Meg Cabot: Haunted

There was a crude drawing on the flyer of a tipsy-looking girl with large breasts downing a can of beer.

"No, you can't go," I said, handing the flyer back to David with a snort. "You're too young. And somebody ought to show this to your class adviser. Eighth-graders shouldn't be having parties like this."

CeeCee, who'd taken the flyer from David's hands, went, "Um, Suze."

"Seriously," I continued. "And I'm surprised at you, David. I thought you were smarter than that. Nothing good ever comes from parties like that. Sure, some people will have fun. But ten to one somebody will end up having to get his stomach pumped or drown or crack his head open or something. It's always fun until someone gets hurt."

"Suze." CeeCee held the flyer up in front of my face just inches from my nose. "Ninety-nine Pine Crest Road. That's your house, isn't it?"

I snatched the flyer away from her with a gasp. "David! What can you be thinking?"

"It wasn't me," David cried, his already wobbly voice going up another two or three octaves. "Somebody showed it to me in social studies. Brad's passing them around. Some of the seventh graders got some, even - "

I narrowed my eyes in my stepbrother Brad's direction. He was leaning against the basketball pole, trying to look cool, which was pretty hard for a guy whose cerebral cortex was coated, as far as I could tell, with WD-40.

"Excuse me," I said, standing up. "I have to go commit a murder." Then I stalked across the basketball court, the bright orange flyer in my hand.

Brad saw me coming. I noted the look of naked panic that flitted across his features as his gaze fell upon what I had in my hand. He straightened up and tried to run, but I was too quick for him. I cornered him by the drinking fountain and held the flyer up so that he could see it.

"Do you really think," I asked calmly, "that Mom and Andy are going to allow you to have this . . . this . . . whatever it is?"

The panic on Brad's face had turned to defiance. He stuck out his chin and said, "Yeah, well, what they don't know isn't going to hurt them."

"Brad," I said. Sometimes I felt sorry for him. I really did. He was just such a dufus. "Don't you think they're going to notice when they look out their bedroom window and see a bunch of naked girls in their new hot tub?"

"No," Brad said. '"Cause they aren't going to be around Friday night. Dad's got that guest lecture thing up in San Francisco, and your mom's going with him, remember?"

No, I did not remember. In fact, I wondered if I had ever even been told. I had been spending a lot of time up in my room lately, it was true, but so much that I'd missed something as important as our parents going away for an entire night? I didn't think so. ...

"And you better not tell them," Brad said with an unexpected burst of venom, "or you'll be sorry."

I looked at him like he was nuts. " I'll be sorry?" I said with a laugh. "Um, excuse me, Brad, but if your dad finds out about this party you're planning, you're the one who's going to be grounded for the rest of your life, not me."

"Nuh-uh," Brad said. The look of defiance had been replaced by an even less attractive one of something that was almost venal. "'Cause if you even think about saying anything, I'll tell them about the guy you've been sneaking into your room every night."

3

Detention.

That's what you get at the Junipero Sena Mission Academy when you sucker punch your stepbrother on school grounds and a teacher happens to notice.

"I can't understand what came over you, Suze," said Mrs. Elkins, who, in addition to teaching ninth- and tenth-grade biology, was also in charge of staying after school with juvenile delinquents like me. "And on the first day back, too. Is this how you want to start out the new year?"

But Mrs. Elkins didn't understand. And I couldn't exactly tell her or anything. I mean, how could I tell her that it had all just suddenly become too much? That discovering that my stepbrother knew something I had straggled to hide from the rest of my family for months now - on top of finding out that a monster from my dreams was currently stalking the halls of my own school in the guise of an Abercrombie and Fitch-wearing hottie - had caused me to melt down like a Maybelline lipstick left in the sun?

I couldn't tell her. I merely took my punishment in silence, watching the minutes on the clock drag slowly by. Neither I nor any of the other prisoners would be released until four o'clock.

"I hope," Mrs. Elkins said when that hour finally arrived, "that you've learned a lesson, Suze. You aren't setting a very good example for the younger children, now, are you, brawling on school grounds like that?"

Me? I wasn't setting a good example? What about Brad? Brad was the one who was planning to have his own personal Oktoberfest in our living room. And yet Brad had me by the short hairs. And did he ever know it.

"Yeah," he'd said to me at lunch, when I'd stood there staring at him in utter dumbfounded-ness, unable to believe what I'd just heard. "Think you're so slick, don't you, letting the guy sneak up into your room every night, huh? How's he get in, anyway? That bay window of yours, the one over the porch roof? Well, I guess your little secret's blown now, huh? So you just keep quiet about my party, and I'll keep quiet about this Jesse guy."

I'd been so flabbergasted by this news that Brad could hear - had heard - Jesse, I hadn't been able to formulate a coherent sentence for several minutes, during which time Brad exchanged greetings with various members of his posse who came up to high-five him and say things like, "Dude! Tub time. I'm so there."

Finally, I managed to unlock my jaw and demanded, "Oh, yeah? Well, what about Jake? I mean, Jake's not going to let you have a bunch of your friends over to get wasted."

Brad just looked at me like I was nuts. "Are you kidding?" he asked. "Who do you thinks providing the beer? Jake's gonna steal me a keg from where he works."

I narrowed my eyes at him. " Jake ? Jake's getting you beer? No way. He would never - " Then comprehension dawned. "How much are you paying him?"

"A hundred big ones," Brad said. "Exactly half of what he's shy on that Camaro he's been wanting."

There was little Jake wouldn't do to get his hands on a Camaro all his own, I knew.

Stymied, I stared at him some more. "What about David?" I asked, finally. "David's going to tell."

"No, he isn't," Brad said confidently. '"Cause if he does, I'll kick his bony butt from here to Anchorage. And you better not try to defend him, either, or your mom's gonna get a big fat helping of Jesse pie."

That's when I hit him. I couldn't help it. It was like my fist had a mind of its own. One minute it was at my side, and the next it was sinking into Brad's gut.

The fight was over in a second. A half second, even. Mr. Gillarte, the new track coach, pulled us apart before Brad had a chance to get in a blow of his own.

"Walk it off," he ordered me with a shove, while he bent to tend a frantically gasping Brad.

So I walked it off. Right up to Father D., who was standing in the courtyard, supervising the stringing of fairy lights around the trunk of a palm tree.

"What can I tell you, Susannah?" he'd said, sounding exasperated when I was finished explaining the situation. "Some people are more perceptive than others."

"Yeah, but Brad ?" I had to keep my voice down because a bunch of the gardeners were around, all helping to set up the decorations for the feast of Father Serra, which was happening on Saturday, the day after Brad's hot tub bacchanal.

"Well, Susannah," Father D. said. "You couldn't have expected to keep Jesse a secret forever. Your family was bound to find out sometime."