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would lead to more disappearing body parts. And sure enough, when I looked down my hands had disappeared, along with my feet and ankles.
    Calm down. Breathe. If I lost control now, after the hit I’d taken from Mrs. Ruiz earlier, I’d vanish and probably be gone until tomorrow morning…at best.
    I clamped my mouth shut and waited breathlessly for Daddy’s infamous temper to kick in, for him to shout at her for even implying that anything could make the loss of his only daughter more bearable.
    Instead, he wiped his face with the back of his hand, and I watched in horror as he propped the ultrasound picture against the framed photo of the two of us, blocking me out entirely except for the top of my ultrafrizzy head.
    “Daddy,” I whispered. “No.”
    He beamed up at step-Mothra and pulled her in close, burying his face in what I realized now was an expanding waist. “I can’t wait.” His voice was muffled, but the broken joy in his voice was very clear.
    And my last thought before I disappeared for the second time today was this: my half-sibling was still practically microbial, barely more than a handful of cells, and already she’d beaten me. Unacceptable. This was war.

I couldn’t fall asleep right away. Not for the obvious reason, either.
    Well, okay, maybe that was part of it. I could still smell the flowery scent of Alona’s shampoo on my pillow and imagined I could still feel the heat of her against me.
    But there was more.
    Not five minutes after Alona had vanished through the far wall of my bedroom, my mom had poked her head in my room to say good night, and let’s face it, probably check up on me.
    Her face was glowing with happiness. She must have had a good time with Sam at the movies. Where I was absolutely sure they did nothing but actually watch the movie, and refused to believe any evidence to the contrary. It was too…weird.
    “Just wanted to say I’m home,” she said, beaming at me. My God, was that red patch on her chin stubble-burn? No, no, I wasn’t looking.
    “Right on time for curfew,” I said instead, even though I actually had no idea what time it was.
    “Ha, very funny. Good night.” She reached for my door to pull it shut again.
    “Wait.” I hesitated. I didn’t want to destroy her good mood, but I had to know.
    Of all the crazy stuff Alona had spouted earlier about the other ghost-talker, one part of it had actually made sense.
    If there was one ghost-talker around here, maybe there were more.
    “Did Dad ever say anything about anyone else? Like us, I mean?”
    Her smile faded a bit. “Honey, I didn’t even know what was…special about him until you told me about your…gift.”
    Nice avoidance of the words “wrong” and “problem,” Mom. “No, I know, but did he ever have any visitors or talk about people who weren’t from work or whatever?”
    She was quiet for a long moment. “Your father was a complicated man, dealing with many…troubles.”
    Like allowing himself to be misdiagnosed as schizophrenic instead of just a guy who could see and hear the dead.
    “When he was having a tough day, I didn’t want to make it worse by asking questions,” she said.
    I remembered that—Dad coming home from work early, and my mom hushing me as soon as I walked in the door from school. On those days, the house had to be as quiet, dark, and still as possible. I never really put it together until recently that he needed the peace and quiet because he’d probably spent the whole day trying to tune out all the ghosts he encountered through coworkers and the various locations he had to go to for work. It would have been miserable. At least when I was in school I’d had a rough idea of which ghosts were around, what they might do, and how aware they were or were not of the living, and in particular, me. For him, working as he did, on assignment from the railroad company, he’d have always been encountering new spirits and new problems.
    “When he was having a good day,”