Ways to See a Ghost

car, then turned and smiled at Isis. Her not-there curls bobbed above her not-there head as she trotted over, soundless on the gravel. Isis smiled back.
    “Big garden!” said Angel, a whisper in the air. “Where the swings?”

    When Isis found them, the swings were hidden in a forgotten corner of the rambling gardens. Old and wonky in their frames, their metal feet lost in long grass. Whatever children they’d been meant for must be long grown up, and Isis wasn’t sure they were even safe to sit on. Of course, that didn’t matter to Angel. Isis pushed the swing and it flew up on its rusting chains, unweighted. On the seat, Angel laughed and shrieked.
    “Higher, higher!”
    Angel could go higher than anyone – there was nothing to hold her down. Isis tried to think what it had been like, pushing Angel when there’d been somethingto push, but her muscles couldn’t remember.
    She hit her palms against the swing’s seat, batting it up into the air.
    “Wheee!”
    Angel was the only one in the family who’d stayed the same after she died, and Isis smiled as she watched her, pushing until her arms started to get tired.
    “That’s enough,” Isis said.
    “No!” cried Angel. “More, more!” She hung stubbornly onto the chains, but without Isis’s help the swing quickly settled back to stillness.
    Angel twisted round on the seat; eyes wide, face pleading. “Pease?”
    Isis shook her head. “I’ve been pushing you for ages.”
    “No fair!” Angel kicked her legs, but the swing stayed motionless. “More!”
    Isis shook her head again.
    “No,” she said. “Let’s play another game.”
    “I not want to!” the little ghost shouted at her. “I want swing! You a meany!”
    “And you’re being a brat!” snapped Isis, before walking away.
    The air was damp, and there was a cool breeze,but Isis felt warm even without a coat, frowning as she walked. Really, Angel was eight. So why couldn’t she act like it? Isis knew the answer, of course. Angel was frozen, halted at the age of her death.
    Isis followed the path as it meandered between deep borders, marking time until Cally finished. Shrubs and plants poked woody stems out of the earth. Crocuses and snowdrops speckled their colours in the flower beds, yellow daffodils just unfurling their buds. The path went on, heading under the spreading canopy of an enormous twisting tree. She saw the bench, circled around its massively gnarled trunk, and sat down.
    Her frown settled in as she stared back the way she’d come.
    It hadn’t mattered when she was younger, and if Angel hadn’t been there she probably would’ve ended up like Cally. But now… Isis was getting older. She was in secondary school, she’d be choosing her options next year, then it’d be exams, and leaving home. She tried to imagine going to college, getting a job, having a boyfriend.
    Isis leaned against the rough bark of the tree. How could she do any of those things, with Angel?
    Lost in her uncertain future, she didn’t notice the boyuntil he was walking down the path straight for her. He was tall, a bit lanky even, with caramel-coloured skin. He’d come from the opposite direction she had, and he was looking up at the tree, his brown eyes deep set beneath heavy black eyebrows. The way his head was tilted made his chin look too big for his face, and he was scratching in the short black hair on his head.
    Isis froze, only moving her eyes, watching him carefully. There. Wet footprints behind him on the paving stones. And there. His breath steaming into the air, his cheeks shiny with cold. Isis relaxed a little, but even so she kept still. It was a trick she’d learned over the years: people often only noticed her when she moved. It was the same for the living and the dead, whatever Cally told her audiences about the spirits seeing everything.
    He almost walked by, and he probably would have if Angel hadn’t shot out from inside the tree, leaping at Isis and laughing.
    “Come, Isis, come!” she squealed. “Play hidey-seek!”
    Isis jumped and the boy stopped dead in his tracks, noticing her.
    “Jeez!” he startled back a step, “what are you
doing
?”
    Now Angel was jumping around Isis, clamberingonto her lap, grabbing her arm with butterfly fingers.
    “Come, Isis,
come
!”
    Isis tried ignoring her, but it was hard. Hard to think, hard to follow even the simplest conversation.
    “Sitting,” Isis answered the living boy, not her dead sister.
    “Don’t sit! Come with