Jason Reynolds has learned to make himself small.
In Connersville, Indiana, 1989, that's how you survive when you're different. Keep your head down. Don't attract attention. Especially don't talk about the dreams-two boys from another time, meeting in secret by lantern light, loving each other in a world that would destroy them for it.
Then Jason meets Christopher Avery.
Christopher is everything Jason isn't: put-together, confident, from the kind of family that actually sits down to dinner. But when Jason finally tells someone about the dreams-about the abandoned farmhouses west of town, about William and Daniel who lived across the dirt road separating their homes-Christopher doesn't think he's crazy.
He wants to investigate.
Together, they uncover a love story from 1892: two teenage boys who found each other in the darkness, who carved out stolen moments in the night, and whose story ended in tragedy on the railroad tracks. But William and Daniel aren't just haunting Jason and Christopher. They're guiding them. Warning them. Showing them what happens when love is forced to exist only in shadows.
Because in a small town where everyone knows your business, being yourself can cost you everything. Jason's learning that firsthand-the whispers, the slurs, the danger of being seen. But he's also discovering something William and Daniel never got the chance to know: that sometimes the people who matter most will surprise you. His guidance counselor David and David's partner Jim. Christopher's parents, who see more than Jason gives them credit for. Even his own mother, who's been carrying her own grief alone for far too long.
Some ghosts don't want revenge. Some want you to live the life they couldn't.
For fans of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Cemetery Boys-a story about two boys separated by a century, united by love, and the ghosts who refuse to let history repeat itself.
