To make matters worse, one of my aunts—my mom’s mean older sister Tara—also liked to refer to me as the Closet Monster when she came over and saw my tiny little bedroom. Not overly nice, considering I clearly had weight and self-image issues, but it was kind of true.
Overall, my years at Newcastle Elementary were long and painful and mostly unpleasant. I had hobbies to keep my mind off of things: writing, drawing, working on the house with my dad, and softball. Ugh, never mind the last one. But when I saw other kids laughing with friends and playing in the schoolyard, I would get jealous. And upset. No one wanted to make friends with Laura Largebottom and no one wanted to become a new target of Portia Carson. So I was alone.
Even the town was bad, to be honest. Newcastle looked like an evil fantasy kingdom: ominous black smoke clouds would drift out of the old car plant down by the lake, blocking out the sun, sticking to windows and clothes, and generally making everything smell like burning rubber. I felt like I was living in Mordor. Combined with my super-bully Portia Carson, I was definitely ready to start somewhere new.
And then we pulled into the driveway of our new house.
“You have to be kidding me,” I said.
Chapter Two
The house was perched at the end of a sleepy little dead-end street that was appropriately named Raven’s End. There were only six old-fashioned brick houses on the street, all backing onto a dense forest that wrapped around the entire town. My parents had bought the house at the beginning of summer and insisted that it be a surprise for my brother and me on our first day—September 1st, only two days before the start of school. Now I could see why: they wanted to make sure someone was already living in our old house so we couldn’t run back to it and refuse to ever leave. Clearly Uncle Laine hadn’t actually looked at the house before he recommended it.
“Seriously, this isn’t the house, right?” I said.
The house was awful. The exterior was painted white, but the paint was peeling off everywhere and flying into the wind like artificial snowflakes. The steep roof was a patchwork of missing black shingles and exposed wood, while a large, rotting porch wrapped around the front of the house. The windows were worse. They were dark and grimy and one of them was even covered with a piece of plywood. Then you had the sprawling front lawn, which was at least a foot high and spotted with menacing thistles.
I was literally looking at a horror movie.
“Surprise,” my dad said happily.
My dad is a big man with a bit of a gut and a thick brown moustache. I like to call him Stache. His wispy chestnut hair is thinning and he’s almost fifty, but he’s got crazy amounts of energy. He’s the one who likes renovations. This was his big dream. A fixer-upper.
I guess my mom was equally to blame. She didn’t really like Newcastle either and quickly jumped on board when my dad suggested the move. She got in a fight with this woman on the parent council and decided she hated Newcastle. When she gets in a fight with someone, it lasts for like twenty-five years, so we didn’t have much choice.
She is an aesthetician, so she does people’s nails and waxing and things like that. My dad is an accountant, and he would still be commuting to the same job in the city, but he had the week off so he could try to get as much done around the house as possible. He likes to consider himself a handyman and always does everything himself.
“Is it bad?” my little brother asked.
I should probably tell you about my brother. His name is Tom, and he’s nine years old with sandy-blond hair and these really cool icy-blue eyes. He’s also blind. Not completely. He sees sort of different shades of black. Shapes sometimes. I’m way overprotective of him, but we have kind of a weird relationship where we just say things that should be faux pas. Like I call him Bat Boy and he calls me Giant Girl.
“It’s bad,” I said. “It looks like our old house, except condemned and haunted.”
“Oh,” he replied.
“It’s not that bad,” my mom said, giving me a disapproving look. “You should see the floor space. It’s twice the size of our old house.”
I made a face. “And eight times as decrepit.”
My father rubbed his big, calloused hands together eagerly. “Not for long,” he said. “I’ll have this place looking like a dream in no time flat. You just wait.”
I looked up at the ugly two-storey house looming over our car.
“Good luck, Stache.”
—
My bedroom was worse. First of all, I had to walk up the narrow old staircase with floorboards that groaned and complained like an African bull elephant was trying to climb the steps. I could see this house was going to be great for my confidence.
“Just needs to be nailed down,” my dad said, coming up the stairs behind me and noticing my sour expression.
“Or burned down,” I muttered.
Then I opened the door to my room. I’ve never seen so many spiderwebs. They looked like drapes. I would have needed a machete to get in there.
“No,” I said firmly, turning to my dad.
I hate spiders. Hate them. I’m not a girly girl by any stretch—I
