“Yeah, dude,” Matt agreed.
“But maybe there’s a reason she doesn’t wear white—white is for virgins, right, Raven?”
He was gorgeous, no doubt about it. His blue eyes were beautiful, and his hair looked as perfect as a model’s. He had a girl for every day of the week. He was a bad boy, but he was a rich bad boy, which made him very boring.
“Hey, I’m not the one wearing white underwear, am I?” I asked. “You’re right—there’s a reason I wear black. Maybe you’re the one who oughta get out more.”
Becky and I sat on the far end of the bleachers, leaving Trevor and Matt standing on the track.
“So how are you spending your birthday?” Trevor shouted, sitting with the rest of the class, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You and farmer Becky sitting home on a Friday night, watching Friday the Thirteenth? Maybe placing some personal ads? ‘Sixteen-year-old single white monster girl seeks mate to bond with for eternity.’”
The whole class laughed.
I didn’t like it when Trevor teased me, but I liked it even less when he teased Becky.
“No, we were thinking of crashing Matt’s party tonight. Otherwise there won’t be anyone interesting there.”
Everyone was shocked, and Becky rolled her eyes, as if to say, What are you dragging me into now? We had never been to one of Matt’s highly publicized parties. We were never invited, and we wouldn’t have gone if we were. At least I wouldn’t.
The whole class waited for Trevor’s reaction.
“Sure, you and Igor can come…but remember, we drink beer, not blood!” The whole class laughed again, and Trevor high-fived Matt.
Just then Mr. Harris blew his whistle, signaling us to hightail it off the bleachers and run like greyhounds around the track.
But Becky and I walked, indifferent to our sweating classmates.
“We can’t go to Matt’s party,” Becky said. “Who knows what they’ll do to us?”
“We’ll see what they do. Or what we’ll do. It’s my Sweet Sixteenth, remember? A birthday to never forget!”
4
Truth or Scare
The most exciting things to happen in Dullsville in my lifetime, in chronological order:
1. The 3:10 train jumped its tracks, spilling boxes of Tootsie Rolls, which we devoured.
2. A senior flushed a cherry bomb down the toilet, exploding the sewage line, closing school for a week.
3. On my sixteenth birthday a family rumored to be vampires moved into the haunted Mansion on top of Benson Hill!
The legend of the Mansion went like this: It was built by a Romanian baroness who fled her country after a peasant revolt in which her husband and most of his family were killed. The baroness built her new home on Benson Hill to resemble her European estate in every detail, except for the corpses.
She lived with her servants in complete isolation, terrified of strangers and crowds. I was a small child at the time of her death and never met her, although I used to play by her solitary monument in the cemetery. Folks said she would sit by the upstairs window in the evenings staring at the moon, and that even now, when the moon is full, if you look from just the right angle, you can see her ghost sitting in that same window gazing at the sky.
But I never saw her.
The Mansion has been boarded up ever since. Rumor had it there was a witchlike Romanian daughter interested in black magic. In any case, she wasn’t interested in Dullsville (smart lady!) and never claimed the place.
The Mansion on Benson Hill was quite gorgeous to me in its Gothic way, but an eyesore to everyone else. It was the biggest house in town—and the emptiest. My dad says that’s because it’s in probate. Becky says it’s because it’s haunted. I think it’s because women in this town are afraid of dust.
The Mansion, of course, had always fascinated me. It was my Barbie Dream House, and I climbed the hill many nights hoping to spot a ghost. But I actually went inside only once, when I was twelve. I was hoping I could fix it up and make it my playhouse. I was going to put up a sign that said, NO NERD BOYS ALLOWED. One night I climbed the wrought iron gate and scurried up the winding driveway.
The Mansion was truly magnificent, with vines dripping down its sides like falling tears, chipped paint, shattered roof tiles, and a spooky attic window. The wooden door stood like Godzilla, tall and powerful—and locked. I snuck around the back. All the windows were boarded up with long nails, but I noticed some loose boards hanging over the basement window. I was trying to pull them loose when I heard voices.
I crouched behind some bushes as a gang of high-school seniors stumbled near. Most were drunk and one was scared.
“C’mon, Jack, we’ve all done it,” they lied, pushing a guy wearing a baseball cap toward the Mansion. “Go in and get us a shrunken head!”