We quietly chew our cheese and pickles and crackers.
“What?” Max asks.
“What do you mean what?”
“You have something on your mind. I can tell. You have something to say about this house, but you’re nervous for some reason.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Like I said—bad liar. I’ve only known you for a few days and I can already tell. You squinch your eyes up a little. Like this.” He dramatically squints, flickering his eyelids.
“That is definitely not something I ever do.”
He watches me as I slowly eat a cracker.
“Okay. Fine. Listen, it’s just… there have always been stories about this house. Ginger and I used to freak ourselves out with it when we were younger. Daring each other to step on the porch, touch the door, dumb stuff like that. It’s the local spooky haunted house. Every small town probably has one.”
“What were the stories?”
I glance around the room, at the cracked window above the sink, the peeling yellow floral wallpaper. The dripping faucet, one loud plink every three seconds.
“People always said that someone was killed here. I don’t know. No two versions of the story were ever the same. Ginger and Noah and I tried to look through newspaper archives in the library once, but we couldn’t find anything. There was an old man who lived here when I was a kid. A total hermit. He died—of old age, probably. Nothing dramatic.”
“Hmm,” Max says. He chews the last bite of his cheese-pickle-cracker sandwich slowly before speaking again. “You finished?”
I nod.
He steps away from the table and cracks open the side kitchen door. I follow him into a closed-in glass structure that was once a sunroom, but now, with half of the glass panels gone, it’s more like a back porch. There are two rusty lawn chairs set up side by side on the cracked-tile floor. Max sits in one. I sit in the other. My seat is missing two slats, and my bottom is balancing precariously in the middle.
We’re both silent, listening to the rain clink against the metal roof above us.
I glance over at Max and he smiles, but his eyes look sad. Maybe—probably—because of what I said about his new home. Good job, Calliope. As if this place wasn’t already bad enough. Throw a murder story in, too, why don’t you?
I close my eyes and pretend we’re anywhere but the Jackson house.
“Oh, sweet lord,” Ginger whispers, though not quietly enough. Max and Noah are in the living room, only one thin wall away from us. Mama and Mimmy are out of the house for their monthly book club. “I am so glad you invited the new boy to movie night. You were right. He’s very pretty.”
“You didn’t really need more lemonade, did you?” I ask.
“Nope. But seriously, whether you like it or not, you two have some kind of intense chemistry. He’s cute and artsy and funny, and seems like your type—not that I knew what your type was before today. It sounds cliché, I know, but it’s true. There’s something there.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I busy myself with the lemonade pitcher, stirring in a few more chunks of sliced strawberries and a handful of raspberries.
Ginger chuckles. “Oh-kay. Whatever you say.”
“I’m being friendly to a neighbor. He’s the new kid in school for senior year.”
“Very altruistic of you, being the welcoming party. That’s all there is to it, I guess.”
“That is all. And really, the three of us should be working on our friend-making skills. We won’t have built-in womb buddies at college.”
“I’m perfectly capable of making friends, thank you.” She plucks a few raspberries from the pitcher and pops them in her mouth. “But Noah will be relieved to hear there’s nothing going on between you two. Poor baby boy. He’s looked so terrified all night, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the cheap and gratuitous gore on the TV screen.”
My stomach pinches. “He’d be okay. Even if I was interested in dating Max.”
Ginger cocks her head, those green eyes squinting hard at me. “You sure about that, sweet thing?”
Before I can answer, Max interrupts us from the kitchen doorway.
“I knew it,” he says. “The lemonade refreshing was all an elaborate excuse to talk about me.” He leans against the doorframe, looking like he belongs there, like it’s not odd at all that he’s suddenly a part of our group. “Please, don’t keep me in suspense. Did I get the Ginger seal of approval? Am I officially a part of the crew?”
Ginger laughs, stepping away from me. She hoists herself up to sit on the counter, studying Max with raised eyebrows. “I’m not one for rash judgments. I might need all summer to decide.”
He lets out a low whistle. “That’s intense. I was nervous about making it into the Art Club, but I guess this will be the real test.”
“I’m pretty sure anyone enrolled in an art class is allowed to be in the club, so actually that one won’t be a test at all. And besides, if you’re joining any club, it has to be Calliope’s. Help her petition for solar panels and a plastic-straw ban and whatever else is on her agenda for the Environmental Club this year.” Ginger pauses, then says, “So why did you move out here to a haunted house in the middle of bumblefuck anyway?”
I try to catch Ginger’s eye, but she’s too intent on Max to notice me.
“Well, according to old Green Woods lore, anyway,” she continues when he doesn’t immediately respond. “But who knows? You could say better than anyone at this point.”
Max rubs his hand along the back of his neck, slowly, deliberating. He finally says, “I don’t know about any ghosts living there. But a few brave humans must have come in and out
