Ways to See a Ghost

for Isis’s place I didn’t know if I’d got Angel or not. Except I was freezing. I was running through town on a really hot day, and I was so cold it hurt. When I got outside the flats where Isis lives, I stood in the street, shivering and wondering what to do. In the end I just said, “Go home now,” to thin air.
    I stopped being cold, so Angel must’ve gone.
    But I didn’t see Isis for days after that. I was dying to talk to her, and find out what had happened, but I couldn’t because the whole thing timed with Dad and Cally cooling off each other, or something.
    I mean, before, Dad was desperate to see Cally. Now she phoned and blew him out on a date, and he didn’t even seem bothered.
    “Okay then, see you another time,” he said, like it wasno big deal. If she’d known him better, Cally would’ve been worried. His girlfriends usually only lasted a few weeks once he got that way.
    “Aren’t you seeing Cally?” I asked.
    Dad shook his head. “Isis isn’t well. She was taken ill yesterday.”
    “She was?” And I was even more desperate to find out then. I was scared, wondering what that monster had done to her. “What’s wrong with her?”
    Dad looked at me. Smiled a bit.
    “Have you got a thing for her, Gray?”
    “No!”
    “You certainly like spending time with her.”
    “No way!”
    Dad shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
    Trouble was, I couldn’t tell him what was really going on, so he got all the wrong ideas.
    “The doctor thinks it was just a bit of heatstroke,” said Dad. “But you know the way Cally is about Isis.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s probably got her on a twenty-four hour nursing watch.”
    I knew it wasn’t just heatstroke, whatever the doctor said. But Isis was strong, even though she looked like a twig.
    I think being strong is how she held on so long, at the end…
    So I had to wait to find out how she was, because I couldn’t ask Dad without him winding me up, and he wasn’t chasing Cally any more. Actually, when I think about it, he wasn’t exactly cooling on her. It was just that things were going really well for him then, with his UFO stuff.
    The latest readings, and my film, they were good, you know? As soon as he posted them on the Network, his mobile started ringing, and he said his email was clogged with messages. It wasn’t just other UFO freaks either – the film clip got forty thousand hits in the first week! Dad got a call from a TV company, and from some professor in America who asked him to go and talk at a conference over there. Dad was turning into a name in the Network, and he was loving it.
    It wasn’t until the Saturday I got to talk to Isis, when Cally invited us over. After a week of not seeing her, I knew Dad would be trying some way to get rid of me and Isis.
    “How about the cinema?” he asked, when we were walking over to their place. “There’s that film you want to see. The one with all the robots.”
    “I went last week, with Dipan and everyone.”
    Dad looked at me, surprised. “Did your mum pay for that then?”
    I nodded. “She wants me to go out with my friends.”
    Dad just grunted, and walked a bit faster. He was cross I’d said that, but it was still true. When I’m with Dad, it’s just me and him. Or me, him and some girlfriend. He’s never even met most of my friends, it’s like the rest of my life doesn’t exist.
    Dad slowed down again. “Isn’t there something else you want to see?” he asked.
    I shook my head.
    “You could go with Isis,” said Dad, “And I could go for a walk with Cally, or something.”
    I didn’t even want to think what the something was.
    So that’s how me and Isis ended up watching
Merlin
Wakes
. Don’t bother, by the way, it’s rubbish. But it was the only thing neither of us had seen.
    We were in seats right at the back, in the noisy, flickering dark.
    “Thank you,” she said quietly, as soon as we sat down.
    I looked at her.
    “You saved Angel,” she said.
    I shrugged like it was nothing, even though I was really pleased.
    “What happened?” I asked her, and she started telling me.
    “It spoke inside your mind?” I asked, when she’d got a bit of the way into it.
    Isis waggled her head – not yes, not no.
    “More like I was remembering what it said. Like someone else had said the words to me, a long time ago.” There was a catch to her voice, and she went really still and quiet, staring at the film. A woman in a medieval-style dress was running around this