"Bella?"

I squeezed my eyes tighter. "Get away. Get away from me!"

"Bella! Bella?"

I'm not going to answer, I told myself. No. Let them deal with all of it themselves.

But when they started shaking me, I had to open my eyes, only to find that it was only my mom, Renee. "Bella! Isabella!"

I sighed. "What is it, Mom?"

She sniffled, and I saw that she had been crying and probably worrying about me… again. "You were screaming in your sleep. Bella, you have to tell me what's wrong. If you've been seeing things again, we'll call the doctor. He helped last time."

I snorted. Dr. Redmond hadn't helped. He had given me a "schizophrenic" diagnosis and an assload of pills that turned me into an emotionless robot. "It's just a nightmare, Mom. You know that the s-word was a misdiagnosis. He admitted it himself. I wasn't seeing things; I needed glasses." Those glasses tended to make everything awful blurry at first, but I had gotten used to impaired vision.

Renee picked up my purple wire-frames. "I don't think the city is good for you, Bella. It puts you under a lot of stress, and you don't really…"

"Have any friends."
"You said it, not me," said my social butterfly mother. "You could start over in Washington."

I took my glasses and shoved them on, and my mother's features immediately distorted. Good- I couldn't see her hopeful expression anymore. "This was Phil's idea, wasn't it?"

"Bella, no matter what you think, he's not trying to get rid of you. It's just tough for him to cope with a teenage girl who… gets bad dreams. He just thinks that it would be better for everyone if you took a vacation for a while."

"He's afraid of dealing with a so-called schizophrenic," I accused.

She hesitated, and I knew I was right. "Bella, please. I know we've had this conversation before, but I really think you should consider it." And without waiting for an answer, she stood and left my room, locking the door after her.

That was how I lived. A prisoner in my own room. Despite having convinced the family shrink that I was no danger to myself or my family, or that I was as sane as the next girl, my mother remained unconvinced. She always could see through my lies, even if they weren't entirely untrue.

I opened my window, something neither Renee or Phil knew I could do, and breathed in the fresh air. A patch of dead grass sat, barely out of my reach. If only I could touch it, I thought. If only I could touch it and watch it grow again.

Because that was my gift, and my curse. I could bring things back to life- plants, pets, even humans in theory, but at a terrible price.

My mother didn't know. She never did believe that the spirits of the dead haunted me, wanting to be restored to their old lives. That my old pet kitty Fluffernutter scratched at my window sometimes, wanting nothing more than my own blood- and I had a feeling she had already murdered others in Phoenix, Arizona. By age ten, I had given up trying to tell her, and settled for hoping she would never let a stray into the house.

When I heard the door open, I quickly closed my window, rather than chance that it would be taken away from me too. Plopping down on one of the beanbag chairs around my little prison (no sharp corners for Bella, right?), I took out a book that I had stole from the school library- because of course Renee had to monitor what I officially checked out. And there were so many rules about what I could and couldn't read that I gave up even trying to be legal about it.

"Bella?"

Awake, I could analyze the voice better and came to the conclusion that this definitely wasn't my mother- but also wasn't to be ignored. "Jack?"

He walked over to me. "Maybe she's right," said the ghost.

I pulled my glasses down so I could look at him more clearly. Light hair, light eyes, a smile that broke hearts… about a century ago, that is, back in his living days. "Are you really trying to get rid of me? Finally giving up?"

Jack McCarty was one of those spirits who continually tried to get me to resurrect him, and didn't seem to understand that I couldn't do it without a body, and wouldn't usually do it even if I had one. Unlike the others, I didn't mind him, because he would actually stick around to chat after pestering me. "No, no, of course not," he assured me. "It's just… Washington."

"Yeah, world capital of boredom. What about it?"

He sat down on the foot of my bed, directly across from me. "I used to know a guy in Washington. I thought he was insane at the time, of course, but doesn't seem like that anymore. When my older brother died while studying in Tennessee and we got the letter, he said if we could somehow get the body back to our town, he could channel the power of Christ or something. Bring him back." Jack snorted. "Power of Christ. I thought he was the devil's worker, but you do the same thing, and you're decent."

"He'll be dead by now, won't he?"

Jack smiled. "Don't worry, Bells, I'm not telling you the story so you'll go grave robbing. I'm telling you the story because his name… was Darryl Swan. And Darryl had a kid right before I got sick. Named him Charles."

It hit me. "Let me guess. And his wife was Marie?"

"Sounds right. Relations, am I right?"

I jumped up. "That's my grandma and grandpa- and my dad's named Charlie! You're not just messing with me, Jack?"

He crossed his heart. "Scout's honor."

It sounded tempting. I could learn about what made me who I was. Maybe, just maybe I could finally prove that I wasn't clinically insane. And I could finally start over, in a place with unlocked doors and actual friends.

I picked up my telephone. It was one of the many interesting devices in my room, like the security camera and the baby monitor that Renee turned on every night so she could hear all the screaming going on in my sleep. The telephone was interesting in the respect that it wouldn't connect me to the outside world without a password, except for 911. Instead, it automatically called the other phones in the house, so I could call Renee when the doors were locked.

The phone rang twice, then someone picked up. "Bella?" Phil's voice said.

"Hi, Phil. May I speak to my mother?" I asked frostily. I knew the baseball player made my mother happy, but I didn't like him in the least. He was the one who convinced my mother to always enforce the locked door policy that she had previously been pretty lenient about. He installed the security camera, and he tried to keep both himself and Renee as far from me as possible.

I could almost see his twisted smile. "Bella, anything you want to say to your mother can go through me. We don't want your mother getting hurt trying to detangle your words, do we?"

"Detangle my… I'm not retarded, Phil! I'm not even insane! The doctor took back his diagnosis before you even married my mother!"

"Maybe to you," Phil said triumphantly. "Telling a patient they're insane isn't the best thing to do. He never recanted it to your mother. And I personally can't believe she's let you believe you were actually normal all of these years!"

My world crashed around me. Was it true? Was I still crazy to the rest of the world? I always thought that what had drove my classmates away from me was my geekiness- classic glasses-and-a-ponytail, science class loving, plant collecting geekiness. Did everyone avoid me because they truly thought I wasn't right in the head?

"I'm doing what your mother was too weak to do, Bella. I'm taking away your choice and sending you to Washington!" He sounded overjoyed.

"You can't do that," I said. Sure, I had wanted to go, but I wasn't going to let him force me. "I'm almost an adult!"

"But you aren't for more than half a year. And, Bella, I personally promise you one thing. If you attempt to return after your eighteenth birthday- ever- then I will check you into a mental institution myself. I never want your mother to see you again. She doesn't need you. You make her suffer, you know that Bella? She doesn't need or want you," he said. And he hung up on me.

I broke down, slamming into a heap at the floor. "No, that's a lie!" I screamed, knowing he wouldn't hear me- for the "comfort of the rest of the house," my room was soundproof.

But I wondered- was it really a lie? Was he putting words in my mouth to further abuse and humiliate me? Or was it true? Could it be?

Jack smiled as comfortingly as he could at me. "He probably was just trying to make you feel like dirt, Bells. Aren't stepparents supposed to do that?"

"I don't know, Jack," I sobbed. "I'm not Cinderella."

"Cheer up, sweetheart, it'll be better in Washington. Your dad loves you. And when you've vacationed in Forks, he's even let you go around town by yourself. He even… almost… seems to believe you about your gift!"

I glared at him. "Okay, since when did I let you read my diary?"

He shifted guiltily. "Sorry, but you were asleep and there wasn't anything else to do. I may not be alive, but I get bored too, believe me."

"You gonna miss me?"

"Nah," he said. "I mean, I like you and all, Bells, but if you're gone, I might as well move on too. There's nothing waiting for me here, and sometimes I forget that. But I have a feeling like there might be something for me on the other side."

"You'll get to see your brother and parents, I hope."

He thought. "I think I'll see my mom and dad, maybe. But I… I have a feeling Em isn't going to be there. Maybe he's still hanging around here. Who knows?"

"Who knows?" I repeated.