The Haunted

spooky with the two of them together.

Of course, they’d have to go down there in the daytime.

“What are we having for dinner tonight?” he asked. There was a lot of food on the table, and he was afraid they’d be eating leftovers. The thought embarrassed him.

His mom smiled. “Don’t worry. You guys won’t starve. We’ll order a pizza or something.”

Feeling better, James dug in, eating four drumsticks, three rolls and a bunch of sliced cucumbers, washing everything down with multiple glasses of iced tea. Ordinarily, he would have returned to his room after finishing his meal—that Star Wars game was addicting—but the images of the dream were still in his mind, and he did not want to go back into the house alone. So he wandered around the yard, pretended to be interested in some new flowers his mom had planted near the fence, and waited until his parents started carrying the dishes inside before finally following them into the kitchen. He hazarded a glance at the basement door as he passed by—

Had the door been ajar before?

—and hurried back up the stairs to his room.

Robbie was supposed to come over around three, but he was late, and it was after four when his family’s car finally pulled into the driveway. James had spent the last hour alternately slouching in a chair in front of his computer desk, lying down reading a book on his bed, and sitting on the floor with his back against the wall while he played with his DS, unable to decide which pose would make him look cooler when his friend arrived.

He heard the parents talking downstairs, and though he wanted to wait here until Robbie came up and discovered him casually lounging in his slammin’ new bedroom, James discovered after several seconds that he didn’t have the patience, and he ended up hurrying downstairs and meeting his friend in the living room. He couldn’t help grinning when he saw how Robbie was looking enviously up at the stairs. The Caldwells’ house had only one story.

“Thank you so much for this,” Robbie’s mom was saying.

“We’re glad to do it,” his own mom replied. “James has been very excited that Robbie’s coming over.”

“Hey,” James said, reaching the bottom of the steps and nodding hello to his friend.

“Cool house,” Robbie told him.

“Right?”

“Why don’t you show him around?” his dad suggested. “You could start with the basement.”

Robbie’s eyes widened. “You have a basement?”

James nodded, his smile fading.

His dad elbowed him playfully. “I’m surprised you didn’t tell him. Wanted to keep it a secret, huh?”

“Yeah.” Again James nodded, trying to maintain what was left of his smile.

“Let’s check it out!”

Feigning an enthusiasm he did not feel, James led his friend through the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen. “That’s the door,” he said, pointing.

“Cool!” Robbie pulled it open. “It looks like it’s going to be a closet, but there’s stairs!” He immediately started down, and, reluctantly, James followed, flipping on the light at the top of the steps before descending.

Maybe he’d been building it up in his mind into something it wasn’t, but when he reached the bottom, James felt a distinct letdown. This wasn’t the spooky chamber he’d been dreading but merely a small storage room lined with boxes and sacks filled with unpacked junk from their old house. He glanced toward the corner where the dirty man had been standing in his dream. An exercise bike was pressed against the wall.

“This is killer!” Robbie was walking up the narrow open space in the center of the cellar. “You should ask your parents if you can make this into your room!”

James shook his head. “Not enough light. Besides, I like to have a window.”

“You could put extra lights in here. And you’d have tons of privacy. And if a tornado hit, you’d be totally safe.”

“Come on. How often does New Mexico have tornadoes?”

“Sometimes.”

“In Jardine? Never.”

“But this is so great! And it’s underground!”

While the basement wasn’t what his mind had made it out to be, James still didn’t want to stay here any longer than he had to, so he said, “You want to see great, check out my real bedroom. It’s upstairs. You can see the street from my window.”

Robbie grinned. “That’s cool, too.”

“We can spy on people.” James led the way back up the steps to the kitchen, and the two of them hurried past the parents, still talking in the living room, and headed up to the second floor. James pushed his door open wide and stood proudly to the side as his friend entered the bedroom.

“Wow,” Robbie said, taking in the posters on the wall, the built-in television cabinet, the beanbag chair on the large expanse of floor between the bed and the desk.

“Look over here.” James went over to the window, pointing down. On the sidewalk in front of the house, an elderly couple was walking slowly, arm in arm. On the street beyond, two men in racing gear bicycled past, going the opposite direction.

“This is awesome.”

“And they can’t see us that good because the tree branches kind of block us. Even if they were looking in our direction—which they aren’t.” James grinned. “This is my room. This is where I live.”

“You are so lucky.”

“And when I get my Wii, the only time I’ll leave my room is for meals.”

“Will I be able to come over?”

James fell into the beanbag chair in a way that he thought was impressively smooth. “Sure.”

Robbie leaned against the windowsill. “So, are you really coming back to Fillmore this year?”

“Yep. Thank goodness.”

“Was Pierce really that bad?”

“I told you—it’s a horrible school. I had no friends there. None. The kids are all—I don’t know—losers. I’m just glad to be out of there.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re coming back.”

There was a shout from downstairs. Robbie’s parents were leaving. The two of them hurried down. Robbie reddened with embarrassment when his mom gave him a hug, and he promised her he would behave. He took his suitcase and rolled-up sleeping bag from his dad, who playfully punched his shoulder and said, “We’ll pick you up in the morning, sport. Have fun.”

“Robbie can spend the day tomorrow if he wants,” James’s mother said. “We can bring him home in the afternoon or evening.”

“That’d be fine, if he wants to. That sound good to you, buddy?”

Robbie nodded happily.

“All right, then.” His dad smiled down at him. “Come home when you want to.” He looked over at James’s parents. “Whenever you get tired of him. We should be home all day.”

“Six o’clock at the latest,” Robbie’s mom said.

Good-byes were said, and after his parents left, Robbie toted his suitcase up to James’s room, where the two of them hung out and played computer games for the next hour.

For dinner, they had pizza, James and Robbie going with James’s dad to pick it up, and afterward they watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a movie they’d both seen a million times but that they both still thought was hilarious. Megan pretty much hid in her room for the entire evening, and that was another great thing about tonight—James hardly had to see her. BBC America was having a Doctor Who marathon, and they watched that until eleven, when James’s mom told them it was time to go to bed.

Robbie had already unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor, and while James’s mom had given him an extra pillow to use, he decided to rest his head on the beanbag chair instead. James, of course, slept in his bed. The two of them talked for a while in the dark—it was their goal to stay up until midnight—but they were tired, and within