Still, she liked the days when Mum sent her to dust the pictures, because it was a quiet, easy job. Now that she was twelve, Mum said she could run the cash register this summer, and Bel was already dreading it. Working with money always made her nervous, especially when there were lines of people. No, give Bel her duster and the row of photographs, and she was a lot happier.
She was also glad that the shop gave her a good excuse for not having that much free time this summer, but that thought just made her sad, so she pushed it away, focusing again on those photographs.
The little bell over the door rang, and Bel turned to see her older brother Jaime walking in. He had the collar of his coat turned up, his sandy-blond hair—the same color as Bel’s—mussed from the wind.
“Brutal out there already,” he said, ducking behind the counter. He came back with his gloves clutched in one hand, waving them at her. “Thought I could get away without wearing them, but it’s cold, and Dad says it’s a good ten degrees colder offshore.”
While Bel and her younger brother, Jack, helped their mum in the gift shop, Jaime worked with their dad on the tour boat. The McKissicks had lived in Journey’s End for nearly five hundred years, and they’d all been fishermen until Bel’s grandad came up with the idea of turning their fishing boat into a charter that could take tourists out to the Boundary.
Bel looked toward the huge window that took up almost the entire front wall of Gifts from the End of the World. It was gray and damp outside, the wind blowing harder than usual.
“You and Dad are taking the boat out?” she asked Jaime, walking to the shelf just behind the counter and flicking on another lamp. Mum didn’t believe in overhead lighting (“Makes everything look cheap,” she always said), so the store was dotted with lamps in all shapes and sizes. The one behind Bel featured a wide-eyed china shepherdess topped with a pale pink shade, its light a rosy spill against the shelves of souvenir teapots.
“Yeah,” Jaime answered, a grin splitting his face. Like their dad and oldest brother, Simon, Jaime loved the sea, and didn’t seem to mind how much time he spent ferrying visitors back and forth from the harbor to the Boundary.
As he walked past Bel, he ruffled her hair, an annoying habit he’d started once he’d turned sixteen and Simon had left for university. He clearly considered it big-brothery, but Bel just shoved his hand away with a roll of her eyes.
“Where’s Mum?” he asked, and Bel jerked her head toward the door, indicating the café just across the way.
“Lunch with Mrs. Frey. She’ll be back in a few if you want to talk to her.”
Jaime shook his head. “Nah. Just wondering.” He turned his grin back to her. “So you’re in charge this afternoon, eh?”
“For the next half an hour, anyway.”
“Fair enough,” he replied, before glancing back at the door. “Only got a few on the boat today, so you won’t have many folk coming in to buy all of our cheap plastic crap.”
With a gasp, Bel leaned, covering the ears of one of the stuffed sheep lining the counter, all of them wearing T-shirts that read Stand baaaaack!
“Jaime! How dare you call Lambert and his brethren crap? You’ll hurt his wee fluffy feelings.”
Her brother laughed at that. Then the bell over the door was ringing again as he opened it, and he was gone.
Watching him, Bel’s smile slipped just a bit. The weather was so gross today, and she didn’t like the idea of both him and her dad out to sea. Who wanted to be out on a boat on a day like today? But Bel had long ago stopped trying to figure out the people who vacationed in Journey’s End. She loved it here, but it was her home. Coming all this way to see a fog bank seemed mental.
Still, as Bel picked up her duster and went back to the pictures, she shot another glance at Albert MacLeish. “Keep everybody safe out there today, okay, Al?”
It was a good thing she was alone in the store; Bel’s mum never would’ve stood for Bel asking pictures of dead people for help. Like everyone born in Journey’s End, Fiona McKissick was practical, with little patience for superstition. Sometimes Bel wondered if growing up so close to something that actually felt magical and mysterious made them that way. Like if they gave in to just a little bit of eccentricity, next thing you knew, there’d be a maypole in the city center and they’d be sacrificing sheep to the full moon or something.
As she moved away from the back wall, Bel could hear voices outside, girls talking and laughing. She looked out the window, and a group of three girls walking down the sidewalk were close enough that Bel could make them out.
There was Cara McLendon, Alice Beattie, and, walking just a bit ahead, her dark hair standing out against the gray, Leslie Douglas. Until just a few months ago, Leslie had been Bel’s best friend, but in March, something had changed, something Bel still couldn’t explain. All she knew was that one day, she had walked to school with Leslie like she’d been doing since they were six, and the next, Leslie had left early and walked with Alice instead.
Alice had been new in Journey’s End, her parents having moved from Wythe to open an arcade for the tourists. Bel knew Leslie had liked the other girl immediately, but it was still a surprise to see how much they were hanging out. Even weirder when Cara McLendon started walking with them, too. Bel and Leslie had known Cara since nursery school, but they’d never hung out with her before.
And then at lunch, Leslie had started sitting with the other two girls, choosing a table with just three chairs so that even if Bel had wanted to sit with them, she would’ve had to drag a chair over, something too embarrassing to even think about.
They hadn’t talked about it, and there hadn’t been a fight or an argument. Just a sort of vanishing act that made Bel feel like all her insides were on the outside.
And then the girls stopped outside the shop, and her insides weren’t just on the outside, they were all twisted up.
Please don’t come in, please don’t come in, she chanted to herself, but apparently luck wasn’t on Bel’s side today.
The bell chimed, and Alice, Cara, and Leslie came piling into the store, Leslie just a little bit behind the other two.
“Do you sell brollies in here?” Alice asked, not even bothering to say hi. Bel watched the way the other girls’ eyes skimmed over the stuff in the store quickly. Suddenly all the little knickknacks that Bel had always thought looked cute felt like exactly what Jaime had called them—cheap plastic crap.
“We have a few?” Bel offered, then took a deep breath, stepping forward. This was her shop, and she wasn’t going to let Alice make her feel bad here.
“We do,” she said more firmly, gesturing toward the tall metal can of umbrellas to Alice’s left, just next to three racks of postcards.
“I told you they did,” Leslie muttered to Alice, and Bel glanced over at her.
“Remember that day we opened them all and made a wee fort?” Bel asked, almost without thinking.
Leslie’s pale, round cheeks flushed red, and her eyes darted to Alice. “We were, like, seven,” she said, and Bel knew she was explaining herself to Alice, not talking to Bel.
They hadn’t been seven. It had been last summer, and it had been fun, the two of them building a sort of tent out of brollies behind the counter, giggling.
But seeing the way Alice’s upper lip curled slightly, Bel suddenly wished she hadn’t even mentioned it.
“Are they all plaid?” Alice asked, sweeping a hand over the handles of the umbrellas, making them rattle in the can.
“Yeah,” Bel said, knowing that if she offered up the green ones with handles that looked like the Loch Ness monster, the girls would act even more disgusted.
“Never mind, then,” Alice said. “Honestly, I’d rather just get wet.”
She turned toward the door, and Bel willed herself not to frown or, worse, give in to the lip wobble she could feel coming. Instead, she shrugged and le
aned against the counter. “Suit yerself, then,” she said, and Leslie shot her another look before the three of them were back out onto the damp, windy street.
Sighing, Bel turned her back on the door, looking at the pictures of the missing again. “Did any of you ever have these problems?” she asked their solemn faces, then shook her head at herself. She was being silly, talking to the pictures. Just as silly as she’d been to make an umbrella fort, probably.
The bell over the door rang again, and Bel whirled around, afraid Leslie and her new friends had come back. What if they’d overhead her talking to the pictures? But when she looked over, there was an unfamiliar girl standing in the doorway.
She was obviously a tourist. Bel knew pretty much all the kids in Journey’s End, but it wasn’t just the girl’s unfamiliar face that told Bel she was new in town. It was her wellies.
Everyone in Journey’s End owned a pair of Wellington boots—between the rain and mud, the sea and the sand, they were a necessity—but they were usually black or gray. Bel’s own were a dull shade of green closer to brown.
This girl was decked out in bright purple wellies printed with big yellow daisies, and they gleamed in the lamplight, squeaking a little as the girl walked forward. She looked to be about Bel’s age, and her red hair was pulled back in a ponytail. As Bel watched, the girl wandered over to the display of stuffed sheep, her lips lifting in a little smile.
“Hiya,” Bel called out, and the girl jumped.
“Oh. Um, hi.”
Even though her hair was back, the girl went to tuck it behind her ear, her fingers skating over thin air.
Bel laid her duster down, wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Can I help you with something?”
The girl continued to glance around the shop, her eyes wide, and Bel smiled. “I know, it’s a lot of stuff.”
Nodding slowly, the girl turned in a little half circle. “For sure. I was, uh, actually looking for books?”
She was American, Bel noted with some surprise. They didn’t get that many American tourists, although some of the scientists at the Institute came from the States.
“What kind of books?” Bel asked, and the girl thrust her hands into the pockets of her gray jacket.
“Ghost story stuff,” she said, and then walked to the metal rack of paperbacks set up near the door. “I have this one.” She tapped the cover of Ghosts of the Boundary. “But really, anything you’ve got would be good.”
If there was one thing the shop definitely had, it was creepy books, and Bel went around quickly, gathering them up. Mysteries and Legends, Journey’s End: The Village at the End of the World, Monsters of the Minch.
When she handed them over, the redheaded girl’s eyes went wide. “Oh, wow,” she said. “This is awesome.”
Bel didn’t think there was much awesome in those books, but she liked seeing a fellow book lover. Chewing her lip, Bel thought for a second before grinning and saying, “If you want something to read that’s not about ghosts, I have something.”
She dashed behind the counter and reached down, riffling through the stacks of paper bags and those boxes of bookmarks that had never sold very well, until she found what she was looking for.
The paperback was slightly tattered, and the cover had been mended with tape in one corner, but the girl didn’t seem to notice as she took the book, her eyes lighting up.
“This looks good,” the girl said, turning it over to look at the back. “Starcatcher Academy,” she read aloud.
“It’s my favorite,” Bel told her, bouncing on the balls of her feet a bit. “Aliens pick these human kids to go to a special school on their planet so they can, like, train them as spaceship captains and stuff. It’s ace. And that’s just the first one in the series; there’s ten of them altogether.”
The girl smiled back. “I could use some aliens with my ghosts. Thanks.” She glanced back over her shoulder toward the window and the drizzle outside.
“Is it always like this?”
Bel nodded, her hair brushing her jaw. “Yeah. Rains at least once a day here, usually more.” Then she leaned a little closer. “Although it seems particularly nasty today.” Once again, her thoughts turned to Jaime and her dad, out on the boat.
“Are you on vacation here?” she asked the girl, wondering if maybe her parents were also headed out toward the Boundary this afternoon.
But the girl shook her head. “Not exactly. My dad is a scientist? At the Institute?”
That was a surprise.The Institute had dominated life in Journey’s End ever since Bel was born, but she had never met anyone who worked there, nor anyone who knew people who did. The scientists, who lived in the big houses on the cliffs, tended to stay to themselves. They did their shopping in Wythe rather than the village, although Mum had mentioned that she thought one of the scientists had come in the other day to buy a stuffed sheep.
Bel remembered the way the girl had smiled at the sheep, and wondered if maybe that had been her dad.
“Oh, aye,” Bel said now, folding her arms across her chest. “The Institute. I’ve never been up there.”
The girl looked at the door again. “Me neither. I’m Nolie, by the way.”
“Nolie,” Bel repeated, though the name sounded a lot different when she said it. “I’m Bel.”
“That’s a great name,” Nolie replied, and Bel shrugged, self-conscious.
Nolie was still smiling when her eyes slid past Bel’s face and to the back wall of the shop. “Whoa,” she said, her voice dropping. “What is . . . what’s that?”
Rubbing the back of her neck, Bel shrugged. “Just the memorial wall. People we lost in the village before the Institute came.”
A crease formed between Nolie’s brows. “Okay, but that kid isn’t dead.”
She gestured with the book, and Bel realized she was pointing at Albert.
Bel widened her eyes and walked over to the wall, tapping Albert’s frame gently. “Albert MacLeish?”
When Nolie nodded, Bel looked back at the photograph. “No, he’s proper dead. See?” She ran her finger over the gold plate at the bottom. “1918. He went out fishing or something and never came back.”
Nolie moved closer, squinting at the picture. “I saw him on the beach,” she said confidently. “Today.”
CHAPTER 4
IT HAD ALREADY BEEN A GROSS GRAY DAY WHEN NOLIE’S dad had dropped her off at the store, but as she waited on the sidewalk while Bel switched the sign on the door to CLOSED, a sort of thin drizzle started up, coating her hair and clothes with a fine mist.
It was an eerie feeling, like being inside a cloud, and Nolie huddled a little deeper inside her jacket, a grin already making her cheeks ache.
Mist and now a ghost. Scotland was totally turning out to be awesome.
“I promise it won’t take long,” she told Bel, “and it’ll be good to have you there as, like, an expert witness and stuff.”
The sign situated, Bel turned around, shoving her hands into her pockets.
“‘Expert witness’?” she echoed, and Nolie made what she hoped was a very serious face as she gave her a solemn nod.
“The person most familiar with the dead boy,” she intoned, and one corner of Bel’s mouth lifted, like she was trying not to smile.
“I don’t know about that,” she said, “but all right, let’s go.”
Nolie liked the way the word “right” sounded coming from Bel. She rolled the R, making the word sound almost like singing.
Despite the rain, Bel marched confidently down the sidewalk, swerving around trash cans and signs advertising boat trips and guided tours of the caves lining the shores of Journey’s End, and Nolie followed in her footsteps.
“How long have you lived here?” Nolie asked, and Bel turned to glance over her shoulder.
“My whole life. There have been McKissicks in Jo
urney’s End for hundreds of years.”
“Oh,” Nolie replied, unsure of what else to say to that.
“What about you?” Bel asked just as they reached the fountain in the center of the square. It appeared to be some kind of sea monster, spitting water up into the misty sky.
“I’m from Georgia,” she told Bel as they skirted the fountain, and Bel veered right, heading off the sidewalk and onto a path of sand and gravel. “But my family hasn’t been there for hundreds of years or anything.”
Bel slowed down, letting Nolie catch up; as soon as Nolie came up beside her, Bel reached out and pressed a hand to Nolie’s arm, slowing her down a bit.
“It’s a wee bit tricksy here,” Bel said as the path began to wind downhill.
“Have you ever been ghost hunting before?” Nolie asked.
Bel’s laugh was high and musical, just like the rest of her voice. “There aren’t any ghosts in Journey’s End,” she said confidently. “We’ve had stories, just like every place ’round here. There used to be one about a ghost haunting a lighthouse.”
She pointed out to sea, toward the Boundary. “Said she was a girl from the village who did . . . something bad, I don’t recall what, and that as punishment, she was set adrift in a boat.”
Nolie widened her eyes. “Whoa.”
But Bel only shook her head. “It’s not real,” she said. “We don’t even know if the bit about there being a lighthouse is real, much less a ghost.”
She said it like even thinking there might be a ghost was the silliest thing in the world, and Nolie wondered why she’d agreed to come along. Maybe she’d just been bored in that little shop? “Do you work in your family’s shop all the time?” Nolie asked, keeping her eyes on the ground in front of her.
Next to her, Bel nearly slid on some pebbles, but regained her footing quickly as she said, “In the summer, aye.” She stopped, looking over at Nolie and brushing her hair back from her face. “I go to school during the year, you know,” she added, like Nolie might be thinking they didn’t even have school out here.
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