Chapter summary's

Chapter's 1-4

A thirteen-year-old girl named Ali finds a torn photograph of Gull Cottage, she recognizes two people in the photo one is her aunt, and one is her mom. There's a third person but that person is torn out of the photograph. Ali wonders who this third person is but neither her mom or her aunt recalls a third person being with them. Ali is given an opportunity to go to Gull Cottage with her aunt Dulcie to watch her little cousin Emma for the summer, but her mom seems scared of something and won't let Ali go. Ali, her dad, and Dulcie argue with her mom until her mom eventually gives in. 

Chapter's 4-7

Ali arrives at the cabin with her aunt and cousin but the cabin looks nothing like her mom described it as. It has fresh paint, a new kitchen, and a studio for her aunt. Everything is going right until Ali and Emma meets Sissy. Sissy is nice to Emma but has something built up against Ali. Emma loves Sissy so much she wants to figure out where she lives so Ali takes her to look around Gull Cottage but forgets to tell Dulcie where they're going. On the way back they stop at the ice cream shop and they meet Erin, Erin asks them where they live and they told her: "Gull Cottage"  she was shocked "Because no one has been at that cottage since-" and then she stops. Ali wants to know why she stopped but Erin says "Just know no one has lived there in thirty years." but Ali thinks she’s hiding something. They start walking back and Ali thinks she see's Sissy staring at them from across the lake but she's just glade emma didn’t she her. 

Chapter 8

Ali and Emma get back to the cottage and Dulcie rushes to them because Ali didn't tell her where they were going. While at the ice cream shop Erin told them that their parents used to hang out together so Ali asks Dulcie if she remembers her and Dulcie says quickly no. Ali finds that weird but the grumpy look on Dulcie's face shuts her up. Later on they ate lunch and Ali put Emma to sleep, after she put her to sleep she asked Dulcie to go to the lake for a swim Dulcie hesitated at first, but let her go. When she got there everything was fine until she saw sissy, Ali decided to speak, they had a conversation and she asked why her mom doesn’t like the lake, Ali says she thinks something happened the last summer they were here but she doesn’t know for sure. Sissy says she knows and everybody knows but won’t tell Ali, So Ali say's she's lying and leaves the lake. When Ali gets back Emma is waiting on her and they decide to play candy crush. When they open the game it has Dulcie's name, her mothers, and another one: Teresa. They ask Dulcie who Teresa is and Dulcie says she doesn’t remember, Ali keeps pushing for the truth so Dulcie gets annoyed and snaps and they all go to bed. 

Chapter's 9-10

Ali wakes up later than usual because she was up late thinking about Teresa the mystery girl, when she goes downstairs she sees that Dulcie already prepared her cereal, she also sees Sissy. Emma claims that she came to play with her. Sissy says to Emma "Lets go to the lake." so they get dressed and head to the lake. When they get there Sissy starts to encourage Emma to do all these bad things and Emma picks up all the bad habits. When they get home Dulcie makes them lunch and Emma says she doesn’t like what Dulcie made but Dulcie and Ali knows she loves peanut butter and jelly. Eventually Emma's behavior gets worse and worse so Dulcie puts her to sleep. After a little while of  Emma being asleep a big red jeep pulled into the driveway of the cottage and came out a plump women named Jeanie grinning at Dulcie. She claims she’s Dulcie and my Moms childhood friend but Dulcie says she doesn't remember. Dulcie doesn’t really want to but she invites her in. Everyone is talking and Jeanie ask Dulcie why they never came back after what happened to Teresa, Dulcie says she doesn’t know anyone named Teresa and Jeanie insist that she remembers because after what happened nobody could forget. That made dulcie upset and she went into her studio. Ali wants to know what happened to Teresa  so she asked and Jeanie tells her that the last summer her mom and aunt was here Teresa drowned in the lake Ali has a feeling that she’s not telling the whole thing but Jeanie claims that she has to go home.

Chapter 11

Ali stays outside after Jeanie leaves. soon she hears Emma’s footsteps in the kitchen when Emma realizes Ali she tells  her that they can't take away Sissy. Ali explains to her that her mom doesn't want them to play together anymore. Ali and Emma end up going to the lake and Emma seems to be going back to her normal self. Then sissy shows up and they start chatting and she ask Emma if she want to go swimming their in lake and Sissy start's plunging Emma's head in the lake over and over again Ali gets Emma away from Sissy and storms home. The next morning they wake up and discovers someone has ruined all of Dulcie's paintings and on the paintings it says tell the truth or else who could've done it they wonder. 

Chapter's 12-13 

Ali and Emma are inside and they hear a knock on the door it's Sissy and she drenched in rain they let her in and she sorta kind of apologizes. their sitting on the couch and Sissy ask if Dulcie ever told them about Teresa she goes on to say the girl who drowned in the lake but she doesn’t just stop their she continues to say that people think that her aunt and mom did it because they were the last people with her but the police never questioned them because they are sucky Sissy told the story so well Emma and Ali were actually scared, so Ali made Sissy get out and made Emma promise she wouldn't tell her mom. The next day Ali is downstairs and at the back door is Sissy. Sissy tells Ali that she is going on a walk and has something to show Ali so Ali goes. Sissy lead her to a cliff where you could she the lake and Ali is a little iffy about being up there with Sissy then it starts raining and Sissy starts running and Ali tries to follow her and ends up at a house and when she knocks on the door a women answers and ali ask for sissy but the lady doesn’t know who that is. The lady who opened the door is Ms.Trent and she got Ali all clean and dry and they start talking about Teresa once again and she says more then Jeannie and tells her it was going around that her mom and aunt might've had something to do with it. After they talked about teresa ali realized she needed to get home so she calls Dulcie and Dulcie comes and picks her up. When Dulcie gets there she talks to Ms. Trent and they get in the car and Dulcie lets Ali have it. 

Chapter 14

Gradually Dulcie got over being mad at Ali probably because sissy stayed away. Ali and Emma are getting along again and Sissy has been away for weeks Ali was glad she hasn’t popped up and was hoping she moved away. One afternoon Ali and Emma were play together when she says she wonders what Sissy is doing but the way Emma acted last time Ali doesn't care what she doing, then Emma says that Sissy promised to come see her today now Ali is confused how would Sissy tell her that Ali is for sure that Sissy has been sneaking in Emma's room at nap time. So Ali ask Emma but Emma ignores her and runs in the house and Ali follows her Ali ask again but Emma just sulks in the couch. Ali goes in the kitchen and Dulcie is in there and she ask where is Emma Ali say sulking on the couch Dulcie ask why they can’t ever get along and Ali say its not her fault and Dulcie says it never her fault it's always somebody else's Ali starts to cry hurt from Dulcie’s words then Emma comes in there and ask why Ali is crying Dulcie apologizes to Ali and says maybe they should just pack up and leave. Emma starts crying and says we can't leave sissy that made Dulcie mad and she stood up and raised her hand like she was about to slap her but hen sits back down and apologizes. They make dinner together and it's like nothing ever happened. They all are in bed and Ali hears Emma scream so she goes to the top of the stairs and Emma says that Dulcie is not in her bedroom they go to her studio and there she is she said she couldn't sleep and so she tried to get some work done but none of her painting are coming out right Ali looks at them and she was right they were indeed bad and scary Emma was even scared of them. They went back to the cottage and went to sleep. 

Chapter's 15-16

The next day was sunny but Dulcie mood didn’t lighten up she told Ali and Emma that she was going on a walk to get her mind right after she leaves Emma says she hopes Sissy comes to see her today and Ali ask her if she remembers what her mom told her about sissy and causes a little argument eventually Ali leaves Emma in her room and goes to the kitchen window while she staring out the window she sees Emma running to the woods so Ali follows her, Ali knows she going to see sissy so she stays a couple of feet away so she can sneak up on them. Emma meets up with sissy and sissy gives emma a doll ali pops up from the bushes and scares both of them Ali tells Emma to give the doll back but she refuses and stickers by sissy’s side, ali start yelling at emma and she hears are you yelling at emma coming from dulcie at the top of the cliff she looks back at sissy but she’s  gone and emma runs to dulcie and tells her that ali is mad because sissy gave her a doll dulcie looks at the doll and gets angry and throws it off the cliff. The next morning Emma wakes up complaining about a headache and she looked sick so Dulcie took her to the doctor but ali stays behind so she can finish her book while home alone sissy shows up and leads Ali to a cemetery but then she disappears. Ali sees Sissy's red hoodie when she goes to it, its on a gravestone so she pulls it off and the name on the gravestones  was teresa so ali run to Ms.Trent's house and throws herself in her arms. Ms. Trent and ali are talking and Ali finds out that Teresa’s sister called her sissy and that got Ali thinking  what happens if sissy is Teresa a ghost coming back for revenge but Ms. Trent assures her that  ghost aren’t real and sissy is a common nickname. Ali is about to get dressed so she can go home and Ms. Trent calls her in the living room and says dulcie want to talk to her when she gets on the phone Dulcie ask her where is Emma but Ali doesn’t know where she is then it clicks she's with Sissy. Ali storms out Ms.Trents house to go get Emma. 

 Chapter's 17-18

 She’s running through the rain and finds Emma about to get in a canoe with Sissy Ali tries to stop her but Sissy bribes her with a doll so she gets in. Ali also gets in and there just riding in the canoe but soon it gets hard to see, Sissy has the doll and emma is begging for it so Ali start tugging for it and it flies out of Sissy’s hand into the lake so Emma is reaching for it and she falls out of the canoe Ali jumps out after her but when she jumps out she flipped over the whole thing. They are all in the lake and Ali trying to find Emma so she's swimming and sees her head pop out from underwater Ali swims to get her and they hold onto the boat which feels like forever. It becomes  light outside and they see a motorboat and two men come and saves them when they get on the dock there's a lot of people waiting for them including dulcie and Ms. Trent. When they get back to the cottage Dulcie wants to know what happened so Ali tell her and they realize Sissy is the ghost of Teresa and she was trying to kill them how she thought Dulcie killed her but Dulcie tells Ali the story and it was all a accident. Then Sissy comes back and grabs Ali she ask her if she told her aunt what happened Ali says yes and Sissy told her that her aunt must tell the truth. She also says that everybody hates her so ali showed sissy that  she doesn’t hate her and she combed her hair and let her sleep in her bed. 

Chapter summary 19-20

The next morning Sissy was gone when Ali went upstairs She saw Dulcie making pancakes and everybody was happy. Later on Dulcie went to tell her lawyer what happened and Emma and Ali went to get ice cream and sit by the lake. Dulcie gets back and tells Ali that her lawyer told her  to tell the news station to get the story out about Teresa and that relieved ali because she knew that's all Teresa wanted. Dulcie ended up calling Ali's mom to see if she wanted to come by for when the photographer got there and she agreed to come but she sounded sad and started crying Dulcie yelled at her to stop crying and she can’t be depressed forever. Ali went to her room and Sissy was there she asked if Dulcie told everybody and Ali responded and told her the News station was coming to take pictures and get the story sissy/teresa was pleased but then Ali added that it kinda ruined her moms whole life and Sissy replied and told ali that it ruined her whole life to. The next morning Sissy was gone but her pillow was damp Ali went upstairs and her aunt apologize for yelling at her mother on the phone yesterday Ali forgave her and they went on with their day later on Ms.Trent showed up to talk to Dulcie and Ali made paper doll on the sun porch with Emma after they got done Ali stayed and watched for her parents to come. When they arrived they cried and hugged each other and went inside. They had dinner and were just sitting chatting and then it started raining Dulcie went to look out the widow then she gasped and she said she saw something. Ali's mom insisted that she told her and she said Sissy after that Ali and Dulcie told Clair everything that happened and her response was that she knew that Dulcie wasn’t capable of watching by herself and asked Ali’s dad to find hotel to stay in but it was already to late so dulice pulled out he guest bed and everyone went to bed. 

chapter summary 21-22

Ali went upstairs and Sissy was waiting on her she told her she saw Emma and her bury the bird yesterday when they were outside she proceeds to say that she wants the same thing and once she get a proper barrel she leave everyone alone but Ali says that's impossible because no one knows where here body is Sissy says that she tried to show her but she was scared that Sissy would push her over the cliff Ali goes inside and her parents are still sleep but Dulcie is awake Ali tell’s Dulcie about her altercation with Sissy and Dulcie's says she had a dream about Sissy then her mom walks in the kitchen and says she did to know they are trying to figure out how to tell the police without sounding weird then the news reporter arrives and Emma wakes up he talks to Dulcie and Claire first then Emma and Ali. Emma tells the news reporter that she knows where the body is and Ali tells him that too. The police comes and Sissy’s sister and they go to where Sissy told them her remains were and they find them the police, news reporter, and Ali’s dad is shocked and can’t believe it. Later that day their getting interviewed but it’s to much fo Ali she run into the woods to cool off then Sissy pops up and she tells Ali how know she can be in peace and ask her  when is she gonna be buried Ali tell her that he sister is planning it sometime this week and they talk some more and Ali goes back to the cottage. A couple days later people would have a funeral for Sissy people cried and brought flowers like she wanted. Ali's Parents were leaving and ask if she was coming with she decided to stay Ali and Emma went to go visit Sissy’s grave and they saw the doll on the ground they weren’t sure if Sissy left for Emma or not so they were about to leave it but then Sissy showed up in told Emma she left for her and she could take and Sissy was left to rest peacefully.