The fog lay on the streets in west Asheville. It wrapped the trees and bumped against the houses. Porch lights and the streetlights all wore halos. The stars had gone away. It was a perfect night for ghosts. “Man, I love flipping people’s houses,” Wyatt said as they searched for the right house numbers. “Flipping? What’s that?” Jana asked. “Do you do cartwheels?” “You know, flip. Show up, walk through, leave. When you flip something, you’re getting it done, like flipping a page in a book.” “You don’t turn over the furniture or things like that?” “I just like people’s houses,” Wyatt said. “They’re different inside than what you expect. They’re not like your own, you know what I mean? I like thinking I live there when I walk through, or that I might have grown up there. My house, we just had junk all over the place. These other houses, it’s like everything has been arranged. I like seeing how different people do that.” Jana smiled. Listening to Wyatt, she felt less dead than usual.
