The Haunted

That was not just weird. It was creepy. Instinctively, she looked around. No one could possibly be watching her here, but she felt as though she was being spied upon, and she had a sudden need to make sure no one could see her. Carefully, she peered out the window again, checking the side yard of the house next door. Spotting no one, she shut the shade and moved to the other window, overlooking the front yard. Staying back in the shadows, so as not to be visible, she scanned the street, the sidewalk, their front yard, the yard across the street.

Nothing.

She shut that shade, too.

Turning around, Megan looked through her open doorway into the hall. It seemed more shadowy than it should, particularly for the middle of the afternoon. “Dad?” she called.

“What?” His reassuring voice answered her from across the hall, and she relaxed, the tension in her muscles dissipating.

“Nothing!” she said gratefully. She turned back toward the center of the room. With the shades drawn, it was as dark as it could get during the daytime, and she was about to turn on the light when the iPhone beeped in her hand.

She looked down at it.

IL C U 2NITE

In one movement, she switched off the phone and threw it on the bed, crying out as she did so and shaking her hands as though to rid them of slime.

“Everything all right in there?” her dad called.

Staring at the phone on the bedspread, Megan thought about telling him, wanted to tell him, but she knew how he got, and she knew what he’d do. He’d take away her phone, which, as far as she was concerned, would punish her, not protect her.

It was better to keep quiet.

“Megan?” He poked his head in the doorway.

She forced herself to smile at him. “I’m fine, Dad. There’s nothing wrong. Everything’s fine.”

Her father had met his deadline and successfully completed his most recent project, so, for the first time in a long while, their family went out to dinner to celebrate. Megan was in the mood for Mexican food, while James wanted to go to Fazio’s because they had pizza, but, as always, their parents were the ones who got to decide, so they ended up at that lame hippie health-food restaurant Radicchio. That was bad enough. But what made it worse was the fact that Brad Bishop was sitting with his dad two tables over. She ignored him, and he ignored her, but Megan knew he saw her, just as she saw him. It was impossible to be cool when you were with your parents, and she settled for acting bored and above it all, as though she’d been forced to come here. She tried not to look over at Brad but couldn’t help glancing up at him periodically. Each time she did, he seemed as bored as she was pretending to be.

Dinner lasted way longer than it should have. Service, as always, was poor, and one of their parents’ friends stopped by to chat, which made her want to sink into the floor with embarrassment. Luckily, Brad and his dad left soon after, and while they passed directly by her family’s table on their way out, neither she nor Brad acknowledged each other.

It had been light out when they arrived, but it was dark when they left, and Megan wondered what time it was. It seemed like they’d been in that stupid restaurant for hours. “Great celebration,” she said sarcastically.

“It was, wasn’t it?” Her dad was either genuinely oblivious or pretending to be oblivious in order to antagonize her, but she refused to take the bait and engage him. Instead, she opened the door of the van and got in.

A few blocks later, near the park, the van’s headlights illuminated a yellow sign at the side of the road: SLOW CHILDREN PLAYING.

“Look out for retarded kids,” she told James.

“Megan!” her dad said sternly.

“That’s what the sign says.”

“I see one!” James announced.

“James!”

The two of them giggled.

They arrived home a few moments later. Her parents never let her keep her phone on when they were out in public doing family activities, so the first thing Megan did when she got inside was turn on her phone and check for messages. There was one text she’d missed, and she immediately announced that she’d be in her room and headed upstairs, not wanting James or her parents to see the message. It was probably from Zoe, and for her eyes only.

There was a split second of hesitation as she reached the top of the steps—

IL C U 2NITE

—but then she heard the sound of James’s footsteps coming up the stairs behind her, she flipped on the hall light, and all was normal. Walking over and into her bedroom, she turned on both the ceiling light and the lamp on her desk before closing the door and checking the text.

?*#%$&?!

It looked like those symbols that were strung together in order to depict obscenities in comic books.

Maybe it was Zoe, she thought doubtfully, although it didn’t make a whole lot of sense and didn’t seem like something the other girl would send.