The Old Willis Place

he had been. I reached down for the bear and sat him on a limb near Georgie. He ignored Alfie just as he'd ignored the book, but if I knew Georgie, he was secretly pleased Lissa had returned them.
    "Can I climb up there with you?" Lissa asked me.
    I shrugged. "If you like. It's not my personal tree or anything. I don't own it."
    She scrambled clumsily up the trunk and slung a leg over the branch below mine. After she'd made herself comfortable, she said, "I have to talk to you about something, Diana."
    I looked at her and waited. She seemed unsure how to begin. Finally, she said, "I'm taking a gymnastics class at the Y. This girl named Chelsea asked me where I lived, and when I told her, she said Miss Willis isn't the only ghost here. There are two children. They disappeared a long time ago. No one knows what happened to them. But people say they still haunt the farm."
    I gazed at Lissa, envying her pretty face and her shiny hair and her right to live in the world as an ordinary girl. What would she say if I told her the truth about those two children?
    "Chelsea says some teenagers came here one night and saw Miss Willis looking out the window of the front parlor," Lissa went on. "They've seen the children, too. Just glimpses of them in the woods or at the gate. They say they're evil spirits."
    I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. Teenagers often sneaked onto the farm to drink beer and smoke and kiss each other. Georgie and I loved to sneak up to their cars and make scary sounds. It was hilarious to see them start the engines and roar away, terrified. We'd been doing it for years, so it was no wonder kids talked about us. We were famous, I guessed.
    "Have you ever seen the children's ghosts?" Lissa asked.
    I caught Georgie 's eye. He had his hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter. I knew he loved the part about our being evil spirits.
    "No." I kept my voice as low as hers and tried to sound scared. "Are they dangerous?"
    "I don't think so," Lissa said slowly. "They're just children."
    "Children can be just as wicked as old ladies." Georgie swung by his knees from his branch, his face inches from Lissa's.
    She backed away from him. "You'd better be careful. If you fall, you could break your neck."
    "And die?"
    "Maybe." Lissa glanced at me, as if she were unsure what to make of Georgie's behavior.
    Georgie hung there, his face red, and laughed. Suddenly, he let himself fall. He hit the ground and lay sprawled in the weeds like a broken doll.
    Lissa screamed and covered her face.
    "He's all right," I told her. "Look."
    Slowly Lissa uncovered her eyes. Georgie sat ten feet below, laughing up at her. He'd knocked the feathers in his hair crooked, but otherwise he was unscathed.
    "That was so stupid," Lissa shouted, angry now. "You could have killed yourself!"
    "Could I?" Still laughing, Georgie stood up. "What if I'm already dead? What if I'm a ghost?"
    I wanted to tell him to stop before Lissa guessed the truth about us, but he was in one of his moods. He'd quit when he felt like it. I gave him a warning look, which he, of course, ignored.
    "You're crazy." Lissa's voice was still shaky from the sight of Georgie plummeting out of the tree.
    "Boooooo!" Georgie made a scary, google-eyed face at her and ran off. Nero and MacDuff watched him go. The cat remained on his branch and the dog remained on the ground, as if neither wanted to yield to the other.
    "Your brother hates me." Lissa looked at me sadly. In a low voice she added, "Maybe you do, too."
    "No." I flipped through Clematis, ruffling the pages like leaves. "But I don't see how we can be friends."
    "Why not?" Lissa leaned toward me, her face earnest. "I told you I'm sorry. I promise I'll never go near that house again as long as I live."
    I sighed and continued to flip the pages. "That's not why we can't be friends. There's so much you don't know about Georgie and me, stuff you'd never understand or even believe."
    Lissa studied me intently, her forehead furrowed beneath a tumble of dark hair. "I know more than you think," she said slowly. "Yesterday I walked to those houses across the highway. I was looking for you. After a while I met some kids by the pond."
    She paused to look at me closely. Unable to meet her eyes, I pulled a crimson leaf from a branch and twirled its stem in my fingers.
    "They told me you don't live there," Lissa went on. "They know everybody, but they've never heard of you. Or Georgie."
    "So? I told you we're not allowed to