The Ghostly Photos by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Author:Margaret Peterson Haddix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

23

The Ghost Boys

“Twins?” Nevaeh repeated. “How could that be? What made you think that?”

“I read about it at the library,” Colin said. “In a book called Groveview during the Great Depression.”

Nevaeh didn’t react right. Her face lit up. She playfully slugged his arm.

“Look at you, walking into the library and right away solving more of our mystery,” she said. “You are the best at research!”

This made Colin feel a little bit better. Enough, anyway, that he could explain why it made him cry.

“No—this isn’t good news,” he said. “It’s awful. Things just keep getting worse and worse. It wasn’t just one boy who died falling off a train back in 1930. It was two. That’s twice as bad. These two twin brothers ran away from home together, I guess, and so there was a family somewhere out there missing two boys and not knowing what happened. And then they died together, but the one boy’s body was found before the other’s. And then . . . well, I don’t actually know what happened next. Because it just seemed so sad to me. It was too much. So I dropped the book and I ran away, and . . . I don’t know. My dad dying, those boys dying . . . it’s too much death.”

Nevaeh patted his knee. And that helped, too.

“We can stop,” she said. “We don’t have to do anything else about the ghost boy. Er—ghost boys.”

Colin let himself peer straight into Nevaeh’s eyes. They were so familiar, though a little more rounded and worried than usual.

“But you don’t want to stop working on the ghost boy mystery,” he protested. “You want to solve this. You wouldn’t be Nevaeh Greevey if you just walked away from a mystery.”

“Except, I do kind of want to stop,” Nevaeh said. She lowered her head and stared down at her empty hands for a moment. Then she looked back up at Colin, her eyes fierce now. “Maybe I’m not the same as I used to be? Standing in the funeral home attic yesterday—being at the funeral home at all—that kind of thing never would have bothered me before. But yesterday . . . I don’t know. It was so weird. I didn’t feel like myself. I couldn’t remember how to act like myself. It scared me so much, I had to run away.”

“You ran away yesterday, I ran away today . . . ,” Colin muttered.

Strangely, it made him feel better to hear that Nevaeh wasn’t always perfectly brave, either.

Nevaeh snorted.

“You had a better reason,” she said. “Your father died. Even if you don’t remember him . . . now he can’t ever be part of your future, either. It’s like . . . didn’t you think we were going to find out good things with Ree’s mystery, too? Not that two boys died?”

“Yeah,” Colin said. “Yeah.” It helped that Nevaeh understood. Even if he didn’t understand himself. Even if she didn’t understand herself.

Even if they were both changing.

He plucked at a

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