Junie hadn't minded so much when her friend merely spoke to her. It'd been sort of, almost . . . natural, expected. But she didn't like the girl. The girl scared her.

She'd first seen the girl in the backyard. Junie had been sent outside to the garden to, as her mother had advised, "check the squash plants for squash bugs." Squash bugs were difficult to get rid of, could ruin entire plants if not taken care of quick enough. Her mother had given her a bottle of soapy water to spray the little ones, some scissors to cut the big ones in half. If she found eggs beneath the leaves, she was to scrape them off with her fingernail. Junie knew her mother just wanted her to get outside, to breathe air. After her seizure at Dr. Stukell's, her parents had taken her to several doctors, but nothing appeared to be physically wrong with Juniper (which she herself had tried to tell them). Even with that reassurance, though, her mother had begun treating her differently, a little as if Junie were fragile, but also . . . well, it was difficult to define. If they were in the same room, her mother would find a reason to leave. There'd be something in a look her mother might give her when she thought Junie wasn't watching, or in the way the woman startled when the girl passed by. It was odd, almost as if . . . as if Mrs. Jones was afraid.

Afraid of her own daughter—that was stupid. Of course her mother wasn't afraid of her. She was just worried. But there was no need to be. Junie's friend was (if not quite nice) at least not harmful.

Some of the squash plant leaves were as big as Junie's head, huge green flags, all in a jumble one over the other, each trying to stretch above and fan out to catch as much sunlight as possible. There were four or five plants, though it was difficult to tell; they grew into one another in a waist-high retaining wall, spilled their vines over the edge and onto the grass. The large yellow-orange flowers continued to bloom, though only about a third of them would yield small fruits, most of which would be too small to do more with than display in the early fall. Searching the plants for bugs was not entirely unpleasant; indeed, finding the adult insects and snipping them in half, observing their insides ooze out of their severed bodies, offered a gruesome satisfaction. The small gray ones, anywhere from the size of a pinhead to the length of Junie's pinky nail, were more difficult to kill. Their demise entailed spraying that soapy mixture on them, but the larger nymphs took a lot of liquid, a lot of spraying, before they succumbed and stopped scrambling their spidery little legs. Most of all, Junie hated the eggs, though. She always tore the leaf in her attempt to remove them, and there was no fun in just scraping a bit of crust off a plant.

As she'd carefully shifted the complicated greenery, trying to avoid the prickly stems, Junie had hummed a little to herself, pondered the plant and insect life around her, wondered why she still had a strange underwater feeling even in the midst of the pure summer heat. Perhaps it'd been the humidity, which was always heavy and damp, made her sweat the second she left the house. Or perhaps it'd been something else inside her; it was true that a part of her had begun to sink ever since her friend had introduced itself up there in the attic, after Juniper's sisters had gone downstairs. Even though Junie hadn't been able to sense any particular danger, she couldn't understand that strange feeling, not yet, anyway.

She recalled that just when she'd caught a two-inch-long adult beetle in her scissors after it'd skittered out from under a smaller leaf and startled her, Junie had sensed a prickle down her neck, a line of sweat running from nape to collar, and that's when she'd turned and first seen the outside girl.

In the back-right corner of the yard, beneath a shady dogwood that in the spring was a cloud of white flowers, next to the neighbors' rows of jaunty yellow daylilies, had stood a figure not much younger or older than Juniper herself. At first, Junie had thought she was a neighbor, but then she'd quickly understood the girl was not all right in any sort of way, and for the first time ever, Juniper knew real fear. She'd run inside to leave the squash bug struggling between the scissor blades she'd left on the wall.

The girl had begun appearing frequently, after that first encounter, always outside. Junie knew instinctively, as she'd known with her friend, that this girl was for her eyes alone, that her sisters and parents couldn't see her. So she hadn't told anyone about her. Her parents' reaction to what had happened at Dr. Stukell's was indication enough of how much they'd overreact if they knew about the girl Juniper saw.

Why'd you say that? her mother had asked Junie after the girl's physical wellbeing had been assured that afternoon Dr. Stukell had asked about her friend.

Say what? the girl had asked.

The . . . the knocking, Junie. Why did you say it?

But Juniper hadn't remembered what she'd said. She'd recalled sitting in that chair in the man's office, talking a little, and then . . . well, being on the floor, on the thick carpet, shaking, her mother and the Stukells making phone calls and trying to get her to drink something. Even now, sitting at her window in her bedroom as twilight shifted into darkness, staring into the backyard where fireflies had begun to blink around the squash plants, she couldn't recall anything about knocking. And her friend hadn't enlightened her, either.

"Do you know that girl outside?" Junie asked into the gloom. She pressed her fingertips to the window, gazed at the now-familiar figure standing before the retaining wall. A moment of complete silence passed, and then she followed up with, "You don't want to tell me. I understand, but I don't like her. She scares me."

Juniper was on her knees, on the floor, glued to that window, unable to take her eyes from the spectral girl, who seemed to stare with her empty sockets right up into Junie's bedroom. The phantasm was thin, with a straight bob of hair, and she wore no clothing. Her pale, powdery white-blue skin appeared to be covered in markings, especially across her flat stomach and chest and her thighs. Junie had never been close enough to make out what they were. The girl's mouth hung partially open, always, and (this part unsettled Juniper most of all) something was coming out of it. From a distance, Junie had a difficult time understanding what it was, but it'd looked in the daylight like some sort of reddish rope, and that rope extended from her mouth downward and to the girl's right, where it then seemed to attach to a bundle of something she held in her arms at her side.

Thank goodness the girl had stayed outdoors, always in a corner of the yard, but Junie feared it might be only a matter of time before the outside girl wanted to come inside, the thought of which terrified her.

Not taking her eyes from the apparition that stood glowing before the still-bright squash flowers against the otherwise murky charcoal background, Junie wondered again what had happened to the girl. If she were indeed a ghost, she'd probably once been alive. Religion class had taught Juniper that ghosts weren't real but demons were. Demons and angels. And yet there was nothing about that eidolic being that felt particularly nefarious or seraphic. There was instead something profoundly sad about her. If only she weren't so disturbing to look at . . .

A footstep behind Juniper indicated Hazel, one of the twins. Junie knew it was Hazel because her other sisters didn't tend to seek her out for a chat, especially at night.

"Why are you sitting here in the dark?" Hazel asked. "It's barely eight-thirty."

Not bothering to turn, Juniper kept her focus beyond the window and didn't reply, mostly because she wasn't sure what to say but also because she didn't want to lose sight of the visitor out back.

"Mom is on the phone, and she's swearing a ton. I heard her say the f-word!"

Hazel had come closer, sidled up right next to Junie. The younger girl, a little tow-headed sprite, peered out the glass, waited for a response of some kind but didn't get one.

"What are you looking at?"

Junie sighed, studied the hollows in the outside girl's head, the ones where her eyes should've been. "Just . . . the fireflies. See them? There are a lot by the squash plants."

"Oh. Yeah. I see them. We can go outside and catch some, if you want."

The cord trailing from the outside girl's mouth glistened slightly. "No," Junie replied. "I don't want to." At last she tore her face from the window and looked at her sister. "Why?"

Hazel almost answered, then scrunched up her nose. "Why what?"

"Why was mom swearing?"

Hazel shrugged. She sat back on her bottom, hands behind her on the floor. "She was talking to her friend, that one she calls Danielle."

"She's been talking to her a lot, lately."

"I think that lady had a baby. Mom talks a lot about baby stuff."

Lowering her brow, Juniper thought. "If mom was swearing, it wasn't about babies, probably." It was about me, she felt. She didn't know why it'd be about her or how exactly she knew it, but the notion was innate. Perhaps her friend had whispered it to her.

"Are you . . . ok, Junie?"

Juniper turned back to the window, was relieved to see the outside girl still standing there. "I'm fine," she absently remarked, observing the apparition adjust its arms. Junie wondered what exactly that girl held, whether it was heavy, why she held it, what that thing coming out of her mouth was.

"Autumn says you're turning into a psychopath."

"What are you saying?" Juniper whispered, not hearing her sister.

Hazel drew nearer, repeated herself.

"I don't want to," Junie went on, her words small and shivery. "Please, I can't."

"You can't what? Junie? Are you even listening to me?"

"It scares me. I can't . . . I don't want to—!" Juniper screamed when she felt an unexpected hand on her shoulder. She whirled, panting, to remember her little sister next to her.

Hazel's glassy eyes were wide. "Who were you talking to?"

But before Junie could even consider an answer, the girls' attention was called to a peculiar bit of light, a sphere the size of a baseball, hovering in translucent milkiness in the center of the room, a couple of feet beneath the ceiling fan. A bright halo ensconced an even brighter core, a prick of blinding white observable only because of the diaphanous outer orb. The thing floated in eerie silence as if observing them.

"D-do you s-see it?" Hazel stammered, gripping her older sister's arm.

Nodding, Junie pulled away and slowly rose to her feet, leaving the hesitant ten-year-old on the floor. A few steps brought her under the light, and she stared into it, unafraid. "I do care about you. But I can't do it."

The furniture across the room began suddenly to move, a dresser pushing drawers out a few inches only to pull them back in, a desk shaking on its legs. Hazel froze, agog at everything happening, utterly at a loss, but Junie persisted.

"I won't do it, you hear me? I said I won't!"

Hazel hardly had time to move before the dresser drawers shot out, all five of them, and crashed into the wall over her head, showering clothing onto the floor and bed. The desk tipped and fell to the floor, scattering all its contents, and the ceiling fan above began spinning wildly, forcing a breeze that whipped Junie's hair about her.

Resolutely, she cried, "Leave me alone, now! I don't want to be your friend anymore if you say things like that!"

The ball of light split into myriad orbs, spawning a cosmos within the dark bedroom, but more suddenly than anything else that had just happened, they all at once blinked out, leaving Junie and Hazel in a dim mess under a slowing fan.

As the girls' parents reached the room, shouting about the noise, and Hazel attempted to blubber out an explanation through her surfacing tears, Junie managed to glance out her window once more, and she saw that the outside girl was still there, her open mouth now pulling up ever so slightly at its corners.