"It's my fault. She's really going to whip me this time."
Mom called once more, then slammed the door closed. Margaret rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the mobile home. Ellen laughed, though her stomach felt full of bugs.
"Let's go to my place," Margaret said.
"What if Mom sees me? She can see me, even if she can't see you."
Margaret started crawling behind the row of dying shrubbery. "Your mom won't find you there."
"She always finds me anywhere." Ellen hung her head, near tears.
Margaret crawled back and poked her in the side. "Don't be a gloomy Gus."
Ellen slapped Margaret's hand away. "I'm not no gloomy Gus."
"Why don't you let me get her? I can make her hurt like she makes you hurt."
Ellen folded her arms and studied Margaret's brown eyes. Margaret would do it. She was a good friend. And in her eyes, behind the sparkle, was a darkness buried deep. Maybe you looked at things that way when you were dead.
"No. It's better if we keep you secret," Ellen said. "I already got in trouble at school, telling the special teachers about you."
Margaret poked her in the ribs again. Ellen smiled this time.
"Follow me. Hurry," Margaret said.
Margaret scrambled ahead, staying low beneath the hedge. Ellen looked at the trailer door, checked for any sign of movement in the windows. Then she crawled after Margaret, the dead twigs sharp against the skin of her palms and knees.
From the end of the hedge, they dashed for the concealment of the forest. Ellen half expected to hear Mom's angry shout, telling her to get inside right this minute. But then they were under the trees and lost among the long shadows.
Margaret laughed with the exhilaration of escape. She ran between the oaks with their orange leaves, the silver birch, the sweet green pine, ignoring the branches and briars that tugged the fabric of her sweater. Ellen followed just as recklessly, her footsteps soft on the rotting loam of the forest floor.
The girls passed a clearing covered by crisp leaves. Margaret veered away to a path that followed the river. The air smelled of fish and wet stones. Ellen stumbled over a grapevine, and by the time she looked up, Margaret had disappeared.
Ellen looked around. A bird chittered in a high treetop. The sun had slipped lower in the sky. Purple and pink clouds hung in the west like rags on a clothesline. She was alone.
Alone.
The special teachers at school told Ellen it was worse to be alone than have invisible friends. "You can't keep playing all by yourself," they told her. "You have to learn to get along with others. You have to let go of the past."
When Ellen told the special teachers about what happened at home, the teachers' eyes got wide. They must have talked to Mom, because when Ellen got home that day, she got her hide tanned harder than ever. Someday Mom was going to lose her temper and do something really bad.
Ellen thought of Mom, with fists clenched and supper burnt, waiting back at the trailer. Ellen shivered. She didn't want to be alone.
She put her hands to her mouth. "Margaret!"
She heard a giggle from behind a stand of trees. The red sweater flashed and vanished. Margaret was playing another game, trying to make Ellen get lost by leading her deeper into the woods. Well, Ellen wasn't going to be scared.
And she wasn't going to cry. Sometimes the girls at school made her cry. They would stand around her in a circle and say she was in love with Joey Hogwood. Well, she hated Joey Hogwood, and she hated the girls. Ellen wished that Margaret still went to school so that she would have a friend to sit beside.
Margaret wouldn't want her to cry. Margaret would just pretend to be bad for a little while, then pop out from behind a tree and tag her and make her “It.”
Laughter came down from the hill where the pines were thickest. To the left, a sea of kudzu vines choked the trees. A run-down chicken coop had been swallowed by the leaves, with only a few rotten boards showing under the green. That's where Margaret was hiding.
Ellen ran across the kudzu, the leaves tickling her calves above her socks. She could read Margaret like a book. That was the best thing about invisible playmates: they did what you wanted them to do.
Right now, Ellen wanted Margaret to go just over the hill, into the new part of the forest. She reached the pines and started down the slope. Half a dozen houses were sprinkled among the folds of the hill. A highway ran through the darkening valley, the few cars making whispers as they rolled back and forth. The headlights were like giant fireflies in the dusk.
"Margaret," Ellen called.
A giggle floated up from the highway. Margaret was there by the ditch, waving her arm. Ellen smiled to herself. Margaret wouldn't leave her. Ellen picked her way down the slope, almost slipping on the dewy fallen leaves, until she reached the ditch.
"Tag, you're 'It,'" Margaret said, touching Ellen's shoulder.
Margaret's golden-white hair blazed in the lights of an approaching car. She spun and raced across the highway, the roar of the engine drowning out Ellen's scream. The car passed right through Margaret, not slowing at all. The red eyes of the tail lights faded into darkness. Ellen hurried across the road.
"You're a crazy-brain," Ellen said.
Margaret shook her head, her hair swaying from side to side. "Am not."
"Are, too."
"You're still 'It,'" Margaret said, running away. The darkness was more solid now, the sun fading in slow surrender. Margaret climbed over the low stone wall that bordered the highway.
"Crazy-brain." Ellen scrambled over the wall after her, into the graveyard. The alabaster angels and crosses and markers were like ghosts in the night. Margaret had vanished.
"Margaret?"
Laughter echoed off the granite.
Invisible friends didn't disappear unless you allowed it. They didn't hurt you or scare you or make you cry, at least not on purpose. They didn’t tease you about Joey Hogwood, or make you sit in a chair and listen to all the reasons why invisible friends couldn’t exist.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Ellen said. She scrambled between the cold gravestones. The grass was damp and full of autumn, and the air smelled of fall flowers. A sharp curve of moon had sliced its way into the black sky.
Ellen found Margaret beside a church-white marker.
"Mom's going to be mad," Ellen said.
"She's just an old meanie."
"She's really going to kill me." Ellen sat in the grass beside Margaret and the dew soaked her dress.
"Don't go back," Margaret said.
"I have to go back."
Margaret folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her lower lip. "In the summer, we got to play until way late."
"It's not summer anymore," Ellen said, looking at the sky. Three stars were out.
"Is that why the fireflies are gone?"
Ellen laughed. "You're such a dummyhead."
The moon was higher now, pale on Margaret's face. Her eyes were dark hollows. "I'm not no dummyhead."
"Yes, you are," Ellen said, her voice sing-songy and shrill. "Margaret is a dummyhead, Margaret is a dummyhead."
Margaret leaned back against the marker. Her shoulders trembled and thin lines of tears tracked down her cheeks. Ellen stopped teasing. With invisible playmates, you always felt what they felt.
"I'm sorry," Ellen whispered.
Margaret was bone silent.
"Hey," Ellen said. "Now who's the gloomy Gus?"
She poked Margaret in the side, feeling the hard ridges of her friend's ribs. It was funny how invisible friends could be solid, if you thought of them that way.
"Sometimes it's hard to remember," Margaret said, sniffing. “You know. What it was like.”
Ellen poked again. “It’s not that great.”
Margaret twitched and tried to hold back her smile. Then the laughter broke and she blinked away the last of her tears. They watched the moon for a while and listened to the rush of the passing cars.