“My normal is nothing. I just . . . exist. But I don’t exist. I don’t know—it’s hard to explain.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know. Time is weird. It’s like it doesn’t count for me.” She traces an old scratch on the table with her finger. “I once stared at a clock on the wall in the living room for eight calendar days, just to see how long I could stare at the wall.”

“You don’t sleep?”

“Nope. Don’t sleep, but I’m always tired. Don’t eat, but I’m always hungry. I can’t drink, but I’m always thirsty. I’m starting to think maybe this is hell because there is nothing worse than being eternally hungry.”

This is surreal. She’s in Layla’s body right now, but she is so different from the Layla I’ve been with all day. “Are there others here like you?”

She shakes her head. “Not in this house. I’m alone.”

“Can you leave?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m too scared to try.”

“What are you scared of?”

She lifts a shoulder. “Other things like myself, maybe?”

I raise an eyebrow. “A ghost afraid of other ghosts?”

“It’s not that far fetched,” she says. “Humans are afraid of other humans.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

Again, she lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But it could just be that I’m inside Layla’s body right now, so I feel some of her feelings. You make her feel comfortable.”

That’s good to know. “How did you feel when we showed up here?”

She lowers her leg and leans back in her seat. “Nervous. I didn’t want you here. It’s why I closed your laptop when you were emailing the Realtor about buying this house.”

“So that was you?”

“I don’t normally do things like that. I try to keep our worlds separate.”

“You aren’t right now.”

“That’s because you asked me to do this—to talk to you through Layla. I don’t want to do this.”

“But you have. Twice, already. Maybe three times. Right?”

She blows out a frustrated breath. “Yes, but that’s only because it’s torture sometimes. I can’t help it.” She stands up and begins rummaging through the cabinets. She finds a bag of potato chips and then comes back to the table, but she sits on the table this time, placing her feet in her chair. She pops a chip into her mouth. “I didn’t know I could do it at first,” she says. “Not until the night you guys showed up. There have been other people here before, but I’ve never tried to get inside of them. I didn’t even know I could. But I was so hungry.” She eats another chip. “You have no idea what it’s like to know what hunger feels like . . . and thirst . . . but not be able to eat or drink. And it’s been so long since this place has been open. I missed the smell of food, and pasta must be my favorite thing because when I was watching Layla pick at it, all I wanted to do was taste it. It just sort of happened. I didn’t mean for it to.”

“How many times have you done that?”

“Just a few times,” she says, wiping crumbs from her fingers onto Layla’s shirt. “Twice at dinner. Once while you were sleeping on the couch. And once when I was looking at her in the bedroom mirror upstairs. I try to be inconspicuous, but you notice every time.”

“You aren’t inconspicuous. It’s an obvious change when you’re inside of her.”

“I’m a bad actor, what can I say?”

“What do you look like when you aren’t inside Layla?”

She laughs. It’s Layla’s laugh, though, which causes my heart to constrict a little. It’s weird—someone else laughing Layla’s laugh. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it.

“I don’t look like anything. I don’t exist in a physical form. I can’t see anything when I look in the mirror. It’s not like the ghosts in the movies with the flowy white gowns. I’m just . . . nothing. I’m thoughts. Feelings. But they’re not really attached to anything tangible. It’s weird, I guess, but it’s all I know.”

I’m trying to think of more questions to ask, but it’s hard when I’m full of this much adrenaline. I feel like we’ve cracked some code by communicating this way. Or maybe we’ve broken some unspoken rule.

I want to get excited about the idea of it all, but twenty-five years of disbelief is hard to just let go of.

“Layla . . . if this is some kind of prank . . .”

She shakes her head. “It isn’t. I’m not Layla. I’m Willow.”

The idea that Layla would go to these lengths to lie to me for no reason is somehow more unbelievable than Layla being possessed by a ghost. All I can do is believe this girl—or at least pretend to believe her—while I try to get more answers. “How old are you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know that I have an age, if that makes sense. Like I said earlier, time isn’t really a thing for me.”

“So you don’t feel like there’s an end to your life?”

“I just don’t think about it. Not like humans do. When there’s literally nothing I can do or look forward to . . . not even meals or naps. Or the bigger things, like aging and death . . . what importance is time?”

She eats several more potato chips in silence. Then she grabs a soda from the fridge and sits back down in the chair while she drinks it. Every time she takes a sip or a bite of food, it’s like she appreciates it with the feelings of a million taste buds. It makes me feel like I’ve taken everything I’ve ever tasted for granted.

“Does it feel different being in her body?”

She nods immediately. “Yes. It’s really confusing. There are memories that don’t belong to me. Feelings that aren’t mine. But that’s the thing—when I’m not inside of her—I feel very little, and I have no memories at all. So I kind of like being inside of her, even though it feels wrong, like I’m not supposed to do this.”

“You have her memories?”

She nods. “Yes, but I’m trying not to be intrusive.”

“Can you remember things that happened between me and Layla?”

She looks down at her can of soda. I see her cheeks flush a little with embarrassment, and it makes me wonder what memories caused that feeling in her.

“You met her here.”

I nod to let her know that memory is right.

She smiles. “She loves you.”

“You can feel that?”

“Yes. She loves you a lot. But she’s also worried.”

“About what?”

“That you don’t love her as much as she loves you.”

I can feel my face fall a little at that confession. I don’t want Layla to feel that way. I don’t want her to feel loved less than she is, or full of anxiety, or scared.

“Will she remember this conversation? You taking over her?”

She shakes her head. “No. She didn’t remember the times I ate her food. She just thinks she’s having memory issues.” Her eyes narrow. “Something bad happened to her. It affected her. A lot.”