THE GHOSTS OF DEPARTURE POINT

It's hard to reconcile the Eve Bunting of, say, The Happy Funeral (p. 867, J-181) with the author of crude teenage suspensers like The Waiting Game and this. Vicki West and Ted Clark, two of the 13 victims of auto accidents at Departure Point, meet as ghosts and fall in love. ("It was almost as good as being alive," says narrator Vicki.) Both are haunting the site, they realize, because they were to blame for the accidents they were in and for the death of others. But if they atone for their guilt—the way fellow-ghost Rebecca does for the unrelated accident-death of her son—their ghostly existences will end and they'll lose each other. So: should they or should they not try to prevent further accidents at Departure Point? And suppose the town decides independently to straighten the hazardous road: "Maybe we'll be off the hook, because we at least tried." Apart from the conundrums (and an ingenious balloon-stunt), altogether flat—and tacky even so.