Sneak Peek: A Seymour Christmas: A Ghost Story

A little holiday treat for you: three chapters of my Christmas ghost story. Happy holidays!

Chapter One

Thanksgiving Pizza

32 Days until Christmas

Welcome to 203 Seymour Street. Hardwood floors. A big old turret. A fireplace in every room. And ghosts. Yes, you heard that right—ghosts. I must have the only parents in the whole world that would buy a house with spooks on purpose. They weren’t looking for a haunted house per se, just a house with character, they said.

They couldn’t even buy a regular haunted house. You know, one with ghosts on Halloween. No, these ghosts only come out at Christmas. Nothing to spoil opening presents like a ghostly head popping out of the box with your Playstation. A banshee howling along with the Christmas carols. A poltergeist tossing the Christmas ham around the dining room like a football. At least a Halloween ghost would be a cool party trick.

“So what do you think?” Mom asked, leaning over me to look up at the house as we sat in the car.

“Well, it definitely looks haunted.”

The large brick Victorian loomed over us in the fading daylight. There was a big turret, all the windows dark and untelling. Anything could be lurking behind them—zombies, ghosts, my first grade teacher Mrs. Mosley (who, by the way, was pretty much the scariest creature on earth). The front porch wrapped around one side of the house, its boards gray and warped. The bushes were ragged and overgrown, and the lawn was matted down with damp leaves. This totally was the house you’d dare your friends to ring the bell on Halloween. I may have gotten a chill just looking at it.

I’m not going to lie, I was kind of excited to live in a house with ghosts. Not that I believed in such things—well, I kinda did, kinda didn’t. I definitely liked the idea of ghosts. And I really liked the idea of being the new kid who lived in the haunted house. It would create this air of mystery. And for once, I wouldn’t be the loser. Or the freak. Or the weirdo like at my old school. Don’t get the wrong idea, I had friends. The best of friends—Jordan and Amir. But at the end of the fifth grade Jordan’s dad got it into his head that they needed to move to the coast of Maine so he could paint seascapes—Mr. Cohen was an artist. Which was completely stupid because our little town of Carlyle sat on the coast of Lake Michigan, and I’m sorry, but the Great Lakes look just like the ocean—lots of water, no land in sight, seagulls, lighthouses . . . everything except the nasty salt water (let’s just say I learned the hard way not to open your eyes underwater in the ocean). And Amir abandoned me after the sixth grade to go to some fancy school for math geniuses, leaving me to face the seventh grade all alone.

Don’t get me wrong, Jordan, Amir, and I still talked—mostly email and IM (but not text because my parents don’t know what century we’re living in and won’t let me have a cell phone until I turn thirteen, which I will in March, but it’s still not fair)—but it’s just not the same.

Needless to say, the last few months at school sucked. No one laughed when I did my air trombone behind teachers’ backs, least of all the teachers. I’m a card carrying band geek so at least the other band geeks let me eat lunch with them. But they weren’t amused by my stuntman hijinks like when I would slide across the lunch table like it was a hood of a car in a cop movie. Of course, I never did master how to do it without knocking over everyone’s trays.

I was a lone llama amidst a bunch of boring sheep.

Yes, I did just call myself a llama and I know you’re thinking that sounds like something a weirdo would say, but just hear me out.

So whenever Jordan and I were annoying my oh-so-perfect sister Katie, which was basically all the time because it was fun, she’d call us weirdos and chase us out of the room. One day Jordan shot back, “I’d rather be a llama than a sheep. Bahhh!”

We had just gone on a field trip to a farm that had llamas and we were totally obsessed with them.

Then he started singing the Name Game song. “Llama llama bo-blama, banana-fana fo-flama, fee-fi-mo-mlama, llama!” And it just became this stupid-funny thing we’d do any time someone called us geeks or dorks or losers. Then Jordan found this poster of a llama wearing sunglasses so we started wearing sunglasses and doing rapper moves every time we sang our llama song. When Amir moved to town in the fourth grade, he thought the skit was hilarious so the three of started doing it and calling ourselves The Three Llamas.

Don’t judge.

A fidgety man in a hideous tan suit wearing an even more hideous toupee waved to us from the steps of the porch. Seriously, the wig looked like it was made out of orange cat hair and it was like he didn’t even try to match it to the few dark brown hairs he had left on his head.

“Oh, there’s Mr. Dupray the realtor!” Mom said, waving back.

“Wait—Mr. Toupee?”

“Travis, don’t.” She shot me a warning look.

“Don’t what? I didn’t do anything.” I gave her my best innocent smile.

“Keep it that way.” She looked back at the real estate agent. “He could have left the keys under the mat. He didn’t have to spoil his Thanksgiving by bringing them out in person!”

“But we can spoil ours?” I griped. That’s right, we were moving on Thanksgiving Day. No lounging around the house, stuffing ourselves silly. Which was a shame because I could seriously go from some turkey and pumpkin pie right about now. Gas station nachos on Thanksgiving was wrong on so many levels.

“We’ll celebrate Thanksgiving once we get settled, I promise,” Mom said, getting out of the car.

“So on Christmas. Then we’ll celebrate Christmas on Easter and Easter on the Fourth of July and the Fourth of July on Hallo—”

“Travis, enough already. I’m not thrilled about moving Thanksgiving weekend either, but that’s just how things worked out.”

The moving van pulled up behind us, and Dad and Katie hopped out.

My sister pulled up the hood of her blue Carlyle Comets hoodie and stared up at the house, unimpressed. Katie hadn’t wanted to move. And if I had her life, I wouldn’t have wanted to move either. Popular—not mean girl popular, but popular in that she had lots of friends and everyone liked her. Athletic—captain of the volleyball team and pitcher on the softball team. Smart—honor classes, class treasurer, first chair French horn . . . You can see why I call her oh-so-perfect Katie. Why would she want to give that all up to be a nobody at a new school?

“Hello Zoleckis!” Mr. Dupray called out, hurrying to meet us in the yard. “Are these the kids?”

“No, we’re actually aliens from the planet Bob here to indoctrinate humans in the ways of—” I said in my alien voice, which honestly sounded more like a robot than an alien. Dad gripped my shoulder and squeezed—hard—cutting me off. What can I say, I couldn’t resist giving ridiculous answers to ridiculous questions.

“This jokester is Travis,” Dad introduced, sounding less than proud. “And our daughter, Katie.”

“Nice to finally meet you both!” Mr. Dupray shook my hand so enthusiastically I thought he’d take it off. Katie wisely crossed her arms so he couldn’t do the same to her. “What do you say we get you inside so you can start fighting over who gets the bigger bedroom?”

Katie and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes in unison.

“You didn’t have to meet us. I’m sure you’d rather be with your family on Thanksgiving,” Mom said.

“Nonsense. My clients are my family.” Gag. Triple gag. “Besides, this is a . . .” His eyes flickered nervously to the house, “special home. I wanted to make sure you were comfortable.” He unlocked the door and pushed it open with the perfect haunted house door squeak.

Nervous anticipation coursed through my body. I could already picture myself in the cafeteria, all the kids gathered around me, hanging on my every word as I told them about how I survived levitating beds, ghostly whispers, and things flying across the room. Girls would jump and grab my arm when I told them how I fought off possession, and the guys would all agree that I was brave and cool and they would never survive living in my house.

Dad flipped the light switch and the lights flickered on.

All my excitement deflated.

It was just a house. A wide hallway with a very dusty chandelier and a large staircase nestled against one wall. No coffin in the corner, no bloodstains on the floor, no unexplainable, ominous wind rushing at us. The hairs on the back of my neck didn’t stand on end, no chills ran down my spine. Seriously, the scariest thing about the house was the size of the dust bunnies.

“We have an actual vestibule!” Dad cried out in geeky glee. Normal people would have called it an entry way. “And over here is the living room,” Dad said. “Or as the Victorians would have called it, a sitting room.”

Katie and I wandered around the sitting room. These Victorians sure liked their wood paneling, crazy wallpaper, and fancy moldings. It was everywhere. The turret was part of this room, which I had to admit was pretty cool. A small fireplace sat in one corner, and there were a bunch of rusted radiators.

“It needs some work, I know,” Dad said. “But just think of the potential. Besides,” he added with a smirk, “we got it for a song.”

If you looked up cheapskate in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of Duncan B. Zolecki. He cleaned and reused floss, which was just gross. When the ketchup bottle was almost empty, he’d put water in it so he could get every last bit out. And half his wardrobe was made up of promotional T-shirts he got for free.

“What song? The Monster Mash?” Katie asked, eyeing the yellow stain on the ceiling. Her arms still crossed.

I smiled. Snarky Katie was the best Katie.

“Come on Katie Bear, cheer up,” Dad said, putting his arm around her.

I noticed something sticking out of the doorway to the family room—or parlor as my dad would have called it. I tried to wiggle it free, but it was wedged in there something good.

“Those are pocket doors. Be careful, you don’t want to break them,” Mom warned.

Okay, doors that slide into the wall—cool.

We moved to the parlor, which had a huge bay window and a large, ornate fireplace with a cloudy, old-timey mirror above it. That mirror was definitely creepy.

“I’ll just wait here for you!” Mr. Dupray called, a nervous smile plastered onto his face. He was still standing in the vestibule.

“Oh, wait until you see this!” Dad said and hurried across the room to a built-in bookcase, moldy old books included. He tipped The Secret Portal by Paul Thisson forward and the bookcase swung out with a long squeak. It was a secret door!

“Cool, huh Katie?” Dad asked, but my sister wouldn’t even smile. I was impressed though.

The door led to a small, dark hallway that had a narrow second staircase. We followed the little hallway into the kitchen, which extended across the back of the house. It had cupboards piled all the way to the ceiling, and there was a little rail with a small, rolling ladder attached so you could reach the upper cabinets. A small island sat in the center of the room. The kitchen hadn’t been updated in decades, the appliances looked as if they were from the 1960s.

The kitchen opened up to the main hall, but there was also a walk-through pantry, which led to a small room that had a counter and more cabinets.

“A butler’s pantry,” Mom explained. “It’s where they used to dress the plates before serving.”

“Can you believe we have a real butler’s pantry!” Dad squealed. He was really into this house.

The butler’s pantry led to the dining room which had yet another fireplace and bay window.

As we stepped back into the main hall, a jittery Mr. Dupray handed Dad the keys to the house. I think I spotted an actual skeleton key on it!

“Just to cover all our bases, for legal reasons, you understand,” he said, sounding nervous as if Dad was going to try to back out of the sale. “You have bought the house as is, which means you’re responsible for all repairs and you have been informed of the house’s . . . quirks.”

“You mean the ghosts,” Dad said with a big smile. “I can’t wait to meet them! Adds character to the house, don’t you think? It’ll be like living in a Dickens novel!”

“Have you ever read a Dickens novel, Dad?” Katie asked.

“I don’t believe in such things,” Mr. Dupray said, as his eyes shifted nervously around the room. He was such a liar. “But the house does have a history—”

“What kind of history?” I asked enthusiastically. “Was there a violent murder? Satanic rituals? Did a cult live here?”

“No, no! Nothing like that. Just the last owner or two have reported . . . unexplainable phenomenon.” The realtor began wringing his hands.

“Like what? Rattling chains? Shadow people in the basement? Sleepwalking with knives? Red rum written on the mirror in blood?!”

“Lord no! Music. Smells. An apparition or two,” he added quickly under his breath.

“On Christmas?” Katie asked skeptically.

“Leading up to that day, yes.”

“So, like, when can we expect stuff to start happening?” I asked.

“I think that’s enough,” Mom intervened. The realtor was now sweating bullets, despite the chill in the house. “I’m sure Mr. Dupray wants to get home to his family.”

“Enjoy your new home. Happy Thanksgiving,” Mr. Dupray said, inching towards the door even as he shook Mom and Dad’s hands. “Remember, the sale is final!” and he disappeared out the door.

“Lovely man,” Dad said.

“Why don’t we check out the upstairs,” Mom said, “and you guys can see your rooms.”

There were four bedrooms upstairs, each with its own fireplace.

“Wait, there is only one bathroom? For all of us?” Katie asked, looking at the claw foot bathtub and pedestal sink. “No way.”

“There is a half bath tucked under the stairs downstairs. And there is a sewing room off the master bedroom that your dad and I are going to turn into a master bath. There will be plenty of bathrooms.”

Katie looked at her, doubtful.

“Brrr. It’s chilly in here,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together. “I’m going to see if I can get the heat going before we start unloading the truck. You know, boiler systems are supposed to be one of the more efficient ways to heat a home.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

“Isn’t it?” Dad responded, totally missing my sarcasm, before rushing down to the basement to tinker with the furnace.

“I’m going to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself,” Mom sighed. “You two okay up here by yourselves?”

“We’re not little kids,” I said, and Mom hurried after Dad. As soon as they were out of sight, I called out, “I call dibs on the tower bedroom!” and rushed to the room to claim it. It wasn’t the biggest of the four bedrooms, but come on, it had a tower!

Katie followed at a less enthusiastic pace. She leaned against the doorway and took in the room. Faded blue wallpaper. Tall, drafty windows. A small black fireplace. “It’s all yours.”

“Will you lighten up? You’ve got to admit that this house is pretty awesome.”

She just gave me a look like I was an idiot, one I received a lot from her lately.

“I can’t believe Dad moved us here just because he’s having a midlife crisis. I can’t believe Mom let him,” Katie said.

A little over a month ago, Dad came home and announced that he had quit his job. He said he wanted to do something different with his life. Something challenging. Something inspiring. I totally couldn’t blame him. Both my parents had the most boring job in the world—accounting. Adding and subtracting an endless list of numbers . . . sounded like some kind of military torture to me. But then he went and picked the second most boring job in the world—teaching accounting. He had gotten a job at Lansing Community College, which was why we left our small town of Carlyle and moved to the state capital.

“I can’t believe Dad thinks he’s going to fix up this house himself. Remember the time he lost his wedding ring down the toilet and tried to retrieve it himself?”

Katie finally cracked a smile. “He managed to flood the bathroom and break the toilet seat.”

“Yeah, Mom’s not getting a master bath.”

Katie stared out the turret windows. You could actually see the Capitol building all lit up in blue. “I wish he would have just bought a sports car like a normal middle-aged man.”

“That would be too cool. Dad’s incapable of being cool.”

“Good point.”

Suddenly, we heard a loud BANG! from somewhere downstairs.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Dad probably just blew something up in the basement,” Katie answered, unconcerned. Given his handyman skills, she could very well be right.

BANG!

This time Katie and I both jumped then looked at each other, our eyes wide. That sound had come from the other end of the upstairs hallway. Could this be the Christmas ghost getting an early start?

BANG! BANG! BANG! The sound was moving down the hall. There was something in the walls and it was coming for us!

“I think we should find Mom—” Katie started to say when a deafening BANG! went off inside my room like a shotgun. We both yelped. Suddenly all the walls were banging and clanking as if an army of angry ghosts was going to bust out at any moment. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, the walls then began to scream and hiss.

Okay, living in a haunted house suddenly wasn’t so much fun.

Panicked, Katie and I ran. We flew down the stairs, the whole house thundering and hissing around us.

“Mom!” I shouted.

“Dad!” Katie called, her voice an octave higher than normal.

We found them in the parlor, completely undisturbed that the house was set to explode.

“—I still say we should have a plumber out just to take a look,” Mom shouted over the racket.

“Nonsense! It’s running just fine,” Dad said.

“What is that noise?” Katie demanded, covering her ears.

“The radiators!” Dad yelled. “The pipes are just getting warmed up. It’s part of living in an old house. You’ll get used to it,” he assured us.

The clanking noise was already quieting down, though the hissing grew louder. I could see steam rising from a little vent on a radiator.

“Just great,” Katie said.

“So no bodies in the wall?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

“No, buddy,” Dad said with a smile. “Since it’s already dark out, let’s unload the basics and worry about the other stuff in the morning. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m famished.”

“Does anyone deliver Thanksgiving dinner?” I asked.

“How about pizza? Good old-fashion moving day food,” Dad said. He clapped his hands together. “Let’s go, campers! Move it!”

Katie and I looked at each other. We both hated when Dad called us campers.

We unloaded some duffel bags of clothes and sleeping bags and pillows and other random stuff. No vengeful ghosts came after us, and the banging and hissing did eventually stop, and the house got nice and toasty.

We camped out in the family room. Dad made a pitiful fire out of the some twigs he found in the yard in the giant fireplace, and we ate pizza on the floor of our new house. All and all, it was a pretty good first night in our haunted house.

Chapter Two

The Ghost of John Seymour

28 Days until Christmas

It was Monday morning, and not only was I up, showered, and dressed by seven-thirty a.m., I was actually excited to get to school. Normally, I was rolling out of bed last minute trying to feign illness, injury, or insanity just to get out of going to class. But this wasn’t just any school day. Not only was it my first day at my new school, but it was also my first day of high school. You see, at my old school, sixth through eighth grade were considered middle school, but here, you started high school in the seventh grade. I couldn’t wait to tell Jordan and Amir.

“Step away from the gel,” Katie teased, leaning against the bathroom doorway. “Haven’t you learned your lesson?”

I scowled at her in the mirror. Okay, maybe I did end up with my head shellacked every time I tried to do something with my hair, but it wasn’t my fault that my reddish-brown hair was kinda straight, kinda wavy, and never wanted to lay right.

“What are you wearing? Is that my Beyoncé T-shirt?!”

I may or may not have snuck into Katie’s room while she was in the shower and stole one of her shirts. I was going to wear my long-sleeved I ♥ Souza shirt, but I was afraid that would pigeonhole me as a band geek and nothing more. Don’t get me wrong, I was a band geek and proud of it, but there was more to me than that. (John Philip Souza was just the greatest composer of marches of all time, in case you didn’t know). I wanted to wear something that would let people know I was cool, but not-trying-to-be-cool cool.

Katie always nailed the not-trying-to-look-cool cool. Like today. Her straight brown hair was in a braid over her shoulder. She had on ripped skinny jeans and chunky sweater and boots. It didn’t hurt that she was already pretty with her blue eyes, freckled skin, and athletic build. Of course, I’d never say that to her face.

“No,” she said and started to wrestle the shirt off of me.

“Hey! Ouch! Careful!”

She yanked the shirt from over my head then looked at my Souza shirt. “Not that either. Come on.” She dragged me to my room. “Have you unpacked at all? What did you do all weekend?”

Did she not see my Lego monster creations displayed on the mantel or my llama poster (a gift from Jordan before he moved away) proudly hung above my bed? Or my music stand set up in the center of the turret where I could pretend I was onstage when I practiced? Okay, so yeah, my bedroom was a disaster. There were boxes everywhere. Nerf guns, sheet music, old blimp models (I went through a blimp phase; don’t judge), and other crap spilling out of boxes and randomly scattered across the room. I hadn’t even made my bed; I just threw my sleeping bag on top of it. None of my clothes had been put away. But I had an excuse.

Worst. Thanksgiving. Weekend. Ever.

First off, cable and internet couldn’t be installed until Monday because of the holiday so no TV, no YouTube, no online videogames, no IM to talk to my friends for four whole days. Which really wasn’t fair because everyone else had a phone and could use data, but not me because I was a whopping four months away from being thirteen. But whatever, that wasn’t even the worst of it.

Mom decided that the house was filthy—she wasn’t wrong—and we couldn’t possibly move all our junk into the house until it had been cleaned from top to bottom. So I spent my Friday sneezing and coughing and gagging as I dusted and scrubbed and swept and mopped. Child slave labor, I’m telling you.

Saturday was even worse. Dad refused to hire movers to “do what we can do ourselves with a little hard work and sweat.” So we spent the day hauling heavy furniture and box after box into the house. It didn’t help that Dad was short-tempered because we had to keep the moving truck a day longer so we could clean, which meant paying more. He and Mom kept bickering because of it, making them both snap at the rest of us over nothing. So excuse me if I didn’t want to spend my last day of break unpacking my room.

Katie rummaged through my duffel bag. “This one.” She handed me my gray John Coltrane T-shirt.

“Are you sure?” I asked, putting it on over Souza.

“Coltrane is cool and you. Beyoncé is not you.”

I looked at myself in the mirror propped up against the wall. “Beyoncé is everyone, thank you very much. But yeah, I like it.” It was hard to look cool when you were on the scrawny side with uncooperative hair and a face full of freckles, but somehow I was almost there. My sister was good.

“Now let’s do something with your hair.”

Katie took me back into the bathroom and found a tin of hair paste. “Hold still.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked suspiciously.

Katie and I didn’t hate each other exactly, but for the last year or so, there wasn’t anything about me that she didn’t find obnoxious, annoying, or immature. I mean, I’ve always annoyed her, but we used to be friends. We could spend hours playing Minecraft together or watching funny videos. And building monsters started out as Katie’s idea. In fact, she built the pink two-headed, six-armed monster on my mantel.

But then she started high school and everything changed.

She just shrugged. “It’s a new school. Figured you could use all the help you could get.”

“You just don’t want me to embarrass you now that we’re going to be in the same school.”

“That too.”

“Come on you two! Hurry up!” Mom called from downstairs.

We trudged downstairs to the kitchen where Mom was dressed all professional and eating toast over the sink, and Dad was rummaging through the fridge in his robe.

“Grab some breakfast, and I’ll drive you to school, then I have some job interviews, and then I’m meeting Richie for lunch.”

Uncle Richie was the other reason we moved to Lansing. Richie was Mom’s younger brother. He called himself an entrepreneur. Dad said he was just too lazy to get a real job. First, he was going to make his fortune selling vitamins, then it was flipping houses (he was about as handy as Dad), then he wanted to open a chain of psychic shops—you know, palm reading and tarot cards and stuff. Now he was on to a new scheme. He had been vague on the details, but wanted Mom to come help him sort it all out, and Mom could never say no to Uncle Richie.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal but was too nervous to eat.

“First time in years I have time for a leisurely breakfast and there’s nothing to eat,” Dad grumbled, closing the fridge. He didn’t start teaching until January when the new semester started.

“Well, after you leisurely see to the leaking radiators, set some mouse traps, tighten the rail on the back staircase, find us a contractor, and finish unpacking, you can go grocery shopping,” Mom snapped. I guessed Mom and Dad were still on each other’s nerves. “Kids, let’s go!”

I zipped up the red hoodie I used as a jacket, grabbed my backpack, and picked up my trombone case. “Where’s your French horn?” I asked my sister.

“I dropped band.”

“Too cool for band now. I get it,” I said, pushing past her.

See, Katie and I could be getting along all fine and then she had to go and do something like this—be a person I didn’t even know. It was like the Beyoncé T-shirt. Katie wasn’t even that big of a Beyoncé fan. I mean, everyone loves Beyoncé, she’s Beyoncé, come on, but Katie was into indie bands. But suddenly she’s going to a Beyoncé concert and wearing her T-shirt. It was like she started high school and became this whole other person. Suddenly, she was an athlete and had all these new friends. Friends who didn’t even know that she was a huge computer geek who knew how to code while most kids were still figuring out how to right-click. That she wanted to design videogames when she grew up. And now she was giving up band even though she loved it and practiced her French horn every single day. What would be next? Giving up her honor classes and becoming the pretty bimbo?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, following me to the car.

“Nothing.” I slammed my door shut.

She climbed into the front seat. “It was too much. Band, sports, school—”

“Well, you’ve already missed tryouts for volleyball. You could have stuck with band.”

“Why do you care, anyway?”

“I don’t.”

Neither of us said another word on the short drive to school.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. I put the shirt on too. I’m a hypocrite, sue me. But I’d never give up something I loved just to fit in.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, I want my mommy to come in with me on my first day of high school,” I said.

“Fine. Do you want Dad to pick you up after school?”

“That’s okay. We’ll catch the bus or walk,” Katie said. “Bye Mom.”

“Love you. Have a good day!”

Mom drove away, and Katie and I stood in front of our new school. It was a huge three story building made of brick that looked like it had been built around the same time as our house. My old middle school might have taken up a fourth of this school.

I swallowed hard and followed Katie inside.

I was pretty average-sized for a twelve-year-old, but I felt like a puny kindergartner in these crowded halls. I mean, Katie had a few inches on me, but these students were giants! There were guys over six feet tall! And muscular! And with facial hair—not just peach fuzz, either, but real beards! I never felt so small and dorky in my life. Maybe I didn’t want to be in high school after all.

“Watch it!” one kid barked at me as my trombone case nailed him in the knee.

“Sorry,” I muttered and hoped he didn’t pound me into the ground.

We walked into the office. The secretary was an elderly black lady with white hair, glasses, and lots of lipstick. Her name plate read: Ms. Rook.

“Hi, it’s our first day. Kathleen and Travis Zolecki,” Katie told her.

She sighed and looked at us as if we had been sent to the principal’s office for dropping cherry bombs down the toilets. “Just a moment,” and she turned to her computer.

I looked around the office. Pretty standard school office.

“Here are your class schedules and locker numbers. Ms. Zolecki, all your classes will be on the first or second floor. Mr. Zolecki, seventh and eighth graders have classes and lockers on the third floor.” That was a relief. I wouldn’t have to navigate my way through all the giants.

I looked at my schedule. Ugh, Social Studies first thing. Then Algebra, double ugh. Language Arts, not so bad. Lunch. Computer Science, Geography, and Band. At least my days would end on a good note.

“You! What are you doing skulking over there?” the secretary suddenly barked.

I looked behind us and saw a girl about my age lingering by the teachers’ mailboxes, no doubt trying to get the skinny on the new kids. She was short and plump with dark brown hair and long bangs that fell over the top of her glasses. She dressed in black leggings, a baggy black shirt with silver moon phases on it, and a long, bulky black cardigan.

“Leaving a note for Mr. Diaz,” she answered in a quiet, muffled voice.

“Mr. Diaz the band director? You’re in band? Good. You can show Mr. Zolecki where he can store his instrument.” The receptionist turned her attention back to us. “Don’t be one of my headaches. I’ve got enough of them in this school. I don’t want to see you in here again.”

“Thanks for the warm welcome. Really. And now I know just what to get you for Christmas. A big bottle of aspir—” Katie yanked me out of the office before I got introduced to the principal too.

“You’ve got to watch that mouth,” Katie scolded. “You think you’re funny, but you’re really not.”

“Bahhh!”

“I thought you wanted things to be different at this school.”

That made me shut my mouth. She had a point. At my old school, kids didn’t laugh at my jokes; they laughed at me.

“Meet you outside after school. Stay out of trouble,” she said, then disappeared into the throngs of students.

“Did you really just bah like a sheep at your sister?” the girl in black asked. I had forgotten that she was there.

“Yeah. Because she’s a sheep and I’m a—never mind. It’s just this thing from my old school. I’m Travis.”

“Tamsin. The band room is this way.”

“So you’re in concert band too? Are you guys any good?”

She just shrugged.

“Do seventh graders get to play in the marching band? What about pep band? In my old school, marching band and pep band were only for upper classmen.”

“Same here.”

Darn. “Do you have a jazz band?”

“By audition only.”

“Cool. I was in my old jazz band. We weren’t very good. What do you play?”

“Clarinet.”

Talkative, Tamsin was not. I wasn’t sure if it was because that’s just the way she was, or if she found me annoying. So I just kept talking to fill the silence. I don’t know why I do that. I guess I’m afraid if there is silence, the other person will think I don’t have anything interesting to say or I’m socially awkward or something, so I just babble on and on, pretty much proving I’m socially awkward.

Finally, we made it to the band room on the first floor.

As I slid my trombone into a cubby, I asked, “So are you a goth or emo or something?”

“Excuse me?”

“The black clothes, the hair—”

“What’s wrong with my hair?” she demanded. First the bah-ing, then the babbling, and now this. I was not making a good first impression.

“Nothing! Don’t listen to me. I’ve never met a goth or emo before. We didn’t have any at my school, so obviously I don’t know what I’m talking about. In fact, I’m not even sure if those are a thing anymore. I mean, you could just be depressed—”

“I’m not depressed! I just happen to like the color black,” she said. I thought she might hit me.

“I’m sorry. I—”

Just then the warning bell rang.

“We only have five minutes to get to class. Come on,” Tamsin said.

I was out of breath and had a stitch in my side by the time we had rushed all the way up to the third floor. There had to be an elevator somewhere, right?

Tamsin pointed me in the direction of my first class and rushed off to her own.

***

So my first day was not going how I planned. Like at all. No one except teachers spoke to me. Social studies was just as boring as it was at my old school. I was late to Algebra because I got lost, and the teacher was not sympathetic to say the least. Mrs. Prince made me go all the way down to the office to get a tardy slip. I tried to explain that she would only be further delaying my education in Algebra (in truth, I just didn’t want to face those stairs again or Ms. Rook), but Mrs. Prince wasn’t having it. So I trudged down the three flights of stairs to the office. When Ms. Rook saw me, one eyebrow raised and her lips pursed.

“I owe you two aspirin,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she said and wrote my tardy slip.

At least by the time I hiked all the way back to the third floor, I only had thirty minutes of Algebra left. Language Arts wouldn’t have been so bad except a group of kids in the back kept pointing at me and whispering. I didn’t even get to look for my locker until lunch. It smelled like old gym socks. By the time I found the cafeteria and bought my lunch, I had less than ten minutes to eat it.

Remember that fantasy I had of everyone sitting around me, hanging off my every word as I regaled them with tales about my haunted house? Yeah, it was rapidly evaporating.

I nervously scanned the cafeteria for a place to sit. I knew whatever table I sat at could label me for the rest of my high school experience. Sit at the wrong table and I might be labeled as a science nerd (science was not my subject by the way) or a skater boy or a foreign exchange student. But the longer I looked around, the more panicked I became that I would be the loser who had no table, no friends, no label. It’d be like I didn’t exist at all. There was nothing in the world worse than that. So I began to approach random tables, but I kept getting the stink eye before I even had a chance to ask if I could sit with them. Desperate, I searched for Katie, though I didn’t know if we had the same lunch break.

Thankfully, Tamsin spotted me and waved for me to come sit next to her. I let out a sigh of relief.

As I headed over to her table, an arm slid around my shoulders. “You’re Travis, right? I’m Mason. We’re in Language Arts together. You do not want to sit over there, dude. Trust me. Tamsin Knoll is a freak and a bona fide witch. All she’s missing is the pointy hat.”

Mason was one of the kids who had pointed and whispered. He was a bit taller than me with bright red hair and a wicked smile that promised mischief. I had a feeling we’d be fast friends.

“Sit with me and my friends.” He steered me towards his table. “This Jaylen, Tyler, Trevon, Makayla, and Shanice. And this my brother, Nolan.”

The other kids were my age, but Nolan had to be at least sixteen. He was stocky with perfectly disheveled black hair, the cleft chin of a movie star (though a movie star probably didn’t have a cluster of acne on their chin), and the same wicked smile as his brother. He wore a red and gold varsity jacket with a wrestling patch. Sitting on the table top was a very pretty girl dressed in a short skirt and tank top, despite the winter temperatures. She had long blonde hair and tan skin and wore a ton of eye makeup. “This is Vic, Nolan’s girlfriend.”

“Cool shirt,” Nolan said.

“Thanks! You like jazz?” I asked, sitting down.

“Yeah, sure,” he said with a smile.

“So you just moved into the old Seymour place, right?” Mason said, picking up a slice of pizza from his tray.

“Yep.”

“Is it really haunted?” Vic asked.

Nolan answered for me. “My Uncle Mike worked for the contractor who used to own the house, and he says the Seymour House is totally haunted.”

“Really?” I asked. Mr. Dupray had been stingy on the details of the house’s history, and I wanted to know more.

“Oh yeah. You know what happened in your house, right? I mean, the real estate agent has to tell you or else you can sue or whatever.”

“Oh yeah, sure . . . well, just the bare bones of it,” I said, not wanting to admit that he knew more about my house than I did.

“So this is what the contractor told my uncle who told me. A hundred years ago or so, a jeweler named John Seymour lived in the house. Apparently after a few too many one night, he started bragging about this big shipment of diamonds that just came in—it was common knowledge that he kept the jewels in a safe hidden somewhere in the house. Come Christmas Eve, he and his wife are supposed to be out caroling or whatever they did back in the olden days. But his wife is sick and stays home. Well, thinking the owners are supposed to be out, robbers break in to steal the diamonds. But the wife surprises them and Pow! They shoot her dead.”

I flinched. I could so easily picture it. Mrs. Seymour sitting in a rocking chair by the fire, knitting, her nose bright red from being blown too many times. Candles on the mantel, a Christmas tree in the bay window. Then she hears a strange noise—glass breaking or the squeak of a floorboard in an empty house. She freezes for a moment, but then she gets up to see what it was. She walks into the sitting room then main hall just as the robbers in black ski masks (Did they have ski masks in the olden days?) step out of the kitchen. She doesn’t even have time to scream. Bang! She doesn’t live to see Christmas Day. And it all happened in the house I was living in. In the room where I watched TV. Or would once the cable was installed. A chill ran down my spine.

“Now they don’t have to worry about witnesses, but they can’t locate the safe. They are tearing the house apart. Well, old man Seymour comes home early and finds his wife dead. He can hear the robbers ransacking the house, and he knows they haven’t found his safe yet. He can’t save his wife, but he can save his jewels. So he removes the jewels from the safe and hides them some place safe. But before he can make it out of the house, the robbers stumble upon him. They see the empty safe and torture him for the location of the jewels, but he won’t give them up. He’s a tough old dude.”

I wondered if the safe was still there.

“Well, the robbers end up killing the old man. They never found the jewels. No one has ever found them. The diamonds are still hidden somewhere in that house. And every Christmas old man Seymour returns to guard his jewels against those who would steal them.”

Oh man, I was totally going to find those jewels! Then I could buy my own cell phone and whatever else I wanted! No more asking Mom and Dad just to have them tell me no. No more saving up my allowance and birthday money for half the year!

“You’ve got it wrong,” a voice said behind me. We all turned around to see Tamsin standing there, her arms crossed, a scowl on her face.

“What do you want, witch?” Mason sneered.

“John Seymour was not a jeweler. He was a real estate developer and philanthropist. There were no diamonds, though there was a ring, a Christmas gift John had bought for his wife—her name was Philomena, by the way. A giant ruby surrounded by a bunch of emeralds. The press called it the Yule Ring. That is what the thieves were after. And there weren’t any murders.”

“Well, my source actually owned the house so . . .” Nolan said with a smug smile. Vic snickered.

“Well, I got my information from a newspaper from 1910 when the event actually, you know, took place. Newspapers tend to be a bit more reliable than hearing something from your uncle who heard from his boss who heard it from . . . . who knows who.”

“Whatever. Go fly away on your broom,” Mason said.

“Yeah, isn’t it time you prayed to Satan or something?” Vic said.

Tamsin turned her fiery gaze to me as if expecting me to defend her. I suddenly became very interested in my mushy mac and cheese.

“Humph!” She turned and stormed off.

“Freak!” Mason called after her and all his friends laughed.

Just so you know, I wasn’t proud of how I reacted. I knew all too well what it was like to be in Tamsin’s shoes. I could give you a bunch of excuses about how I was the new kid, how I just wanted to fit in and make friends, but in truth, I was just a coward.

The bell rang. Lunch was over and I barely had two bites to eat.

“So Travis,” Nolan said casually as he dumped his tray into the trashcan. “Think we can check out your house after school?”

“Yeah! I mean, sure, why not.”

“We’ll meet you outside after school,” Mason said.

“Cool!”

First day of school and I had made friends!

***

I was excited for band, but a little nervous too. Nervous that Mr. Diaz would put me on the spot and make me audition on my first day. Nervous that everyone would be a million times better than me. But mostly nervous that I would have to see Tamsin.

I needn’t have worried. Mr. Diaz was a young teacher and super laidback. He told me he’d give me a couple of weeks to get settled before we worried about chair order. All the other trombone players seemed cool, even when Mr. Diaz sat me in the middle of the section for the time being.

Tamsin sat across the band room, third chair out of like a bazillion clarinet players. She simply pretended that I didn’t exist, which I guess was better than a death glare, but I still felt like a jerk.

The final bell rang and I rushed to pack up my trombone so I could meet my new friends.

“Don’t trust Mason and Nolan,” Tamsin said, standing over me, her arms crossed.

“Listen, I’m sorry about—”

“Whatever. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. I just thought someone should warn you. The Bannon brothers like to pull pranks. Mean ones. Dangerous ones. You shouldn’t trust them.”

“They seemed pretty cool to me.”

“Really? You think the Bannon brothers are cool?” she demanded.

“Hey, they’ve been nothing but nice to me!”

“So as long as someone treats you well, it doesn’t matter how they treat others? That’s how it is?”

“No—”

“I guess you’re just like Mason and Nolan then. I’m sorry I wasted my time trying to help! You deserve whatever you have coming!” She began to storm away but must have had more to say because she turned back around. “By the way, Nolan doesn’t like your shirt or jazz. He was making fun of you.” She turned again and this time really did storm off.

I watched her stalk off, but I didn’t have much time to think about what she said; I had to go meet Mason!

I found him on the front steps just as Nolan and Vic pulled up in a shiny black jeep. Nolan honked the horn and impatiently waved us over. Mason climbed in, but I hesitated. I couldn’t just leave without telling my sister. I spotted her, standing by some bushes and talking with a group of girls.

“Katie!” I yelled, jumping up and down and waving my arms. She looked up and spotted me. I pointed to Nolan’s car, gave her a thumbs up, then hurried into the car. Music blared from the stereo.

“So,” I said, raising my voice above the music, “why does your uncle think my house was haunted?”

“What?” Nolan yelled over the music.

“WHY DOES YOUR UNCLE THINK MY HOUSE IS HAUNTED?” Halfway through my question Nolan turned down the music and my face reddened. Very cool, Trav, very cool.

“Oh man. Uncle Mike’s stories will give you nightmares. Okay, so Uncle Mike is a plumber. About this time last year, the contractor calls him because the pipes in the house had burst or something. Mike goes over and said he got chills just walking into the place. He said was colder inside than out.”

“I noticed that too!” Well, it was awfully cold when we first walked into the house.

Nolan smiled at me in the review mirror and carried on with his story.

“So he starts work. The plumbing is a huge mess. It’s going to take a few weeks to sort it all out. There were other workmen who were supposed to do electrical work, fix the floors, whatever, but none of them lasted more than a day or two. See, their tools kept disappearing and their radios would suddenly start playing Christmas music, even if the radios hadn’t been on.”

That was spooky.

“Well, unlike the other men, Uncle Mike didn’t believe in the supernatural. Yeah, his tools had a habit of disappearing too, but he was convinced it was the other construction guys messing with him, trying to scare him. He heard the music too, but didn’t think much of it. I mean, it was Christmas-time after all, you were going to hear Christmas music.

“There were other things he couldn’t explain though. Whenever he was alone in the house, he’d hear footsteps on the stairs. Or he’d get the sensation that someone was watching him, but when he turned around, no one would be there. As Christmas neared, he swore he’d hear a gunshot when he worked late. Always at 9:08.”

“The shot that killed Philomena!”

“The turning point happened late one night when Uncle Mike was working alone. He heard a man’s voice say, Get out! He said he could even feel a cold breath in his ear as if something had leaned in close to say it. Then he felt his wrench yanked out of his hand and it flew across the room. He was finally freaked out and demanded answers from the contractor, who told him the story of old man Seymour and the jewels.

“Now Uncle Mike is dreaming of finding the diamonds and retiring early. Taking Aunt Marcy to the Bahamas. Buying a Harley. He’s not about to be scared off by any ghosts.

“On Christmas Eve after everyone has gone home, Uncle Mike starts exploring the house. He makes his way up to the attic. And it just feels different up there. Brutally cold. And oppressive like something doesn’t want him there. But he doesn’t let that stop him.

“Christmas music starts playing, Silent Night, but it’s all soft and distorted and full of static. He must be getting close. He keeps exploring and the music keeps playing. Now he smells sulfur and knows he’s not alone. Suddenly he’s sweating even though the room is frigid. The music stops and Uncle Mike holds his breath, carefully scanning the attic with his flash. Then it happens! His light passes over the ghost. It wasn’t all white and see-through like in the movies. Mike said it was dark, dense, blacker than the rest of the attic. Startled—”

“More like scared out of his mind,” Mason snickered.

“Uncle Mike stumbles back and drops the flashlight, but he can still see the ghost. Thief! it yells. Freaking out, Mike scrambles for the flashlight, picks it up, and shines it directly on the ghost, thinking that it’ll make him disappear. But it doesn’t. The ghost is no longer just a dark shadow. It’s John Seymour after he had been tortured, his face all bloodied and bruised, a gunshot wound to his chest.

“Get out! old man Seymour yells, and this angry cold wind rushed at Uncle Mike. It was so strong, it pushed him a couple of steps back. No jewels or trips to the Bahamas or Harleys were worth this. Terrified, Mike runs out of the attic.

“GET OUT! the ghost screams again, and this time the wind knocked Uncle Mike down the rest of the stairs. He sprained his ankle, but he didn’t care, he ran out of the house as fast as he could. And he refused to step foot inside ever again, not even to get his tools.”

We all sat in silence for a moment.

“How do you know your uncle wasn’t just messing with you?” Vic asked skeptically.

“Because Uncle Mike would rather cut out his own tongue than admit to ever being scared,” Mason answered.

“I guess we’re about to find out for ourselves,” Nolan said with a smirk as he pulled up to

the old Victorian. I suddenly didn’t want to go inside, which was completely stupid, of course. I had already spent four nights in the house and the scariest thing to happen was the sound the radiators made.

As we got out of the car, I noticed that Mom’s car was gone, but Dad’s was still there. I silently prayed that he wouldn’t do anything to embarrass me. So of course Dad came out of the house and began oiling the hinges of the front door with Pam No Stick Cooking Spray. I wish I was joking.

“Are you spraying the door with cooking spray?” Vic asked.

“I am! Ingenious, isn’t it? Why spend money WD-40 oil when you already have cooking spray?! Look, it works!” Dad moved the door back and forth to demonstrate. “No squeak!”

“Are you going to use a frying pan as a hammer next?” I asked, my face flaming red, my new friends snickering, trying not to laugh outright.

“No, I already own a hammer,” Dad said. “So what are you guys up to? Where’s your sister?”

“Katie was hanging out with some friends.” I never thought to ask how she was planning to get home. Oops. “This is Mason, Nolan, and Vic. We’re just going to hang out.”

“Well, I made it to the grocery store, so there are plenty of snacks. Help yourselves. I’ve got more doors to oil.”

“Or fry up for dinner,” Mason muttered under his breath. Vic snorted.

“Come on,” I said, wanting to get them away from my dad as soon as possible. “So this is it. The Seymour House.”

“Wow, it’s like walking back in time,” Vic said, looking around. Her tone indicated that it wasn’t a compliment. The radiators began to clang a bit as the heat kicked on and Vic jumped. “What was that?”

This time I smiled. “Oh, that’s just the heat. You’ll get used to it.”

“You were scared of the heat coming on!” Nolan laughed. “I thought you didn’t believe the house was haunted?”

Vic frowned and gave her boyfriend a shove. “Shut up!”

I was eager to impress them and wanted to show them the secret door in the parlor, but Nolan was already climbing the main staircase. On the second floor, they began to randomly open doors and snoop.

“So is your sister hot?” Nolan asked, his head poking into Katie’s room.

“I’m standing right here,” Vic said, her arms crossed, her red lips pouting.

“I didn’t say I was interested in her,” he told her and pulled her into his arms for a kiss. Embarrassed, I looked away.

“Is this your room?” Mason asked.

“Yeah, but—” It was a disaster and I really didn’t want them to see it, but all three barged in.

“What are these?” Mason asked, picking up one of the Lego monsters and breaking off one of its six arms. It was the best one, the one Katie made.

I quickly snatched it from his hand before he could do any more damage and gently set it back on the mantel. “Just something my sister and I used to make. You know, when we were kids.” I really hoped they didn’t come across my giant tote of building blocks.

“Cool llama,” Nolan said, looking up at my poster. It was the same tone he had used when he said he liked my shirt. Tamsin’s words came back to me. I had a bad feeling that she may have been right.

“Why do you have a signed photo of some guy dressed up as Wolverine?” Vic asked, picking up one of my autographed pictures from a box.

“That’s Richard Bradshaw, just one of the greatest stuntmen of all time! He did a bunch of the X-men movies, The Dark Knight Rises, Harry Potter, a Bond movie, Game of Thrones . . . I have Renae Moneymaker’s autography too—she did the Hunger Games movies. Oh and Clay Fontenot! Forget Robert Downey Jr., Clay Fontenot is Iron Man.”

“Okay then,” Vic said, dropping the picture back into the box. She was not impressed. And by the look she exchanged with her boyfriend, neither was he.

“Why don’t we check out the attic?” I suggested before I embarrassed myself any further. Thankfully, they filed out of my room.

“Cool, a second staircase,” Nolan said and took the lead.

I actually hadn’t been up to the attic yet—Mom hadn’t cared about cleaning it—and I was a little nervous about what we might find.

“It’s locked.” Nolan rattled the handle.

“Let me try.” Yep, it was locked, but it had a keyhole that would match the skeleton key. “Let me run down and grab the keys from my dad.” I bolted down the stairs as fast as I could and found Dad spraying the hinges of the hidden door.

“Whoa, buddy. Where’s the fire?”

“I need your keys.”

“Kitchen counter,” he said. “What do you need them for?” he called after me.

“My friends want to see the attic.” I found the key ring and there was a skeleton key on it just like I had thought.

“I don’t want you up there,” Dad said. “It’s not safe.”

“Okay Dad,” I said, already running back up the stairs. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“I mean it, Travis!”

I unlocked the door and pushed it open. It was dark and cold and dust hung in the air. It had a stale smell as if the room had been shut up for ages.

All three broke out their phones and used the flashlight app. Just another reason I needed a cell phone—I’d always have a flashlight on me.

It was so cold in the attic that we could see our breath. Thankfully I still had my hoodie on. Thick cobwebs were strung between the eaves like party streamers. There were a few old pieces of furniture up there—an old rocking chair (maybe the very one Philomena had been sitting in the night she died); a standing mirror, the mirror cracked in a spider web pattern; and some old trunks. All of it had a thick coat of dust.

“It smells like mouse poop,” Vic said, covering her nose and mouth.

“Look, there’s one!” Mason said, his flashlight running along the floor.

Vic screamed, and Mason and Nolan laughed. “You jerk!” She punched Mason in the arm.

“So Uncle Mike said he saw the figure at the back of the attic. He figured that old man Seymour was guarding his jewels so they must be somewhere in the back of the attic.”

Slowly we began creeping our way to the back, the ancient floor boards creaking under our feet. I could hear my own heart beating in my chest. Part of me wanted to see the ghost and find the jewels, the other part of me wanted nothing to do with the supernatural.

“Shh! Did you hear that?” Nolan whispered. We stopped moving and listened.

I heard it!

“Footsteps!” I cried out in a whisper and we whirled around, the light from my friends’ phone slicing through the darkness. There was nothing there.

“Creepy,” Mason whispered.

The hairs on the back of my neck were officially standing up on end.

Under one of the eaves, I thought I saw the headless figure of a woman. The shadow was blacker than the rest of the darkness, just like Uncle Mike had described. Maybe Philomena haunted the house too. Maybe the robbers shot her in the head and that’s why the figure was headless. “G-guys, what’s that?”

All three turned their light to the figure.

“Arghhh!” Mason screamed and I screamed too, and kept screaming too, until I realized they were all laughing at me. The headless shadow of Philomena was just a dress mannequin.

“You guys suck!”

“Come on, it was just a joke,” Nolan laughed, putting an arm around my shoulders to show that there wasn’t any malice.

“I guess it was kind of funny,” I laughed weakly.

“But back to business. No more joking around,” Nolan said, giving a strict look to his little brother and Vic. We continued on.

Abruptly, the floor ended, and there were just beams, a random catwalk of boards, and old insulation.

“I guess this is as far as we go,” I said, feeling a bit relieved. I was ready to get out of this attic. We could all go down to the kitchen, have a snack, laugh about our adventure.

“This was where Uncle Mike saw the ghost. Seymour must have hidden the jewels somewhere beyond. It’s kind of genius if you really think about it. Most people would think the jewels couldn’t possibly be over here when there’s no floor,” Nolan said.

“But why would Seymour hide his jewels up here? I mean, he already knew there were thieves in the house, his wife was dead, why not run out the door with them instead of trapping himself in the attic?” I asked.

“How should I know what the old dude was thinking?” Nolan said, annoyed. “What are you? Scared? Think there are more mannequins back there that’ll get you?”

Mason and Vic laughed.

“No. Let’s go,” I said.

Nolan flashed a smile then began walking on the boards deeper into the attic.

Once we were all on the boards, solid flooring far behind us, it started. Christmas music. Silent Night. It was playing very, very softly.

“We must be getting close,” Nolan whispered.

I had had enough; I wanted to get the heck out of that attic, but I didn’t want to look like a wuss. So I just took a deep breath and prayed that the boards would stop and we’d have no choice but to turn around. However, we made it to the back of the house with only one more board to the wall. The music had faded away, and the attic was deadly quiet except for the sound of our breathing.

Shining his light down, Nolan said, “I think I see something. It looks like a box.”

“Let me see,” Mason said, moving towards him. “It’s definitely a wooden box. It’s gotta be the Seymour’s jewels!”

“Travis, it’s your house. You deserve the honor,” Nolan said.

I didn’t want the honor. If the jewels were up here, I would tell Mom and Dad and let them get it.

“No, that’s okay,” and I started to back up, right into Vic.

“Careful!” she barked. “Don’t be a baby. Go get the jewels,” and she gave me a little push.

So a carefully scooted past Mason then Nolan. But without their flashlights, I couldn’t see anything.

“I don’t see anything. Give me your phone.”

“It’s right there!” Nolan pointed, shining his light over my shoulder at the insulation.

Suddenly, I felt a hot, moist breath on my ear. “Get out!” a voice growled. I was done with this! Call me a wimp. Call me a scaredy-cat. I didn’t care. I was not going to be killed or possessed by whatever was haunting the attic!

I whirled around, ready to book it out of there, but standing before me was old man Seymour, just as Uncle Mike had described, his face all bloody and deformed. I screamed and jumped back, losing my footing. My feet crashed through the insulation and the ceiling below. My armpits (painfully) struck the beams on either side of me, saving me from completely going through the ceiling.

I thought my friends were screaming too, but they weren’t. They were laughing hysterically. It was then I noticed that old man Seymour was wearing a varsity jacket and jeans.

Nolan ripped off the mask, his eyes were watering, he was laughing so hard. “Did you get it?” he asked.

“Oh yeah. All of it,” Vic said, still laughing. She was also still filming. She had been recording this whole time!

“This is going to be our best one yet!” Nolan said.

“You tricked me!” I yelled, still stuck in the ceiling.

“You tricked me!” Mason mocked in a high-pitched voice.

“Travis! What was that?” Dad called from downstairs.

“At least help me up.”

“I don’t think so. Sorry,” Nolan said with a charming smile. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Guys! Don’t leave me! Guys!” My shouting turned into screams as they took their light with them and I was left in the dark, creepy attic all alone. I could hear them speeding down the stairs, still laughing.

Chapter Three

Burnt Gingerbread

I wished we had never moved. I thought my old life sucked when Jordon and Amir left. Ha, it was a tropical vacation compared to my life now.

So I screamed my head off until Dad ran up to the attic to save me. I’m not going to lie, I was in tears by then. I was scared and humiliated and my armpits hurt. At first Dad was relieved that I was okay. Then he was mad that I had disobeyed him and left a gaping hole in the bathroom ceiling. Then Katie’s new friends dropped her home, and Dad was really angry that I had left school without my sister. We were always supposed to stick together. I really didn’t see what the big deal was. It wasn’t like Katie was my little sister. She was perfectly capable of getting herself home, especially since she was, well, home. That argument did not go over well.

I thought I would at least get some sympathy from Mom. I mean, I was the victim here after all. Older kids had pretended to be my friends and played a cruel trick on me. But Mom came home in a foul mood, which was not improved upon by being unable to relax and unwind in a hot bath after a long day. Her interviews hadn’t gone well.

“What were you thinking?” Mom asked over the dinner table. “Your dad told you the attic was dangerous. You could have been seriously hurt.”

“He was just showing off for his friends,” Katie said.

“They are not my friends,” I said with a glare. “Besides, none of this would have happened if you’d just let me have a cell phone.”

“Excuse me?” Mom said.

“Then I would have had a flashlight app and could have seen that they were playing me.”

“And none of this would have happened if you had just listened to your father.”

“This is crap.”

“You’re grounded. You know that, right? No internet or videogames for a week. And this weekend, you’re cleaning up the yard,” Dad said.

“By myself?” That was a lot of leaves for one person.

“You better believe it,” Dad said.

“I’m the victim here! I don’t know how I’m going to show my face at school ever again.”

“And that’s another thing. You can’t just take off with people you don’t know. And you can’t leave your sister stranded, not knowing where you went,” Mom said.

“She was hardly stranded.”

“Not the point.”

“Whatever.” I slouched down in my chair.

As if I needed further punishment, Mom made me clean up after dinner. And this stupid house didn’t even have a dishwasher so I had to wash the dishes by hand.

With my fingertips looking like prunes, I went up to my room. Mom had taken my tablet, computer, and Playstation, so even though we finally had internet, I couldn’t use it.

I flopped down on my bed and stared up at the cracked ceiling, hating my life.

In truth, I was mad at myself too. I should have known Nolan and Mason were lying. Mr. Dupray flat out told us that no murders had taken place in the house. But then Nolan talked about not only one but two murders, and I believe him like a pathetic little kid who’ll believe anything just to be liked. Then he went on about his plumber uncle and all the workmen in the house experiencing stuff . . . I lived in the house; I knew no one had worked on it in ages.

Plus, his story made no sense. Why would John Seymour hide his jewels in the attic when he could have walked out the front door with them? I was an idiot. But worse than that, I had become a sheep. I didn’t stand up for Tamsin when Mason and his friends were being jerks to her. A total sheep move. I let Nolan mock me just so he’d like me. I was embarrassed of the things I loved like Legos and stuntmen. I didn’t deserve to call myself a llama anymore.

There was a sharp knock at my door and Katie let herself in, closing the door softly behind her.

“What do you want?”

“What happen to my monster?” she asked, picking up the Lego creation and reattaching the arm.

“What do you care?”

“Here,” she said and tossed her phone on my bed.

“What? I play on your phone and you call Mom, and I get into more trouble?”

“No one is going to catch you. Mom and Dad are in the bathroom arguing about fixing the hole in the ceiling. Mom wants it fixed now. Dad thinks we should wait until we remodel the bathroom. I just thought you’d want to know what you were going to walk into tomorrow. The video is already pulled up.”

My stomach dropped and my hands broke out into a cold sweat. I picked up the phone and pushed play.

There were Nolan and Mason standing in front of the attic door. This must have been when I went downstairs to get the key.

“I’m Nolan and this is my little bro, Mason, and we’re the Prank Brothers!” He spoke in an excited loud whisper. “Behind the camera today is the beautiful, the vicious Victoria!” The camera spun around and Vic blew a kiss to the camera before spinning it back to Nolan. “Today’s prank is on the new kid. This is the quickest we’ve ever put together a prank and it might just be our best one yet! Just three hours to come up with a scheme to convince the new kid that his house is haunted and scare the living crap out of him. Mason has the sound effects all queued up on his phone, and luckily I still had my Halloween mask in the car.” He pulled part of the mask out of the neck of his coat and smiled devilishly.

“Shh! He’s coming!” Mason said. Vic lowered the camera but was still filming.

There I was, all red-faced and eager. We entered the attic and Vic turned on some kind of night vision app so everything was green.

God, did my voice really sound like that?

I knew what was coming, the part where I did the work for them and pretty much scared myself with the mannequin. I screamed like a newborn baby.

The video caught Mason using his phone for the sound of footstep, then for the Christmas music.

As Mason growled into my ear, Nolan pulled the Halloween mask out of his jacket. I turned the video off there. I already knew what happened.

I started scrolling through the comments so I’d know just how bad tomorrow would be.

What a loser!

How gullible can you get? If you’re that stupid, you deserve to have the crap scared out of you.

You can hear him start to cry. Poor little baby!

Nolan, Mason, and Vic had at least a dozen Prank Brother videos on their website. Tamsin had warned me. Why hadn’t I listened?

“I’m never leaving this house again. I’ll be homeschooled. Then at least Mom won’t be able to ground me from the internet.”

“I’m sorry for what I said at dinner. I thought you were showing off.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Obviously.”

“Just get out!”

“Fine.” She snatched up her phone and left.

24 Days until Christmas

Yesterday at school, I thought the worst thing that could happen to me was to be a nobody. Today, I knew better. Everyone from the seventh to the twelfth grade had seen that video. People were playing it on their phones in the halls. Now, everyone knew exactly who I was.

“Guys! Don’t leave me! Guys!” kids mocked as I walked down the hall.

“Stay away from the Home Ec room. The scary dress mannequins might get you!” a girl laughed.

“It’s Moaning Myrtle! Oooo.”

In third period, Mason and his friends spent the hour throwing spitballs at me, taunting me, and laughing at me. I did my best to pretend that they didn’t exist, but my face was flaming for the entire hour.

I swear even some of the teachers eyed me with an amused glint. Come lunch, I didn’t even dare step foot in the cafeteria. I hid in the boys’ bathroom.

During band, my fellow trombone players who were so welcoming the day before kept their distance so their reputations wouldn’t be contaminated by Moaning Myrtle, which I was pretty sure was going to be my nickname for the rest of high school. Tamsin just gave me a satisfied smirk from across the band room, but never said a word to me, not even I told you so.

I had never been more miserable.

Pretty much the rest of my week went that way. Nolan and Mason somehow rigged their Halloween mask to pop out at me when I opened my locker one morning. I screamed, kids laughed. It was great fun. Oh, and the Bannons recorded the whole thing so now I was the star of two Prank Brothers videos.

Finally, it was Friday and the first day of December, which meant Christmas was just around the corner. At least I had something to look forward to.

It began to snow, just flurries, but I hoped we’d get more snow so I wouldn’t have to do yardwork this weekend. You can’t rake leaves in the snow, right?

Mr. Diaz kept me after band to see how I was settling in. I was pretty sure he realized what was going on. Whether he had seen the video or not, I didn’t know. He told me I was welcome to hang out in the band room any time there wasn’t a class, and if I wanted some help with my audition, he’d be more than happy to help. I was glad he didn’t directly bring up the video, all the teasing, and the way I was treated as if it was the second grade and I had cooties. That would have been mortifying. I think he knew that. Mr. Diaz was definitely my favorite teacher.

Tamsin hung back, pretending to clean her clarinet as I talked with Mr. Diaz. She hadn’t spoken to me since my first day, but she hadn’t given me any more smirks or death glares either.

I had gotten into the habit of bringing my coat and backpack to band so I wouldn’t have to go all the way back up to the third floor to get my stuff before heading home.

As I left the band room, Tamsin followed.

“Your playing isn’t terrible,” she said, trying to break the ice.

“Go away,” I said and picked up my pace.

“I did try to warn you.”

I spun around. “You could have told me about their videos! You could have told me about their other pranks! You could have proved you were telling the truth!”

“And you could have stood up for me when they called me a freak and a witch!” she shot back.

“Whatever. Just leave me alone,” and I walked away.

A fine film of snow dusted the sidewalk as I walked home. Katie had gotten a ride home with a friend. She said I could catch a ride too, but I needed the alone time to feel sorry for myself.

Mom and Dad’s cars were gone. I let myself in and dumped my trombone and backpack by the door even though Mom was always yelling at me about it. The scent of popcorn caught my nose (I was starving. Eating lunch in the boys’ bathroom was less than appetizing to say the least) and followed the aroma into the kitchen.

“You know you’ve made an enemy for life,” a girl said with a laugh as she leaned against the island. She was Asian and had an edgy artist vibe going on. Her black hair was chin-length, but one side was shaved and the other side had electric blue streaks. Not only did she have a nose ring, but an eyebrow ring too. She wore black leggings, one of those flowing tunic thingies all the girls wore, and an oversized cardigan. “Mr. Kendrick never forgives a student who knows more than him.”

“Then how come you’re teacher’s pet?” Katie teased.

“Because he thinks he’s the one that taught me everything there is to know about web design.”

“Well then, I’ll just tell him that you taught me everything I know. Then he’ll have to like me,” Katie said. They smiled and looked all googly-eyed at each other. My bet was that artist girl was more than just a friend. Figures, the first week of school and Katie already had a girlfriend. I sure hoped she was nicer than Katie’s ex-girlfriend, Jade. Better known as Jerky Jade around the Zolecki household, J.J. for short.

It was while dating Jade that Katie really started to change, abandoning the things she used to love for her new friends and new hobbies. My oh-so-perfect sister did seem to have one flaw—her taste in girls.

“Hey,” I said, and Katie jumped as if she had been caught doing something wrong. I smiled. Definitely not just friends.

“Oh, it’s you,” Katie said, annoyed. “Lo, this is my little brother, Travis.”

Lo smiled at me and gave a small wave. “Hi.”

“Whoa! Is that a tattoo?” I asked wide-eyed.

Lo smiled and rolled up the sleeve of her cardigan. It was a tree. The roots were wrapped around her fingers, the trunk on her hand, and the branches up her forearm.

“Is it real?” I asked.

“Nah. I was just bored in study hall.”

“You drew that? For real?”

She nodded. She rolled up her other sleeve and there was a small black cat on her wrist. “Government class.”

“That is so cool. Can you do one on me?”

“Sure.”

The microwave beeped. “Lo, you don’t have to. Travis, leave us alone,” Katie said, pouring the popcorn into a bowl.

I immediately stole a handful and crammed the popcorn into my mouth. “You don’t mind, do you Lo?” I asked with a full mouth.

“Not at all.”

I already liked her better than J.J. I may have already liked her better than Katie.

“So what would you like?” she asked, digging an eyeliner pencil along with travel-sized baby powder and hairspray out of her backpack.

“A llama, I think. What’s all that stuff for?”

“So your tattoo will last a little longer.”

“Like how long?”

“Depends on how much you wash, but about a month.”

“Then probably three months for you,” Katie quipped.

I just made a face at her.

As Lo got to work on the llama on my wrist, I said, “I like your hair. I dyed my hair purple once.”

“Yeah, with finger paint when you were like five,” Katie said.

I ignored her. “My mom freaked out. She would kill me if I ever pierced anything. Did you get in trouble?”

Lo flashed a small smile up at me. “My mom has spikey pink hair. My parents support self-expression—as long as I keep my grades up and stay out of trouble, of course.”

“Wow. What does your mom do?” I tried to picture my mom walking into work with pink hair. It just didn’t work.

“She’s a doctor. Both my parents are. Right now Mom is in Honduras with Doctors without Borders. My dad does research for the university.”

“Do your parents want you to be a doctor when you grow up?”

“I don’t know. They’re not really home a lot so . . .” She shrugged.

“So do you want to be a tattoo artist when you grow up?”

“I want to be a lot of things. I don’t think I could limit it to just one.”

“Like what?”

“A tattoo artist. Start my own company. Design apps. Travel the world and write about it. Run an animal rescue. Lots of things. How’s that look?”

I looked at the little silhouette of a llama on my wrist. It was perfect. “I love it!”

“Good.” She powdered it, then blew off the excess baby powder and sprayed it with hairspray. “All set.”

“I want to be a stuntman when I grow up. Like for the movies. Watch, I can already pretend to get beat up in a fight.” And I launched myself into the cabinets as if I had just been kicked in the stomach.

Lo laughed and continued to laugh as I flung myself around the kitchen, pretending to be punched, kicked, and head-butted. Katie just looked at me with an annoyed expression. You’d never guess she used to watch Hunger Games stunt videos with me.

“Oh, and watch this!” and I slid across the kitchen island like it was the hood of the car. And of course, I knocked over the popcorn.

“Now, look at the mess you’ve made, you little—” Before Katie could insult me, a frantic beeping sound came from upstairs. We all looked at each other and Katie said, “Smoke alarm.”

We ran upstairs, and the beeping was so loud and obnoxious we had to put our hands over our ears.

“What room is it coming from?!” Katie yelled.

“Yours, I think!”

Indeed, it was her smoke detector going bonkers and there was a heavy scent of sweet tobacco smoke like from a pipe, but no fire, no smoke. Smell couldn’t set off a smoke alarm, could it?

“Turn it off!” I yelled, but the ceilings were ten feet high. Even on a chair, none of us could reach it so we looked around the room for something to hit it with. Katie grabbed her old bat from softball and knocked the cover off the detector then with another swing, knocked out the battery and it went silent.

“Where did that smell come from?” Lo asked, sniffing the air.

Before anyone could answer her, the ear-splitting beeping started up again, but it wasn’t coming from inside Katie’s room this time. We ran into my room, which had the same smoke smell but no smoke, and the blaring of the smoke detector. Katie hit it with her bat, totally destroying the thing. Yet the beeping didn’t stop. It was coming from somewhere else too.

It was like someone was smoking a pipe and taking a leisurely tour of the house and setting off all the alarms. We killed the detectors in Mom and Dad’s office (which only contained a single desk and a bunch of boxes) and the one in their bedroom (which wasn’t much better than my room when it came to mess). Finally, the house was quiet. Eerily so, actually.

Suddenly, another smoke alarm went off, this time downstairs. We all looked at each other then raced back downstairs to the kitchen. Tendrils of black smoke plumed from the built-in oven. The kitchen reeked of burnt gingerbread.

“Are you baking something?!” I yelled over the noise.

“No! All I made was popcorn!”

Lo opened the oven to a cloud of black smoke. “There is nothing inside! The oven isn’t even on!” She stuck her hand inside as if to prove her point.

“Oh, shut up!” Katie yelled at the smoke detector before bashing it in with her bat. “Thank you.”

“How can smoke come from an empty, cold oven?” Lo asked, a bit freaked out.

“And how can the smell of smoke set off the smoke alarms upstairs?” I asked. I was more than a bit freaked out.

“Where did the smell come from in the first place?” Katie asked.

“You don’t think . . .” I said, looking at my sister.

“No,” she said, shaking her head but didn’t look convinced.

“What are you guys talking about?” Lo asked.

“You’ve heard that our house is supposedly haunted, right?” Katie said.

“Just in the vid—” she cut herself off with a guilty glance at me.

My stomach dropped. Lo had seen the prank video. The first person I met who seemed to genuinely like me and she had seen that stupid video. My face burned with embarrassment.

“Travis—” Lo started, but was interrupted by my mom.

“Hello! Anyone home? I need help with the groceries!” she called from the front door. “Ouch! Darn it, Travis! What did I say about leaving your stuff by the door?!”

She walked into the kitchen, her arms full of groceries.

“Oh, hi,” Mom said, seeing Lo. “Who’s this?”

“This is my friend, Lo.”

“Hi, Mrs. Zolecki.”

“Nice to meet you—what is that smell? Did you burn something?”

“Popcorn,” Katie said quickly, then bent over to clean up all the popcorn on the floor.

“It smells like . . . gingerbread?”

“We’ll go get the groceries,” Katie said, setting the popcorn bowl on the counter. I don’t know why, but neither of us wanted to tell Mom what had happened. Maybe we didn’t think she’d believe us. Maybe because we weren’t sure what we believed yet. Or maybe with her and Dad so stressed out and fighting so much lately that we didn’t want to add ghosts to their list of problems.

So we unloaded the car then helped her put away the groceries.

“Didn’t Dad just go shopping?” I asked, pulling celery and carrots out of a bag.

“He did. But I promised you a Thanksgiving dinner, and I thought we’d do it this weekend,” she said, heaving a turkey into the fridge. “Uncle Richie is coming too.”

“Awesome!” I honestly thought Mom had forgotten about her promise. “Stuffing and cranberry sauce too?”

“Yep,” Mom said and actually smiled. I don’t think I’d seen her smile since they bought the house. “What is that on your wrist?”

“Lo gave me a tattoo! Isn’t it cool?” I thrusted my arm out for her to see.

“It’s temporary,” Lo assured her with a smile.

“Oh,” she said, looking relieved. “The artwork is quite good.”

“Thanks. Um, I should get going. It was nice meeting you.”

“You too, Lo.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Katie said, and they disappeared.

“Can Lo come to Thanksgiving dinner too?” I asked.

“I don’t know, sweetheart. It was going to be a family dinner.”

“But her parents aren’t home often and I doubt she gets that many home cooked meals. Please?”

Mom just looked at me like she was trying to read me. I hated when she did that because she was normally so good at it. And I knew what she saw, her marches-to-his-own-beat son (her expression for me) had finally made a friend. “Okay. You better catch her before she leaves.”

“Yes! Thanks Mom!”

I took off running out of the kitchen. My sister and Lo were standing in the vestibule, holding hands, their hands gently swinging, and talking softly. Lo looked up at her and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Katie’s ear then—

I called out, “Hey Lo!” interrupting them. Katie turned and just glared at me. I grinned back at her. Sometimes being a little brother was the best thing in the world. “Mom says you can come to Thanksgiving dinner. You’ll come, right?”

“Um, yeah. Hey, Travis, about that video—the Bannon brothers are jerks. Don’t let them get to you.”

“What video?” Mom asked, suddenly standing behind me. “Lo, dinner will be around three tomorrow. Feel free to come over earlier if you want.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Zolecki. Bye Travis. Bye Katie,” and Lo slipped out the front door.

“What video?” Mom asked again.

“It’s nothing. Just a school project. I better get my crap out of the middle of the hall before someone trips over it and breaks a leg.” I quickly picked up my backpack and trombone and whisked them upstairs. I hadn’t told my parents that Mason and Nolan had taped everything that happened up in the attic or the harassment I faced at school. The last thing I needed was for her to find out and make a big deal out of it.

“So is Lo a friend or a girlfriend?” I heard Mom asked Katie.

I shut my bedroom door, relieved that Mom was more interested in Katie’s dating life than that stupid video.