[THE ELEVENTH MONTH]
I see your handprints in your bedroom window and it is in that moment that I cannot deny
it any longer. The house is haunted again. There were a lot of other little things leading up to that point, a lot of candles burned and a lot of lips pulled tight against the bone, but your handprintsin the window? That is the metaphorical straw that finally cracks my spine. Listen closely and you can hear my vertebrae snapping apart like the Kit-Kats we used to trade on Halloween.

Maybe they aren’t your handprints anymore. But they used to belong to you. I can tell by
the space between the fingers, the distance of the lines in your palms, the swirl in your left
thumb. Paths carved out for me to get lost in. I trace my fingers across your phantom knuckles and pretend that this is a sign of healing as opposed to something darker. Idiot girl. I thought I had chased the ghost from these walls, but even the most lost of things leave traces.

Outside my window you snort a line and pretend you are made of plastic and cannot feel.
Maybe this is the closest to healing you will ever be. An arm’s length and an ocean away.
The ghost whispers “Welcome back.”

Sometimes I like to pretend that time is a mirror. If I look backwards maybe it will reflect
something cleaner.

[THE TENTH MONTH]
Omens pop up like weeds and I pull them just as fast. The ghost’s presence seeps like
water: under door jambs, through windows, between cracks in the plaster. It is starting to pool on the floor. Soon it will fill the walls. I am learning to breathe deeply so that when the time comes I will be ready to be pulled under.

In the meantime, I cook pancakes, a different type every morning. Blueberry, banana,
chocolate chip, hazelnut. When the flowers in the windowsills start to wilt I cut fresh ones. I pin up pastel sketches of sunshine and smiling faces on the fridge. I have bought brand new candles, lavender and pumpkin spice scented. Maybe they can help cover the smell of smoke that lingers in the wallpaper. The redness in your eyes. The yellowness in your teeth. The way you slip out the window without saying a word ...

Even if they don’t, I will still burn them. They help me feel like a girl instead of a cavern.
An empty space that exists for other people to fill.

[THE NINTH MONTH]
The house is slowly learning to open its eyes again. It cranes its face to the bleak light,
wipes the dust from its ears, licks the dryness off its teeth. Mom leaves the windows open;
sometimes I catch her listening to the birds outside. Her eyes are always closed, her face
overcome with a strange sense of calm, as if she is listening to them whisper some avian secret she has long since forgotten. She stops whenever she notices me watching her. I don’t know how to tell her it’s okay to try to listen.

At dinner we balance orange chicken and fried rice between our chopsticks and dare to
laugh. You tell a story about the time you twisted your ankle in second grade. “I took lava tag
very seriously,” you say. “I wasn’t about to let a five foot ledge stop me from beating Tommy
Hiddlenberg, no way!” Mom cackles and the house is filled with such a lung-squeezing kind of
warmth that I wonder how any phantom could have ever lived here without choking on the love between these walls.

Mom saves the takeout boxes even after they are picked clean. The dry bones of the night
we were a real family.

[THE EIGHTH MONTH]
When I see you again your face looks like a face. The rosy tinge is back in your cheeks,
the gleam back in your eyes. Your clothes no longer hang over your twig limbs like shower
curtains; you fill out the wool of your sweatshirt. The box under your bed is gone and so is the
ghost. You are exorcised.

At night you creep into my room. We tangle up in blankets and for a moment just watch
each other. In the worst months I forgot what you looked like. There are pieces of me in you; we share the same hooked nose, same chapped lips. But you got Mom’s freckles. They’re starting to appear again after the ghost stole them from you. Like stars shoring up against the dark.

“What was it like in there?” I whisper.

“Scary,” you reply. Your voice is raw but it is yours. “I didn’t know anyone. It was lonely.”

“It’s okay. You’re home now. I can protect you.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” You trace your finger across my cheekbone like worship. “I’m the big sister here. I should be the protector.”

Words neither of us are brave enough to say: But I am/you are still too haunted.

[THE SEVENTH MONTH]
Mom sends you to a place with some fancy name I can’t remember. They are supposed to
cleanse you. I watch you trudge to the car in the morning, all the fight lost from your body. You look like a marionette, your limbs wooden sticks with phantom strings jerking them forward. How could it have gotten this bad? This question sticks with me even after Mom’s car rounds the corner and you have disappeared.

In the following weeks I buy crystals. Put up crosses. Burn incense and say my mantra:
“Leave this house. You are not welcome here.”

Sometimes the ghost replies. I am here forever. Its voice is written in the sag in Mom’s
back, the stains on the walls, the ash on your dresser. But slowly, slowly, it starts to quiet.
Either it is dying or you have taken it with you.

[THE SIXTH MONTH]

The ghost shows its full power the night Mom finds the box under your bed.

“What is all this stuff? What the heck is wrong with you?” The lights flicker so fast I can’t
separate light from dark. They pop and crackle, rain sparks onto the floor.

“How long has this been going on? Tell me -- how freaking long?” The walls shake.
Cabinets lunge open. Everything trembles - books slam off of shelves, photos shatter off walls.

“Look at me -- No, freaking look at me! Who gave you this stuff? Give me your phone!”

Sound fills the walls fills my lungs fills me fills me fills me and I can’t breathe.

“Give it to me right now!” And the ghost takes over your body. Makes you do things -
smashes plates, throws chairs, speaks with your voice, screams with your voice --

“I really hate you! You did this to me, you witch, you did this to me!”

“I have done nothing my whole life but love you!”

“Well obviously you did it very wrong!”

Bury my head in my palms and scream scream scream as the roof caves in and the walls
collapse. This house, a prison. This prison, a ruin.

[THE FIFTH MONTH]

I spend a night tracing fingers across our old photo albums. Us playing with the hose,
eating pancakes, blowing out pink birthday candles. Your arms are always marked with
band-aids, teeth missing from your huge smile. You were the brave one. The explorer, the hero, the main character. I was your sidekick. I went wherever you did.

Our imaginations were so powerful as kids. In an instant our boring backyard could be
transformed into a sultry rainforest, or a fairy village, or a future world inhabited by robots.
Where did that skill go? If I still had it, maybe I could unlock the phantom hands around my
throat and pretend not to notice that you’ve been in the bathroom far too long and Mom’s pills
have vanished from the medicine cabinet.

[THE FOURTH MONTH]
The ghost has stolen your face and shaped it into a home. Demonic possession is softer
than it is in the movies, which makes it more painful. You don’t fight for your life. You surrender with a smile.

Your voice is a haunted rasp, your skin yellow and sagging off the bone like wax off the
Christmas candles you always hated to burn. The worst are your eyes. Vacant like marbles.
Hollow like globes. You have been emptied out, brittle mannequin honeycomb-girl with shards
of glass for teeth. If I tugged on your limbs they might snap off.

You never look at me anymore. I like to think it’s because you love me too much, but
quietly, I know it is because I am the reflection of who you used to be. Who you could have
been. It’s okay. I don’t mind. Seeing you like this, even after all the hours spent praying for
redemption, has made me realize that maybe I am not worth repenting for.

I think of giving the ghost a new name - addiction - as if it hasn’t already taken yours.

[THE THIRD MONTH]
Bloody streaks appear on the walls. Sometimes they spell things: Don’t be scared / I
don’t hurt / I will leave when you ask / I love you.

I grit my teeth and scrub it all away before you or Mom can see. My fingernails have
taken on a permanent scarlet hue that no soap can erase. Whatever. You’re the one the ghost is here for. If it speaks, you might listen, which scares me.

You don’t want me to protect you but I will do it anyways. Atonement for all the years
you spent kissing my boo boos and pulling me out of mud holes.

More messages every day: You need me / I want to help you / I live here.
The blood doesn’t smell like blood. It smells like humid summer nights at Aunt Lisa’s
lake house, like half-melted snowmen and pancakes and the perfume you used to wear.
The clearest message appears in the bathroom mirror. I have already ruined you. I hold
my breath and wipe it away. Maybe once it’s gone I will forget that it’s true.

[THE SECOND MONTH]
I do not know if it is the ghost that has frozen my body or just my bones dissolving, but
either way I cannot move.

You look half-natural there, posed against the wall, your silhouette a darker shadow
against the streetlight-tinged night. I almost can’t tell what you’re doing, until you take a drag
and the end of your joint glows. Just a small circle of embers, softly pulsing like a halo.
Something sacred and holy poking out between your lips as sweet tendrils of smoke rapture into the sky.

I knew you were haunted but seeing you like this is something else entirely.

Your gaze slides over to mine.

We lock eyes.

You freeze.

For a moment, everything is still. The entire world holding its breath.

Then you exhale. “Crap,” you hiss. “What the heck are you doing? Just standing there like
that?”

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

“You can’t just sneak up on people like that! It’s creepy!”

“What is that?” I unstick my hand enough to point at the halo between your fingers, still
glowing. Your eyes narrow into cold slits.

“It’s not a big deal, okay? God. It isn’t anything.” You grind it into the wall. The halo
dissolves into ash. “See? You happy now?”

Your voice is a knife, cutting me open. I look at your face and see a thousand others. The
face that shared all her birthday presents with me. The face that braided pink yarn into my hair. The face that caught my threads and pulled me back together. My sister’s face. My sister’s face. My sister. My sister. Sister sister sister with a halo in her mouth, box under her bed, weapon in her voice murder in her gaze pink birthday candles in her gums smoke in her clothes my clothes needling into the cracks in our bodies and swallowing us whole.

You grab my shirt collar and pull me in. “One word about this to Mom and I’m never speaking to you again.”

And suddenly I am your sister only in the way that steam is a sister to smoke. One is
silent as breath and the other never leaves.

I manage to swallow the stone in my throat just before you go inside.

“What happened to us?”

You remain silent. The ghost speaks for you. “You already know the answer,” it says, and
then follows you through the door.

[THE FIRST MONTH]
I’m not sure how to describe the thing that leads me into your room. Love or curiosity or
maybe something else entirely. Whatever it is, I can hear it. It talks to me in the night, whispers things I don’t understand. Do we live in a haunted house? I’ve never been a believer in the paranormal but it’s getting hard to ignore.

Your bedroom is different from how I remember. All the posters and fairy lights have
been stripped from the walls, replaced with blank squares. Your bedspread is the same from
when we were kids, though. I stick my hand beneath your pink bedskirt and brush my thumb
against something solid. A cardboard shoebox. The source of the whispers.

Inside is a little bit of everything.

Orange bottles and upside down crucifixes. Ouija boards and plastic baggies. Goat skulls
and black ribbons and white powder.

I don’t know the name of everything in there. But one thing is clear: you have invited a
spirit into our home. No turning back now.

I shove the box back under your bed like a curse; hope that it’s nothing serious.
Lots of houses have ghosts, right?

What harm could this one do?