Of Delicate Pieces by A. Lynden Rolland

were given back to me. But a kid that young? Imagine how she felt. She couldn’t have understood what happened when she died and showed up here.”
    Alex’s face crumbled, and he felt her distress in his own heart. “Will she speak?” he asked.
    “No. I guess Lost Ones don’t talk.”
    “You want her to stay here?”
    She nodded. “If she wants to.”
    The light around Rae glowed even more radiantly. She lifted herself to her knees and reached out to place a small hand on Chase’s shoulder, her expression mature. This child was not the baby in the room.
    “Is it okay with you?” Alex asked.
    “Whatever makes you happy.”
    Rae scrambled off the bed and grabbed a book from the shelf. It levitated beside her as she toddled to the desk chair and climbed up. The gigantic book drifted down onto her legs. All that stuck out were her small, bare feet. The pages swished as she read. Chase did a double take as he glanced at the title: Aerodynamics of the Afterlife.
    Geez , Chase thought, get this kid a pop-up book or something.
    “I guess you don’t have to take her with you to class today …?”
    “Something tells me she’s pretty self-sufficient.” Alex gestured to the book.
    Part of Chase was pleased that Rae wouldn’t need the time and care necessary for a normal toddler. Alex wouldn’t get so committed. At the same time, if Rae was so independent, so intelligent, and apparently so old, why did she want to stay on a newbury campus?
     
     
    ***
     
     
    There was a blank note in Alex’s memory, taunting her. She was forgetting something, and spirits don’t forget. The note flapped and flew around in her head. She hated it. Fear seeped through her when she thought of the grandmother Forget-me tree and the gate, but she didn’t know why. She only accepted her forgetfulness because Rae distracted her.
    Chase, on the other hand, never accepted anything right away. His brothers behaved similarly. They didn’t trust anyone. Kaleb’s initial reaction to Rae was:
    “What is that?”
    Followed by:
    “Does it need a leash?”
    “Cut it out,” Alex warned, watching Rae peer over the railing of the seventh-floor balcony. Alex tried to take her downstairs, but Rae refused, planting her feet at the landing and shaking her head.
    “So what? It’s going to live in your room like a pet?”
    “Kaleb, knock it off,” Gabe said. He tucked a book under his arm and unfolded the pamphlet he’d been using as a bookmark. “She’s a person. It will be interesting to have her around. Lost Ones are brilliant. They have to be to make it here so young. She died with a youthful mind, so she’s probably learned ten times as much as any other spirit who died the same year.”
    Kaleb regarded Gabe with incredulity. “Sometimes, I wonder if we’re related.” He jabbed a thumb in Rae’s direction. “Does she do any tricks?”
    “Chill out, Kaleb,” Chase whispered.
    His baby brother never asked for much. Kaleb held up his hands and surrendered.
    “You don’t have to stay up here with us,” Alex said. “Go ahead and hang out in the vestibule.”
    Kaleb hooked his feet on the bottom railing, to stand taller and take in the scene. “I can’t go down there right now. I’m avoiding someone.”
    “Whose heart did you break this time?”
    He faked shock, slapping a hand over his chest. “It pains me that you think so lowly of me. I have a stalker. That new girl who sits with the Legacies.”
    “Legacies.” Alex crinkled her nose.
    “It’s not like I had anything to do with it! I can’t help how irresistibly handsome I am. She keeps popping up out of nowhere, and it’s starting to freak me out.”
    Gabe folded the pamphlet and tucked it back into his book. It advertised something called a health center. “She’s actually really cute.”
    “Skye doesn’t like her,” Kaleb said.
    Alex laughed. “Skye doesn’t like any girls. And since when do you follow the crowd?”
    “She’s jailbait. She’s a newbury, and