Chapter 1

I'm an elementary school homeroom teacher.

Every summer, I remind my students again and again: no swimming on your own, no going out alone.

Less than a month into break, one of my well-behaved girls sent me a video of herself swimming in a backwoods pond.

It scared the life out of me. I called her right away and spent over an hour talking her into going home.

That night I brought it up in the class group chat a few more times, calling her out by name. But her mother's reply made my skin crawl…

"Ms. Rodriguez, you are so negligent, so heartless. Vivi died in a car crash three days ago, and you're still here scolding her?"

I froze, and a cold wave went straight down my spine.

Then who was the person I'd talked to for over an hour that afternoon?

...

I couldn't say a word for several minutes.

It was the middle of summer, I didn't even have the air conditioning on, yet my whole body had gone cold.

Then, without warning—

The ringtone made me jump. Hilary Perry's face was there on the screen, the icon trembling with the call.

She was a girl who loved to laugh, two little snaggleteeth showing when she smiled, so cute.

But right now, the more I looked, the more my scalp prickled.

The second I answered, mournful, heavy funeral music came through, the wail of a horn rising and falling, near then far, and it terrified me even more.

"Ms. Rodriguez! What exactly is your problem? Vivi is dead, and you're still scolding her? Do you want her spirit to have no peace?"

"No, no, I really didn't know."

I apologized fast, so frightened I could barely string words together.

The call log from midday was still there. It really had lasted over an hour.

The call had come from Hilary Perry's kids' smartwatch. I checked. Not a single digit was wrong.

But how could any of this be real?

I couldn't believe it, so I asked her mother again.

"Vivi's mother, I honestly didn't know. You're saying Vivi died in a car crash three days ago?"

"That's right! She went out to buy her little brother some popsicles, and this horrible thing happened. And the driver hit and ran. They still haven't found him."

Her mother was beside herself, sobbing and shouting until her voice cracked, and still she kept crying out, like someone had a hand around her throat.

"You have no idea how terribly Vivi died! That driver hit her and ran, and then, too scared to take the blame, he dragged her off to somewhere with no one around and left her there to die alone."

"In heat like that, over a hundred degrees! She was knocked unconscious, and then her fever climbed until her organs were practically cooking… She was gone within two hours of reaching the hospital."

"God! How could anyone do that to my daughter? And you, her own teacher, scolding a dead child in the group chat! What is wrong with you? You have no heart at all!"

She tore into me, and I didn't dare argue back, my mind still stuck on that phone call.

To get to the bottom of it, and to apologize to Hilary Perry's mother, I asked for her address and made the trip out the next day.

Ina Henson, our class life supervisor, came with me.

On the way there Ina looked strange too. Whenever I spoke to her she was somewhere else entirely, her eyes wide with fear.

I pressed her a little, then told her about the video and the call Hilary had sent me the day before, and Ina grabbed my hand like she'd just seen a ghost!

It startled me into slamming the brakes, and I nearly hit the median strip.

"You got a call too?!"

Ina was stunned.

"What do you mean? You got a call from Hilary Perry too?"

"Yes."

Ina nodded, even more frightened than I was.

"Not just during the day yesterday. I got another call from her at night, I swear. I didn't sleep a wink."

"Could it be some prank of theirs? Maybe when we get there we'll find out it's all a misunderstanding!"