for real? Had I somehow walked into a crazy person’s home instead of a shrink’s office? I focused back on her, torn between running for the door and staying to see what she would say next. Damn my curiosity.
    “Why do you think the house is haunted?”
    She laughed. “Oh, I don’t
think
it’s haunted. I just understand that some things—or some people, in this instance—refuse to be put to rest. They linger, whether we want them to or not.” Her eyes held mine, and I sensed that there was deeper meaning to her words.
    I glanced down at my hands, deciding in that moment whether I should stay or leave. I had enough crazy in my life, and this therapist was all sorts of crazy. Yet . . .
    I lifted my eyes back to hers. “Okay. So, tell me about the sisters.”
    ***
    I left Dr. Rose an hour later, my mind a convoluted mess of confusion and awe. Rose spent most of the time explaining the ghost sisters. How Doris and Gertrude were alive during the Great Depression and how they had run the house as a sort of social place for people to come and feel like they belonged. Not like a brothel, even though it sounded that way to me. It was just a place people could come and eat or have tea or just talk. The sisters were apparently very wealthy, so they allowed their house to become an escape for those who weren’t.
    Rose said the sisters never really left the house after they died. Rumors of it being haunted spread, and soon the house became a steal on the market. Rose scooped it up when she had opened her own practice nearly ten years ago because, as she put it, “The sisters were nothing more than therapists in their own right, and I wasn’t one to be prejudiced against therapy. Regardless of the brand.”
    I listened to the story, asking questions all the way, and before I realized it, Dr. Rose had done something a dozen therapists before her couldn’t do. She had me talking. And I hadn’t even realized it.
    Damn her.
    When I returned to my dorm, it was empty, but Kara had scribbled a note for me to meet her for lunch after my 11:25. I grabbed my messenger bag and set off for my first official college class.
    Because Kara and I had spent most of Sunday walking from building to building, I knew what I was doing when I entered the Science Center. I knew where to go. I knew it would be a large auditorium-style class. I had my mind set on where I would sit. How close to the door. How far away from the teacher. I was prepared.
    But I wasn’t prepared to see Preston Riggs walking into the class moments before me.
    He didn’t see me enter, which was maybe the only thing that kept me from running back to Dr. Rose’s office to hang with her and the ghost sisters. I wasn’t an especially shy person, but something about your first class on your first day of college felt private, sacred even, and I didn’t want it ruined by having to be “on.” I wanted to settle into things before I had to talk to the people around me. I wanted to observe and listen and take it all in. And there was no chance of me doing any of that with Preston Riggs in the room.
    He was a sophomore, anyway. What was he doing in Bio 102? Unless this wasn’t Bio 102, and I had somehow pulled an Olive and jacked up my schedule. Oh God. What if I was in the wrong class?
    I had already taken my seat in the middle back of the room, a good