Upstairs, in the cramped bedroom they’d shared since the divorce split the house like a wishbone, twelve-year-old Lena froze. Her brother, Leo, didn’t. He kept thumping the floor with the heel of his sneaker, a dull whump-whump-whump that matched the bass line bleeding through his headphones.

The shout came from downstairs—Mom, voice frayed as old rope.

Leo put the earbud back in. He turned the volume up. Then, quietly, deliberately, he kicked the wall. Once. Twice.

“Yeah,” Lena said. “I know.”

“The one that lives in the radiator. It’s having a party. Very rude of it.”

They looked at each other. Leo’s smirk faded. Lena’s glare softened into something worse: understanding. Because the funny thing was, they hadn’t been fighting. Not really. They’d been playing—a dumb, wordless game of sock-ball, then the thumping, then the pillow. It was the first time all week they’d made any noise at all that wasn’t a door closing.

“She doesn’t hear us,” Lena whispered, “unless we’re too loud.”

“What ghost?”