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when I
     find someone who . . . well, if there’s a person who seems to have an unusual ability, somebody particularly gifted . . .”
    “Right,” I said. Was he talking about me? Had he and my mom been talking about my spirit sight?
    “Yeah. Anyway. Something to keep in mind.”
    “Right,” I said again. I was an A stu-dent in English. I’d aced every spelling and vocabulary assignment of the year. Why
     couldn’t I think of any other English words except for right?
    “Right,” Orin repeated. “Your fifth chakra is blocked, by the way. See ya ’round.”
    He walked past me and crossed the street. His bike was leaning up against the face where it had been yesterday. Max stood
     up and took a few steps after him. Traitor dog, I thought, tightening my grip on the leash.
    And what the heck kind of thing was that to say to somebody? Your fifth chakra is blocked, by the way—see ya ’round.
    I knew a little about the chakras, but they were more my mom’s thing. They’re like little spinning spiral disks of energy
     in our bodies. We have seven of them. Each one represents a different thing. And when one is blocked, the energy can’t flow
     through your body right. It’s like throwing a tree down into a stream—it gunks up the works. The fifth chakra was the throat
     chakra. It was connected with being true to yourself, connecting with your divine source, and stuff like being who you’re
     supposed to be.
    If my mother was friends with Orin, then he was definitely the real thing, not a quack. So my fifth chakra was blocked. I
     was withholding truth. I was turning my back on self-knowledge.
    Big whoop.
    I was starting to feel like an idiot, standing there on the sidewalk. Orin was kneeling down next to his bike, fiddling with
     something—a lock, maybe. I couldn’t just keep standing there. But I didn’t want to go back inside. Then I’d have to talk to
     my mother. She’d tell me more about Orin. For some reason, I didn’t want to hear it. I don’t know if I was embarrassed or
     envious, but I just didn’t want to know what she and Orin had been talking about all that time in her office. Maybe it was
     because I was afraid they’d been talking about me. Maybe it was because I was afraid they hadn’t.
    I headed around the back of my house, unlatching the gate that led into our little garden and yard. I let Max off his leash
     and stood with my arms folded, trying to decide what to do next. Before I could even seriously mull the prospects over in
     my mind, my feet started moving of their own accord. In sixty seconds I was standing in the overgrown yard in back of the
     van Hecht house.
    I needed a place to hide. I needed to be somewhere that no one would find me for a while. Away from the phone, away from my
     perfect mother. From shaggy-haired guys on bikes. From spirit orbs swarming around me and blocked chakras. Something kept
     telling me that Tank held the answer. Though I wasn’t even sure what the question was.
    I opened the screen door the same way I had the day before. The kitchen window was still propped open. I didn’t think anyone
     had been to the house since my last visit. I climbed through and stood in the empty kitchen, wondering what on earth I was
     doing there.
    I had just started to think that I was being ridiculous to avoid home and that I should just go talk to Mom when the kitchen
     window slammed shut with a bang so loud I screamed. On the porch, the screen door flew open and shut several times. The windchimes
     fell to the floor in a heap.
    I backed away from the window, pressing one hand over my pounding heart. As I took several cautious steps backward, the cupboard
     doors flew open, one at a time, like a row of dominoes. When the last one opened, the first snapped closed with a crack, and
     the others followed suit.
    I ran through the dining room and the hall, and stopped by the front door of the house. My heart was pounding even harder,
     and I was short of breath. I tried