Isn't it weird how stepping into a neighbor's house for the first time feels like entering another dimension? It's like you're on the other side of the planet, when you're only on the other side of the street. Even my home, our familiar yellow house, looked strange to me, because I had never seen it from right here before, from behind the green curtains in Mr. Flannagan's living room. The stuffy air smelled like microwaved Italian food, dusty shelves of books, and torn leaves.

"I'd want you to water these plants here." Mr. Flannagan pointed to some palm-like things on the windowsill. "And the African violets, there." He waved toward a desk where a pile of books teetered over the poor little violets. "But not too much water for those. Just when the soil's very dry. I'll only be gone a week, so you probably won't have to water them more than once."

In photos on his wall I spotted him when he was younger, his hair blonder and fluffier, his arm around some exotically pretty woman. Mr. Flannagan lived alone and was an old guy--mid-forties, at least; bony and dry-looking. Always wore clean clothes but in drab colors. Dealt in antiques and junk; mostly online now, my parents said. His wife died ages ago, before I was born. He had so many pictures of her, of them together, that I felt like her ghost, with its feathered '80s hair, was staring at me and wondering what this flat-chested girl with the pink-striped sneakers was doing in her house.

Mr. Flannagan's silence suddenly reminded me that I was supposed to answer him. I looked up and smiled, trying to forget about ghosts. "Right. Only when it's dry."

He nodded, squeezing his hands together in front of his chest. "Thank you, Kyra."

He actually said my name right. Most people either forgot it or pronounced it wrong: "Keer-ra," they'd say, instead of the right way, which is exactly like it's written. Ky-ra.

"And these, in the kitchen..." Mr. Flannagan stepped over a heap of Smithsonian magazines, his tasseled loafers making no sound on the moss-colored carpet.

I followed, skirting his velvet armchairs, which were a different shade of moss. I glanced up and noticed his ceiling was covered with bumpy plaster, painted seafoam green. With all this green, dark, fuzzy, textured stuff around me, I felt like I was drowning in a forest pool.

In the kitchen, brown took over where green left off: bark-brown cupboards, redwood-brown counters, sawdust-brown floor tiles. "All the plants in the garden window." He pointed at the window, where a hundred plants combined to strangle the light; vines, big leaves, little leaves, some tiny pink flowers. "These should get watered every day. The sun dries them out, even in October like this."

He seemed nervous, like people who don't get visitors much--or who don't talk to teenagers much. I smiled again to make him feel better. "Yeah. Gets hot here sometimes, even in fall."

His smile was as strangled as the sunlight in his window. "Yes. It really does."

"Do you go on vacation every year?" I asked.

"Ah, no. I haven't been out of Seattle for more than a few days in...well, several years. But the conference is in Boston, which is where I'm from, so I thought I'd combine it with a visit to my father."

"Cool." He had lived here as long as I could remember, which, come to think of it, made it weird that I hadn't been inside his house till now. Just glimpsed it, when trick-or-treating or selling candy bars for school fundraisers. (He gave out Halloween lollipops, but never bought the candy bars.)

"So. That's about all." He coughed, in a wrapping-up-the-conversation kind of way. "Would twenty dollars be an insult these days?"

For showing up ten minutes a day and pouring water on plants? It was a bargain. "Sounds fine. Thanks."

"I'll give you ten now. Let me just find my wallet..." Murmuring to himself, he tiptoed away down the hall.

I wandered out of the kitchen and looked through a glass door onto his small deck. A couple of weather-stained plastic chairs lived there, taking up most of the room. But below that, his backyard--holy cow! Flowers as high as my head, trees with leaves turning flaming red and yellow, pale blue grass sprouting up in mounds the size of our Rottweiler, and all of it enclosed in a fence ten feet tall. I'd had no idea any of this was back here.

His footsteps returned. I pulled my nose from the glass and looked at him. "What about the garden?"

His hand paused as he lifted a ten-dollar bill. "Oh, don't worry about that. It's taken care of."

"It's really pretty. Like, gorgeous."

"Thank you. Ah, here you are." He handed me the bill.

I tucked it into the pocket of my capris. I couldn't resist looking out at the garden again. "Those big red ones, are those chrysanthemums?"

"Yes. Uh--Kyra. The garden, it's actually, ah, best if you stay out of it. I've got a pest problem, and it's important that nobody go into it."

"Oh. Sure."

"And if you must go in--you shouldn't, but if you must--ah, I know this sounds odd, but..." He pinched two folds of his gray sweater, one in each hand. "Take off your sweater or coat, turn it inside out, and put it back on before going out. The--the scent of your skin will repel them. The pests."

"Wow. That's weird." I gave the polite laugh I hauled out for my parents' friends. Or bizarre neighbors.

"Yes. So, please just try to stay out of it."

"Okay. Sure. I'll keep an eye on the place."

"Here's my cell phone number. Call me if you need anything."

With Mr. Flannagan's number in my pocket alongside the tenner and his spare housekey, I stepped onto his front porch and breathed the free air like a skin diver surfacing at last.

* * *

I unlocked Mr. Flannagan's front door the next day with dread. What if the pests were rats? That was the worst case scenario in my world. Also, I wished I hadn't thought about his wife as a ghost, now that I was alone in the place. But no animals came scurrying or squeaking at me, and his books didn't rise into the air by themselves or anything, so I relaxed and got the plants watered. It only took five minutes, and I spent another five standing on his deck, my arms folded on the railing, gazing down at the garden. Nothing moved down there except an occasional bird. The yard didn't look pest-ridden.

I ran my gaze along the flowers, and forgot about pests and ghosts as my mind drifted to Christian Blake in my Geometry class.

I always sat behind him. He was a sophomore, amazingly hot, one of those people who crosses lines to be in any group he wants. I had seen him hanging with the stoners, talking to the Theater kids, carrying a saxophone to the Band room, running with the track team, and coming out of an Honor Society meeting.

His hair almost reached his shoulders, brown streaked with blond; he constantly flicked it back with his lean, strong hands. On his left wrist he wore a black leather string with a couple knots in it and two green beads on either side of a dull silver half-moon. Every day he wore a T-shirt, track shorts, and running shoes with those socks so low you could hardly see them. If it was cold he wore his maroon track jacket zipped up to his chin.

So far he had said three things to me: "Here you go," when passing a worksheet down the row; "This yours?" when he found a pen on the floor near his chair (it wasn't mine); and, my favorite, "After you," when holding open the classroom door for me. That was last Thursday. I felt shaky and happy all day because of it.

I looked at Mr. Flannagan's garden and imagined walking through it with Christian. I pictured him picking one of those red chrysanthemums, plucking some petals off, and handing the rest of the flower to me. "You sleep with this under your pillow," he could say, "and I'll sleep with these under mine." Maybe he would kiss me before we went home.

I wondered if everyone thought things like that, or if I was just weird.

* * *

I was a freshman at the same high school in West Seattle where my brother was a senior. He told me he'd keep an eye on me and not let anyone pester me, but so far all he did was lift his head in a sort of reverse nod when we passed in the halls. He was too busy chilling with his swim team buddies, or with girls, to acknowledge his dorky sister.

Fine by me. I had a couple friends left over from junior high, so I didn't sit alone at lunch or anything. Still, high school wasn't yet the exciting four-year social event I had hoped it would be. My two best friends were changing in an irritating direction. They dreamed of becoming cheerleaders, of all things, and when I said I might dust off my clarinet and take Band, which I'd dropped in seventh grade, they looked at me like I had just eaten a moth in front of them.

So getting new friends was climbing my list of personal wishes, with Christian Blake (in a special "more than friends" position) holding the top spot. But wishing for Christian was shooting for the moon, the planets, and the asteroid belt all in one. I had no chance with him.

Or so I thought. Then four days into my housesitting for Mr. Flannagan, something fantastic happened.

In Geometry our teacher told us to do a worksheet and compare answers with our neighbors. Christian had finished the math, and was chatting track stuff with the guy across the aisle. I was done too, and listened in. The guy said he was thinking of going out for the swim team.

Christian swiveled in his chair, looked me in the eyes (oh God, his eyes were actually green! how beautiful!), and said, "You're Freddie McCall's sister, right?"

"Yeah."

"He's a swim team guy. How's he like it?"

That's all it took. We launched into an actual conversation. I talked about how Freddie had been a swimmer all his life, and how I personally sucked at it but wasn't too bad at volleyball. The guy across the aisle told of going cliff diving once. Christian described surfing last summer in California.

When the bell rang, he said, "See you tomorrow, McCall-girl," and loped out.

I could have died happy right there.

As I collected my books I noticed a black squiggle on the floor: Christian's bracelet. I snatched it up and looked at the door, but he was gone.

Well...I could keep it overnight, and return it tomorrow. That would be okay.

I shoved the bracelet into the breast pocket on my shirt. The rest of the day I kept pressing my knuckles against the fabric, feeling the hard beads underneath, making my heart speed up for another minute.

* * *

After watering Mr. Flannagan's plants that afternoon, I leaned on his deck railing and ran Christian's bracelet through my fingers. The October air smelled of wood smoke and crisp maple leaves. I squeezed the bracelet in my cupped palm and sniffed it, imagining I could smell Christian's skin and not just the leather of the cord.

What if I wore it to bed? That would be so romantic! I unraveled the bracelet and looped it around my left wrist so I could tie it with my right hand. But tying a cord with one hand isn't easy. I tried holding down one end with my teeth, bracing my arm against the railing, but the cord slipped and--oh crap--fell into the backyard.

I stared down at it. That did not just happen. Yes, it did. It was down there, among the rats. Or the spiders. Or the yellowjackets. Well...I could leave it there, and never tell Christian. He could go on thinking he'd lost his bracelet.

Yeah, then I'd feel bad forever, plus I would lose a chance to talk to him.

Okay. One quick dash into the garden, pick up the bracelet--I could even see it down there, draped over a strand of long grass--and then I'd dash right back out. Wouldn't take three seconds.

I went back into Mr. Flannagan's house and found the stairs descending to the half-buried basement. Daylight came in through the dirty glass door leading to the garden, but the basement was darker than upstairs, and that's saying a lot. It wasn't a creepy basement in the usual sense; I mean, it had carpets and furniture and a plaster ceiling, not dirt floors and cobwebs. But I felt trapped and threatened just being there, as if someone or something lurked in the shadows, glaring at me. Reminding myself I didn't believe in ghosts, I sprinted across the carpet and shoved aside a desk that blocked the glass door.

The door scraped as I opened it, like the track was thick with grit. I took a deep breath of the fresh air pouring inside, rich with flower and grass scents. I slipped out, passing under the deck into the sunken garden.

The tall green grass folded over my feet, stroking my bare skin above the soles of my flip-flops, which I habitually changed into after school. The sensation soothed me, reminding me of summer barbeques. I picked up Christian's bracelet and stood there looking around at the peaceful hidden garden. I didn't see any "pests," and felt calm and curious now rather than scared.

Only when something pricked my ankle did I remember I was supposed to have turned my sweater inside out. Hissing in pain, I looked down. A needle-thin thorn stuck out of my foot, right below the ankle bone. Well, at least it was just some plant, not a pest. Stupid me for wearing flip-flops over here.

I knelt and pulled out the thorn. Then the ground and sky tilted. And swayed, and tilted the other way. I planted my hand in the deep grass for support, but soon found myself on my back, looking up at the pale gray sky. Orange flowers gazed curiously down at me.

Something poisonous stung me, I thought; an animal after all, not a plant. Panic tried to invade my weird calm. If I could just get my sweater off and turn it inside out, and keep them from stinging me any more...

I pulled one arm out of my sweater, but finding the other arm took some time. And while I was searching, the garden got darker and darker. Then I saw them: about twenty creatures, maybe six inches high, walking on two legs, creeping toward me through the thick plants. I fought to keep my eyes open. Some of the pests looked like mats of grass, others looked like clumps of dried flowers, and others were more like twigs with moss hanging off them. They all had faces.

"It's not him," said a voice that sounded like a grasshopper's chirp.

"It's a she!" said a voice like dry leaves getting stepped on.

"Doesn't matter. Let's do it anyway," said a voice like branches creaking in the wind.

The faces got closer and then I did shut my eyes, because I was so tired.

"Who's the object of this one's desire?" sang the grasshopper voice.

"I wager the one whose string she clutches," said the branch voice.

"The name," said the dry leaf voice. "Tell us the name!"

I knew I shouldn't, but I did, because my voice didn't obey me anymore. "Christian Blake," I said with my eyes closed.

The pests cackled and cheered, then rattled and swooped away in all directions. I fell asleep.

* * *

I jolted awake to catch the last colors of sunset in the clouds. I jumped to my feet. Crap! What time was it? I ran back into Mr. Flannagan's house and straight up the stairs. All the rooms were dark as night, and I was terrified. What if those pests swarmed me again?

But his house was just a house, empty and silent and ordinary. His microwave clock read 6:27. In the evening, I hoped. Yeah, had to be--if it were 6:27 a.m., my parents would have come over by now to find me. As it was, I had to get home this second. Mom was going to scream herself purple if I was late for dinner--which was at 6:30.

As I locked Mr. Flannagan's front door and ran across the street toward our porch light, I decided the "pests" had to have been a dream. I mean, yes, it was weird that I fell asleep in his backyard, but I hadn't been sleeping enough lately. Teenagers need a lot of sleep, and high school starts too early in the day. Sometimes a nap just sneaks up and knocks you out, and naptime dreams are the weirdest.

I burst through the front door, yelled hi to Mom, and rushed into the bathroom to tidy up. The important thing was I had rescued my treasure. I put my hand in my pocket and drew out the bracelet: safe and sound, cord, beads, half-moon, and all.

* * *

I put the bracelet under my pillow that night and fell asleep earlier than usual, with a dull headache.

When I woke up, my head felt perfectly clear. I looked at my clock--2:00 a.m. exactly--and got out of bed to put slippers and a bathrobe on over my nightgown.

With Mr. Flannagan's house key in my hand, I tiptoed out our front door. I heard Kronos, our Rottweiler, snoring on his kitchen bed. Some guard dog.

I walked across the street in the cold wind, through the saltwater-scented fog that was rolling in. A streetlight down the block cast my faint shadow across Mr. Flannagan's rustling hedges.

This was weird, I told myself as I unlocked his front door, but I didn't stop. I was on auto-pilot, like I was every morning when I groggily got up and showered and went to school.

The door clicked shut behind me, and I stood alone in his dark house, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The wind whistled outside, muted now. Inside, the soil and leaf smells seemed stronger tonight, sharp on my nose as if I were lying in the garden again.

I could make out shapes of furniture in the living room now. I stepped forward and felt the entry tiles give way to carpet under my slippers. I was starting to feel afraid, starting to wake up and wonder what I was doing. If Mom and Dad caught me, my room would become my jail cell for the rest of the year. So why was I walking forward instead of turning and running home?

A shimmery white-blue gleam moved into the room from the basement staircase, and fear pounced on me, knocking away my breath. My heart thudded; my skin felt electrified. The glowing shape was a person, a person walking toward me. I couldn't move. Too scared or too much under a spell, whichever; I couldn't move. His dead wife? Oh, God...

Then I recognized him, this shining moonlight person: Christian Blake. He smiled as he got closer, like we had arranged this little meeting and he had been waiting for me. Happy amazement pushed aside some of my fear, but still...what was going on? Why here? How did he get in? How did he know I'd come when I hadn't known it myself?

"Hello, pretty girl," he said softly.

And just like that, I was terrified again, because that didn't quite sound like Christian. It sounded like a really good imitation, by someone who had a talent for voices--someone whose natural voice sounded like tree branches creaking in the wind.

The pests. What had they done to me?

"Aren't you happy to see me?" The Christian-thing reached out and caressed my cheek.

I jumped backward. His touch had felt cold, rough, and damp, like a fallen piece of bark. Not taking my eyes off him, I groped for a lightswitch on the wall beside me, but it was no use: even when I found a switch, nothing happened when I flicked it.

He advanced on me. "Please, darling. Kiss me."

Darling? He'd never say that. And now the voice had a grasshopper-chirp echo in it.

I couldn't speak; my mouth was utterly dry. I skittered away again, but one of my slippers came loose on the carpet, and I tripped and fell over backward.

The moonlight creature, grinning like a mannequin, leaped on me and pinned me to the floor. "Please hold me. Please kiss me. I love you so, darling darling darling." Its clammy, jagged fingers stabbed between the buttons of my nightgown, clawing at my breast. The smell of rotting plants clogged my nose.

I screamed and twisted and kicked, but the thing held me down with the weight of a tree trunk. I tried not to cry. Something--lots of somethings--giggled and snickered in the room's corners. "Let me up," I begged, staring into the blank eyes above me. "I take back whatever I wished. I'll never go in the garden again. Please just stop all this. Let me up!"

"You have to kiss me. Please kiss me." It lunged its face down toward mine.

I flung my hands up in defense, and my fingers plunged into a nest of scratchy, slimy, dry, wet, crumbling, wriggling things. While the distant voices cackled in hilarity, the creature's head fell apart, showering me with twigs, moss, wet leaves, caterpillars, and spiders.

Screaming, I rolled from side to side and knocked the rest of the Christian-shaped thing off me. I jumped up, frantically brushing dirt and bugs off my bathrobe. The moonlight glow flickered out and disappeared from the creature's body, which then crumbled into a heap of yard waste on the carpet. Bugs crawled off in all directions; a centipede crossed my foot on its way.

I bolted for the front door, sobbing, while the little voices hooted with laughter and called after me, "Darling, darling, come back! Kiss us! We love you so!"

I got across the street in about two seconds, dashed into my house, and shut the front door a little too hard. Kronos's toenails hit the kitchen linoleum; he woofed and came running. When he saw it was me, he quieted down and wagged his tail. I knelt, hugged him, and buried my face in his neck. He turned his head to lick away my tears. I heard my dad shift around in the bed, grumble something to my mom, and flop back down. They figured Kronos heard a raccoon or something; they weren't getting up.

I took the dog to my room with me and let him up on my bed, even though usually I kicked him off whenever he tried to sleep there. I got my cell phone out of my backpack and turned it on. I didn't care what time it was. I had to know what had just happened to me.

Mr. Flannagan apparently had left his cell phone on, for he picked up, sounding sleepy. "Hello?"

"Mr. Flannagan?" My voice quivered. "What are the pests? What do they do?"

"Kyra." Suddenly he sounded awake. "Tell me what happened."

I told him everything in a few minutes, though at the part where the pests asked my heart's desire, I said I just answered "the name of this guy I sort of know." I was too ashamed. Kiss me, darling. Hold me, darling. Oh God.

After hearing about the Christian-creature, Mr. Flannagan sighed, long and shaky. He didn't speak for almost half a minute. Then he said, "When my wife died, eighteen years ago, I went to a man who specialized not only in antiques but in mythology and the occult. He said yes, there were ways to see your loved ones again, but none of them were perfect, none the way you'd want it to be.

"I didn't care," he continued. "I was young--my wife and I were only twenty-five when she died. I decided to try one of those ways. It was reckless, but I thought she would approve. She was reckless herself, always taking risks. That's how she died--sailing too far, in weather too rough..."

"The pests brought her back?" I asked, huddled against the snoozing Kronos for warmth.

"In a sense. They're fairies--or something similar; forest spirits, which the man told me how to summon. He warned me they would strike a deal but then wouldn't always follow the agreement. They love mischief, he told me, especially against humans. But I didn't care." He sighed again, and I heard fumbling sounds as if he were rubbing his face.

"What was the deal?"

"I gave them the backyard for as long as I live, for them to live in and tend. They love having a natural space where they won't be disturbed. In return, when I wanted to see my wife, I would go out and fall asleep in the garden. That would be their signal to work the magic."

"Was she..." I swallowed, afraid to ask. "Was she made of leaves and stuff? Like Christian?"

"Yes. Just as you describe. When I finally tried it, I knew I had made the wrong choice. It was horrible. I touched her hair, and...came away with a handful of lichen, crawling with earwigs." He spoke the sentence as if it tasted sour in his mouth.

I shuddered, massaging the scratches on my chest. "Bet you never fell asleep in the garden after that."

"Well, no. But I discovered they weren't willing to wait. A few months later I ventured out, just to look, and they pricked me with a thorn and made it all happen again. They lure people out with the garden's enchantments, then attack. All we can do is repel them, with the inside-out clothing--an age-old trick against them."

"When will it stop? Will they make me come back?"

"No. It should be over now. The spell, at least, dies fast."

"You can't get rid of them?"

"No. The agreement was for life. I've tried tearing up the garden, every last plant--twice, I've done it. Both times I woke up the next morning to see new seedlings, new plants everywhere, healthy and growing. I could move away, but..." Another sigh. "I suspect they'd only follow me. And if they didn't, I'd be saddling someone else with them. I couldn't do that."

"Guess not." I leaned on Kronos, rising and falling with him as he breathed. So Mr. Flannagan's house was haunted after all, but not by his dead wife like I had imagined. The living haunted it, if that was possible: the pests, and Mr. Flannagan with his grief and regret.

"I'm sorry I went out there," I said. "After you told me not to and all. It was my own mistake."

"Oh, Kyra. Your mistake is nothing next to mine. You're getting an extra twenty dollars, by the way. No arguments."

* * *

I didn't dare ask Mr. Flannagan if the pests might have hurt or even killed Christian. It sounded like Mr. Flannagan had never seen the "magic" happen with anyone except himself and his dead wife, so he might not even know how it worked if the "heart's desire" was living. But the idea kept me sleepless and worried until I got to school and spotted Christian down the hall at his locker, looking like his usual self, his hair wet as if he'd been out running in the fog.

I slumped into tired relief and could hardly stay awake in my classes after that. I don't remember a thing my teachers said.

But I did pay attention when I walked into Geometry class.

Christian was telling the guy across the aisle, "I thought they were bats, right, 'cause it was dark out. But then bats wouldn't go flicking against windows like that; they've got good sonar. So maybe a bird or a possum or something. I don't know. I didn't see anything."

I sat down behind him and took out my Geometry textbook. I didn't bother telling him he had actually heard forest spirits who were out to get a look at him so they could rebuild him in dead leaves and moonlight. I wasn't ever going to tell him that.

I opened my text to the place where I had lain his bracelet flat like a bookmark. I lifted it out on one finger, and cleared my throat. "Christian."

He turned, saw the bracelet, and beamed. "Hey! You found it."

"Yesterday. After you left."

"Cool. Thank you." He lay his arm on my desktop, palm up. "Here. Tie it on for me."

I saw clearly his pale-tan skin and gold-brown hairs; I breathed the light scent of boy and soap, and knew that the invitation to touch him would have thrilled me yesterday. But today my nose still held onto the smell of dirt and dead plants, and my fingers could still feel damp twigs and crawling insects.

I shook my head and dropped the bracelet into his hand. "I suck at knots." I gazed at the textbook until he withdrew his arm and turned forward again.