1

Jasmine Garza—freshly twelve, her black hair in two long braids down her back—rests her hand against the frame of her front door.

She can hear her new friend, Samantha Reyes, coming up the stairs behind her.

She’s quick as she can be. She whispers to her house: “Please behave yourself.”

Samantha is there, a little out of breath, and she smiles, and Jasmine’s heart leaps.

She did it! Finally. She had invited a friend home, she actually said yes, and now, they’ve kicked off their shoes in the entryway, then they’re in Jasmine’s bedroom, pulling books out of their backpacks, and it feels … normal.

It’s all Jasmine has wanted these last couple years: what everyone else already has.

And now, Jasmine’s first friend in a long time—the first since she had to move twice in the last two years—is sitting on her bed. They’re supposed to work on a group project for Mr. Theo’s history class, and Samantha asked if they could do a report on the Philippine-American War. Jasmine let her lead; she wanted to make this whole process as easy as possible.

Which is why the loud knocking on the other side of the house sends dread tearing through her stomach.

She doesn’t look up, hoping that she imagined it, that her mind is running wild because she’s nervous.

Knock, knock!

“Is someone at the door?”

Jasmine looks up. “It’s probably our landlord. He likes to bother us a lot. We just ignore him.”

Her heart thumps faster.

She tries to read the book Samantha checked out of the library for them, her own fingers on the delicate charm on a chain around her neck, but she can sense it. She always can.

It’s here.

The hairs on the back of her neck and arms rise up. She looks up again at her friend, but she’s jotting something down in a notebook like nothing is happening. Does she not sense it?

Of course not. No one else ever does.

Please leave us alone, she wills. Just this once.

Her eyes drift over the words in the book again. She doesn’t take in a single one.

The moment passes and Jasmine thinks, You won’t ruin this!

The ghost doesn’t respond. At least not in words.

Jasmine and Samantha both startle as the knocking begins again, this time from the wall behind Samantha.

Her almost-friend leaps off the bed. “Jasmine, what is that?”

Jasmine rises. “Uh … the landlord?”

Samantha gives her a look that says everything: You’re obviously lying.

“I don’t know!” Jasmine says. “Maybe it was an animal?”

But she knows what it is.

Jasmine has lived in three apartments these last three years, and this spirit—whomever or whatever it is—keeps showing up and making trouble. It never seems to bother Mami, either. Just her.

There’s a slamming sound in the hallway, and Samantha stuffs the book she dropped on the bed back in her bag. “Is this a prank or something?” she asks, backing away from the bed. “It’s not funny.”

Jasmine doesn’t know what to say. She inches over to her bedroom door, and she peeks out into the hallway where the noise came from.

One of the doors to the linen closet swings open, then slams shut.


Copyright © 2024 by Mark Oshiro