Ghost Hand by Ripley Patton

and jams minus meters?”
    “How did you—Did you see me pull it out?” I demanded.
    “No,” he mumbled. “I heard you say it, here in the cemetery.”
    “You were listening in on my private conversation with my dead father?”
    “I was trying to warn you that a CAMFer was stalking you.”
    “Right,” I snapped. “By falling on me and making my backpack torture you. I almost forgot.”
    “Oh, give me a break! I just saved you out there.”
    “You saved me? You have got to be kidding me. You spent most of the time playing dead. If anyone saved anyone, I’m pretty sure I saved you.”
    “Saving someone you’ve just killed hardly counts.”
    “Hey! I had no idea it would do that.”
    “Exactly! You have no idea about anything. You have no idea what your hand can do, or what it pulled into the world. You’re walking around with something in your backpack that can torture people on contact. Something those CAMFers would kill to get their hands on. You need to come with me,” Marcus insisted, but he didn’t grab me this time, and I knew why. He was afraid of getting zapped again. “I can help you keep that thing from falling into the wrong hands,” he said, glancing at my backpack warily.
    “Come with you? Come with you where? You’re in high school, just like me. How in the hell are you going to keep me safe from militant CAMFers?”
    “I just can,” he said, stepping off the lawnmower and moving past me toward the door. “Trust me. There’s a place in the woods—”
    “No,” I said. “I can’t go with you. Don’t you get it? My mom expected me home like an hour ago. She’s going to be seriously pissed, especially after I tell her some guys were following me in the cemetery.”
    Marcus’s silhouette stopped in its tracks halfway to the door and turned toward me. “That is a really bad idea,” he said.
    “Why is that a bad idea?”
    “Because,” he sputtered, “she’ll probably call the cops. Someone in this town has been watching you for years. Might just be one of your friendly neighborhood officers.”
    “It could be anyone,” I argued, but I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Someone in Greenfield, someone I knew, someone I had known and trusted for years, had been spying on me.
    “The point is you don’t know who you can trust,” Marcus was saying.
    “No,” I said, getting up and moving toward him, “the point is I need answers, and you have them, and you’re using them to try and get me to disappear into the woods with you. How am I supposed to trust that?”
    “I can’t tell you what I know unless you come with me,” he said in frustration.
    “Why, because you don’t trust me?”
    “No,” he shot back. “Because as long as you’re within their reach, they won’t give up. And if they take you, they’re going to find out whatever you know, and I can’t risk that.”
    “I don’t know anything! I’m clueless remember?” I said, struggling to keep my voice down. “And take me?” I blinked at him. “I thought they wanted to take my PSS, not me. Where would they take me?”
    He just stared at me, his arms crossed.
    “At least tell me how you fixed my hand in Calc today.”
    “Come with me, and I will,” But he couldn’t even look at me as he said it. He knew it was a cheap shot.
    “Oh. Wow. Thanks for nothing,” I said, pushing past him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him step back, moving well clear of any contact with my backpack. At the shed door, I slipped my ghost hand through and popped the lock.
    “Olivia,” he said, half-plea, half-warning.
    “What?” I said, looking back at him as I pushed the shed door open a crack.
    “That thing in your bag. If it can block their minus meters, keep it close to you. And don’t let them get their hands on it.”
    “I get it. I’ll be careful,” I said, before I turned and slipped out, heading toward the south gate of the cemetery and home, leaving Marcus alone in the dark, which