"I don't know." Jack's lower lip started to tremble again. "To kill me."

I couldn't help smiling a little at that one. "No, Jack," I said. "That's not why ghosts come up to you. Not because they want to kill you." Not yet, anyway. The kid was too young to have made the kind of homicidal enemies I had. "They come up to you because you're a mediator, like me."

Tears trembled on the edges of Jack's long eyelashes as he gazed up at me. "A ... a what?"

Oh, for God's sake, I thought. Why me? I mean, really. Like my life's not complicated enough. Now I have to play Obi Wan Kenobi to this kid's Anakin Skywalker? It so isn't fair. When was I ever going to get the chance to be a normal teenage girl, to do the things normal teenage girls like to do, like go to parties and hang out at the beach, and, um, what else?

Oh, yeah, date. A date, with the boy I actually like, would be nice.

But do I get dates? Oh, no. What do I get instead?

Ghosts. Mainly ghosts looking for help cleaning up the messes they made when they were alive, but sometimes ghosts whose sole amusement appears to be making even bigger messes in the lives of the people they left behind. And this frequently includes mine.

I ask you, do I have a big sign on my forehead that says Maid Service? Why am I always the one who has to tidy up other people's messes?

Because I had the misfortune to be born a mediator.

I must say, I think I'm way better suited for the job than poor Jack. I mean, I saw my first ghost when I was two years old, and I can assure you, my initial reaction was not fear. Not that, at the age of two, I'd been able to help the poor suffering soul who approached me. But I hadn't shrieked and run away in terror, either.

It wasn't until later, after my dad - who passed away when I was six - came back and explained it that I began to fully understand what I was, and why I could see the dead, but others - like my mom, for instance - could not.

One thing I did know, though, from a very tender age: mentioning to anyone that I could see folks they couldn't? Yeah, not such a hot idea. Not if I didn't want to end up on the ninth floor of Bellevue, which is where they stick all the whackos in New York City.

Only Jack didn't seem to have quite the same instinctive sense of self-preservation I'd apparently been born with. He'd been opening up his trap about the whole ghost thing to anyone who would listen, with the inevitable result that his poor parents didn't want to have anything to do with him. I'd be willing to bet that kids his own age, figuring he was lying to get attention, felt the same way. In a sense, the little guy had brought all his current misfortunes down upon himself.

On the other hand, if you ask me, whoever is up there handing out the mediator badges needs to make a better effort to see that the folks who get awarded the job are mentally up to the challenge. I complain a lot about it, because it has put a significant cramp in my social life, but there is nothing about this whole mediator thing I do not feel perfectly capable of handling....

Well, except for one thing.

But I've been making a concerted effort not to think about that.

Or rather, him.

"A mediator," I explained to Jack, "is someone who helps people who have died to move on, into their next life." Or wherever people go when they kick the bucket. But I didn't want to get into a whole metaphysical discussion with this kid. I mean, he is, after all, only eight.

"You mean like I'm supposed to help them go to heaven?" Jack asked.

"Well, yeah, I guess." If there is one.

"But ... " Jack shook his head. "I don't know anything about heaven."

"You don't have to." I tried to think how to explain it to him, then decided showing was better than telling. That's what Mr. Walden, who I had last year for English and World Civ, was always saying, anyway.

"Look," I said, taking Jack by the hand. "Come on. Watch me, and you can see how it works."

Jack put the brakes on right away, though.

"No," he gasped, his brown eyes, so like his brother's, wild with fear. "No, I don't want to."

I yanked him to his feet. Hey, I never said I was cut out for this baby-sitting thing, remember?

"Come on," I said again. "Jorge won't hurt you. He's really nice. Let's see what he wants."

I practically had to carry him, but I finally got Jack over to where we'd last seen Jorge. A moment later the gardener - or, I should say, his spirit - reappeared, and after a lot of polite nodding and smiling, we got down to business. It was kind of hard, considering that Jorge's English was about as good as my Spanish - which is to say, not good at all - but eventually, I was able to figure out what was keeping Jorge from moving on from this life to his next - whatever that might be: His sister had appropriated a rosary left by their mother for her first grandchild, Jorge's daughter.

"So," I explained to Jack, as I steered him into the hotel lobby, "what we have to do is get Jorge's sister to give the rosary back to Teresa, his daughter. Otherwise, Jorge will just keep hanging around and pestering us. Oh, and he won't be able to find eternal rest. Got it?"

Jack said nothing. He just wandered behind me in a daze. He had been silent as death during my conversation with Jorge, and now he looked as if someone had whacked him on the back of the head with a Wiffle bat a couple hundred times.

"Come here," I said, and steered Jack into a fancy mahogany phone booth with a sliding glass door. After we'd both slipped through it, I pulled the door shut, then picked up the phone and fed a quarter into the slot. "Watch and learn, grasshopper," I said to him.

What followed was a fairly typical example of what I do on an almost daily basis. I called information, got the guilty parry's phone number, then phoned her. When she picked up, and I ascertained that she spoke enough English to understand me, I informed her of the facts as I knew them, without the least embellishment. When you are dealing with the undead, there's no need for exaggeration of any kind. The fact that someone who has died has contacted you with details no one but the deceased could know is generally enough. By the end of our conversation, an obviously flustered Marisol had assured me that the rosary would be delivered, that day, into Teresa's hands.

End of conversation. I thanked Jorge's sister and hung up.

"Now," I explained, to Jack, "if Marisol doesn't do it, we'll hear from Jorge again, and we'll have to resort to something a little more persuasive than a mere phone call. But she sounded pretty scared. It's spooky when a perfect stranger calls you and tells you she's spoken to your dead brother, and that he's mad at you. I bet she'll do it."

Jack stared up at me. "That's it?" he asked. "That's all he wanted you to do? Get his sister to give the necklace back?"

"Rosary," I corrected him. "And yes, that was it."

I didn't think it was important to add that this had been a particularly simple case. Usually, the problems associated with people speaking from beyond the grave are a little more complicated and take a lot more than a simple phone call to settle. In fact, oftentimes fisticuffs are involved. I had only just recently recovered from a few broken ribs given to me by a group of ghosts who hadn't appreciated my attempts to help them into the afterlife one little bit, and had, in fact, ended up putting me in the hospital.

But Jack had plenty of time to learn that not all the undead were like Jorge. Besides, it was his birthday. I didn't want to bum him out.

So instead, I slid the phone booth door open again and said, "Let's go swimming."

Jack was so stunned by the whole thing he didn't even protest. He still had questions, of course . . . questions I answered as patiently and thoroughly as I could. In between questions, I taught him to freestyle.

And I don't want to brag, or anything, but I have to say that, thanks to my careful instructions and calming influence, by the end of the day Jack Slater was acting like - and even swimming like - a normal eight-year-old.

I'm not kidding. The little dude had completely lightened up. He was even laughing. It was as if showing him that he had nothing to fear from the ghosts who had been plaguing him his whole life had lifted from him his fear of ... well, everything. It wasn't long before he was running around the pool deck, doing cannonballs off the side, and annoying all the doctors' wives who were trying to tan themselves in the nearby lounge chairs. Just like any other eight-year-old boy.

He even struck up a conversation with a group of other kids who were being tended by one of my fellow sitters. And when one of them splashed water in Jack's face, instead of bursting into tears, as he would have done the day before, Jack splashed the kid back, causing Kim, my fellow sitter, who was treading water beside me, to ask, "My God, Suze, what did you do to Jack Slater? He's acting almost... normal."

I tried not to let my pride show.

"Oh, you know," I said with a shrug. "I just taught him to swim, is all. I guess that gave him some confidence."

Kim watched as Jack and another boy, just to be irritating, did double cannonballs into a group of little girls, who shrieked and then tried to hit the boys with their foam floaties.

"God," Kim said. "I'll say. I can't believe it's even the same kid."

Neither, it became apparent, could Jack's own family. I was teaching him the backstroke when I heard someone whistle, low and long, from the far side of the pool. Jack and I both looked up and saw Paul standing there, looking all Pete Sampras-y in white and holding a tennis racquet.