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You’re amazing. So…are you from another planet?”
    “I am from…another realm.”
    “ Another realm . This is so cool! And you came here and chose me—why?”
    “You should rest, D.” She reaches out her wing, but I pull back from her feathery touch.
    “I’m not tired.”
    The bird doesn’t sigh, but she lowers her eyes and seems resigned. “The journey we must undertake will require all the strength you can muster.”
    “Where are we going—back to your realm?”
    “Yes. But first we must gather the dead.”
    “The dead!?” My heart begins to pound inside my chest. One second I am terrified, and the next I am filled with hope. Maybe this bird is an angel sent down from heaven! Mom must have sent her to get me, and now—
    “Long dead, D.” The bird looks at me, and there is kindness in her eyes along with an apology. “These souls have been waiting hundreds of years for me to return.”
    “You left them?” I say accusingly to hide my disappointment.
    “Yes—but not by choice.”
    “Someone made you leave them behind?” I ask with suspicion.
    “Yes. And those beings are out there still. They will hunt us, D.”
    The terror I felt a moment ago creeps back into my heart.
    “As long as you stay close to me, I can keep you safe,” she says reassuringly.
    This time I don’t pull away when the bird reaches out a protective silken wing. She drapes it across my cheek, and I feel myself falling asleep. “Why are they hunting you?”
    This time the bird really does sigh. “All the dead are not dead, D. Souls that have suffered do not always find peace. They are restless, impatient. And sometimes…hostile.”
    Rest in peace . That’s what the minister said at Mom’s funeral. And RIP is sprayed on all the murals painted to honor the memory of those shot down in the street. I have just enough strength to ask one last question. “Where do they go—the souls that can’t find peace?”
    The bird touches her feathers to my lips, and suddenly I can’t remember the question I just asked. I yawn and fall into a deep sleep.

7.
    T hat night I dream that I am trapped in my room during a flood. Dark, murky water bubbles up from the drain in the basement and rapidly rises through the house. But just as the oily water oozes under my door, a brilliant star lights up the night sky and forces the water back downstairs and into the drain. I wake with a breathless gasp, but the bird brushes my face with her satiny feathers, and I immediately go back to sleep.
    The next morning, Mrs. Martin beams at me like she always does before setting a bowl of oatmeal and steaming milk on the table. Mercy’s gurgling contentedly in her carrier.
    “Brown sugar or maple syrup?” Mrs. Martin asks.
    I want to ask for maple syrup, but Mrs. Martin pays a lot for the small jugs they sell at the farmers’ market. I don’t feel right pouring it on thick like the cheap syrup my mom used to buy at the supermarket, and I like my oatmeal sweet. So instead, Perfect-me says, “Brown sugar, please.”
    Mrs. Martin brings the sugar bowl over to me. “You weren’t in the basement last night, were you, D?”
    “The basement? No, ma’am.” Why would I go down there? It’s damp and creepy and full of cobwebs and scurrying things.
    “I came down this morning, and there was a dreadful draft—somehow the basement door came open during the night.”
    Just then icy air wafts into the room, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. I glance over at the door leading into the basement, but it’s shut tight and the bolt has been slid into place. I stir a lump of brown sugar into my oatmeal and try to remember more about the dream I had last night. Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all. Could I have opened the door to the basement while sleepwalking? I’ve never walked in my sleep before, but these days a lot of things are happening to me that have never happened before.
    After breakfast I rush upstairs to ask the bird about my bad dream,