 
### Reapers Never Smile

By Stephanie J. Prochaska

Copyright 2012 Stephanie J. Prochaska

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

Senior year of high school was supposed to be the best year of my life. I was supposed to hang out with Steve and Marcus. We were going to be the best three on the varsity basketball team – we were going to be kings of the school. Instead, my parents decided it'd be the perfect time to move 2,473 miles across the country. Dad got a new job, and there was no way he could put it off – not even for the year it would take for me to graduate with my friends.

My parents said it'd be great – a chance to try something new. I definitely had my doubts, but I decided to try and be optimistic about the whole thing. Sure I didn't know a single person in this state, but I'd made friends before. I had a ton of friends at my old school, and I was sure I could do it again. That wasn't really the problem. The problem was I shouldn't have to make all new friends. I'd spent three years at my school, and I deserved to have my fourth year there too. I'd put up with all the jokes that get played on freshmen, like being told the class had been moved to room 117 – a number that didn't actually exist, even though there was a room 116 and 118 – or told that certain teachers liked papers hand written instead of typed, or that it was ok to get up and go to your locker real quick without asking. Not that I was planning on pulling these same things on the incoming freshmen myself, but at least at my old school I knew the kinds of tricks that people pulled. Now, I was going to be a senior at a new school, which meant I'd be able to be tricked by the same things that the freshmen were! All the good things about sticking with the same school for those three years were about to be washed down the drain.

I never would have thought it'd be hard to make friends; I'd always gotten along pretty well with everyone at my old school. So when I moved, I'd been hoping I'd be able to talk to a few people and at least have a couple of acquaintances by the end of the week. So far, it wasn't looking like that's the way it was going to go. I talked to people here and tried to get to know the kids in my class, but these kids had already known each other for years. Some of them had been friends all their lives, and it seemed like they were all pretty happy with the friends they already had.

At least I got to start school on the first day just like everybody else. It was bad enough that I would be going to a new school as a senior, but it'd have been even worse if I had to start in the middle of the year.

I walked aimlessly down the halls. I was trying to find my first class, but I wasn't looking particularly hard. I figured the first week or so I'd have basically a free pass to be late to any class. All I'd have to do was tell them I'm new and I got lost, right?

I wandered into my first class with the rest of the students. Chemistry. I sat towards the back next to one of those kids who was obviously built to play football. A few minutes later, a tall blonde girl sat next to me. As much as I hated to admit it, I started to feel better about this school. She was pretty cute. And if she was already sitting next to me, how hard would it be to start up a conversation with her? Nervously, I leaned over and gave her my best smile.

"Hi. I'm James."

"I'm Karen." she smiled back at me, and I was glad I was already sitting down.

"I just moved here." I told her, even though I was pretty sure she knew.

"Oh, really? Well, it's nice to meet you." She smiled at me again. I sat there a second, trying desperately to think of something to say. But before I could come up with anything really clever, a hand came down on her desk and she turned away.

The hand belonged to a tall, thick guy with close cut hair. As soon as Karen saw him, she got right up out of her seat and gave him a hug. They talked for a while, and my shoulders started to slump. Well, there was always the chance that she was just friends with the guy.

The teacher came into the room, and the guy finally took a seat. He'd been talking to Karen so long almost every other seat in class had been taken, and he had to head back up to the front. Now that he was sitting far away, maybe I'd be able to talk to her again later, without him around.

"Good morning, everyone." our teacher said, looking around the room. He was a tall, thin man with greying hair that for some strange reason he'd decided to spike. "Most of you I know, but there's a few faces out there that I don't recognize. So, for those of you who don't know me, my name's Mr. Ingersol."

Mr. Ingersol turned around for a second, and came back with a huge stack of papers, separated into two sections. He walked over to the far corner of the room and passed the first section to the girl sitting in that desk. As he crossed the room, he continued talking. "I'm passing out my grading policy, and an overview of the course." He paused when he got to the other side of the room and handed the second half of his stack to a kid I couldn't see. He continued talking about how the class was going to run this year and the things we were going to cover – periodic table, measurements and calculations, atomic theory. I was only half listening; the lecture was basically the same in every class, every year. And since he was already passing out a syllabus that would say exactly what he was telling us, what was the point? The atomic thing did sound pretty cool, though. I tried to pay attention to see if he'd talk about that any more, but by the time I'd decided to actually bother listening he'd already moved on to the end of his speech. "So, as long as everybody's clear on the rules, I think we'll have a good year. Now, does anybody have any questions?"

......

The rest of my day went by pretty quickly. It turned out that Karen was in two more of my classes, which worked out pretty nicely as far as I was concerned. She said hi to a few more people in each class, but not to me. Somehow, I'd managed to pick seats in both of those classes that were on the opposite side of the room from where she sat. I'd hoped she would recognize me even though I wasn't sitting anywhere near her, but she didn't really get the chance. I knew she was pretty, but it was turning out that she was also really popular too. Every time I glanced her way, she was talking to someone new.

I tried to come up with an excuse to talk to her, but sitting on the other side of the room made it really difficult to get a conversation going. For the first time in my life, I actually considered pretending I needed to sharpen my pencil to go to the other side of the room. It was so cheesy, I was actually embarrassed that the thought had even occurred to me. Besides, I'd already checked out the pencil sharpener, and it wasn't that close to her. I wanted her to notice me, but if I walked across the room staring at her the whole time, I was pretty sure any reaction I got would be a negative.

Over the next two days, I tried to get Karen's attention, especially in chemistry; I sat too far away in econ and math to worry about talking to her much then. So the pressure was on in chemistry. Too bad I seemed to always walk in the door just before the teacher did. By the time I'd thought of something to say, class was already starting.

My schedule said I had "Lunch 3", so I was surprised to see Karen sitting in the cafeteria with her friends. I hadn't noticed her on either of my first two days, and I'd figured she had either first or second lunch. Besides, already having three classes with her seemed like such great odds, I hadn't expected to have any other periods with her. I decided to go over to her and see if I could sit with them. So far, I didn't really have anyone to sit with, and this seemed like a good opportunity to squeeze into her group. But first, I had to get my own lunch. I'd spotted them while I was already stuck in line, and there was no point in going over to sit with them before coming all the way back here. So I waited. The line moved so slow, I could hardly stand it. I watched as the seats at her table slowly filled up. By the time I got out of the line not only was her table full, but so were the tables next to hers. The only place I could see to sit was on the far end of the cafeteria, furthest away from the doors.

Feeling somewhat dejected, I slowly made my way to the only open table I saw. The cafeteria bordered the gym, and this far back, there wasn't much light coming from the windows at the front of the building. The light overhead was dim, like it was going to give up at any minute. The only kids at the table with me so far were sitting a few chairs away, and looked like they were all freshmen. I stared down at my canned green beans and ham sandwich and realized that this was going to be a long year.
Chapter 2

I got home from school, made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and slumped into the nearest chair. It had been a week and a half since I'd started going to this school, and so far I could honestly say that this whole "new experiences" thing was a terrible idea. I still didn't know anyone any better than I did on the first day, and it was getting pretty sad sitting next to those freshmen at lunch all the time.

My mom walked in and saw me sulking. I tried to cheer up a bit, just so I wouldn't have to talk about what was wrong, but it didn't work.

"How was school today?" she asked.

"Horrible." I'd meant to say something else, like "not bad", but the word just came out before I could stop it.

"Oh, honey, I'm sure it wasn't that bad."

"It really was though." I told her. No point in backing away from it now.

"You just need to be more positive." I knew she was trying to be helpful, but it wasn't working. How could she possibly know how bad school was? If she really thought that a good outlook was all it would take to make this school even somewhat ok, then I really wasn't sure what else I could tell her. I sighed inwardly.

"I'll try." I told her. And silently added _"even though it won't help."_

"That's the spirit! I know you can do it." She stood up from the table, convinced she'd just had a successful pep talk with me. Whatever. "Oh, you remember that my schedule changes tomorrow, right?"

"Really?" I asked. "On a Thursday?"

"Tomorrow's the first. So for the next four months, I won't be home when you get here."

"So what time will you be home?"

"Not until eight or nine."

"Ok." It's not that I didn't care. I just wasn't in the mood to talk to her about it. Normally, I liked coming home and having her there. She didn't really understand what was going on in my life, but at least she was around. Now, I was going to have to go to that boring school and come home to an empty house. Figures.
Chapter 3

Over the next few days, I sat next to Karen in chemistry in near silence. I tried to work up the nerve to talk to her, but it was a lot harder than I thought it'd be. I'd managed to say hi, sure, but every time I felt like things were going good, someone would come up and interrupt us. The good news was that it was at least a different person each time. But it was still discouraging. How was I supposed to get to know Karen if I never got a chance to talk to her? And how was she supposed to remember me? The more our conversations got cut short, the harder it was for me to start one up the next day. I hated to admit it, but I was starting to give up hope of making friends at this school. Maybe I was so out of practice that I'd forgotten how to get people to like me. Could that really be what happened? So far, the only friend I'd manage to make was a gangly kid named Derek Porter.

Derek was in my P.E. class. He'd been easy to spot, and I'd made a mental note to stay away from him. He just seemed... different. He was a little too skinny, a little too eager, a little too loud. He was the kind of kid that didn't have a lot of friends. Other people tolerated him, but he was obviously someone that was best in low doses.

We were picking teams for a game of forced baseball. I knew I wasn't popular enough to be picked first, but I'd played sports for years. I looked athletic enough that I should be at least comfortably in the middle, if not sooner. As the first couple of guys were picked, I nodded to myself. I'd expected that, after all. A few picks later and nearly every normal-looking guy had been put onto a team; I knew I my turn was coming. As the girls started getting picked over me, I got a little nervous. I didn't have anything against girls or anything – a lot of them are really good at sports. I knew a couple girls at my old school who were way better than most of the guys. It's just that I knew how these line-up-and-pick-people-for-teams things work. As good as the girls might be, they just didn't tend to get picked first.

Soon it was down to me, that skinny kid Derek, three girls who looked like maybe they'd never seen a baseball bat in person before, and a kid I was pretty sure I'd just seen picking his nose. _Oh, come on!_ How was I still waiting for a team next to these kids? Sure, no one here had seen whether or not I had any skill, but did I really look like I belonged with _this_ crowd?

I was picked next, and while I was relieved, I couldn't help but be annoyed at the same time. I sighed. _At least I beat the nose-picker_. Derek was picked last; I couldn't say I was surprised. He didn't seem surprised either.

Derek's team started up at bat, and my team headed to the outfield. I ended up in center field, which was ok, I guess. I'd wanted to be a little closer to the action, but it looked like that would have to wait until next time. Maybe I'd get lucky and someone would hit a ball to me, but I tried not to get my hopes up too much. I put my glove on and settled in for a 50 minute period of watching seagulls land on the roof of the building across the field.

For the most part I was right. No one hit the ball in my direction, and the only time I really got to do anything was when I was up at bat. Every time I'd been up, I'd at least managed to hit the ball. I got a triple, a double, and once I almost got a homerun. I was starting to feel pretty good. And I could tell my teammates were happy enough with me that I wouldn't be that far down in the team-picking list next time. Maybe I'd even get to play infield.

We had about ten minutes left the last time I came up to bat. A stocky boy threw the pitch at me, and I swung. I connected easily, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the ball fly into the air as I sped off towards first base. I made it to second easily, and as I turned and headed for third, I saw why the other team hadn't been putting much effort into it. Derek had been stuck in the outfield like me. Unlike me, Derek was less than athletic. When the ball had flown up into the air, Derek had tried to catch it. Maybe there was a glare off his glasses or something, because he failed miserably. As I rounded second, I saw him sitting on the ground, the ball nestled in the grass beside him. His hands were covering most of his face, and I could see thin lines of red seeping out from between his fingers.

For a split second, I thought about running past him and trying for a homerun. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I knew what a terrible idea it was. I'd basically just hit a baseball at full force into this kid's face; I had to see if he was alright. I heard someone shouting at me from the dugout to run home, but I ignored them with a wave of my hand. I trotted over to Derek and knelt down beside him.

"Hey, kid, you alright?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." He put on a brave face, but I could see he was trying hard to hold back the tears. For some reason, none of Derek's teammates had come over; maybe they just didn't know how bad it was. Or maybe they'd grown used to it from Derek by now. I looked over at the shortstop, who was the closest person around. It was the nose picker.

"I'm going to take him to the nurse's." I told him. "Go tell Mr. Jeffries, ok?"

Nose Picker nodded and scampered off to find our teacher. I helped Derek up to his feet and together we headed down to the office.

As we started off, I turned around and screamed over to my team that Derek was hurt pretty bad; I didn't want to just leave the game without letting them know there was a good reason. I caught the look on Derek's face and realized that by screaming about how badly he'd failed to catch a ball I'd accidently embarrassed him even more.

"Sorry." I mumbled.

"It's ok." he said. "I'm pretty sure they won't think any less of me because of it." Suddenly, I felt even worse.

Derek had hurt himself pretty good, and there was a lot of blood. But it wasn't really as serious as I'd made it sound. Maybe it was just my way of justifying leaving; even though I knew there was really only one choice, part of me still felt like I was abandoning my team. I figured if I made it sound like Derek's head had almost been knocked clean off, my teammates would be more understanding.

We walked in silence for a few minutes, Derek sniffling quietly, his hand still over his nose. I decided to talk to him to try to get his mind off it a bit.

"So, what's your name?" I asked. I was 90% sure his name was Derek, but since I'd never met him, I wanted to be sure before I started calling him the wrong name. Besides, it was the only thing I could think of off the top of my head; I wasn't really good with making conversation on the fly.

"I'm Derek." he said from behind his hand. "You?"

"James." I told him.

"Nice to meet you."

"Same here." I said absently. "Sorry I hit you in the face."

"It's ok. I almost had it – it just slipped off the tip of my glove at the last minute."

_No it didn't_. If he'd been even somewhat close to blocking that ball with anything other than his face, he wouldn't be nearly that bloody. I was willing to bet his glove was nowhere near the ball – probably down by his side – but I sure wasn't going to tell him that. He was feeling bad enough as it was; why make him feel worse?

We made small talk for the next few minutes, and I discovered that Derek was not only not fond of baseball, he didn't like _any_ sports at all. It wasn't exactly shocking; he didn't really strike me as the sports type. Especially since in just the few minutes we'd been walking to the office I'd watched him nearly fall off a curb, walk into a wall, and almost trip over his own sneakers.

As soon as we walked into the office a crazy-haired secretary immediately stood up and rushed around the desk to meet us.

"Oh, you poor dear!" she cried, her voice filled with concern. "What happened?"

"He got hit with a baseball. In P.E." I said guiltily before Derek could tell her that I was the one who'd hit the ball.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed, sounding even more upset. Derek shot me a look that clearly said even he thought she was overreacting just a bit. She stood there, wringing her hands, looking from Derek to me with wild eyes. When it became clear that her only plans consisted of standing around and looking worried, I decided I'd have to speak up.

"Umm...is the nurse back this way?" I asked, pointing down the hall. The secretary absently followed my finger with her eyes for a minute before suddenly snapping back into action.

"Oh. Yes, of course." she said. "Right this way." We followed her down the corridor and turned into the second door on the left. She stuck her head into the room and asked, "Ellen? This boy needs some help. Would you look after him?" And with that, she headed back to the front desk, mumbling "poor dear" as she shut the door.

We walked in and the nurse turned around to greet us. She took one look at Derek and in a businesslike tone said, "Sit down. What happened here?"

"He got hit with a baseball." I admitted as the nurse pulled Derek's hand away from his face. She nodded, tilting his chin up to get a better look.

"Well, it doesn't look broken." she said at last. "I'm going to get some ice. You wait here, ok, Derek?"

Derek nodded and the nurse left the room. I turned and stared at Derek, but his eyes were closed, so he missed the look I was giving him.

"How does she know your name?" I asked. I knew we hadn't introduced ourselves to her. Derek opened his eyes just a sliver and looked at me before answering slowly.

"I've been here before." he admitted.

"As in, you've been injured at school before?" He nodded, and I continued. "So many times that the nurse actually knows you by name?"

"Yeah." he said. "I'm not that coordinated, ok?"

"Sorry." I said. I hadn't meant to imply anything. I'd just never met a kid who went to the nurse's office on such a regular basis.

"Here we go." The nurse cut in, coming into the room with an ice pack wrapped in a cheap brown paper towel. "You'll be fine. Just put this on it to keep the swelling down." _At least I hadn't caused any permanent damage,_ I thought.

The nurse left the room, and we made small talk until most of the bleeding had stopped. By the time he looked good enough for me to stop feeling guilty about leaving, my math class had been in session for about twenty minutes. The lady at the front desk was incredibly impressed that I'd come down and spent time with Derek. She made me feel like most people wouldn't have done that, which made me start to worry about this place. I hoped she was just a really dramatic person. She was so happy that I'd stayed with Derek, she gladly wrote me a note to give to my teacher so that I wouldn't have to worry about getting in trouble for being late.

It turned out that we did lose that baseball game after all – by one run. On some level I knew it wasn't my fault, and I'd like to think that my classmates knew it too. But the kids I'd been talking to in P.E. that day didn't seem to have quite as much to say to me after that. I definitely moved up the list when it came to picking teams in class, but there wasn't any of the friendly banter anymore; it was much more impersonal. I sighed, realizing that my hitting a ball into some dork's face and then apparently having the nerve to check to see if he was alright may have just cost me several friends.
Chapter 4

Over the next few days, I realized more and more that the only person who ever seemed happy to talk to me was Derek. I stood with my tray in hand, and scanned the cafeteria wearily. I'd been here almost a month, and I still didn't really know anyone. I mean, I knew a lot of the kids in my class, but none of them really talked to me more than to say hi. I'd been really hoping to meet people, but everyone seemed to have all the friends they needed already, like they'd filled their friend quotas. That's what made changing schools senior year even worse.

I saw Derek sitting in a corner by himself. He'd seen me standing in the isle looking somewhat lost, and as soon as I made eye contact he grinned and waved. I sighed and slowly headed over, wishing I was somehow able to make other friends. Even though I hadn't particularly wanted to hang out with Derek, he was really starting to look like my only option. Before I knew it, I was sitting with him every day at lunch, watching Karen eat with the cool kids and wishing that _anyone_ else wanted to be friends with me.

I hadn't really talked to her in a couple of days. The more I hung out with Derek, the less I felt like talking to Karen. Don't get me wrong, I still _wanted_ to talk to her. It was just that I was falling further and further into the dork group with each passing day, and it was getting harder to think of something impressive to say to her. It was embarrassing, really. I tried to think of something more clever than "hi", but it never came. Mostly I just stared at my desk in gloomy silence.

"Hi." Derek said as I sat my tray down.

"Hey."

"Classes getting any better?" he asked, making me take my eyes off of my lumpy pizza. He knew I wasn't really liking the school, and it was pretty cool of him to ask. It almost made me feel bad that I wanted other friends. Almost.

"They're ok." I told him. Suddenly, he got a knowing smirk.

"And how's Karen?" he asked.

"Huh?" I asked, only somewhat interested.

"You like her, don't you?" he asked. Apparently, he'd noticed my staring across the cafeteria several times each week.

"Yeah, I guess... I mean, she is pretty cute." I added lamely. It was a pretty terrible answer, but I'd been caught off guard.

"I don't blame you. Everybody likes her." he joined me in looking jealously across the room for a minute before asking, "Why don't you talk to her?"

"Huh?" I asked, surprised.

"Why don't you talk to her?" he repeated. "I mean, she's nice and she's really smart. You'd probably get along really well with her." I sat there for a moment, thinking about what he'd just said.

"If she's so great, why haven't you tried to talk to her?" I asked. I felt like I was on the spot, and I was trying to get out of it as fast as possible.

"Really?" He looked at me like maybe I'd lost my mind.

"Sure, why not?"

"I don't think she'd be that interested in talking to me." he said patiently. I glanced over at him and knew instantly what he meant. Actually, I couldn't believe I'd even asked him. Clearly I was spending too much time with him; his dorkiness was starting to slip by me. I don't know if he saw the look on my face or if he was just continuing his train of thought, but he looked a little embarrassed as he said, "Karen's a cheerleader. And she's on the volleyball team. I'm not exactly the athletic type, you know."

I really did know. He was the most unathletic person I'd ever seen. Even if you ignored the fact that his nose was still a little swollen, his arms and legs were sticks and his thick glasses put most contact sports out of reach, the thing that really sealed his fate was his coordination. Somehow, he'd managed to get through life with almost no balance or hand-eye coordination. He stared dejectedly down at the table, and I knew I had to think of something to cheer him up.

"Well, you never know." I told him, even though I was pretty sure I did know. "Have you ever talked to her?"

"Yeah. Sophomore year. We were in science together. I helped her study for a couple of tests... it was pretty obvious that I was barely even in the 'friends' category."

"That's ok. There's plenty of other girls out there. And maybe you can meet one who has the same hobbies as you."

"Maybe..." I could see Derek brightening as he considered this.

"So what do you like to do anyway?" I asked. "Video games?"

"Nah, I'm not that good at video games. I like cards, personally."

"Well, I'll keep my eyes open for any card-playing girls in any of my classes, ok?" I clapped him on the back.

"Oh, yeah. I'll be waiting." He said it sarcastically, but I could see him start to smile. I was glad to see he was feeling better. He might be a little weird, but he was starting to look like my only friend for the year. And I couldn't let my only friend be upset.

I looked over at Karen one last time. She was sitting with a group of six other students. I knew one of the guys from my Spanish class and two of the girls were in English with me. The others were people I'd never seen. She was laughing and smiling, and all her friends seemed happy to be near her. I hated to admit I was jealous. When I compared her lunch group to mine, I felt just the tiniest bit depressed. Not that there was anything wrong with Derek. It was just that he was, well... Derek. He was a really nice guy, but I thought I could actually feel myself becoming more and more dorky every second I sat next to him. I gulped, trying to put things into perspective. _Ok,_ I told myself. _First I'll get in to Karen's group. Then I'll worry about what to do with Derek._
Chapter 5

Monday morning, I sat down in history, wishing I was just about anywhere else. It wasn't just the fact that I thought history was boring and irrelevant, or the fact that my teacher jumped from topic to topic like he was getting paid based on how many subjects he could bring up per day. The reason I was really dreading history was because this was the day we were going to learn about our big project for the year: a term paper.

"Alright, listen up." Mr. Guerra said. "As I told you yesterday, we're going to discuss your term papers today."

The class quieted down, and my heart sank right along with the noise level.

He passed out outlines so we could follow along as he told us all about the paper I didn't want to write. The outline was two full pages front to back, and detailed everything that would happen from start to finish on this project. Once he was sure that everybody had received a paper, Mr. Guerra started talking.

"The reason you have to write this paper is so you get some practice in before you go off to college. Once you get there, your teachers will expect term papers for almost every class you do." Suddenly I found myself reevaluating whether or not I wanted to go to college. Maybe I could switch to one of the other history classes and get out of this whole thing. Mr. Guerra continued on. "And before any of you think about trying to change classes, I want to remind you that this is a school-wide project. Everybody in this school will be writing a ten to fifteen page paper their senior year." _So much for that idea_.

A hand shot up at the back of the room. Mr. Guerra nodded, and whoever it was asked, "How long do we get before the paper's due?"

"Four months." he replied. I sighed with relief, knowing I would have at least three months before I'd really have to get serious.

"What's it on?" Someone else asked.

"Why don't we hold off on questions until the end?" Mr. Guerra said, sensing the anxiety levels in the room. Three hands that were already raised slowly lowered back into the crowd. When everybody had quieted down, he continued. "As I said before, your papers will be ten to fifteen pages and they will be due in four months. Each of you will write about an ancient civilization. Now, since this will be a big project, we're going to do it in stages to make it easier."

Mr. Guerra continued to talk, and I scanned the outline he'd given us as he went. In two weeks we'd have to turn in a paper saying what our topic was. After that, for the next four weeks we would need to turn in the names of books or articles we'd found that we were planning on using for our sources. Our first five pages would be due in two months and the entire thing would be due in four.

That didn't sound too bad. So I wouldn't have quite as much time to mess around before it was due, but this actually made it seem easier. Now all I had to do was find a topic that would be interesting enough for me to be able to fill ten pages talking about it.

......

When school finally let out, I started my long walk home. I was still thinking about that history paper and what a pain it was going to be. I wanted time to think, so I decided to take the longest route I could find. Mom wouldn't be home until around seven, and dad was almost never home before nine. I could have gone home and played video games, but I'd already beat my last game the night before, so the feeling just wasn't there. I didn't have anything better to do, so I cut across a field, suddenly wishing Steve was here with his beat-up old football.

The problem with wandering aimlessly in a new town is that you're almost guaranteed to get lost. And that's exactly what happened to me.

I came out of the field and walked into the supermarket parking lot. I took a left from there. I was pretty sure I lived right, but I guess I was hoping for some sort of adventure. Even if I got totally lost, it'd be a lot better than any of the boring stuff I'd be doing at home. And it was definitely better than thinking about all the stuff I could be doing if I hadn't moved to this stupid city and all the homework I had now that I was here.

Eventually, I found a network of long narrow alleyways that connected the local mom-and-pop shops to the garbage route. Perfect. I'd never been back here before, but this was exactly the kind of place I'd been hoping to find. And judging by the sickly-sweet smell of rotting garbage, I was pretty sure that no one else would be coming around here any time soon.

As I walked down the passageways, I couldn't help but notice that there was all kinds of junk on the ground, from springs to twisted bits of scrap metal. I really wished Marcus was here to see this! He was always gluing useless pieces of garbage together to make new pieces of garbage. I thought about calling Derek for about a second before I decided against it; he'd probably tell me not to touch anything so I didn't get rabies or something.

I walked past a pile of junk that looked like it had come from either a doll store or one of those places that sells really old furniture. There was a broken old bookcase and a few tattered rag dolls that looked pretty badly burned. A porcelain pot lay shattered next to some tarnished pieces of metal, battered beyond repair. I knelt down to get a better look, a sense of excitement growing. Maybe someone had started a fire here on purpose! For insurance, probably – that was always the reason for fires, wasn't it? Maybe the cops had been investigating, but they couldn't figure out who did it. If I was the one who figured it out, I'd be a hero! Just the thought of everyone knowing I'd solved the case and brought a terrible arsonist to justice made me smile. Not to mention it'd be a great way to get noticed! I'd be impressive enough for even Karen to know who I was!

Grinning stupidly to myself, I knelt down and ran my fingers through the soot that was still caked onto pieces of broken glass. I looked carefully at a thin aluminum pot, which rocked violently as I touched it. Despite being warped and discolored, there didn't seem to be anything suspicious about it, so I turned my attention to the dented metal pieces on the ground. I didn't really know what I was looking for, but I'd seen a lot of crime shows with my parents. It seemed to me that all the cops on those shows had to do was to run their fingers through the dirt in order to come up with the suspect's name and address. How hard could it really be?

I picked up the ugliest pot in the soot, and my heart sank. I knew I wouldn't be solving the crime of the century any time soon. The old copper pot had partially hidden an incredibly old lamp – the kind people used to carry around the house before they invented electricity. The lamp was actually in pretty good shape. The glass wasn't cracked at all and the metal had a dim kind of shine to it. I picked it up and confirmed what I'd already suspected.

Along the side of the lamp, going from the base of the glass shade up to its top, was a three inch ribbon of velvety charcoal where flames had licked the side. I set the lamp down on the only good shelf still left in that old book case in order to get a better look at it. As soon as I let go, the lamp started rocking back and forth so much that I quickly put my hands back around it to stabilize it. As the lamp continued to wobble even after I'd steadied it, I knew exactly what had happened in that store: a rickety old lamp had tipped over and scorched a few items on a bookcase. No mystery. I sighed to myself in disappointment. It looked like it was going to take a little longer than that to get recognition in this city.

Even though my investigation had been a bust, I decided not to go away completely empty-handed. I grabbed the lamp and dusted off the loose pieces of dirt. It was a pretty nice lamp, even if it was really old. I'd never seen anything like it, and I figured it would make a nice souvenir if nothing else.
Chapter 6

I got the lamp home and set it carefully on the desk in my room. Of course, neither of my parents was home when I got there. Not that I'd expected anything else, but it did make things a lot easier since it meant I wouldn't have to worry about sneaking tools up to my room or being too quiet. It wasn't that I wasn't allowed to bring tools up to my room – I was practically an adult, after all. I just didn't want to have to explain that what I was trying to fix was a lamp that would have an open flame when it finally worked. Especially since the lamp in question had already caused at least one fire, I just didn't see that conversation going all that well.

I went out to the garage and got down my dad's toolbox. I had absolutely no idea what was wrong with the lamp or what tools I would need, so I just took the whole toolbox to my room. I just hoped that old lamp wasn't going to be too hard to fix once I opened it up.

I'd never fixed a lamp before. I'd helped Marcus with his junk-building projects, and my dad had made me help him around the house, but electrical work wasn't something I'd ever tackled. _At least I couldn't make the lamp any worse,_ I told myself.

I set the tools down on the floor next to my chair. I grabbed the lamp and looked it over. It was about a foot and a half tall with a tarnished brass base and a glass chimney. The base was probably six inches tall; the bottom three inches looked like a stand that swept up to meet what looked like a brass ball that had been flattened on the top and the bottom. The whole base, even the stand part, looked like one solid piece. _Probably for holding the oil,_ I figured.

The chimney was attached to the base by tiny brass prongs around the edge. It flared out into a huge balloon shape before tapering off towards the top. There seemed to be etchings around the top of the chimney, but I couldn't tell what they were supposed to be.

I managed to take the chimney off without too much trouble before carefully unscrewing what I later realized was the burner. I peered inside and realized that this was going to be more difficult than I'd first thought.

......

I went on the internet and looked at a few diagrams. I didn't know much, but everything I could find said I was going to have to replace the burner. It took me a couple of days to get around to it, but I finally made my way to the store. I even shelled out the money for a new wick while I was at it – the one I had was looking pretty bad. Normally I wouldn't have wasted money on something like this, but the lamp was so different looking, and I really wanted to see what it would look like when it finally worked. Besides, it would give me something to do when I got home; it's not like I had anything better to occupy my time with.

When I got home, I put the new parts on my desk next to everything else. The lamp was still in pieces, and the whole thing was starting to take up a lot of room. Before I put everything back together, I took a couple minutes to hammer out some of the bigger dents I'd found in the base. Then, I took some pliers and pulled the bottom edge back into a circle. When it finally looked like something I hadn't found in the garbage, I set it up right. I pushed it lightly with my finger, and I was glad to see it didn't wobble anymore. Good. Now, if my parents saw it, they wouldn't get mad at me for having a fire hazard in the house.

I threaded the wick through the brand-new burner and tested out the little knob that raises the wick. It seemed to be working. So, at least I'd done that right. Nothing seemed to be wrong with any of the other pieces at first, and for a minute I thought I wasn't going to be able to do anything else to fix it. I was about to put the whole thing back together and test it out when I noticed that the place where the oil was supposed to be was completely dry. So, I was going to have to make _another_ trip up to the store.

I bought oil the next day and put it into the lamp. _Finally,_ I was ready to put it all back together and see what happened. It took me two more days to finally get all the pieces lined up and back where they were supposed to be. It was amazing how it only seemed to take a fraction of the time to take it all apart. But now that I was trying to put it all together, it seemed like some of the pieces just wouldn't fit. Why was it always so much easier to take things apart than it was to put them back together?

Finally, I managed to get everything in the right place. I set the glass chimney back on the base, and took a step back to admire my handiwork. I had to admit, it looked pretty good. I wasn't sure if I'd done everything that needed to be done, or even if I'd done anything right, but I was still pretty proud of myself. Now all I had to do was see if the thing worked. I took a lighter I'd bought to the lamp's wick; I'd know in about two minutes if I'd done it right. I didn't know a lot about lamps, especially old lamps, but I did know that it looked just like the pictures I'd found. If it didn't work now, I wasn't sure how much more I could do. The light flickered for a minute, but it stayed lit. Once I was sure the flame wasn't going to go out, I put the glass cover back on and headed over to my bed. I laid down with my fingers laced under my head and watched the light flicker against the wall.

As I lay there, thinking about what an amazing lamp-fixer I was, something strange happened. The orange light glowing off the walls started to change to an unearthly cold blue. I turned to look at the lamp. What had been a perfectly normal flame when I'd lit it was now glowing a deep, bright blue. The flame got darker and darker, until the tip looked almost black. The room got dark, and the lamp seemed to almost glow.

Strange patterns danced around the room, swirling out from the lamp in a spiral pattern. I started to feel motion sickness coming on, so I closed my eyes a minute to steady myself. When I opened them again, the room had stopped spinning, but it was still bathed in dark blue light. And standing in the middle of my bedroom was a girl.
Chapter 7

"Hello." the girl said. I just stared at her.

Normally, I would have been pretty scared at the sight of someone I didn't know appearing in the middle of my room. But the whole thing was so surreal, and the light so dim, I wasn't actually sure if my mind was playing tricks on me. Even when I finally realized that she really was there, I didn't scream, or jump up, or do anything at all. It wasn't that I was too cool to be rattled by something like this; it was shock.

She stood in the center of the room, a smile on her lips. Her dark hair flowed out around her face in wisps, and her skin was so pale I thought I could see it glow even with the minimal amount of light that was now in the room. Her dress had frills around the edges and was such a pale blue it was almost white. The dress ended in ruffles a couple of inches above where her knees would have been – if she'd had any. I could see a faint outline of legs coming from under the dress, but they faded into nothing well before they got to where her feet should have been. She wasn't exactly transparent, but she didn't really look solid, either. More like a collection of thick spider webs bundled loosely together.

She kind of shimmered, an almost neon white hovering around her. Blue light swirled lazily around her, not going anywhere near as fast as it had when the lamplight first started turning blue. Now it hung in the air and on the walls, but never seemed to quite penetrate the girl's own unnatural light. After staring at her for about five seconds, I could tell that this girl was definitely no longer amongst the living. She smiled as she walked – or floated, whatever –towards me. I tried as casually as I could to move from the edge of my bed to a place closer to the corner. I tried to sound big and brave when I asked who she was, but judging by the giggle I got in response, I was less than successful. I cleared my throat and tried again.

"Who are you? What do you want?" I asked.

"My name's Samantha. Samantha Corben."

"What do you want? Why are you here?" I demanded.

"You have a lot of questions!" she laughed cheerfully. Her eyes were still sparkling when she asked, "Are you scared?"

"No." It was a pretty transparent lie, but what did she expect? There was no way I was going to _admit_ it.

"No? Really?" She shrugged. "That's good, I guess. Anyway, since you asked, I don't really want anything."

I blinked. "Then why are you here?"

"Because of the lamp."

"The lamp?" I asked. "What? Like a genie or something?" She sure didn't look like any kind of genie _I'd_ ever heard of, and she didn't really strike me as the kind of person who would be granting wishes anytime soon.

"No! Not like that at all." She rolled her eyes. "It's just that I like this lamp."

Apparently. I'd turned on hundreds of lights before, and not one of them had ever caused some strange girl to magically appear.

"So, what's so special about it?" I asked.

"It's the last thing I saw before I died."

She let the sentence hang there, and I could tell she was watching closely for my reaction. I didn't say anything for a full minute; I didn't know how to respond. What do you say to that? Finally, I settled on "Oh."

"I usually hang around near it – it's just that you don't see me until it's actually burning."

"So... were you watching me fix it?" I asked. I really didn't like the idea that she'd been watching me.

"No." she reassured me. "It's really hard to see anything without the lamp's being lit."

"It's not exactly the brightest lamp I've ever seen." I squinted over at it, trying to see if it even lit up the edges of my desk.

"I know. Maybe it's because it's the last thing I saw, but when it's lit, it lets people see me."

"So you hang around it, so that when people light it, they'll be able to see you?" I asked. That sounded like a pretty terrible existence to me.

"No, I don't hang around it _all_ the time, just a lot of the time." she had an edge to her voice, and I wondered if she'd picked up on my thoughts about her. "I do other things too. It's just that when it _is_ lit it's pretty much the only thing I can see." I stared blankly, trying to figure out what that meant. Apparently I wasn't suitably impressed, so she continued. "Once I died, things got really dark. Literally. It's kind of like everything's covered in a bluish-black fog. But when the lamp lights up, things look a lot better."

"So... you haunt the lamp?" I asked hesitantly. I didn't mean to sound callous. That's just what I'd gotten out of what she said.

"Why not?" She stiffened. "I like it. It reminds me of when I was alive. I used to see it all the time before I died. And I told you already, it makes things seem nicer."

"Oh... I'm sorry." She seemed pretty touchy about the lamp, so I decided to just let it go. It obviously made perfect sense to her, and who knows? Maybe if I were a ghost, I'd feel the same way. I tried to think of something to ask her, but all I could come up with were questions about her being a ghost; I wanted to think of something to ask that didn't seem like it would have quite as much potential to insult her.

"So, how old are you?" she looked about my age, but it was the only thing I could think to ask; my mind was just too clouded by things I felt were more important but didn't know how to bring up.

"I guess I'd be seventeen now." she told me. "I was sixteen last year, so..."

"Oh." It was amazing how even a simple question could turn so awkward. I tried to think of anything else to say, but the only things I could think of were about her dying. Finally, I realized that if I wanted to talk to her at all, I was going to have to break down and ask her. "If you don't mind me asking... how did you die?"

"I drowned." she said, and there was a definite edge to her voice. "You're very nosy, you know."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. It's just that I've never met a ghost before."

She shrugged and nodded in a way that let me know she saw my point without her having to actually admit it. She crossed her arms and tilted her head back as she studied me. She didn't say anything for a minute or two. Finally, she decided to ask me a question.

"What school do you go to?"

"Parkside High."

"I thought so." she said, nodding. I tried to look impressed, but since there were only two high schools in this town, I wasn't giving her much credit. Besides, she didn't even guess it – I _told_ her.

"That's the school I went to." she said quietly, interrupting my thoughts.

"Did you like it?" I asked.

"It was ok. I mean, I never really liked school, but it wasn't that bad. Why? You like it?"

"Not really."

"Oh? Trouble at school?" She seemed to be interested suddenly. I had to admit I was kind of glad; she was the first person I'd talked to who seemed to actually care about my problems.

"I guess I don't know as many people as I'd like. Everyone says to just give it time, and I know I should. I guess I'm just a little bit frustrated."

"Don't worry." she shrugged. "It really _does_ take time. And in a year or two, you'll know a ton of people."

"But I'm a senior now. I don't have a year or two to wait." And even if I did, who in their right mind would wait that long?

Samantha blinked in surprise.

"How old did you think I was?" I asked.

"I don't know. Sophomore? Maybe a junior."

"Really?" I asked, somewhat sarcastically. I'd never been told I looked younger than I am; people usually thought I was already in college.

"Well, I don't recognize you. I just assumed it was because you're younger. Why else would you be here and not know anybody?"

"I just moved here." I was about to tell her about how my dad made us move and how I knew a ton of people at my old school, but before I got the chance, the door slammed shut downstairs. I glanced at the clock on my dresser. 7:06.

"My mom's home." I told her.

"Then I think it's time for me to leave." Samantha told me. She studied me for a minute before adding, "I like talking to you. I'll be back, ok?"

I barely even had time to respond before she faded away. The room turned back to its normal cream color, and I was left wondering what had just happened.
Chapter 8

That night when we sat down for dinner, my dad asked me the same thing he did every night.

"How was school today?"

"It was ok." I told him.

"Did you meet any new friends?" He knew I'd been having trouble meeting people here.

"Well, I did meet one person today." I said slowly. A ghost was still a person, right?

"That's great, honey!?" my mom cut in, a little too excited. "What's his name?"

"Uh... Sam." She hadn't really said I could call her that, but there was no way I was going to tell my mom that my new friend was a girl. Mom would want to know all about her and would keep bugging me about when she could meet her until I had to finally tell her that Samantha was actually a ghost. And then what? My mom would think I was crazy for not only believing in ghosts, but for thinking they were my friends. And even if she did believe me, she'd probably be disappointed that I couldn't make any friends that were actually alive. So let her think that Sam was a guy in my class. Why not?

"Oh, I'm so glad." My mom told me. Like this was the first time I'd ever made a friend. Was it really that impressive?

"Thanks." I replied. Apparently she missed my sarcasm because she continued right on as if I hadn't said anything.

"See? I knew you'd make friends. I've told you before, you just have to be patient and not worry so much. So when are you going to bring this Sam over so we can meet him?"

"What?" I almost choked on my drink. So much for my theory that she wouldn't care as much about meeting my guy friends.

"You don't want me to meet him?" she sounded almost hurt. "I've always met all of your friends, ever since you were little."

"That's because I met half of them when I was still playing T-Ball. You had to drive me to their houses."

"So? Is that any reason to stop being involved in your life? Just because you're older doesn't mean I can't keep track of who your friends are."

"Dad, make her stop." I pleaded.

"Stop what?" he asked. I couldn't tell if he'd been tuning out our conversation or was just refusing to get involved. Either way, it was obvious that he wasn't going to be much help.

"I don't really know him that well." I told my mom. "But I'll bring him over once I get to know him better, ok?"

She didn't look like she thought it was ok, but she nodded anyway. I made a mental note to never bring Samantha – or Sam – up again. I could only hope that in a couple of weeks she'd forget all about this conversation.
Chapter 9

I'd been talking to Samantha for almost a week before it occurred to me to ask her about Karen. I knew that Samantha had been a junior last year, so odds were really good that she'd know her. _She'd_ be able to tell me how to impress Karen for sure.

"So, who'd you hang out with at school?" I asked, warming up.

"Eric Milner." She said almost immediately. She got a faraway look in her eye as she said, "I used to go to his house every day."

I knew Eric Milner. He was in my math class and captain of the basketball team. More importantly, I'd seen him talk to Karen once or twice. Chances were good that if Milner knew Karen, Samantha would too. If they'd actually been friends like I'd hoped, she could tell me all about Karen, and I could _finally_ do something to make her notice me.

"So, did you know Karen?" I asked hopefully.

"Yes." she said, her eyes narrowing. She folded her arms across her chest.

I knew she wasn't happy, but I didn't care. I needed to know about Karen. I pushed for more information, figuring Samantha would get over whatever was bothering her. But the more I pushed, the more annoyed she seemed to become.

"I don't want to talk about Karen." she practically spat. "She's a terrible person. I can't believe you'd even ask about that backstabber!"

"Ok, ok. I'm sorry." I said quickly, throwing up my hands. It was clear that I'd really upset her, so I decided to back down before things got really ugly. Normally, if someone had acted like that, I'd be asking what their problem was. But with a ghost, I wasn't sure if that was such a good idea. I mean, I'd seen a lot of movies, and none of them had ever shown a nice little harmless ghost. Those things could _hurt_ you if they got mad enough.

I wanted to ask what happened to make her hate Karen so much; it would probably be a good idea to know if there was anything wrong with her before I tried to go out with her, but I decided not to press my luck any more for the time being. If I made Samantha mad enough, I might not get a chance to ask again. I'd have to try again later, once she'd calmed down some.

"So how'd you meet Milner?" I asked. She'd looked really happy when she'd been talking about him earlier. Hopefully talking about him now would calm her down. And maybe I could still get some information about Karen or her friends in the process.

"Oh, Eric was amazing!" she said, instantly happy again. It's true I didn't actually know him, but "amazing" seemed like a pretty strong word to use. To be honest, he seemed pretty average to me. But I was going to do my best to keep her happy.

"You talk to him a lot?"

"All the time. He was in my English class. And math. And we ate lunch together too. There were other people in our group, but I always sat next to him."

"You really liked him, didn't you?"

"Of course! Who wouldn't? I think he's the most handsome guy I've ever seen. And probably the smartest too." she seemed to look through me for a second, as if she were remembering the best days of her life – which, she probably was.

I was glad for the silence; it was nice to have a few minutes where she wasn't gushing about how great Milner was. Not only was it nauseating, it was starting to hurt my feelings. I could only sit and listen to how great some other guys was for so long before I started wondering what was wrong with _me_. I mean, I knew I wasn't the best looking guy around, but I wasn't ugly or anything. And I was willing to bet I was just as smart as Milner.

"Are you even listening?" Samantha cut into my thoughts.

"What?" I asked, focusing back on her.

"I _said_ , you know Eric, right?"

"I've seen him around. But I don't really know him."

"Good." she said, clearly ignoring the second part of what I'd said. "Could you talk to him for me? Tell him I said hi?"

"Tell him what? That the ghost of his dead girlfriend wants to check in on him? You think he'll believe that?" She paused a moment, considering. I could clearly see she didn't think it was all that weird. Before she could say anything, I quickly added, "What would you think if someone told you that?"

"I'd think it was very nice of them to check up on me like that."

I rolled my eyes. I was sure that was exactly what any normal person would think. Who was she kidding?

"Could you just see?" she asked. "I just really want to say hi to him. Please?"

I didn't want to; I didn't actually know Milner, and I _really_ didn't want my first conversation with him to be an explanation about how I was friends with his dead girlfriend. How could I really explain that? Even in the best scenario, he'd think I was crazy. I was about to tell her that no, sorry, I couldn't do it. But the look on her face was so sad, so pathetic, that I just couldn't bring myself to say it.

"I guess I can try... but no promises." I added quickly. Her excitement only made me feel the tiniest bit better about the situation. I told myself that if I did this, maybe she would help me make a good impression on Karen, but I tried not to get my hopes up.
Chapter 10

I didn't actually approach Eric Milner until close to the end of the following week. I'd seen him every day, but somehow I just couldn't bring myself to go over to him and tell him that Samantha said hi. Even before Samantha asked me to say hi to him, I'd been meaning to talk to Milner about joining the basketball team, but I hadn't gotten around to it just yet. I'd started to go up to him several times in the past few weeks, but I'd always had some reason to put it off. I hadn't seen him alone, for starters, and I really didn't want there to be a crowd around when I asked him about the team. And after Samantha had mentioned him, somehow my desire to talk to him had faded even more; how could I talk to him and not even try to bring her up?

Eventually, I decided to give it a shot. She'd be glad to know I said hi for her, and I could use my interest in the basketball team as an excuse to start a conversation with him. I saw him after class, and for once he didn't have anybody around him. I really was about to go over to him when he saw me staring in his direction. He nodded a greeting to me before heading my way.

"You're James Caffery, aren't you?" he asked, smiling. I nodded, surprised that he knew my name. "I'm Eric." he told me. As if I didn't know.

"You're on the basketball team – captain, aren't you?" I asked awkwardly.

"I am." He smiled. "Have you seen us play yet?"

"Yeah. You guys are pretty good. Actually, I was thinking about trying out."

"That'd be great. We can always use a few more players." His smile looked like he meant it, and I found myself smiling back. This guy was alright. I couldn't believe I hadn't talked to him sooner. "Have you played on a team before?"

"Yeah, at my old high school. I was on the team every year there."

"Well, tryouts are starting next week. I'll look forward to seeing you there."

He turned to leave. I actually let him take a few steps away before I called out to him.

"Uh, hold on a sec." I said, kicking myself. How could I have almost forgotten about Samantha?

"What's up?" he asked, turning back towards me.

"Can I ask you something?" I hesitated. It was a delicate subject, and I didn't really know the guy. If he didn't believe in ghosts, this was going to either be really short or really awkward.

"Sure. Shoot."

"Do you remember a girl named Samantha Corben?"

Suddenly, all of his good-naturedness dried up. His eyes got dark and his face clouded over. For a second, I thought he was going to hit me. Then, he leveled his icy gaze at me.

"No. I don't." And with that, he turned on his heel and walked away.

......

I sat there in each of my classes for the rest of the day, replaying what had happened with Milner over and over in my mind. Of course he knew Samantha – why else would he have reacted like that? But what could have happened that would make him so upset?

When I got home I went straight up to my room. I lit the lamp and waited impatiently as the patterns of blue and black swirled around me.

"I talked to Eric today." I snapped when Samantha finally showed up. It had only been a few seconds, but it had seemed like it had taken a lot longer than usual. Samantha apparently didn't notice how annoyed I was; she grinned at me and looked like she would have hugged me if she'd been alive to do it.

"Oh good." She actually clapped her hands together as she said it. "How is he? How much did he miss me?" She almost managed to look sad as she asked, "Was it a lot? Is he pining away?"

I stared at her for a full minute, unable to comprehend what I was hearing.

"Uh...no." was all I could think to say. Actually, missing Samantha was probably the last thing on Eric's mind. I tried to figure out what a nice way to say "it seems like he hates your guts" would be, but couldn't. Samantha's face fell for an instant. But just as quickly, her smile bounced right back into place.

"Oh, I'm sure he's just hiding it." she said with confidence. "He's so brave, isn't he? Soldiering on like that!" She tilted her head and got a faraway look on her face. I tried turn my head a little so she wouldn't see me roll my eyes.

"Actually, it didn't really seem that way." I said it in the tone that my mom used to say was mean and belittling before she grounded me, but Samantha didn't seem to notice. So I tried again. "It was pretty clear to me that he doesn't like you. Now, why would that be?"

I watched carefully for her reaction, but Samantha was giving nothing away. She looked up at me with what seemed to be genuine hurt and shock.

"That's ridiculous!" she looked insulted that I could even ask such a question. "You probably just misinterpreted it. I bet you said something that made him mad, and then decided it must be _my_ fault he was so upset. He really liked me! You don't know anything about us." She crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at me in a way that made me really uncomfortable. The blue light seemed to get a little darker and swirl a little faster, and I started to feel dizzy. I held my hands up, deciding to give in before I threw up.

"Alright, alright. You know him – or _knew_ him, I guess – better than I do. Maybe I just brought it up too suddenly."

"Or he just misses me too much to talk to you about it when he doesn't even know you." She was still snapping at me, but at least she seemed to be calming down. She unfolded her arms, and the weird, uneasy feeling I'd had started to vanish. She turned away for a moment, and when she looked back at me, she was completely calm again. It was hard to believe it was the same girl who'd been so upset just a few minutes earlier.

"Look," she told me. "Maybe you shouldn't mention me to Eric again for a bit." As if _that_ hadn't occurred to me! "And don't mention me to anyone else either, ok?"

"Why not?" I'd already made that decision on my own, but I wanted to know why _she_ suddenly didn't want me bringing her up in conversations.

"Because. Besides, the other kids at school wouldn't understand."

"Wouldn't understand what?" That she was a ghost? Yeah, I could definitely see why that might be something they'd be skeptical about.

"They didn't really like me. They were jealous because I was with Eric, you know?" She paused a minute before saying, "I have to go. I'll talk to you later, ok?" And with that not-really-helpful explanation she faded away into the shadows.
Chapter 11

Ever since I'd talked to Eric about Samantha, I'd been feeling a little awkward around him. I knew I'd ticked him off, and I wanted to apologize. But the fact that he wouldn't even admit how mad he was made it really difficult to figure out what exactly was bothering him. I couldn't figure out if he was still mad at me, and even if he was, what exactly had set him off? I knew it had something to do with Samantha, but with the reaction I got last time, I really didn't want to try bringing her up again. I tried to put it out of my mind, but of course all that did was make me notice even more every time I saw him.

I hadn't really noticed how much he hung around Karen until then. I'd seen them talking in the hallways before, sure. But suddenly I noticed that they were together a lot; it seemed like every time every time I turned around, she was talking to Eric!

I knew I had no right to be jealous – they'd probably been friends for years – but that really didn't make me feel any better. I'd been holding out hope that I would still be able to go out with her, but suddenly I could think of at least four reasons why that was probably not going to happen. I wondered if they were actually a couple and if I'd somehow just missed it, but Derek had assured me that wasn't the case.

"They went out for a couple of weeks last year, but it didn't last that long." he told me. "Actually, I'm pretty sure he's going out with Michelle now."

That sounded familiar now that he said it, but since I only barely knew Eric and I didn't know Michelle at all, the information hadn't really stuck.

"So why'd they break up?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Eric and Karen? Oh..." he trailed off, as if he was trying to figure out the right way to phrase something. Or if he should say anything at all. "Last year was pretty stressful for everybody." he said finally. "Some bad things happened, and I think it just got to them."

I was about to ask what had happened when I suddenly I realized I had a pretty good idea. Samantha had told me she'd been friends with Karen, and she's definitely known Eric. And I could certainly see how Samantha's death could be traumatic, especially for her friends. I thought it over for a second, glad I hadn't asked that question out loud.

"You still haven't talked to her, have you?" Derek asked, interrupting my thoughts.

"I've talked to her. She's in my chemistry class, remember?" _And my math class and economics,_ I added silently.

"Great. So you've spoken to her. But have you actually had a conversation with her?"

I had to shake my head. "I've tried. A bunch. It's just that it never seems to go much past 'hi'."

"Yeah, that's the same problem I have." Derek sighed. Somehow, that didn't make me feel any better.

"It's not that I don't know what to say." I said, trying to justify myself. "It's just that I never really get the _chance_ to say anything."

Derek raised his eyebrows, but kept his mouth shut firmly. So, I continued.

"She just seems to have a ton of friends. Every time I talk to her for more than about two minutes, someone always comes up and starts telling her something. I don't get it."

"Yeah, she's always been popular." Derek told me. "And after last year, everyone's tried really hard to make her feel better. It seems kinda funny to say, but I think she actually got more popular after all that happened."

"Well, at least everyone's supportive of her." I said before lapsing into silence. Somehow, that actually made sense. I started to feel a little better about the whole situation; her friends were just going overboard with cheering her up. At least it was nothing to do with me personally. Too bad it didn't solve my problems about getting to talk to her for any real amount of time.
Chapter 12

The next time I saw Samantha, she looked upset. Not in the way she was when I told her about Eric not being particularly excited to talk about her; this was different. She was more subdued, more troubled. When I asked her what was wrong, she took her time answering.

"They're looking for me." she said, biting her lip, her eyebrows knitted together.

"What? Who is?" I asked. As far as I knew, nobody even knew she existed, let alone was trying to track her down.

"The reapers." she replied, still not quite looking at me.

"I'm sorry, but can you be a little more helpful?" Maybe it wasn't the nicest thing to say, but I was tired of these cryptic half-answers all the time. If she wanted to tell me something, she was going to have to be more direct; I was tired of guessing what she was trying to say. Samantha glared at me for a second before nodding in agreement.

"The reapers," she repeated, "are after me. Maybe it's because of you talking to Eric. Maybe that's what put me back in their minds. They realized that they never got me. So now, they're looking for me."

"I'm sorry." I told her. And I meant it too. If I hadn't talked to Eric, there was a pretty good chance she wouldn't be in trouble now. As if I needed another reason to regret talking to him.

"It's ok. We're going to stop them." She grinned in a way that I didn't like; it was too cold.

"What do you mean?" I asked hesitantly. I was all for helping a girl out when she needed it, but I wasn't sure I was willing to go up against Death itself. Especially for a girl that wasn't even alive anyway. Not that I had anything against dead girls or anything; it just didn't seem like it was going to be a long-term friendship is all. Besides, trying to trick Death into letting someone go when they were already a ghost seemed like a losing battle to me.

"If the reapers are after you," I said slowly, "I mean, isn't that how it's supposed to work? Doesn't stopping them go against nature or something?"

"No." She rolled her eyes like I was an absolute moron.

"Why doesn't it?" I asked. I was really trying to see her point, but I had to admit it was difficult.

"Because I don't _want_ to go. I want to be with Eric. I didn't even get to say goodbye. And now they're trying to take me away from him for good."

"I understand that. But aren't you supposed to, you know... move on or something?"

"I _told_ you already." she said, and I could start to see that angry glow start to smolder in her eye. "You want to get rid of me, don't you?"

"Of course not." She was annoying at times, sure. But she was still my friend. "I'm just trying to understand."

Samantha got quiet for a moment, her eyes on the floor. When she looked back up at me, it was with the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Her mouth turned down into the slightest pout as she asked me, "Won't you help me? Please?"

I was annoyed because I knew she was manipulating me. I was even more annoyed that it was working. She just looked so pathetic, it almost seemed cruel to say no. Besides, this was different. I'd flaked on other people before without worry. And I knew I'd been hesitant to do things for Samantha – like talk to Milner for her. But this time it was a lot harder to just walk away; this time I _knew_ without a shadow of a doubt, that I was literally the only person who could help her. If I said no, what would she do? I sighed. I still wasn't completely committed, but I decided I should at least hear her out.

"Okay." I told her. "What is it you want to do?"

As soon as the words had left my mouth, her face instantly changed. She smiled brightly with what I knew in my heart could only be gratitude. Her enthusiasm made me feel guilty for being so hesitant.

"So, how do we hide you from the reapers?" I asked, since she hadn't said anything yet. Samantha giggled happily.

"Oh, no." she said. "We're not going to _hide_. We're going to find them."

"And... do what?" What could finding them possibly accomplish?

"We're going to get rid of them." She had that cold smile again.

"How do you plan on doing that?" I was obviously not the expert on death here, but I was pretty sure that it would actually be impossible to kill a reaper and at least as hard to get them to just go away. Samantha just smiled knowingly and shook her head.

"Don't worry about that right now. What's more important is finding them. I'm counting on you."

"What am I supposed to do?" Surely she didn't expect me to go hunting for reapers.

"You're going to find them, of course. Do I have to explain everything?"

"Actually, I think I'd rather not. I'd like to stay as far away from any reapers as possible."

"But you already agreed to help! You can't back down now!" Her tone was a mixture of pleading and yelling.

"Well, I didn't really think I'd be doing it all on my own."

"Just this one part." she assured me. "Then we'll get rid of them together."

I still wasn't convinced, and apparently it showed on my face. Samantha got that sad, pleading look on her face again. But instead of trying to guilt trip me, she decided to switch to a different tactic.

"Wouldn't you at least like to know if there are any around you?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd know if there was a reaper near me." I told her. They were big, ugly skeletons in black robes; I'd seen the drawings.

"Oh, you'd be surprised. In fact, I'll bet there's at least one at school with you."

Now that got my attention. I was ok with reapers being far away. But going to school with me? That was something else entirely. I still wasn't 100% sure that I was really going to help get rid of them, but I _would_ like to know if they were there or not, if for no other reason than to avoid making them mad. Samantha saw the look on my face and knew I was starting to come around.

"We'll worry about the details later. But for now, there's only one thing you need to know."

"And what's that?"

"Reapers never smile."
Chapter 13

"What?" I asked. I looked closely at Samantha, trying to see if she was messing with me.

"Reapers never smile." she repeated. As if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Why wouldn't they smile?" I asked. It seemed like a weirdly specific rule for them to have.

"Well... I guess they do smile sometimes. But not that often. Really, they just tend not to."

"Why?" I repeated.

"I think it's just because it tends to lead to laughter. And no matter what else you might say about them, they are not an emotional group."

"Oh. Ok." I said. I still didn't know what she was talking about, but if she wasn't going to give helpful explanations, I wasn't going to bother.

"Have you ever seen a reaper?" she asked, seeing that I was starting to lose interest.

_Of course not,_ I thought. It's not like they wander around all the time advertising their presence. I shook my head, and she continued.

"A lot of people think they look like skeletons and carry sickles around all the time. But they don't."

"So what do they look like?" I was starting to get frustrated and wished she would just get to the point.

"They look like regular people. If you just passed one on the street, you wouldn't know it."

"Oh. Well, then finding one should be easy." I tried to keep the sarcasm to a minimum, but it was getting pretty hard.

"Actually, it will be. Because I already told you, they don't smile. Or laugh – they never, _ever_ laugh."

"Lots of people don't laugh." I said. "That doesn't mean that every grumpy old man is a grim reaper hiding in plain sight."

"Of course not. I didn't say they were grumpy, did I?"

"So how come they never laugh? What's so special about laughing?" I asked.

"Because they have no sense of humor?" she asked. I just stared at her, wishing she'd stop. When she saw that I was about done talking to her, she finally became serious.

"Well, in general they tend not to smile. They're pretty good at keeping their emotions in check – they don't cry and they don't laugh. But if they ever do laugh – or cry – that's when you'll know your dealing with a reaper." She shuddered.

"Why? What happens when they laugh?" I asked. It had only taken a second for me to realize that it would be a lot easier to make a stranger laugh than to make them cry. And if I had to make a hundred or so people either laugh or cry, it was pretty obvious which one was going to get me branded as a jerk. So, obviously there was only one choice for finding a reaper.

"Things get really weird when they do." she told me in a way that said she thought that should answer all my questions.

"Weird like what?" I tried again. Clearly it was something bad, and I didn't want to walk into a situation where I didn't know what was going to happen. But no matter how much I asked, Samantha wouldn't say any more. _Figures,_ I thought. It was just like her to give me all sorts of useless information and stop when she got to the important parts.

Samantha disappeared, and I still didn't have any idea of what was so bad about a reaper's laugh. It looked like I was going to have to find a reaper – presumably by finding the grumpiest person in town – and seeing what happened when they laughed.
Chapter 14

Mindy was a strange girl. She sat next to me in economics, but in all the months I'd been going to school here so far, she hadn't said a word to me. She hadn't even looked in my direction. But that wasn't what made her weird.

To be honest, I wouldn't have cared one way or the other if I ever talked to Mindy. She was a bone-thin girl with charcoal eyes. Her hair was pulled evenly into two pigtails, but it stuck out in all directions like tree branches in winter. She wore baggy flannel shirts and gave the impression that she'd _read_ about being a kid instead of actually going through the experience herself. She reminded me a lot of Derek, to be honest.

The first time I'd actually talked to her was almost three months into the school year. We'd had to partner up for a quick presentation that was due at the end of the class. Even thought I wasn't technically new to the school anymore, I was still the newest kid in class. So, I still got treated like the new kid that no one wanted to partner up with. And, no surprise, Mindy didn't seem to have any friends in class either. So, I found myself sitting next to the weirdest girl I'd ever seen, talking about the advantages and disadvantages of a free market economy.

Our presentation went smoothly enough. I had to admit, she was smarter than I'd initially given her credit for. The next day when I came to class, I found myself actually keeping an eye out for her. She smiled at me when I walked in the room, and I felt a little relieved to know that at least now I had one friend in econ. Since that day, I'd made a conscious effort to say hi to her every morning. Sure, calling her bizarre would be putting it nicely, but who in this town wasn't? If I were completely honest with myself, I'd have to admit she wasn't any worse than Derek. And since I wasn't exactly the most popular kid in class here, I couldn't afford to ignore any of the few people I did manage to meet.

"So how are you doing today?" I asked casually as I sat down.

"I'm doing good." she shifted slightly in her seat. I waited a few seconds, but she didn't say anything else. Clearly, if I didn't want to sit around in silence, I was going to have to be the one who did most of the work.

"So, did you grow up around here?" I asked.

"No. I moved here." Her tone was neutral, and I couldn't read her face. I decided to keep trying.

"Me too. I moved at the beginning of the school year. It's hard to move to a new place, isn't it?"

"It is."

"You don't talk much, do you?" It might have been too obvious for most people to say, but I was running out of things ideas at this point. And I was afraid that if I stopped trying to talk to her, I'd never get to know her. She didn't seem like the type who'd start a conversation on her own, and I knew that if I gave up after only getting this far, I wouldn't bother with her again.

"Not really." she replied, shrugging.

"Well, why not?" I was getting frustrated, and I hoped it didn't show.

"I guess I don't see the point. No one here really talks to me, so I don't bother to talk to them."

"Yeah," I nodded, understanding. "It seems like no one here is really interested in meeting new people."

"Yeah." Her tone still seemed pretty uninterested, but at least she was glancing my way, which was an improvement.

"So how long have you lived here?"

"A little over a year and a half."

"Why'd you come here?"

"I didn't want to. I had to." she sighed, and I suddenly got the impression that I was bugging her.

"Is everything ok?" I asked.

"Why are you talking to me?" she asked, and I had to admit I was taken aback by her bluntness.

"If you don't want me to talk to you, just say so next time." I told her. She didn't have to be so rude about it.

"No, that's not what I meant." She turned towards me and gave me her full attention for the first time since I'd sat down. "I mean, no one at this school is particularly friendly. I guess I was just wondering why you'd decided to talk to me when no one else really has since I've been here."

"Oh." That made sense. I guess if I'd been here as long as she had and people were still acting like I didn't exist, I'd probably be suspicious of anyone who talked to me too. "I just thought I'd get to know you, that's all." I said, shrugging.

Mindy looked at me, her eyes softening. The corners of her mouth twitched a little and I thought she was going to give me the first actual smile I'd seen from a student at this school, but it was cut short by our teacher walking into the room.

I thought about what Mindy said as the teacher droned on about supply and demand. I hadn't realized she'd been the new kid before me, and even though I wouldn't wish the kind of treatment I'd been getting on anyone else, at the same time it was nice to know I wasn't the only one having problems here. I'd been starting to think that it was just me.

Class seemed to drag on forever, and when the bell finally rang, I almost jumped out of my seat. I stood up to leave, but before I did I turned back towards Mindy.

"Well, it was nice talking to you." I told her.

"Really?" she asked, and her surprise made me feel kind of bad for her.

"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow, ok?"

"Ok." Mindy looked at me, her eyes sparkling. I could tell I'd made her happy just by saying it was nice to talk to her. Slowly, a smile spread across her lips. Her eyes looked really pretty, but the smile was wrong somehow. It looked unnatural, like maybe she was out of practice and was just doing it wrong. But before I could pinpoint what it was, Mindy's smile turned into a kind of giddy laughter. And that's when a chill ran down my spine.

At first the sound was nice. A little high pitched, maybe, but still sweet. But as the laugh continued, I started to hear another noise beneath it. Laughing along with Mindy's somewhat high pitched giggle was the sound of a much deeper and somewhat maniacal sounding laugh, like the sound of an old carnival doll that was breaking down and had become distorted in its old age. The noise spun around and around in my head, knocking me off balance. I put my hand lightly on my desk, fighting the sudden urge to throw up.

"Are you alright?" Mindy asked, a look of concern on her face.

I looked up at her. Her sudden concern for me had caused her to stop making that terrible sound. Slowly, the nausea started to fade away. But the cold, unnatural feeling still stayed in the pit of my stomach.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I lied.

"You look a little pale." She peered into my eyes, and I had to fight to keep from taking a step back – or worse, running out the door screaming. She didn't seem to notice that I'd just heard the creepiest sound imaginable, and I really didn't want to draw attention to the fact if I didn't have to.

"I didn't eat breakfast this morning. I think it's catching up with me." I told her.

"You should go to the cafeteria and get something to eat real quick."

"Good idea. I think I'll do that. Thanks. I'll see you later." My head was still spinning. I tried to leave as fast as I could without actually running. As the classroom door swung shut, I heard Mindy call out to me.

"See you tomorrow! I hope you feel better." I couldn't tell if her concern was genuine or just an attempt to throw off anyone who might have been watching us, but it did nothing to actually make me feel any better.
Chapter 15

When I told Samantha about Mindy, her reaction wasn't quite what I was expecting.

"So you found a reaper?" she asked happily.

"Yeah. If that laugh is anything to go by." I shuddered, remembering the sound all too well. Just _thinking_ about it made me break into a cold sweat.

"Well, what did it sound like?"

"Like she was a complete psycho. It made my head pound and I thought I was going to be sick." I knew I wasn't doing it justice, but there really was no way to describe something so horrendous. Samantha tapped her finger on her chin. After a moment she gave a short nod and shrugged, turning back towards me.

"That sounds about right." She said, nodding like I'd given the correct answer to some trivia question. I just stared at her for what felt like several minutes before I opened my mouth.

"So... you weren't going to warn me or anything?" I just couldn't believe it.

"Warn you about what?" she blinked. Like _I_ was the one who was acting crazy here. "Did you get hurt?" she asked.

"No." _But that wasn't the point._

"Then I don't see the problem." Her eyes twinkled. "You were scared, weren't you?"

"Of a grim reaper?" I scoffed. Of course I was! But there was no way I was going to tell _her_ that. Especially while she was wearing that smirk. "Of course I wasn't scared! I just think it would have been nice if I'd been _warned_ first."

"I don't understand what the big deal is. You're fine, you said you weren't scared. So what's the problem?"

I wanted to point out that I'd nearly jumped out of my skin when Mindy had laughed. Samantha really was lucky that I hadn't screamed. Who knows what would have happened if Mindy was forced to act to keep me from drawing attention to her? But, I kept my mouth shut – explaining all that to Samantha would mean going back on what I'd said and letting on how nervous I'd really been. When I didn't say anything, Samantha just shrugged; she obviously couldn't care less. I was getting frustrated that I would even have to explain this to her. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, and the fact that I couldn't only made me more frustrated. I decided to take a deep breath, calm down, and change the subject.

"So, do you think she _knows_ that I know?" I asked.

"Know what?"

"That she's a reaper." I sighed. Why was everything so difficult with this girl? "Look, she laughed when it was just the two of us talking. She has to know I heard her laugh. Do you think she'll know that I know what it means?"

"Probably not." Samantha said, after a minute of thinking. "I don't think they realize they sound so creepy to other people."

"How could they not know?" I asked in disbelief.

"Being dead does weird things to you. Especially with regards to how you perceive things around you."

"I didn't think reapers were dead."

"Well, they're not really. But they're not exactly alive either, are they? Have you ever heard of a reaper dying?"

"No." I admitted.

"Well, there you go." she said triumphantly.

"So now that we found one, what do we do?" I asked.

"Well, we're going to have to get rid of her, aren't we? I mean, there's just no other option."

I wanted to ask what "get rid of" meant, exactly. But I didn't have the nerve. Instead, I just nodded and tried to convince myself that she probably just wanted to scare Mindy away. And if not, we could figure out a new plan later, right?

"Ok." I mumbled.

"Good." she said with an air of finality. "I'll look into the best ways to get rid of her. And you," she leveled her gaze at me, "find out everything you can about Mindy. I want to know all her weaknesses before we attack."

I nodded absentmindedly, my mind not really on Samantha anymore. I was more focused on what she'd said about finding out everything I could; that could only mean I'd have to keep on talking to Mindy, and that was about the last thing I wanted to do. Samantha didn't seem to notice my preoccupation and slowly faded from sight. And I was left standing alone with a growing feeling of worry in the pit of my stomach.

......

The next day in class I made sure to say hi to Mindy for two reasons. The first was, of course, so I could learn more about her for Samantha. The second, and by far more important reason, was that I didn't want Mindy to suspect anything. When I had bolted out of the room, she had seemed to only be concerned for me. But I still wasn't sure whether or not that was just her pretending not to notice. Normally, I'd say there wasn't a chance that she didn't know I knew she was a reaper. But with this girl... who knew? She seemed disconnected enough that she might not realize that running away from a girl who's smiling at you wasn't typical behavior; it looked like Samantha might actually be right about her not realizing how scary she was.

Samantha might not be too concerned about Mindy finding out I knew, but that was because she was already dead – what did she have to lose? But to me, doing anything that might upset a reaper seemed like a real bad idea.

"I'm sorry about yesterday." I told her.

"Oh, that's all right." She tried to say it casually, and even gave me a small smile. It wouldn't have bothered anyone else, but after I'd seen a bigger version of that smile the day before, all I could think about was that hollow, evil laugh of hers that had followed it. I quickly pulled my eyes away.

"Are you feeling better now?" she continued, not noticing my discomfort.

"Yeah. Thanks." We sat for a minute or two in silence. She looked like she wanted to keep talking but didn't know what to say. I didn't really feel like it at the moment, but I knew I was going to have to do it sooner or later if I wanted to find out anything about how to get rid of her. I thought about it and realized that the best way to learn what her weaknesses were would be to find out what kinds of things she liked to do – and what she didn't.

"So what do you do for fun?" I asked, hoping she wouldn't think it was a subtle hint that I wanted to hang out with her more.

"What do you mean?" Mindy asked, shifting her weight.

"I mean, don't you have any hobbies or anything? What do you do when you're not at school? Do you go to the movies? Or hang out with people?" _Other reapers, maybe?_ I added silently to myself.

Mindy sat for a minute, thinking. She seemed lost in thought, and I almost asked if she was still paying attention. When she did speak, she sounded a little strange.

"I guess I don't really do anything fun." she said.

"What? You have to do _something_ fun. What do you do when you go home?"

"I work." She shrugged. "It actually takes up most of the rest of my day."

I was about to ask her what kind of job she had, but I stopped myself in time. I already _knew_ she was a reaper, so I was pretty sure I knew exactly what job she was talking about. I kind of wanted to know what exactly she did when someone died, but I wasn't sure how to casually bring that up. I couldn't really just ask her; if she found out that I knew about her, who knew what would happen to me? I was pretty sure she could just kill me right there if she wanted to.

"So, do you ever get days off?" I asked. "Do you have a set schedule, or what?"

"I'm sort of on call, I guess." That made sense. She probably didn't know ahead of time who was going to die.

"But you go in almost every day?"

"Yeah. It's pretty rare that they don't have something for me to do."

"And when you get home – what? You just go to bed?"

"I read, mostly." she told me.

"So you just hang out by yourself?"

"I guess so." Well, this wasn't going well. How was I supposed to find out her weaknesses if she didn't really do anything? So far all I found out was that she didn't have an aversion to books. How helpful was _that?_

The bell rang, and class started. As I started taking notes, I realized that finding out about reapers was going to be a lot harder than just the simple two minute conversation I'd hoped for.
Chapter 16

I sat down at my desk, staring blankly at a book on ancient Chinese history that I'd checked out of the library. I was trying to get started on that paper that Mr. Guerra had assigned, but so far it wasn't going all that well. I had all my sources turned in, and my outline had been graded and handed back to me. I thought it was going to be easy from here on out, but it turned out that wasn't the case; I had about three sentences written and absolutely no interest in doing any more. I'd pushed Samantha's lamp over to the far side of my desk to give myself more room, but the light from my floor lamp kept reflecting off its base, drawing my attention to it. I resisted for about ten minutes before I decided to see if Samantha knew anything about history.

I felt a little guilty about putting my paper off, but it was pretty easy to justify. It's not like I was getting anywhere on my own, and even if she didn't know a thing, at least I'd have something interesting to do. What's the worst that could happen?

The crisp blue light swam through the room, and Samantha stepped forward out of the shadows. It was funny how lighting that oil lamp actually seemed to make the room darker. Even though a few inches from the lamp itself the light was almost blinding, the corners of the room were completely dark.

"You haven't talked to me in days." She started to pull her bottom lip out but saw the look on my face and stopped. "What's wrong?"

"It's this stupid paper I have to write. The first draft's due in two weeks and I haven't even started yet."

"Oh. I'm glad I don't have to do schoolwork anymore! It's so boring!"

"You're telling me." I grumbled. "It's on Chinese history. I thought it would be easy – there's a ton of books in the library. But I'm just not caring about the topic enough to actually do it."

"Yeah, I don't blame you. I remember last year when Mr. Guerra made us write a seven page paper 'for practice'. I mean, I learned a lot, but it took forever!"

My sympathetic nod turned thoughtful.

"What was your paper on?" I asked. Hey, seven pages of whatever she'd done was better than the zero pages I currently had.

"I did mine on the Roman Empire."

Well that worked. The only guidelines were that it had to be ten to fifteen pages long and be about an ancient civilization. I'd wanted to pick something a little more original, but with only two weeks left, I was starting to not care _what_ it was on.

"So how much of your paper do you remember?"

"I don't know... it was almost a year ago..." she trailed off. She sounded unsure, but I could tell by the look on her face that she was enjoying herself. I was pretty sure she remembered most, if not all, of what she wrote.

It didn't take much convincing for her to admit that maybe she did remember a few things from last year. We talked most of the night, Samantha telling me all about the Roman Empire. I wrote down everything she said. I was just happy to finally have something I could put down on paper, and she clearly enjoyed telling me all about the topic. She told me about how the emperor ruled the senate and about all the plays they used to put on. By the time we were done, it was almost four in the morning. I thumbed through my notebook and realized I already had five pages of a first draft written and three pages of extra notes. This was going to be easy! All I had to do now was hand in the five page paper in two weeks and spend the rest of my time adding my extra notes in. After a quick trip to the library to get sources and flesh out the paper, I'd be done!
Chapter 17

"So what do you know about Mindy?" I asked Derek through a mouthful of sandwich. I'd already talked to her a couple of times by now, but I hadn't learned much. I was hoping that Derek could either shed some light on her, or at least give me a couple of pointers on how to get through to her.

"The girl with the pigtails?" Derek asked, snorting. "She's kind of a dork, isn't she?"

I barely managed to hold back my own laugh. The idea that Derek of all people would make fun of someone for being uncool was almost too much.

"Yeah, her." I told him. "What do you know about her?"

"Well, not much." he admitted. "She came here last year around March or April. She was in one of my classes for those last couple of months. You should have seen her when she first came here. You think she's weird now! She's a lot better than she used to be. When she first came here, she was like an _alien_ or something."

"What do you mean 'an alien'?" This could be more promising than I'd thought. If she was even weirder before, maybe she used to do something that would give me a clue as to how to get rid of her.

"She just seemed like someone who'd read about humans, but had never actually met one, you know? Like, she wouldn't eat lunch with _anyone_ – she wouldn't even go to the cafeteria. She'd just go to the library."

"So? A lot of kids don't eat lunch. What's so weird about that?" I asked. I was starting to think Derek didn't have as much information as I'd hoped.

"I know that. But she wouldn't even go _near_ the place. Even when we had to go to P.E. she took the longest route possible – away from the cafeteria. And do you see the way she dresses? It used to be way worse."

I thought about it for a second. So far, what Derek had said was interesting, but I didn't really see how it would useful at all.

"Does she have any hobbies or anything?" I asked hopefully.

"Probably." he said, shrugging. "Why're you so interested in her, anyway? You like her or something?"

This time, I didn't even bother to hide my snicker. Was he _serious?_

"No." I told him straight out. "I just met her the other day, and I wanted to know what you knew about her."

"Because of your crush? It's ok, you can tell me." he said, laughing.

"I told you already, I don't like her. She's just really... unusual. I just wanted to know what her deal was."

"Well, that's really about it." Derek said. "She doesn't really talk to anyone that I know of. I never see her around before or after school. She just comes to class and goes home."

I nodded vaguely, thinking. I'd really been hoping that Derek would have some insights into Mindy, like that she was allergic to apples or something. But it seemed like he might actually know less than I did. At least I'd actually had a conversation with her. For the first time, I was beginning to have my doubts about this whole plan of Samantha's. Mindy didn't seem to have any friends at school to ask, and she wasn't offering up any information herself. It looked like I was going to have to tell Samantha it was time to think of a new plan.

When I got home from school, I did my usual quick check of the house to make sure I was alone. Even though I knew neither of my parents got home until late, I figured it was still a good idea to double check. It only took a few minutes, and I really didn't want to have either of them walk in on me while I was summoning a ghost to my room.

I lit the lamp and placed the glass chimney back on the base. Before I'd even had it completely fastened, the orange glow from the wick had started to change colors. The now-familiar blue light swirled out from around the lamp. I stepped back towards the bed and waited, rehearsing what I'd say when Samantha showed up.

"Hi." she said when she saw me.

"Hey."

"So how's it going with Mindy? Have you found out anything we can use against her?" she asked it as a question, but the look on her face said she already expected the answer to be yes.

"Well, actually, I wanted to talk to you about that." I said. Samantha froze for a second, a look of suspicion slowly spreading across her face.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I think we should try something else. She doesn't seem to do anything, and I can't keep asking her questions. Even she's going to realize something's up soon, and I really don't think we're going to learn anything helpful anyway."

"Are you kidding me?" she asked in disbelief.

"I've tried talking to her for over a week. And I don't know any more now than I did before."

"Then you're not trying hard enough." she said flatly.

"I am trying." I told her. Besides, I thought she was supposed to be coming up with the plan. All I had to do was find the reaper and she would take care of the rest. Hadn't I already done my part? I tried to ask her about that, but apparently she was having a hard time remembering that little part of our agreement.

"How am I supposed to do anything if you don't find information out for me? That's the whole point of you finding out about the reapers."

"So... what's your part in this plan?" I asked.

" _My_ part? I'm trying to find out information too, but it's a lot more difficult for me. Besides, this is all your fault – you started this. And now you won't even help me?"

"I am helping." Unless somehow all those hours spent talking to Mindy didn't count.

"Good." she said. "Well, I'm glad we talked. So, just keep trying, ok? And let me know when you find out anything."

"What? Wait." That was not what I'd had in mind at all. I tried to stop her, but the thing about ghosts is that it's pretty much impossible to stop them from leaving if they want to. She faded away, and I was left alone wondering how I was going to get Mindy to open up about her personal life when everything I'd tried so far had been completely useless.
Chapter 18

I walked into econ and sat down next to Mindy. I'd been hoping I wouldn't have to talk to her much anymore, but it looked like I couldn't give up just yet. I tried telling myself she wasn't bad, that she was just a little weird. And it was true that personality-wise – she wasn't bad. It was just that she was really creepy. Every time I looked at her, all I could think about was seeing her laugh. I tried to put it out of my mind, to think about anything else, but somehow it never worked.

"Hi." she said as I sat down.

"Hi." I replied, a little glumly. Hopefully I could find out something in the next day or two so I wouldn't have to keep doing this.

Mr. Taylor walked into the room and set his briefcase on the desk. He didn't even open it. Instead, he turned to the class and made a short announcement.

"Everybody partner up. We're going to play a game." he told us. He started writing categories on the board: businesses, theories, supply/demand. He kept going, until there were seven different groups. Under each category he wrote 100, 200, 300, until he reached 1,000. When he was finished, he turned back to us. "Each group will have a chance to answer the questions. Whichever team answers the question gets to choose the next one, and whoever raises their hand first will get to answer first. If they get it wrong, the team who raised their hand second will get a chance, and so on. Any questions?" No one raised their hand. "Ok. Groups of two. Go."

I looked around, purposefully avoiding eye contact with Mindy. Even though she was a reaper, which should have been more than enough to intimidate me into partnering with her, I was hoping for better. She was about the scariest dork I'd ever seen, and that wasn't really a combination I was looking for in a friend. We'd been talking a lot lately, true. But that didn't mean I wasn't open to the possibility of hanging out with someone else. But after a couple more minutes of frantically searching, it was pretty clear she was going to be my only option.

Finally, I looked over in her direction and nodded to let her know I'd seen her. As everyone started moving around the room and arranging their desks, she scooted her desk next to mine.

"So how are you at econ?" I tried to sound more enthusiastic than I felt. I just hoped she'd put down my lack of excitement to our class subject instead of who my partner was.

"I'm ok at it." She shrugged.

"I hope you're better than me." I laughed nervously.

I'd thought I'd like econ; it seemed like it would be intuitive. But it was a lot more formulas and theories than I'd expected and it ended up being more difficult than I'd been prepared for. So now I was going to have to guess answers to econ questions in front of the whole class and do it with Mindy breathing down my neck. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves.

We were allowed to use our notes and books, so that at least made it a little better. The first question was about the father of modern economics. I had no idea who that was, but Mindy's hand shot right up. We got the answer right, so I let Mindy pick the next question.

We actually managed to do pretty good. I got a few questions right, but Mindy did most of the work; we ended up getting third place. It was actually pretty impressive. I knew that if I'd been on my own, I would have been in the last five.

Maybe it was selfish of me, but I started thinking of Mindy in a slightly different way. She was still really creepy, sure. But she was also really smart. And she didn't even make me feel bad about not knowing the answers to most of the questions. She might be a reaper, but she still seemed like a decent enough person. Maybe I'd be able to overlook her scariness after all. I mean, she was pretty nice, and who knows? It might be a come in handy to have a reaper like me.
Chapter 19

I tried to ask Samantha only one more time about Karen. She'd been less than thrilled. She stared at me for a couple of minutes; her eyes got real big and her mouth turned down a little at the corners.

"Why do you want to talk about her?" she sulked.

"She's in my class..." I trailed off. I really couldn't think of a good reason that didn't also have a pretty high chance of alienating Samantha. What could I say? That Karen was pretty? That she was nice? Popular? Saying any of that could easily lead to Samantha asking if I thought she wasn't as good as Karen. I already knew Samantha wasn't that fond of Karen, and she got mad pretty easily when I brought her up. Why did talking to girls have to be so difficult? At least now she was just pouting instead of getting mad like she usually did. It wasn't much, but I decided to take it as a sign that maybe I'd actually be able to get some information out of her today.

"I don't want to talk about her." Samantha's whine got a little more obvious. "Let's talk about something fun."

"Talking about your old classmates isn't fun?" I knew she didn't exactly count Karen amongst her friends, but I was hoping if I said it that way she'd let it slide. "You don't want to talk about the people you used to know at all? Don't girls usually love to talk about people?" At least all the girls I'd ever known seemed to like to.

"I don't mind talking about my _friends_. It's just that Karen isn't one of them, so why should I bother with her?"

"Oh. Ok." It was obvious there was something she wasn't telling me, but I decided not to even bother asking; it's not like she would have told me, even if I did.

"So who were your friends?" I asked.

"Eric." she said instantly. Of course he was. Did this girl ever think about anything else?

"Anyone else?" I asked after a pause.

"Well... there was Sarah. And Katie. And Lisa and Janet were ok. How are they doing?"

"I think they're all cheerleaders now."

"Yeah, that makes sense. Katie and Janet and me were cheerleaders last year. Sarah and Lisa tried out, but they didn't make the squad. It's good they made it this year."

I didn't know any of her friends personally, so I couldn't tell her much more. The only person I could really tell her about was the one person I wanted to pretend I didn't know.

"Derek?" she asked, laughing. "How'd you get stuck hanging out with a loser like him?"

"I didn't really get _stuck_ with him. I hit him in the face with a baseball during P.E. I only talked to him to see if he was ok." It was only partially true, and I knew it. But even though I thought calling him a loser was pretty harsh, I just couldn't bring myself to admit that Derek was my only friend at school. Especially to someone who'd not only met him but had just called him a loser.

"Uh-huh." She said, not believing me. "So tell me. Does he still wear those big, thick glasses and have that stupid haircut?"

"Uh... yeah." I mumbled. "His haircut's pretty normal, but he still has the glasses."

"I almost felt bad for him." she said wickedly. "I mean, how does someone go through life being so nerdy? I'm just glad I'm not him!"

I stared blankly at her, and I could tell my mouth was hanging open. Did she really say she'd rather be herself – a _ghost_ – than a nerdy kid? Nothing like keeping track of the big picture after you're already dead. I would have thought dying would have given her some perspective, but apparently I'd have been wrong. I really wasn't quite sure what to say. I knew I'd think of something eventually, but for now, I was too busy trying to figure this girl out.

I was still trying to come up with some kind of response when I heard a loud noise downstairs. The front door; my mom was home. Apparently Samantha figured out what the sound was at the same time I did because she looked surprised for a second before taking a quick step backward and vanishing into the darkness.
Chapter 20

"You haven't been as much fun lately." Samantha informed me the next time I saw her. _I'll get right on that,_ I thought.

"And why's that?" I asked wearily.

"You've been all moody and quiet."

"I've had a lot on my mind." I said flatly. Sometimes she really made me regret talking to her.

"Like what?" she asked, clearly thinking I was lying.

"Like school. I've had a lot of homework the last couple of weeks." Maybe she would get the hint and just leave for the night.

"What about Karen?"

"Huh?" Where did _that_ come from?

"Has _Karen_ been on your mind?" she persisted.

What was this? Had I mentioned Karen? No. I hadn't brought her name up since Samantha got all moody last time. I hadn't even brought up Derek on the off chance she got mad talking about anyone I knew, even if they were just my friends and not people she actively hated. So why was she getting so upset?

I looked over at her. Her arms were folded over her chest, accusing glare fixed on her face. Something about that look really got to me. Was she still mad that I'd asked about Karen almost a week ago? Was I just not allowed to have friends or talk about people other than her? I put up with a lot from people – especially her. But questioning me about my choice in friends was something I was _not_ going to put up with. So maybe I snapped a little. I hadn't really thought about Karen in a while, but I decided not to tell Samantha that. Why was it any of her business anyway?

"Yeah, Karen's been on my mind. A lot." I lied. "And why shouldn't she be? She's in three of my classes. I see her all the time, and she's nice. So what?"

" _So what?"_ she repeated incredulously. "So, she's a backstabber and she only cares about herself."

"Oh, yeah? How?" This was going to be good; it was the second time she'd called Karen a backstabber. She never gave a reason last time, and I was pretty sure this time would be the same.

"Because she tried to go out with Eric when she knew I liked him."

That caught me off guard. Though it did make sense. If I'd really thought about it, I could have probably figured it out for myself. Everything Samantha had told me let me know she and Eric had been going out and that it had been pretty serious. And I knew Eric had gone out with Karen. It hadn't occurred to me that they'd both been going out with him around the same time, but it sure explained why Samantha hated Karen so much.

I felt kind of bad now. I opened my mouth to say something, but Samantha stopped me before I even had a chance. I'd really made her mad, and she wasn't finished letting me have it.

"I told her I liked him and she didn't even care! It didn't change her mind at all! She just kept trying to weasel her way in between me and Eric. Even when it was so obvious that he wanted to be with me, she just wouldn't stop. What kind of a friend does that?"

I sat there for a full minute, my mouth hanging open. Samantha stood in the middle of the room seething. She was so angry she was practically shaking. The blue glow that came from around the lamp seemed to pulse and twist with each ragged breath she took.

"Wow." It was the only thing I could think to say. Once I got ahold of myself I managed to add, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Well, you should be." she snapped. I could see she was starting to feel better now that I'd admitted I was wrong, but I wasn't in the clear yet. "What kind of friend does that?" she demanded again.

"I don't know." I confessed. I had to admit, it was pretty hard to justify.

"I was nothing but nice to her, and _that's_ how she treats me." Samantha told me. "So that's why I got so sick of her. And all you do is talk about her."

"Don't blame me." I snapped back. "If you'd just told me in the first place, I would never have asked about her." Not to mention waste so much time thinking about her.

Samantha made some scoffing noises and turned her back on me. I didn't mind; it gave me a chance to think. I was surprised that Karen would do that to Samantha. It's true I didn't know her very well, but it just hadn't seemed like it was in her personality. But I'd been fooled before. I was just glad I hadn't ended up being friends with Karen before I finally found out.
Chapter 21

Even though I walked into econ a few minutes late, Mr. Taylor wasn't there yet. I took my seat next to Mindy and said hi. Since we had a few minutes before class could start I decided to make the most of it. Mindy and me had been talking for several minutes, but it hadn't been going that great. Even though she seemed much happier to talk to me than when I'd first met her, she was still only responding with the shortest answers, and I really wasn't getting very far. I'd tried asking again about what kinds of things she liked to do and about her job, and the answers were just as helpful as they'd always been. Finally, I decided to change the subject completely; if direct questions concerning her weaknesses weren't working, maybe I could try just treating her like another person. Maybe I'd find out more that way. And if I was going to treat her like anyone else, there was something on my mind that had been bugging me since I first met her.

"So can I ask you something?"

"Ok." She said, smiling.

"How come you always wear those flannel shirts?" Ever since I'd started paying attention to her, I'd noticed she came to school every single day with a new giant flannel shirt. I just had to know what she saw in them.

"Why not?" Her face clouded over.

"Well, I mean... most girls aren't really big flannel fans." I wanted to tell her most girls didn't wear shirts that ugly, but I held it in.

"Oh. I don't know. They just seemed nice."

"They're not bad." I told her. She seemed a little down, and that was the last thing I wanted. And not just because I needed to get information from her. Since the moment I'd found out, it had never left my mind that this girl was a reaper, and could probably kill me with a glance; I did _not_ need her mad at me. Why did I have to keep meeting such scary girls? Whatever happened to nice, normal girls?

"I just meant that, well, you'd probably look good in green – plain green." I added quickly. I could just see her finding a big green flannel shirt. Then I would have gone through this whole awkward conversation for nothing.

"Green? You think so?" she asked.

"Sure. It's a nice color, right?" Of course, I had no idea how it would look on her. Green was just my favorite color. So, naturally it was the first thing I thought of when she started looking unhappy. And hopefully it would be bright enough to distract from the fact that she was basically death incarnate.

"Yeah..." she thought it over. The way she looked at me, I could tell I was probably the first person to ever really pay attention to her. She gave me a warm, awkward smile. "Well, thank you." She said.

......

The next time I saw Mindy, she had on a light green, scoop-neck T-shirt. I had to admit, she did look a lot better. Maybe I wasn't so bad at fashion after all. I made sure to tell her she looked nice, and she responded by giving me the biggest smile I'd ever seen on her face. I had to admit, she did have kind of a nice smile.

"Thank you!" she said excitedly.

"So how are your other classes going?" I asked, trying to make conversation.

"They're pretty good. I got an A on my English test."

"That's great." I told her. And I meant it. "I wish I could get an A in English."

"It's not that hard. If you need help, let me know."

"Ok. Thanks." I said. I probably wouldn't ever ask for help, but it was nice to know I had the option.

When Mr. Taylor came in, class immediately settled down. We spent the entire period reviewing for tomorrow's test, so I didn't have much of a chance to talk to Mindy any more. Class finally let out, and I walked down the hall, smiling to myself. Even as I walked home, I was still in a really good mood. Sure, Mindy was weird, but she was getting so much easier to talk to! I was surprised to realize that I was actually starting to not only enjoy talking to Mindy, but I was actually looking forward to seeing her in class.

Of course, when I saw Samantha, she was unhappy; she glared at me and demanded to know what was taking so long with Mindy.

"We talked about this over a week and a half ago!" she snapped. "I thought we settled this then. What've you been doing? Are you even _trying?_ "

"Of course I am! It takes time to get to know someone, you know." I was trying to stay calm, but she was really making it hard. I was the one doing all the dangerous work. What was she doing again?

"Why do you need to get to know her at all? You're not supposed to be making friends with her. You're _supposed_ to be finding out her weaknesses. Who cares if she likes puppies or silly movies? What is she _afraid_ of? _That's_ what's important!" she rolled her eyes. I took a deep breath to calm myself down before I said something I'd regret.

"Look," I said, speaking slowly. "I can't figure out any of her weaknesses if I don't know her, can I? What am I supposed to do? Go up to her and say, 'Hi, I'm James. What would be the best way to lure you into a trap and then kill you?'"

"If that's what it takes!" she practically screamed. Her face contorted into a look of rage, and I thought I saw her eyes spark. She freaked me out, but I wasn't going to let her push me around.

"Well, that would never work in a million years." I told her.

"And I said it would!" she shrieked. The room seemed to get a little darker, blue shadows swirled around in the corner of my eye. I shivered a little. "Instead of messing around all the time, trying to make _friends_ , why don't you do what you're supposed to do?" She was yelling so loud I was worried that my parents would be up any minute, pounding on my door and demanding to know what I thought I was doing. "And the next time I see you, you had better have some information that's actually useful!"

She was actually shaking with rage. I opened my mouth to protest, but I never got the chance. I got as far as "You know," before Samantha vanished. As soon as I realized she'd actually left, I went to the desk. As fast as I could, I blew out the flame to make sure she didn't come back any time soon. My heart was pounding fast; I'd been so caught up in our argument, I hadn't realized how nervous I was. When the flame was completely out, I walked over to my bed and sat down. Shakily, I brought my hands up to cover my face as I leaned back against the wall. 
Chapter 22

Talking to Samantha last night was pretty scary, I had to admit. She'd been kind of snotty before, but I'd always assumed it was due to her being dead and all. But last night was crazy, even for her. I'd spent the entire morning trying to convince myself that it was just because she was worried. Mindy's being around literally threatened Samantha's existence, so I could understand why she'd be upset. But threatening me? That was just not something I was going to let happen. This whole thing was really getting out of control; I needed to talk to someone.

I set my tray down on the thick plastic table and sighed. Derek looked up at me, pushing his glasses further up on his nose.

"You ok?" he asked.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"Ok." I said. "I know this is going to sound really crazy, but just bear with me, alright?" Derek nodded, so I continued talking. I told him how I found a lamp in a pile of junk and how I'd fixed it up. I told him about how I lit it to see if it worked and how a ghost appeared. I even told him about how the reapers were after the ghost even though all she wanted was to be left alone. I could tell by the look on Derek's face that he didn't believe me. And I couldn't say I blamed him.

"It's true!" I told him. Seeing the look of disbelief on his face got me nervous, and I started rambling a little. "I can prove it." I said. "I just have to light the lamp and she appears. Her name is Samantha, and she's really –"

"Wait." Derek said, stopping me mid-sentence. I wasn't sure, but he looked a little paler than usual. "Her name is Samantha? Samantha what?"

"Samantha Corben. I think she used to go to this school, actually. She said –"

"She did go here." Derek said quietly. Something in his tone made me stop.

"Why? What's wrong?" I asked, not quite sure I wanted to know.

Derek gave me a look I'd never seen before. His eyes were wide, his mouth pressed into a thin line. I didn't know a person could look so scared while being so safe.

"If you're telling the truth," he swallowed. "If you really have found the ghost of Samantha Corben, then you need to destroy that lamp. Immediately."
Chapter 23

"What are you talking about?" I asked. I knew she got mad easily, but was that really so bad that I should stop talking to her forever?

"Look, I don't want to say anything. I just think you should be careful." Derek shrugged.

"Really?" I asked, sarcastically. How could he say I should destroy the lamp and then turn around and try to tell me he didn't want to say anything bad about Samantha? Of course I was going to question him.

"All I'm saying is that you should, you know, watch out." he said, squirming.

"I am." I told him. I knew she had a temper, and I was careful to make sure she stayed at least somewhat happy. I knew that if she'd been alive she wouldn't have been much of a threat. But being dead and all, I wasn't sure if she had any extra powers, and I figured I'd err on the side of caution.

"Good." Derek said, but he didn't look convinced. "I'm sorry I brought it up. I'm just trying to look out for you."

"Well, thanks." I said it sincerely, but I was pretty sure that if I ever needed Derek to look out for me that I was going to be in real trouble. Still, he was a good guy, even if his worries were unnecessary.

"So, you want to hang out sometime?" I asked.

"Really?" I could tell he was surprised.

"Sure, why not? It's not like we don't hang out all the time at school. I figured we may as well go somewhere fun once in a while."

"Yeah, that'd be good."

"Great. I'll think of a place to go, and I'll let you know, ok?"

"Alright."

I was glad I'd finally asked Derek to do something. It had been a long time since I did something other than go straight home after school, and I was looking forward to getting out of the house. Now all I needed to do was find some place to take him where we'd both have fun.

It took me a couple of days to figure out where someone like Derek could go and still have a good time. I mean, he didn't like sports or other physical activities, and he didn't like video games. Finally, I hit upon the perfect place – the old fashioned arcade.

Normally, I thought arcades were only ok, but this one was different. None of these machines looked like they were made any more recently than the 1960s and a lot of them were from the 20s and 30s. And they all worked.

The building looked like it had been built as a warehouse and had recently been painted a light blue. We walked through the huge open doors and were immediately greeted by a fat, seven foot tall, laughing mannequin. I had to admit, it was a little creepy. Fortunately, the sound didn't last long. I just hoped nobody else put a quarter into _that_ machine again.

With a pocketful of quarters, we were able to entertain ourselves for hours. We played a pinball game from the thirties with a baseball theme. There were no bells or whistles and only three slots for the ball to go through. It was incredibly basic, but it was the most fun I'd had in a long time. The score counter only had three digits, and I must have spent an hour trying to see if I could get my score to 999.

Towards the middle of the warehouse, there was a huge glass case about ten feet wide and twenty feet long. Inside, there was a carnival scene made entirely out of wood. I put a quarter in to a little box on the side, wondering what would happen. The whole case lit up, and the carnival came to life; Ferris wheels turned, sheep were sheared. There was even a section with booths set up for side shows like they had at the turn of the century.

"Hey, look at this." Derek nudged me. He nodded over to a machine that looked like it had been built right around the time of the depression. It looked like an arcade game made of wood, except that it had what looked like a pair of gold-plated binoculars attached to where the controls would be on a modern arcade game. Where the screen would have been was a large sign hanging by two chains. Painted in large black letters were the words, "WHAT DOES A STRIPPER DO ON HER DAY OFF?"

Derek looked at me, a grin slowly spreading across his face. "So what _does_ a stripper do on her day off?" he asked slyly. I could only imagine. I took a step towards the box, looking it up and down. I wanted to check it out, but I felt a little weird about it. Derek saw my hesitation. "Are you chicken?" he asked.

"No." I told him.

"Are you too afraid to see what she does?"

"No." I said again, but with a little more force this time.

I stepped up to the machine, put my quarter in, and took a look. I was a little nervous, but I reminded myself that this was a family institution; _kids_ came here. How bad could it be?

I put my eyes down to the eyepiece and watched a short, choppy film clip.

I tried not to laugh, and had to stare into the eyepiece a few minutes after the movie had ended to just to make sure I wasn't still smiling when I turned back to Derek.

"Well?" he asked expectantly, "What does she do?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do!"

"Nope. You're just going to have to watch for yourself. Or are you too afraid?"

"I am not!" he said, but his face got just the tiniest bit of red in it.

"Then check it out."

"Fine." He grabbed a quarter out of his pocket, jammed it into the machine and proceeded to watch the film clip. Thirty seconds later, he turned back towards me, laughing. "Hey!"

"I know!" I laughed along with him. The film had shown a young woman lounging for a few seconds on a small sofa before getting up, washing her stockings, and hanging them up to dry. Then it cut to black.

"I mean, I guess it makes sense. I just thought it'd be a little different." Derek told me.

"I know what you mean!" I replied. "Hey, did you play that golf game?"

"No, I was over playing the basketball game."

"Yeah? Where's that?"

He showed me the basketball game and I showed him the golf one. By the time we were done, we'd taken over four hours, but we played every single game they had. I would have never thought I'd have had such a good time with Derek, and I began to wonder if maybe I'd underestimated him.
Chapter 24

"Mom, can I ask you something?"

"Sure, honey. What's wrong?" she sat down on the couch next to me, a look of mild concern on her face.

Normally, my mom would be the last person I'd go to for help – especially when the problem involved girls. I knew all of her focus was going to be on the fact that I was hanging out with not one, but _two_ girls, and she hadn't even known I'd had any friends at all that were girls. The important part – the fact that I was having real problems – would be almost completely lost on her. But with Derek not wanting to talk about Samantha, who else could I turn to? Mindy didn't know Samantha before she died, and even if she did, what good would it do? It wasn't like I could just ask Mindy if I should ditch Samantha. As a reaper, her answer was almost definitely going to be yes. And if I mentioned her to Mindy, I knew it would only set her straight on Samantha. Even with everything that had happened so far, I wasn't sure that's what I wanted just yet. Deciding to go to Mindy was such a permanent solution, and I needed to make sure it was what I really wanted before I did it.

My mom was the only other person I could talk to about this whole thing. I was just going to have to keep her focused on the important parts of the story. I let out a deep breath and got ready for a very long and probably awkward conversation.

"I have this friend, Samantha." I started. "And she's been acting really weird lately. She's been snapping and –"

"She?" my mom cut in. _Here we go,_ I thought. "I didn't know you had a girlfriend. How long have you been seeing her? Is it serious?"

"Mom, please. That's not actually important. She's been –"

"Well, I sure think it's important. How can I know what's going on in your life if you won't tell me?" She sounded hurt.

_I'm trying to tell you,_ I thought. What I said was, "Ok, fine. We're not dating and never have been. So no, it's not serious. But I really need to ask you about her, ok?"

"Anything, honey."

"It's just that she's been acting really weird lately. She snaps at me whenever she doesn't get her way, and she doesn't really like my other friends. She gets really mad whenever I talk about them, actually." _Wow_. Listening to myself talk, I suddenly felt like the world's biggest wimp. At least my mom didn't say it. She leaned over and patted my hand.

"Well, it sounds like she's not a very good friend." _That_ was for sure. I wondered why it took a conversation with my mom before I realized it.

"So what should I do?" I found myself asking. "I mean, she was one of the first friends I met when we moved. I don't want to just abandon her. Especially since if I do, I know I'll never be friends with her again."

"Sweetie, you're not abandoning her. Sometimes people just grow apart; you realize that you have different interests or different goals. It's nobody's fault. If you decide you don't want to be friends with her, that doesn't mean she'll be all alone. I'm sure she can make other friends."

"I don't think so." I said slowly. She was a ghost, after all. How many other people could she meet?

"Of course she will." my mom said lightly. "And you can't let someone else run your life. If things aren't working out, you have to move on."

"Yeah," I was starting to warm to the idea. "I tried to ask Derek what I should do, but he wasn't much help. And I couldn't ask Mindy – I don't think she's really able to be objective about things like this."

My mom raised her eyebrows. I could hardly wait to hear what she was going to say.

"Mindy?" she asked. I'd never heard so much meaning squished into one tiny word. When I didn't say anything, she continued on. "Who's Mindy?"

"She's a friend at school." I said wearily.

"Could this Mindy be the reason your other friend is upset with you?"

"No." I said it with finality, even if it wasn't technically true. Samantha was mad about me talking to Mindy, but not for the reasons my mom was thinking.

"Maybe she's jealous." she said.

"Of what? There's nothing to be jealous of!"

"I didn't say it was rational. But sometimes, when a girl likes you... " she shrugged, trailing off.

"Mom, I'm not dating either of them. I don't _want_ to date them. And I'm pretty sure that neither of them wants to date me either."

"Oh, I'm sure that's not true. Who wouldn't want to date you?"

"Yeah, I'm just beating them off with sticks." I told her.

"Well, just because you don't want to date them, doesn't mean they're not interested in you."

"Ok, mom." I said, rolling my eyes. I could just picture trying to date either a ghost or a reaper. I actually couldn't decide which would be a worse idea.

"So, if you're not dating either of these two girls, who are you dating?"

"No one, mom."

"You can tell me. You don't have to be embarrassed."

"I'm not embarrassed because I'm not dating anyone." I was trying not to get annoyed, but she made it really hard sometimes.

My mom kept on asking about my dating life, convinced that I was just being secretive. She didn't stop until I promised she could meet my girlfriend. Now all I needed to do was find one.

......

The next day after school, I walked up to my room and laid down on the bed. As usual, no one was home, and for once I was glad to be alone. I saw the lamp resting in the corner, but I didn't bother to light it; I needed time to think.

I couldn't believe I actually had to break down and talk to my mom in order for me to realize what I had to do. Thinking back on it just made me feel like such a huge wimp all over again. Crying about how mean Samantha was! Even my mom had said pointed out that she wasn't a good person to hang out with. I'd been worried that telling Mindy where Samantha was would be betraying a friend. But the more I thought about it, the more I had to wonder if Samantha had really been a friend at all. And if she wasn't a friend, then I wasn't really betraying her, was I?

Even with all the talking I'd done, I still wasn't particularly close to Mindy. But she still seemed way better than Samantha. She paid a lot more attention to what I was saying, and even though she was just as scary and potentially dangerous as Samantha, Mindy was never angry. When I thought about Samantha, I realized that not only was she mad a lot of the time, but her anger was usually directed at me.

I liked to think of myself as a pretty nice guy. And I could understand how being a ghost could put a lot of stress on a person. I knew I'd be cranky if I'd been dead for as long as she had. But there comes a point where stress just can't be the reason a person's acting that way; at some point, it's obvious that that's just their personality. It was really simple; Samantha's personality just wasn't that good. And when I thought about it for any time at all, I realized I'd definitely rather have Mindy around than Samantha any day.
Chapter 25

"When you talked to Samantha, did she ever tell you how she died?" Derek asked.

School had gotten out about ten minutes ago, and we were now cutting through the field behind school, heading home. When I first found out Derek only lived a few blocks away from me, I'd been somewhat annoyed and I worried that I might see him around the neighborhood after school. But now that I knew him, I was kind of glad for the company I got most of the way home.

"Uh..." I said, mentally running through the conversations I'd had with Samantha. "I think she said she drowned."

"Yeah. Did she tell you how?"

"Too much water?" I guessed. Derek did not seem impressed.

"I'm going to take that as a no." he said. "I would have been surprised if she'd told you, in all honesty. She died in Eric Milner's pool."

"Really?" I said, surprised. How was that even possible? "What, she didn't know how to swim?"

"How would I know if she could swim?"

"Well, if she could swim, how did she drown in a pool?"

"Will you let me finish?" I could tell he was starting to get annoyed.

"Sorry." I mumbled. Once he was satisfied that I wouldn't be interrupting again, Derek continued.

"Apparently, she'd climbed up a tree in Milner's backyard and was trying to make her way to his window when she fell. She hit her head on the side of the pool and knocked herself unconscious or something. That's why she didn't get out of the water once she fell in."

"No, she didn't." I looked sidewise at him, trying to decide if he was joking.

"She did too!" he shot back.

"Why would she go through all that?" I think it's fair to say that I was scoffing at this point. Derek's story just wasn't making sense; why would she bother with such a dramatic entrance? Nobody really did that kind of thing. "Why didn't she just go through the front door? It'd be way easier."

"Because most psychos don't use the front door?" Derek asked.

"Why's she psycho? I mean, if Eric was her boyfriend and all, why not just have him let her in the easy way?"

"Her _boyfriend?_ " Now it was Derek who was scoffing. "Are you crazy? She was stalking him! She followed him around every day from the moment she woke up. He couldn't stand her; she even tried to get rid of all his friends so she could have him all to herself. Why would you ever think Milner was Samantha's _boyfriend?_ "

"Cause she told me." I mumbled into my shirt. It was one of the most painful admissions of my life. I was such an idiot! She told me a story, and I just took her at her word for it, despite everything to the contrary. Even when she'd told me how mean Karen was, it still hadn't clicked. How could I have been so stupid? Clearly Derek agreed with my self-assessment because he started laughing at me like I'd just told the best joke. "Well how was I supposed to know?" I said defensively.

"I can't believe you bought that!" he said, gasping for air. He actually grabbed his sides and doubled over, he was laughing so hard. After what seemed like forever, Derek's laughter finally died down and he turned serious again. "She really is crazy, though. If anyone ever tried to get between her and Milner..." Derek trailed off, looking nauseous. When I asked him what he meant, he just shook his head. All he would say is, "Let's just say a lot of people thought it would be Karen that died instead of Samantha."

We walked in silence for a few minutes while I did my best to absorb what Derek had said. If what he said was true, it certainly would explain a lot. The more I thought about it, the stupider I felt. I mean, what was _wrong_ with me? How could I really not have noticed? I'd managed to ignore for months the fact that this girl was completely crazy. And what was even worse was the fact that I had almost gone along with her! If I'd listened to Samantha, I would have been trying to get rid of Mindy permanently.

Mindy. My blood ran cold. Just the thought of what I had almost done made me feel a little sick. Especially after getting to know her, it was hard to imagine there was a time when I'd wanted her gone. Good thing I'd never have to tell her!
Chapter 26

"Hi, James!" Mindy gave me a big smile and a goofy wave when she saw me. Derek made a strangled-sounding noise in his throat as he tried to choke back his laughter, but he managed to at least keep his mouth shut.

"Hi, Mindy." I mumbled, and I could feel my face start to turn red. I tried not to be embarrassed as people around the cafeteria turned and stared, but it was really hard. I'd really gotten to like Mindy and Derek, but sometimes the things they did made me wish I was invisible; it was no wonder I'd never gotten to hang out with the kids over at Karen's table once everyone saw me with these two. As soon as the thought entered my mind, I felt a fresh wave of guilt rise up and hit me, causing my face to turn an even deeper shade of red.

"Are you ok?" Mindy asked, looking at me with concern. I cleared my throat and gave my head a quick nod before smiling back at her.

"I'm fine." I told her. "Look, are you busy? We really need to talk to you."

"Ok." she said, then stood patiently waiting.

"Umm, ok." I'd expected a little more than that, somehow. When it became obvious that she was going to wait until I told her what I needed, I just shrugged; I really should be used to it from her by now. I looked around the cafeteria. At least no one was looking in our direction anymore – they'd all gone back to whatever they'd been doing before they spotted Mindy and me. Still, we were standing pretty close to a couple of the tables. We might not be interesting now, but if any of them heard us talking about grim reapers and ghosts, we'd probably catch their attention all over again. And that was the last thing I needed; if Mindy thought people were listening, I was pretty sure she'd never agree to help.

"Why don't we go outside?" I suggested.

We left the cafeteria and headed quickly around the back corner so no one would see us. Once I was sure we were alone, I turned to face Mindy. She still hadn't asked what I wanted. She just stood there, waiting for me to explain myself. I took a deep breath and plunged right in; there was no point in being shy about it.

"Ok. So, I found this lamp a couple of months ago..." I trailed off, already losing steam. It was bad enough I'd had to explain the whole thing to Derek. But now I was going to have to do it all over again. Only this time, I was going to have to tell it to someone much stronger and a whole lot scarier.

"What are you waiting for?" Derek asked. Since he didn't know about Mindy, he didn't have the same problem with telling her that I did.

"The lamp is haunted." He blurted out. "By the ghost of a girl who used to go to this school. Her name is Samantha Corben, and she died last year."

I watched as Mindy's eyes lit up for a split second before going dark again.

"Why are you telling me?" she asked. She tried to sound casual about it, but I knew better. I'd heard that hideous laugh of hers, and I'd seen the way her eyes lit up with recognition at Samantha's name; she was a reaper for sure. And you couldn't tell me that a reaper would be able to resist tracking down and catching a ghost that had been running around for over a year, especially when they clearly knew the name.

"She wants to kill you." I said simply. "You don't care about that?"

"Why would she want to kill me?" she asked impassively. "I've never even met her."

I stared levelly at her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Derek turn to look at me too. I hadn't really told him why we needed Mindy. All I'd said was that she'd help. And since she didn't seem too interested at the moment, I could tell he was starting to doubt me.

"Why _would_ Samantha want to kill Mindy?" he asked quietly, trying to at least keep his doubts between the two of us.

I stared pointedly at Mindy, but she just kind of shrugged like she had no idea what I'd been talking about. She really was going to make me tell him.

"Because." I said, "Samantha wants to get rid of any reapers in the area. And Mindy is one of them."

Mindy, of course, denied it. She raised her hands up in front of her and looked wide-eyed as she tried to tell Derek that she had no idea what I was talking about. And when he looked back at me with doubt written all over his face, Mindy squinted her eyes and set her jaw. She shot me such a dirty look I actually took a step back. Under her icy glare, I wavered just a bit. I almost told Derek that I must have been wrong, but I managed to stay firm. If she didn't agree to help, I really didn't know what I'd do.

"Look, I know for a fact it's true." I had no actual proof, and my only hope was that Mindy wouldn't realize this. "It's ok. We're not going to tell anyone."

Mindy managed to give a look somewhere between a sneer and absolute pity.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." she told us.

Derek raised his eyebrows, looking from her to me and back. He took a small step away from me, and moved just a little bit closer to Mindy. _Great_. Now I was going to lose both of my friends at the same time _and_ get no help dealing with Samantha. I sighed; I knew when I was beat.

"Fine." I turned to Derek. "I guess she won't help us. We'll just have to take care of this on our own." I turned on my heel and started to walk determinedly back towards the cafeteria. I couldn't even describe how glad I was that Derek actually started to follow me. As soon as Derek caught up to me, I turned around to face Mindy.

"So, I guess we'll handle it on our own." She didn't seem particularly phased, but I continued on anyway. "So we'll take care of the ghost by ourselves. And if you meet any other reapers out there, and they learn that Samantha Corben was caught and they ever ask you about it, you can just live with the knowledge that you didn't do anything. You let two regular kids do it while you sat back and watched."

I turned to leave, not even waiting for her reaction. I knew it was a low blow, but I was hoping it would shame her into helping. I felt a little guilty, but I tried to tell myself she had it coming. I'd asked nicely – I'd even practically _begged_ her to help us. So if I had to make her feel bad for her to help, I was fine with that.

We were about two feet from turning the corner when Mindy finally spoke up.

"Wait." she said. I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. Relief flooded through me. I turned around to face her as casually as I could.

"I'll help you." Mindy said, lowering her eyes towards the ground for a moment before walking slowly towards us.

"You will?" Derek asked as we headed back to meet her halfway. "Why?"

"Because she's dangerous. And I don't want to see either of you hurt."

"But... how do you know she's dangerous?" Derek asked. There was silence for a few minutes while Derek worked it out. "No! You really are a reaper, aren't you?" he practically shouted.

"Well..." Mindy started. She smiled so wickedly I could hardly believe it was the same awkward girl I knew from class.

Derek started at her eyes wide, mouth hanging open.
Chapter 27

"Wait, so you really are a reaper?" Derek asked, a mixture of awe and terror on his face.

Derek stared at Mindy as if she'd grown another head. I had to admit, I really enjoyed watching his reaction; I'd _tried_ to tell him, but he wouldn't believe me. And now, I didn't even have to say I told you so to him. As I sat there thinking about what a genius I was, a cold chill ran down my spine and I hoped my thoughts weren't showing on my face. All I could do was hope that neither Derek nor Mindy would ask why it was that Samantha would have bothered to inform me of the ways I could tell if someone was a reaper. There was just no way I was going to explain that she'd tried to convince me to trick Mindy. Fortunately, Derek's thoughts had turned in a different direction.

"So if you're a reaper, what're you doing in high school?" Derek asked.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but it was actually a pretty good question. She basically had a job, and she clearly didn't need the education for what was probably a lifelong career – if _life_ was the right term for person I was pretty sure would never die. Especially since I didn't think she could just quit being a reaper. So, it seemed like all the reasons a person would have for going to high school just didn't apply to her. So why was she here?

"I was assigned here." she said shrugging. Apparently that had been the only information she'd needed to make the move to this town.

"Assigned?" Derek asked, clearly thinking she had more knowledge than she was sharing.

"Yeah. When we couldn't catch Samantha Corben within a few months after she died, the people higher up than me started to panic. Especially considering what she'd done. They wanted to get results no matter what, so they sent me here."

"To do what, exactly?" maybe I was being dense, but I couldn't figure out what help her going to school could be.

"A couple of things." she told us. "See if she was haunting the school, check if any of her friends had managed to contact her. They didn't even care if all I managed to do was to learn about her personality in order to get more leads as to where she might be."

"And did you get any new leads?" I asked. I already knew Samantha hadn't been haunting the school, and judging from both Milner's and Derek's reactions to her, I figured it was a pretty safe bet that she hadn't contacted anyone who'd actually known her.

"Not really, no." she confirmed. "No one ever mentioned her, and I never saw anything strange. So it's really good you came along." she said, looking at me. She actually had a small smile as she said that.

"Yeah, I feel so lucky." I mumbled.

I couldn't help but wonder how I'd managed to get into this situation. It was funny; I'd thought Samantha had been overreacting when she told me how the reapers were out to get her. And even when she told me she wanted to get rid of the reapers before they got to her, I still hadn't really realized the severity of the situation. Maybe it was naïve of me, but I really thought there could be a peaceful resolution to this whole thing. But the more I talked to both Samantha and Mindy, the more I was convinced that neither of them would be satisfied until the other was gone.
Chapter 28

I walked into econ and found the empty seat next to Mindy. When I'd first started talking to her in class, I'd been kind of embarrassed. But now I figured, who cares? I'd stopped worrying about how cool I looked; I wasn't making friends with anyone who wasn't either Derek or Mindy, so why not start sitting with my friends and actually enjoy it? It's not like I had anything to lose in other people's eyes, and I figured I might as well work on the relationships I already had instead of worrying about ones that seemed pretty nonexistent, especially since they'd agreed to help me with Samantha and all.

Mindy smiled when she saw me, and I smiled back in spite of myself. When I looked over at her, I saw she'd dropped the pigtails. That combined with the fact that she wasn't dressing like she'd stolen her dad's clothes anymore made me feel a certain amount of pride. After all, it was my suggestions that had helped her start to look like a normal human girl.

"Hey." I said as I sat down.

"Hi." she said, smiling at me. "How's your day going so far?"

"Uh, good. You?"

"Good." she said.

"Hey, how often do you, you know, _work?_ " I asked. "Do you ever get any days off?"

"Yeah. There's usually a day or two every week that I don't have to do anything. Why?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to go bowling or something. Me and Derek were thinking about going either this Thursday or next Thursday. They have a special, so it's cheaper. You wanna come?"

Mindy's eyes lit up. She got a huge grin on her face, and she put her hand to her mouth to hide it. She made a kind of strange noise, and for a split second I thought she was going to laugh with joy. I closed my eyes, silently hoping she wouldn't make that bone-chilling sound. This time, I was lucky.

"That would be really fun. I've never been bowling before." she said.

"I've been lots of times. It's really fun. You'll like it, I promise." I told her.

"I don't really know the rules." she mused. "Is it hard?"

"No, it's easy. I'll show you."

"Ok."

"Are you busy this Thursday?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. I don't actually know what my schedule is until a day or two before. Every now and then I only get notified a few hours in advance, but that doesn't happen that much."

"Ok. Why don't you let me know on Wednesday? If you can go, we'll do it this week. If not, we'll try for next week."

"Sounds like fun." she said happily.

Our teacher came into the room, and the class quieted down. I got out my notebook and got ready to learn about economic disturbances. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mindy make a kind of wave that caught my attention. When I turned to see what it was, Mindy was staring at me. Once she was sure I was looking at her, she smiled. "Thank you," she mouthed before turning back to her own desk.

I headed from econ to history, feeling pretty good about myself. Today we were finally getting our papers back, and I knew I was going to get a good grade. As soon as I sat down, I saw a thick pile of papers, stacked carefully on the teacher's desk. When the bell rang, Mr. Guerra stood up and came around to the front of the room. He split the stack in half and handed each to two students sitting in the front. He started to talk about how great most of the papers were, but I wasn't really listening. I was too busy waiting anxiously for my paper to be handed back to me. I knew that with Samantha's help, I had to have an A, but I still felt a little nervous now that they were actually being passed out. Finally, my paper landed on my desk.

The first page had no red marks, which was a great sign. I flipped through the first couple pages, noticing that there didn't seem many more marks inside, so I skipped ahead to the last page. Stapled to the end of my paper was a blank page where Mr. Guerra had written comments, and this was the page I was most interested in.

The page didn't have very much written on it. I smiled to myself, knowing that the less he wrote, the better. But as I started reading, my heart dropped.

James, your paper is very well organized. You have an interesting introduction and good sentence structure. I was very impressed with the mechanics of the paper. However, you didn't cite very many sources and a lot of your information seems to be incorrect.

Please see me after class. D–

I sat there reading those five sentences over and over, my ears burning. A lot of my information was incorrect? What did that mean? Was he saying that I made stuff up? That I was _lying?_ It's true that I didn't exactly check out what Samantha had said, but I'd trusted her. She wouldn't just make things up. And even if she did get something wrong, how could she have gotten so much wrong that I'd gotten a D–?

Class passed incredibly slowly. I tried to put my paper out of my mind, but every time I glanced at it, tucked under my notebook, the words Mr. Guerra had written came right back to me. Finally, the bell rang, and I slowly packed up my things. I knew I hadn't tried my hardest on that paper, but a D– seemed a little harsh. Now, I got to hear in person all the things that were wrong with my paper. Slowly, I walked towards the front of the room, where Mr. Guerra was busy packing up papers of his own. When he saw me, he stopped what he was doing and turned towards me.

"James." he said.

"Mr. Guerra. You wanted to see me?" I showed him the last page of my paper as a reminder.

"Oh yes. I read your paper. I did like the layout and how you presented your information. But the actual information itself was a little... strange."

"Strange?" I asked.

"Well, maybe strange isn't the right word." he conceded. "But I do have a problem with some of the things you wrote." He took my paper from me and casually flipped through it. "You wrote that the ancient Romans used to worship Zeus, the sun god. And here you put that the entire empire came to an end in 257. And those are just two of the problems I saw."

I didn't know what to say. I mean, obviously what I'd written was wrong. And it hadn't taken him any time at all to come up with those two mistakes. If he could come up with those after a casual glance, there must be a ton more that he'd found when he actually read the whole thing. I tried to think of something to tell him, some sort of excuse that would explain everything. But I couldn't come up with a thing. And the worst part was since that was part of the information I got from Samantha, I didn't even have a source to back it up.

"I'm sorry." I mumbled, not sure what else I could say.

"I've seen your work before, and you're obviously bright. You've turned in great papers in the past, so I have to wonder why this one was so different."

"I don't know." I said after a pause. I knew he was hoping for an explanation, but the only one I could give him was that a friend of mine had made stuff up and I was dumb enough to write it all down. And there was no way I was ever going to tell him that.

"I know ten pages is a lot to ask. That's why you have so long to do it, and why we have small pieces due every couple of weeks. Did you just get overwhelmed?"

"Maybe." I said. It would certainly explain why I'd had such a hard time when it came to writing the final paper.

"I remember reading that all your sources were for a paper on ancient China. What happened to that?"

"I guess this one just seemed more interesting." I mumbled.

"Well, it is interesting." he said, glancing down at it. "You do have some good information here. And I know you also have a lot of sources for that paper on China. So I'd like you to go back to your sources on either that paper or your notes on Rome, pick one, and write out another paper. Ok?"

"Ok." I mumbled. I wanted to ask if I'd get a better grade if I did it, but I didn't quite have the nerve. I was still a little shaken that I'd basically been caught cheating.

"And when you turn it in, I'll grade that one in place of this one. You won't be able to get an A, but it'll really improve your grade if you do this. Ok?"

"Ok."

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow then." he smiled at me before starting to shuffle papers into his bag.

"See you tomorrow." I said, relieved the torture was finally over. "Thank you, sir." I added as I headed out the door as fast as I could.
Chapter 29

"Hey, Mindy." I said as I sat down in econ the next day. Our teacher wasn't here yet, and I was hoping to talk about maybe hanging out this weekend.

"Hi." she replied. She had a strange look on her face, and I knew something was wrong. I braced myself.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I need to talk to you about... that lamp you found."

_Great_. Samantha was just about the last person I wanted to be talking about right now. I'd already decided she was a lousy friend, so what else was left? And now on top of everything else, I had to rewrite my whole history paper because I was dumb enough to believe her. I really wanted to talk about anything else. I decided to tell Mindy I had it all figured out and get to another topic as soon as possible.

I looked around. Everyone was so involved in their own conversations that they wouldn't pay any attention to us.

"I know, I know." I told her. "She's out of control. But don't worry, I'll take care of it."

Mindy narrowed her eyes at me.

"You'll take care of it?" her skepticism was pretty obvious. "How do you plan on doing that?"

"Well... I... I'll just..." I had no idea. Normally I probably would have come up with something clever that at least sounded plausible, but with her, I just couldn't do it. There was absolutely nothing I could make up that Mindy wouldn't be able to see through instantly. So instead, I just sat there like an idiot caught in my lie.

"I do this all the time, remember?"

"Yeah, I know." I admitted. It was true I'd asked for her help, and I should be grateful that she'd finally agreed. But I just didn't want to worry about all that right now. It wasn't just the fact that I was still mad about the history paper. I'd already admitted to Mindy that I didn't know what to do, and now I was having to come up with my own plan to get out of this whole mess. I just didn't want to have to admit that I really was as completely clueless as we both knew I was. Not right now.

"Do you actually know what you're doing?" I could tell by her tone she already knew the answer was no. "What do you really know about this girl, anyway?"

"Well..." I thought about it for a minute before replying. "I know she was a student who went to school here before she drowned. She has a bit of a temper, but she's not all that bad."

"She's been on the loose for over a year." Mindy pointed out. "Most ghosts can't do that. She's obviously very clever – you'd better watch out."

"What all do you know about her?" I asked. For the first time, I was starting to get worried about my ability to maintain even the tiny amount of control I had over this whole mess I was in.

"Not too much. I got here a couple months after she'd already died. What I _do_ know is that strange things started happening after she died."

"Really?" I glanced around one more time. Everyone was still talking loudly to each other. "What kinds of strange things?"

"To be honest, I'm not really sure, they didn't go into a lot of detail. What I do know is that the people who give me my... assignments... were worried. And they don't worry unless something big is happening."

I nodded, but didn't say anything for awhile. When I did speak, I had only one question.

"So what should I do?" I asked.

"My advice is to stop lighting that lamp. Whatever you do, don't summon her again."
Chapter 30

As it turned out, Mindy was not able to come with us the first week we tried to go bowling. I had to admit, I was a little disturbed; if she wasn't coming, it could only mean that someone in this town was either dead or would be very soon. I tried to push those thoughts from my mind, and I wondered how Mindy could do it all day. But I guess when that's your job you learn to deal. Maybe it doesn't bother you so much after you spend enough time with the dead. I thought about asking Mindy about it the next time I saw her, but I really couldn't do it. Even though I had a lot of questions, there was a definite part of me that just didn't want to know.

I could tell Mindy felt bad about not being able to make it. As soon as she walked into the cafeteria, I could tell something was wrong. She sat down in the chair we'd saved for her, slumping slightly. The first thing out of her mouth was an apology.

"I'm not going to be able to go out with you guys on Thursday." she told us glumly.

"That's ok." I said, knowing instantly what the only reason she wouldn't be going could be.

"How come?" Derek asked. I'd been more than happy to just reschedule, but apparently Derek wanted to discuss it first.

"I have an assignment that day." she told us. I didn't like how she gave a slight emphasis to the word "assignment".

"So how does that work? I mean, it's only Tuesday. How much notice do you get?"

"It depends. Sometimes I get a few days, sometimes it's kind of last minute."

"That's ok. We can just go next week." I interrupted. "Derek, you'll be able to go next week, right?"

"Umm... I think so." he said.

"Good." I said, happy to have derailed the conversation. I didn't really want to talk about Mindy's job – it was enough that I _knew_ about it at all. I was just as happy not knowing about the actual details of what she did.

Derek and Mindy continued to talk, but at least it was about more normal things – like homework assignments. The bell rang not too long after, and I headed off to class. I'd been looking forward to bowling on Thursday, and I was a little disappointed. But, I knew we'd get to go eventually, I just had to be patient. When one of your best friends is a reaper, things were bound to come up.
Chapter 31

My hand shook the last time I lit that lamp. Just the thought of seeing Samantha again after all I'd learned made my stomach turn. After Derek told me how she died and Mindy told me that she was still capable of doing enough damage that the head reapers were worried, I just couldn't picture her in the same light. I hoped Samantha wouldn't notice. I knew I'd promised my friends that I wouldn't talk to her again, but I couldn't help it. I just had to know.

The light swirled ominously on the walls around me. Mindy had seen I wasn't convinced by her suggestion that I never light the lamp again. She'd sighed and told me that even though I really _shouldn't_ light it, if I did do it, I should at least make sure I was outside. I knew I should have taken listened to her, but what was the point? I mean, Samantha already knew where I lived.

As the lamp's flame started to dim and change colors, I squinted into the darkness. Samantha sure seemed to be taking her time in showing up. The longer I had to wait, the more nervous I became. By the time she finally materialized, my palms were damp.

"Hello." she said coolly.

"I didn't think you were going to come for a minute there." I couldn't believe how relieved I sounded. It bugged me.

"I wasn't going to." She tossed her hair over her shoulder in an exaggerated way. "You really don't deserve to talk to me. But I decided to forgive you."

My jaw dropped before I could stop it. I didn't deserve to talk to her? Was she serious? How could she even say that? Hadn't I been nice to her since the day I met her? Even when she wasn't exactly being nice to me? I'd even agreed to help her track down anyone who tried to hurt her – even reapers! And now she was standing here – in the middle of my bedroom – telling me that _I_ didn't deserve to talk to her?

"You decided to forgive me?" I asked in disbelief.

"Of course. I'm actually a very nice girl." She seemed completely surprised that I would question her.

"I just can't figure out what I did that was so bad."

"It's just that you've been talking to Mindy about getting rid of me. And Derek, too." She smiled icily. A chill ran down my spine.

" _What?"_ was all I could think to say. How could she possibly know that?

"I saw you." she told me. Well, that answered that.

Samantha's eyes flashed. I swallowed and ran my hand through my hair. She could see the look on my face, and I could tell she liked the reaction she was getting. She grinned in a way that made me long for the comfort of Mindy's smile when I'd told Derek about her being a reaper.

"Of course I saw you. Oh... did I not mention that? I've been watching you since the moment you first summoned me."

"But, you told me you could only see me when the lamp was lit. That the world was too dark otherwise." I said weakly.

"Yeah, I did say that. But, well, you know..." she shrugged.

"You lied to me?" I felt like an idiot. _Again_. It had never occurred to me that she would lie like that. Especially on the first day I'd even met her.

"Yeah... I guess I should be sorry about that. But I knew you'd try to trick me. So, I wanted to be prepared."

"Why would I want to trick you?" I asked, too confused to be worried for the moment.

"What do you mean, 'why?'" she sneered. "You _did_ , didn't you? But that's ok. Everyone always does. So I made a plan. And it's a good thing I did! You went behind my back, and I wouldn't even have known!"

"I only went to talk to her because of you!" I told her. I did my best to reason with her, but she really wasn't interested. I tried to explain that if she hadn't been so intent on killing reapers that I would never have talked to Mindy in the first place. But it didn't matter what I said. Her eyes burned with an intensity I'd never seen before. My skin crawled. Samantha smiled like a lunatic and seemed to become more prominent in the room. I don't know if it was just my fear or if she actually became more solid. What I do know is that I had to stifle the urge to scream. As her fury grew, the walls got darker, and she seemed to glow an almost blinding white.

The room seemed to fade away. All I could do was watch as her face contorted into an ugly scowl. I heard a rattling sound from somewhere behind Samantha. She stepped closer to me, and just as quickly I took a step back. The rattling got louder as Samantha took another step forward. As I was slowly backed against the edge of the room, I could finally see what was making that sound. Sitting on the middle of the desk was the kerosene lamp. And it was wobbling back and forth, going faster and faster, until each rock seemed like it would be the one to send the lamp tumbling to the floor.

Seeing the lamp dance across the table might have been a pretty terrible sight, but it was still a lot better than looking at the angry ghost stalking towards me. I watched as it made its way closer and closer towards the edge of the desk. Finally, it tipped over.

The good news is that it didn't tip over onto the floor. The bad news was that it had spilled backwards and landed on the desk. The flame rushed across the now sideways glass chimney and started to spread across the desk, turning from deep blue to bright orange the second it left the lamp. Seeing the river of orange running across my desk was all I needed to snap me back into action. Samantha was still bearing down on me, but I rushed through her and over to the burning desk.

I'd never gone through Samantha before. Even when we were somewhat close, I'd never tested it out. And I was glad I hadn't. If I had, I might not have been able to do it again. It was a feeling of unbelievable coldness. It felt like ice pressing up against my bones, making my muscles ache. For a second I couldn't breathe, and my brain went numb. Fortunately, the feeling only lasted for the time it took to pass completely through her.

Now that I was safely past her, I had a clear path to my fiery desk. I grabbed a dirty shirt off the floor, took a flying leap, and slammed it down as hard as I could onto the burning wood. I righted the lamp with one hand and slapped the desk's flames with the shirt in my other until the fire was finally out. I had just let out my sigh of relief when I heard a shrill, unearthly shriek behind me.

I whipped around as fast as I could and immediately wished I hadn't. Samantha was barreling down on me, her hair wild and her eyes screaming. This time, she wasn't stalking across the room. Instead, she rushed up so fast, I almost didn't see her do it. She came right up to my face, only inches away, and let out a scream that made my knees buckle. I sank into the chair, glancing hopelessly around for some kind of weapon. My gaze fell on the lamp, still burning dully with the tiniest of flames. I yanked the glass housing off as fast as I could and blew all my air out. I kept blowing even after the shriek had faded away and the room had turned back to its normal colors.

......

When I woke up, I almost felt like the night before had been a dream. How could any of that really have happened? Samantha had a temper, sure, but I'd never seen anything more than a pout or the occasional stamping of a foot. I had just about convinced myself that I'd made the whole thing up, when I glanced across the room and saw my desk.

I stared at the wood with its ugly black scorch marks running from side to side and the horror of the situation really started to sink in.

I walked purposefully to the other side of my room where my dresser sat. I turned my back to the desk, forcing myself not to stare at the marks as I got my clothes out of the drawers. I pulled my shirt on over my head and a thought occurred to me. I stood frozen as I remembered what Samantha had said last night: that she'd been watching me even when the lamp wasn't on. She could be watching me _right now_. I shuddered, changed my clothes as fast as I could, and hurried downstairs.
Chapter 32

On the day we finally went bowling, I arrived a few minutes early to make sure we'd get a place in line. I put my name on the list and sat down at a small table to wait. It didn't take long for me to spot Mindy and her goofy wave coming towards me. A few minutes later, Derek walked in.

"I put us on the list already." I told them. "Hopefully it won't take too long."

"Ok." Derek said.

"I've never played before." Mindy reminded me. "What are the rules?"

"It's really simple." Derek told her. "Basically they'll just call our names and give us shoes. Then you'll pick out a ball and when it's your turn, just throw the ball underhanded and try to knock the pins down. You get two tries. That's about it." Mindy looked at me, and I nodded.

"That's about it." I confirmed. "Just make sure your toes don't go over the line. You'll be fine."

"That doesn't sound too hard." she said brightly. I had my doubts, but I didn't want to discourage her. Not that bowling was the most difficult thing in the world, but if she didn't even know the rules, how good was she really going to be? Hopefully she'd pick it up in a few games.

We didn't have to wait long for them to call our names and assign us a lane. When I'd first walked in the door, it wasn't as crowded as I thought it'd be. But by the time I'd typed our names into the computer's scorecard, the place had really started to fill up. I saw a lot of kids from our school there, and I was glad I'd decided to show up early.

I started off, followed by Derek, and then Mindy; we'd decided Mindy should go last so she could watch how it was done. I got a spare my first run and Derek managed to get eight pins. Mindy even managed to get five pins down. It wasn't great, but for her first time, I was pretty impressed. By the end of the first game, she was actually beating Derek and was only a few points behind me.

"You're really good." I told her.

"No kidding." Derek said. "I thought you'd never done this before."

"I haven't. But it doesn't really seem that hard." she told us. "Why?"

Derek made a strangled sound, and I just laughed.

"Yeah, most people aren't that good their first time." I told her.

"How _are_ you so good?" Derek asked jealously.

"You just throw it in a straight line. That's it." she said in a way that clearly let us know she didn't see what the big deal was. Derek just shook his head.

"It's probably some reaper thing." he mumbled.

"Maybe." I said, and Mindy looked thoughtful. I wasn't sure how she was so good at this after only one game, but being a reaper might have explained it. Maybe she had some power as a reaper that she was able to use, but who knew for sure?

"Maybe she's just naturally good at bowling." I shrugged. I wasn't sure I believed it, but Derek seemed to be implying that she was practically cheating. Even if it was some special power she was using, I said go for it. Why waste the skills you have? And having her able to keep up with us made it a whole lot more fun. By the end of the night, Derek and me were struggling to catch up with _her_. As we walked out the door, someone handed Mindy a flyer for the bowling league, practically begging her to join.

"Really? You want me to bowl with you in your league?" she asked. She was so happy for the invite, I couldn't even be jealous. We walked towards the parking lot, Mindy practically dancing. I just laughed.

"See? Now when someone asks you what you like to do for fun, you've got an answer." I told her.
Chapter 33

I thought really hard about what Mindy said. Samantha hadn't seemed to be that cunning to me, but maybe I just wasn't giving her enough credit. I did have to admit, it was hard to argue with the fact that she'd been on the loose for a year or so. And Mindy had brought up another very good point: I didn't really know Samantha all that well. What if there was something important that I was missing?

Since she tried to light my desk on fire, I'd started to think that Mindy was more right than I'd wanted to admit. Obviously I'd missed some important clues about her. I decided to do all I could to find out what else there was about her that I didn't know.

I tried to ask Derek about Samantha, but he wasn't much more help than Mindy had been. He'd stalled and hesitated long past the point where he could pretend he just didn't remember much about her.

"Derek, come on." I said. "I really need to know about this girl."

"I can't really tell you." he swallowed.

"You didn't know her?" Wasn't she a cheerleader? He might not have known her, but he almost definitely knew _about_ her.

"I just kind of saw her around." he tried to sound causal, but he wouldn't meet my eye. He fidgeted for a minute before asking, "You really do know her? Like, you've seen her and everything?"

"Yeah." I tried not to roll my eyes – we'd covered this before, several times.

"You should see if you can find any newspaper articles." he told me unhelpfully.

"Why can't you just tell me?"

"I really can't." his eyes were wide and his hands were shaking just a little bit. "Just check the papers, ok?"

I could see he was really upset about something, but I wasn't quite sure what. I knew better than anyone how scary Samantha could be. But Derek didn't know that she could be watching us at any minute. So why was he so afraid to talk to me about her? I tried to get something more useful out of him, but he just shook his head and wouldn't say any more.

......

I walked into the university's library and looked around. The building was six stories tall, and each story above the ground floor was open in the center so I could see the seventy or so feet of bookcases in all directions. Halfway across the floor, two fogged glass staircases, one on the left and one on the right, ran up to meet the second floor. On the other side of the staircases were two huge glass doors leading out into a courtyard.

I'd really hoped that Derek would just tell me what was going on. It was obvious that he was scared of whatever it was she'd done when she was alive, and he didn't want to upset her by talking about it. Mindy wasn't scared, but she didn't really have any information. She'd only moved to the area after Samantha had died; she had never even seen Samantha, much less gotten to know what kinds of things she'd done. I'd asked her, just to be on the safe side, and she was honest with me. She told me it wasn't her job to know what the ghosts had done – it was just her job to make sure they went where they were supposed to go. She didn't have any interest in Samantha's life, and the only reason she even had what little information she did was because she'd been warned that Samantha had been dangerous. So while my friends didn't have any useful information on what had happened, they did at least have one useful suggestion: read the papers.

The records and archives rooms were down a short set of stairs in an area that was surprisingly well-lit for a basement. I wandered around for a bit, trying to figure out where the newspapers were. I found a room that contained about a dozen big, brown machines that actually used microfilm. _Wow! I didn't know people still used those._ I mean, I'd read about them before, but I'd never actually seen one. I was kind of hoping I'd get to use one of these ancient machines, but apparently they only converted articles to microfilm if they were more than three years old. Anything newer would be along the back wall. I made my way to the far end of the room to the bookcases that housed the last three years of what looked like every newspaper in existence. The shelves went from the floor to the ceiling and covered the entire length of the eighty foot wall. Each shelf was stuffed full of papers, and a few boxes were placed strategically on the floor. _At least this mess was sorted by date,_ I told myself.

It took all afternoon, and I was pretty sure that the sun had long ago set by the time I was done, but at least I'd finally figured out what had happened last year that was so bad Derek still wouldn't talk about it. Piecing together what Derek and Mindy had told me with what I'd found in the local paper, I was sure that I now knew the whole story. And I could see exactly why Derek hadn't wanted to be the one to break it to me.

Apparently, Samantha Corben had moved to town at the beginning of junior year. Derek had said she'd been pretty popular; she was on the cheerleading squad and the soccer team. She'd had a lot of friends, including Karen. It wasn't until Karen and Milner started getting serious that things got really weird.

Karen and Milner had been friends since junior high, and had been going out off and on since the end of freshman year. Everybody in school had known that they liked each other; Derek said it was such common knowledge that nobody even brought it up anymore. Then, halfway through junior year, they finally got serious. It seemed Samantha hadn't really been aware of their relationship up to that point because almost immediately she had started yelling at Karen, demanding she stop dating Milner. She started spreading rumors, the more hurtful the better. When that didn't work, she escalated more and more. Eventually, she resorted to starting fires.

The first fire, according to the _Chronicle_ , was set at the local video store where Karen worked. The police had found that someone had set a piece of cardboard on fire and threw it in the dumpster behind the building. Fortunately, it had been just before closing and the store had been almost empty; everyone managed to escape uninjured.

Two weeks later, a gas leak nearly blew apart the school's gym fifteen minutes before cheerleading practice was supposed to start. Less than a week later, the video store was attacked again. Only this time, Karen's manager suffered 2nd degree burns.

Finally, six weeks to the day since Samantha had found out that Karen and Milner were dating, Karen's house caught fire. The _Chronicle_ seemed happy to report that Karen had been home at the time with her mother. Her mom had been in the living room and had been able to escape within a few minutes with only minor burns to her hands and forearms.

Karen, on the other hand, hadn't been nearly as lucky. She'd been in the back bedroom with the door closed. Firefighters suspected that the fact that her door was closed is what had kept the fire away long enough to save her life. The only problem? Having the door shut had prevented her from hearing what was going on in the rest of the house. She hadn't heard the crackle of the wood as flames licked down the hall. She never heard the sound of support beams cracking and splitting, falling to the floor and blocking the only exit she had. And she didn't hear the screams of her mother, the yelling, telling Karen to run as she herself fled through the flames, escaping through the front door.

Karen had been sitting peacefully in her room, her music on. She didn't notice anything unusual until thick curls of smoke started forcing their way around the edges of her door and the heat started to become unbearable. By the time Karen even knew something was wrong, it was almost too late. Karen later told reporters that it was the almost surreal sound of her dog howling outside of her window that finally let Karen know that something was not right.

As the smoke poured into the room, making it almost impossible to see, Karen managed to make her way to the window. She found the edges with her fingers and pulled up on the window pane as hard as she could. It was locked. When everything was over, investigators would find a single nail jammed through the window frame and into the side of the house. And no matter how hard she tried, that single nail prevented her from opening the window and escaping. The firemen found her curled up on a box in her closet, a shirt over her face to shield from the heat and smoke. She was barely breathing and had to spend two weeks in the hospital, but she was alive.

Police officially declared that there was an arsonist in the area and a full investigation was launched. They combed through the ashes of Karen's half-standing house but found very little. The only thing they could say for sure was that the fire had started in the middle of the hallway. But what had caused it was still a mystery. All they could say for certain was that whoever had done it had more than likely been in that hallway just a short time before the fire started.
Chapter 34

Everyone at school had suspected Samantha was responsible for the fires, but since there hadn't been any proof, nothing had been done. Even Karen was convinced Samantha was responsible, but had refused to stop being friends with her – mostly out of fear. Derek had even told me about rumors that Karen hadn't wanted to leave the hospital. It had been the first place she'd felt safe in weeks, and when she was finally discharged, she'd had a panic attack and was readmitted for observation.

Samantha didn't seem particularly eager for Karen to leave the hospital, either. With Karen temporarily out of the way, Samantha took her devotion to Milner to the next level. Convinced that the only hurdle to her relationship with Milner was now gone, Samantha began following him relentlessly. Everywhere he went, she'd be there – smiling, gazing up at him, even trying to hold his hand. It was during this time, at the height of her obsession, that Samantha decided it would be a good idea to break into his room.

The last set of articles I found had to do with Samantha's final night. Without Karen in her way, Samantha seemed to have been convinced that Milner felt the same way about her that she felt towards him. He wasn't with Karen, so it must mean that he wanted to be with her. Karen's being in the hospital didn't seem to register as being even the least bit important. Since he obviously wanted to be with her as much as she wanted to be with him, she decided to make them both happy and visit him at his home. So, late one night, she climbed over his back fence and into his yard.

Milner's room was in the back of the house, on the second floor, left side. It had been suspected that she'd been there numerous times and so knew exactly which room was his, even without seeing him through the window. Based on the time she was last seen, police estimated she got to his house just after dusk. She walked through the manicured grass, around the pool, and over to the large oak tree that stood about five feet from the house.

The tree was old – maybe even older than the house itself. It was twisted and gnarled and perfect for climbing. Samantha easily shimmied up the thick trunk and perched herself on a sturdy-looking branch that lead right to his window. She crawled along the branch, slowly making her way towards his room. The light was on, and she moved towards it like a moth to a flame.

Inch by inch, she made her way towards the window. She even managed to touch the window pane; her prints were later found on the glass. But all of her effort had been in vain; the window was tightly locked. All she could do was look through the glass, trying to see what was inside. Smudges on the window seemed to indicate she tried to knock on the glass several times, hoping Milner would come and let her in.

Unfortunately for her, Milner wasn't at home. He'd gone out to spend the night at a friend's and had simply left the light on when he left. Getting desperate, she tried again to force the window open so she could wait for him inside. She pushed on the center of the glass with her palms. She tried pulling on the top with her fingertips. But nothing worked; the window refused to budge. The longer she sat there, the angrier and more frustrated she got. Using both hands, she tried to put enough pressure on the window to get it to come loose. But she pressed too hard. Her fingers slipped. She lost her balance and fell fourteen feet to the ground below.

Hitting the ground so hard had caused her to break her arm and sprain her wrist. She smacked her head on the side of the house on the way down, giving herself a concussion. She stood up, trying to shake it off. She staggered away, maybe deciding to go home, maybe ready to try again. But in her disorientation, she forgot about the pool. Her foot skimmed the side, and she lost her balance. She tried to stop herself from falling and leaned back. All she managed to do was to hit her already bruised head on the edge of the pool as she fell. She sank, unconscious, into the deep end of the pool. She wasn't found until the next morning, when Milner's mom took her morning coffee and a book out to the back patio.
Chapter 35

I sat there on my stool for several minutes after I'd finished reading the last article. I'd known Samantha had anger problems – I mean, it was obvious – but I never thought she'd be _that_ crazy! I shuddered, knowing that that lunatic had not only been in my room several times, but I'd actually invited her every single time. And just like Karen, she'd tried to set my room on fire. I couldn't believe I'd actually thought of myself as being friends with this girl!

Suddenly, I remembered what Samantha had said the last time I saw her, and I froze. I darted my eyes back and forth, then quickly whipped around to check behind me. No one was there. My relief was short-lived, though; as soon as it appeared, it quickly faded into feelings that I was being stupid. Did I really expect to see Samantha hovering over my shoulder? But then again, just because I couldn't see her didn't mean she wasn't there, did it? She even told me that herself! At least I knew she couldn't hurt me with the lamp not being lit – if she could, I was sure she would have finished me off the last time we met.

I started feeling incredibly cold and alone and realized it was more than time to go. I grabbed my bag, threw the small stack of papers I'd collected into the re-shelf bin, and headed for the door.

Even though I was only about twenty minutes away from home, the walk seemed so much longer. Every time a twig snapped or a leaf clattered across the street I jumped. I couldn't help but think about all the things I'd read. Not only had Samantha tried to kill the person she thought of as preventing her from going out with the guy she wanted, she'd been willing to possibly kill innocent people she'd never met and, worse, her _friends_. I couldn't say for sure if I was still someone she counted as a friend, but even if I was, she couldn't be thinking that highly of me. I had to acknowledge that there was a very real chance that she would kill me if she got the chance. I'd been outside for about six minutes before I decided maybe I'd better jog the rest of the way home. I picked up the pace and didn't stop until I was at my front door.

I walked inside and was immediately greeted by the smell of homemade tomato sauce and meatballs cooking. I knew even before I closed the door that mom was making her spaghetti. The smells filling the air and the warmth of the house started working instantly to make me feel at ease. By the time I got to the stairs, I was starting to feel just a little bit stupid about worrying so much. But I still couldn't shake that tiny bit of fear in the back of my mind, knowing that someone I had considered a friend was completely unhinged. As I stomped up the stairs, I heard my mom call out from the kitchen.

"James, is that you?"

"Yeah." It was good to hear a friendly voice.

"Dinner'll be ready in about five minutes. Go wash your hands."

"Ok." I finished climbing the stairs and headed to my room to drop my backpack off. I threw it in the middle of the floor and turned to head back downstairs for dinner. As I left, my eye caught the sight of that lamp. It seemed to glow just a little bit as it caught the moonlight and held it. Suddenly, all the relief I felt from coming home to a nice, brightly lit house disappeared. I hurried back downstairs.

I don't think I'd ever enjoyed eating with my parents so much. The food was great, sure. Who doesn't love homemade spaghetti? But, surprisingly, it was actually the conversation that I enjoyed the most. Walking home in the dark had been incredibly unnerving, and to be honest, I'd been more than a little creeped out. But in the warm kitchen, sitting at the table with my parents, I was able to push all of that out of my mind. All the fear I'd felt seemed to melt away. So what if my best friend had turned out to be a complete psycho? At least I wasn't the only person to make that mistake, right? And even though she tried, she hadn't actually killed anybody that I could find out about. What were the odds that I'd be the first, especially now that she was dead? I just wouldn't light the lamp, and I'd be ok. I'd be safe until I could get Derek and Mindy to help me take care of that problem permanently. But that was for another day. For now, my only concern was whether or not there was any more garlic bread.
Chapter 36

"So what does a reaper actually do?" I asked Mindy.

I'd asked her to sit with me and Derek at lunch, and we were now at the end of one of the long tables towards the back. I figured _why not?_ I already ate lunch with one person most of the school thought of as weird; why not make it two? By this time I'd completely given up on getting in to Karen's group, so what was the harm in eating lunch with both of my friends?

"Well, there's a couple different types." she told me. "Some ferry souls to wherever it is they go after they die. Some try to catch rogue souls that didn't go where they were supposed to. I'm in the second group."

"So catching spirits like Samantha is your job?" Derek asked, impressed. "Like some sort of detective?"

"Kind of." she nodded.

"Maybe this isn't such an impossible mission after all."

"Usually they're caught after only a few weeks, a few months at the most. It's pretty unusual for any to go uncaught for as long as she has."

"How did she go unnoticed for so long?"

"She never appeared to anyone consistently." Mindy shrugged. "And from what James has said, it looks like she was happy just spying on the people she used to know."

"Seems kinda weird." Derek said.

"Yeah, well, she's a weird girl." I cut in. It was nice to hear about how Samantha had eluded capture and all, but there was something else I wanted to talk about. "You said some reapers take souls to where they're supposed to go, right?"

"Yeah, why?" Mindy asked.

"So where is that?" This was my chance to find out the answer to one of the most important questions in the world. I tried to contain my excitement, but it was hard.

"Where is what?" she asked. I blinked. _Did she not know the importance of this?_

"Where do people go? What's it like?" I was getting impatient.

"I don't know."

"You don't _know?_ " I was beside myself. "How could you not know? You're a reaper, after all!" I was starting to raise my voice, I knew. But I couldn't help it. It was a mixture of excitement and exasperation.

"I told you, there's two groups. And neither group really shares the details of what they do." she shrugged. "They're really secretive – it's kind of a security thing. Besides, even if I did know, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be allowed to tell you anyway."

I'd known it was a long shot, but I still couldn't help but be disappointed. The answer seemed to be so close, but I guess I knew all along that I wasn't going to find out.

Derek seemed to be a little disappointed too, but he got over it a lot quicker than I did. Instead of dwelling on it like I was, he turned back to the conversation he'd already been having.

"So how do you catch a ghost?" Derek asked.

"It depends. Most of them just need some sort of guidance. Some of the harder ones need a little more... persuasion."

"And Samantha's in the second group?" Derek asked glumly.

"Yep." Mindy nodded.

"Of course she is – it would be too easy otherwise. So how do we get rid of her?"

"Hold on a minute." I cut in before Mindy had a chance to respond. "We probably shouldn't do this at school, you know?"

"Good point." Derek said. Mindy agreed. "Why don't we meet after school tomorrow?" he asked. "That way we can ask our parents, and you..." he glanced briefly at Mindy "you can just arrange your schedule, I guess. Sound good?"

"Yeah. I should be able to come tomorrow." Mindy told us.

"Same here." I said distractedly, knowing my parents wouldn't be home either way.

I'd tried to make it seem like I hadn't wanted to talk about Samantha in front of all these students, but they'd only been a secondary concern. If any of them had overheard us, I was pretty sure we'd be able to either tell them it was some game or even deny it completely. None of them would actually take us seriously; why would they? The real reason I didn't want to talk about it now was because of Samantha herself. If she were spying on us, she would know exactly what our plan was. Somehow, I was going to have to figure out a way for us to make a plan while being absolutely sure she didn't know what we up to.

......

The next day after school, I headed to the field behind the gym and waited for Mindy and Derek. Derek showed up only a minute or two after I did, but Mindy took a few minutes longer.

"Sorry I'm late." she told us. She had her backpack slung over one shoulder and a large black bag in her hand.

"What's in the bag?" I asked.

"I brought a few things I thought we might need." She reached into the bag and brought out a bunch of twigs with leaves on them, a green bottle trimmed in gold, a small clear bowl, and a box of matches.

"What's all _that_ for?" I asked, suddenly visualizing a séance or something.

"It's just in case." Mindy said in a way that didn't leave much room for questions. I just shrugged and watched as she lit the branches on fire and blew on them until all they did was smolder. She set them in the bowl, fanning the smoke for a minute with her hand. I looked at Derek, but he looked about as confused as I was.

"Come here." Mindy told us. Once we were all within about three feet of the leaves, Mindy took her green bottle and spread a ring of salt in a large circle around us. "There. Now, where were we?"

"What's all _this_ for?" Derek asked, coughing slightly.

"Protection." she replied.

I swallowed. I'd really hoped we wouldn't actually need protection, but who was I kidding? Derek sat down on the grass and Mindy used her backpack as a chair. I sat down next to them, still lost in thought. I tried not to, but my mind kept reviewing everything I knew about Samantha. I'd known she was dangerous to me, but I'd kind of assumed she would be no match for Mindy. But what if I was wrong?

I closed my eyes for just a second, trying to calm my thoughts. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, I was being lightly shaken.

"Huh? What?" I asked, trying to focus.

"What's wrong with you?" Derek peered down through his glasses at me.

The knowledge that for once I was completely safe from anything Samantha might do was a huge relief for me. Knowing that someone who probably hates you could be spying on you and planning your demise at any time was obviously stressful. But I hadn't realized just how stressed I was until I knew I had a few minutes where I didn't have to worry about her. I was so relieved, in fact, that I'd just passed right out.

"Sorry." I told Derek, straightening. "I'm fine."

"This is important, James. We're talking about _your_ ghost here." Derek was clearly annoyed, and I didn't really blame him.

"I know. I really do. I just haven't been getting much sleep lately."

"Why not?" Mindy asked. "If we're going to get rid of this ghost, you're going to need to be awake."

"It's just this whole thing with Samantha." I told her. "Just knowing she could be spying on me at any given time makes it really hard to relax enough to go to sleep."

"I thought she couldn't see you unless that oil lamp you summoned her with was burning?" Derek asked.

"No," I told him. "I can only see _her_ when it's lit. But she can see us any time she wants."

Derek paused a minute, and I thought he was going to point out that this wasn't what I'd said before. Instead, he just said, "So? Just because she _can_ watch you doesn't mean she actually is, you know."

"She told me she has been." I said, somewhat quietly.

"When did she tell you this?" Mindy cut in. I paused for a second, not liking the look in her eye. I'd hoped I wouldn't have to answer, but I could tell that wasn't going to be an option. Mindy just waited patiently until I answered; she was really good at ignoring those awkward silences.

"About four days ago." I mumbled.

"What happened four days ago?" I could already see the clouds forming behind her eyes; she already knew what I was going to say.

I hadn't told either of them I'd talked to Samantha again; I'd been planning on keeping that little piece of information to myself. But, somehow I'd manage to walk straight into an admission.

As quickly as I could, I ran through the details, skipping over the unimportant things like how scared I was and how I thought I was going to die. I hadn't wanted to tell Mindy and Derek about what I'd done; I knew they'd be upset. And I was completely right. Derek shook his head slowly, his eyes wide. Mindy was even less impressed.

"So you risked your life to talk to Samantha Corben when you were specifically told not to?" she asked, her voice rising. "What were you thinking? She could have killed you!"

"Yeah, I know." I said glumly. When she said it like _that_ , I sounded like a moron. "I just needed to talk to her, you know? She was one of the first people I met when I moved here, and I just wanted to give her a chance. To make sure I was right about her."

I felt pretty mushy saying it, but apparently Mindy didn't think so. Her eyes softened just a little bit and she even managed a small smile. I couldn't quite tell if it was pity in her eyes, but I decided to pretend it was sympathy.

"At least you're ok." she said grudgingly.

"She actually told you she'd been watching you for the last couple months?" Derek asked. When I nodded he added, "Creepy."

"You have no idea." I told him.

There was silence for a few minutes, but Derek quickly filled it with the sound of his coughing.

"What _is_ this stuff?" he asked, swatting at the smoke that was still streaming out of the bowl in the center of our circle.

"Sage." Mindy told him somewhat defensively.

"Oh, great. Sage. Why do we have it?"

"To keep Samantha from spying on us while we make our plans."

"Wait, what?" I broke in. "You mean to tell me you knew all along that Samantha could be watching us at any moment?"

"Of course." Mindy said sounding exasperated. "Why don't you listen to me when I tell you I've done this before?"

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I didn't see the point in worrying you. Since you've found out, do you feel any better? Or are you just a lot more paranoid?"

I could see her point. Knowing I could be being watched hadn't really changed anything I did. It just made me feel weird every time I did anything. She was right – I really did wish I didn't know. Mindy took my silence for the acknowledgement it was.

"So, let's make a plan." she said.

"All I care about is doing it as soon as possible." I told her.

"How's Thursday?" Today was Tuesday. I could wait two days.

"Thursday's good."

"I'll have to ask my mom, but I think it'll be ok." Derek told us.

"Great. So now all we have to do is figure out a location. The rest is pretty simple." Mindy said.

It didn't seem like it would be simple to me, but what did I know? Mindy was fond of pointing out to me how much she knew about all this stuff, so I decided for once to take her word for it. We talked for another two hours, going over every single detail. I knew Mindy was getting annoyed at my insistence that we repeat every part of the plan at least twice, but I didn't care. After my experiences with Samantha, there was no way I was doing this unprepared. Finally, when I couldn't come up with any more questions, we decided to call it a day. Derek and I headed one way, and Mindy started off the other. The two of them seemed so confident in the plan. I tried my best not to worry, but I still had that nagging feeling in the back of my mind. I just hoped it would work.
Chapter 37

Thursday afternoon, I was surprisingly calm. I'd thought I'd be more nervous about this whole thing, but I guess it hadn't really hit me yet how hard it was going to be. Right now, all I was thinking about was how soon I wouldn't have to worry about someone peeking over my shoulder at any given moment.

Derek got to the cafeteria first as usual, and when I spotted him I saw he'd already grabbed a couple seats at one of the tables. I sat down and started unpacking the lunch I'd brought from home.

"So, today's the day." he said. "Are you nervous?"

"Not yet. I probably will be tonight, though."

"Don't worry, it'll be fine." Easy for him to say. _He_ hadn't actually seen Samantha in over a year. And even then, she'd at least been alive. "Oh. Before I forget – I can't walk home today. Something came up."

"Really? What happened?" I asked, curious.

"I just have to talk to someone. It's no big deal, really. I just wanted to let you know."

He was acting a little strange, so I figured it must be a teacher. Or maybe a tutor. Either way, he was probably too embarrassed to tell me. I would have liked the company, but this would give me a chance to go over the plan one more time in my mind before getting ready. I knew I was starting to obsess over it, but I couldn't help it. There were just so many things that could go wrong.

The walk home was long enough I was able to go over every detail twice. We'd covered everything that was going to happen from the moment we met up to the moment Samantha was gone. We'd even managed to come up with a few back up plans in case something unexpected happened.

As I walked in the front door, I forced myself to put tonight aside. I only had a few hours, and I really needed to relax. I turned on the TV and somehow managed not to think about Samantha for almost four hours. When it was finally time to go, I walked as calmly as I could upstairs. I took my books out of my backpack and threw them on the bed. Then, I carefully took the lamp and set it inside. I tossed a pack of matches in on top, zipped it up, and headed for the door.

......

We walked into the parking lot of the abandoned grocery store near the north end of town. It was kind of a pain to go all the way out there, and I'd wanted to just use the field out behind the school; it was a big enough area, right? But Mindy was quick to reject it; the field was _covered_ in dead weeds. And we all knew how much Samantha loved fire. No, it was better to come out here, where we'd be surrounded by nice, safe asphalt.

Despite everything, I still wasn't really sure what to expect. Mindy had brought that same large black bag with her that I'd seen when we planned this whole thing. I, of course, brought the only thing I was allowed to: the oil lamp. I'd offered to bring more, but since Samantha was most likely to be following me, Derek and Mindy thought it would be best if she didn't see any of the tools we were planning on using.

I set the lamp down in the middle of the parking lot and stepped back. I didn't want to be anywhere near that thing if I could help it, especially knowing what that I would soon be confronted by a very angry Samantha. Mindy set her bag on the ground and pulled out three ornate and matching bottles: the green one I'd already seen, a blue one, and a gold one.

She grabbed the green bottle and spaced herself about ten feet away from the lamp. She turned the bottle sideways and started to walk, pouring the contents on the ground as she went. When she was done, a thick line of salt formed a perfect circle around the lamp.

"There." She said. "The salt will keep her here – she shouldn't be able to go past that line."

" _Shouldn't?_ " I asked. I'd hoped our security measures would be a little stronger than that.

"Won't." Mindy corrected, rolling her eyes. "Don't worry so much. I really do know what I'm doing."

"Ok." Derek said. I just nodded.

"So what's in the other two bottles?" I asked.

"The gold one has oil in it, and the blue one has the water." She looked surprised that I'd asked, and suddenly I wondered if that had been something we covered when I was asleep. When I didn't say anything else, she looked carefully at Derek, then back to me. "Are you ready?"

"I guess." Derek said.

"Not really." I mumbled. I'd been right in thinking it wouldn't hit me until the time finally came, and now that it was here, I was even more nervous than I thought I'd be. I kept having flashbacks to the last time I saw Samantha. And this time would be even worse. Last time, she'd been furious with me for even _talking_ to Mindy. Now, she'd have the added benefit of having heard me telling Mindy all about her. She'd know I'd made plans with Derek and Mindy to get rid of her, and she would know that that's exactly why we were all out here tonight. If I thought she was mad before, I could only imagine what fury awaited me this time.

"Did you bring matches?" Mindy asked. I nodded and fumbled nervously around in my now empty backpack. I got them out, and tossed the bag aside. Mindy nodded in approval. "Ok. Go light it." she said.

"What? You don't want to do it?" I asked, gulping.

"No, I need to stay here and make sure everything's ready. You can do it. You'll be fine – it's just like all those other times you did it, right?"

"Yeah, right." Except those times it hadn't occurred to me that she might try to hurt me.

"I can do it." Derek said, his voice wobbling just a little. It was pretty tempting, but in the end I couldn't let him do it. It was just too easy to picture him lighting himself on fire or tripping and breaking something as he ran away.

"No, it's ok. I'll do it." I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

I knelt down and took the glass off the lamp. It took a minute for the wick to light, especially the way my hand was shaking. But as soon as it did I put the glass back on, jumped up, and all but ran back towards my friends. The light shown orange for a minute before the warm glow started changing to that familiar deep blue. I heard Derek suck in his breath at the sight of it.

Since there were no walls for the small amount of light to bounce off of, the shadows were even darker than they usually were. Instead of swirling around my room, long strange shapes spiraled out from the lamp, reaching out in all directions like black and blue tentacles. I couldn't tell if it was the darkness preventing me from seeing or if it was really true, but from where I stood, those blue tendrils really didn't seem to reach past the salt border. Seeing that made me feel a tiny bit better, and I could only hope it was real and not just some trick of the light.

When Samantha stepped slowly out of the shadows, she did it deliberately, with smoldering eyes. She focused directly on me, completely ignoring my friends. She took a slow, purposeful step forward. I took one back.

"You." she practically snarled at me. "You really did it, didn't you?"

I was about to ask her what I did, but it turned out I didn't have to.

"I can't believe you actually brought _her_ here. To get rid of _me_."

"Yeah, well, turns out she's a better friend." I tried to sound braver than I felt.

"No, she's not!" Samantha snapped as if I was just making up lies for the sole purpose of seeing how mad I could get her. "I'm a _great_ friend. I'm the best friend you've ever had."

"Really? The best friend I've ever had?" I repeated skeptically. "You don't think you're exaggerating just a little there?"

Samantha stood up even straighter, threw her balled up fists down by her sides, and began to really let me have it.

"Of course not!" she screeched. "I was your first friend in this town. I talked to you when no one else did. I helped you with your homework and I even listened to you complain about all your stupid little problems that no one _cares_ about anyway."

I blinked and took a step back as if she'd hit me. She continued to yell at me, but I'd stopped paying attention. I was so floored I couldn't be bothered to listen to her anymore. I mean, I know I should have figured it out ages ago – probably the first time I ever talked to her, honestly. But I hadn't. Instead, it had taken me almost seven months to realize it. Standing here, listening to her mocking me, it finally dawned on me what it was that had made me start to become friends with Mindy over Samantha. Samantha was completely unable to care about anyone or anything other than herself.

"My problems that no one cares about?" Now it was my turn to get angry. "My _stupid_ problems?"

"Oh, come on. Who really wants to hear you whine about how you had to move to a new place where you don't know anyone?" She gave me a look that clearly let me know she thought this was such an obvious fact that everyone knew it and that I should just admit she was right. Her words really stung. I felt like I'd been punched, and the blood started to rush to my head. I felt dizzy, nauseous.

"You really are something." I said. I was still reeling, but I shook my head, trying to focus. "I only told you that because I thought you of all people would understand. But you don't understand or care about anything unless it's about you."

"I care about Eric." she shot back. Like that somehow disproved my point.

"So the only thing you care about is a guy who doesn't even like you?"

"He does like me!" she shouted. The sound seemed to echo faintly throughout the parking lot.

"No he doesn't." I said calmly, knowing I finally had the upper hand. "I asked him about you, remember? And if you really were watching me like you say, then you know he pretended he didn't even know who you were."

I'd noticed Mindy had started inching away from me when I'd first started talking back to Samantha. Now Derek was moving away from my other side. I'd been ok when they were both standing next to me, but now that they were starting to split, my confidence was beginning to fade. And the fact that Samantha was beyond furious was only making me feel more uncomfortable.

She glared down at me, eyes burning, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she stalked towards me, a snarl on her lips, her hair blowing crazily around her. She was only a few feet away from me when I saw her rage finally boil over, contorting her face into an incredibly disturbing grin.

"You have no idea what I care about or who cares about me. You don't know _anything_ about me." she said it in that quiet tone that people use when they're thinking about strangling you.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Samantha lunged at me, arms outstretched. I was almost completely positive she couldn't physically hurt me, but there was a part of my brain that was not about to take that chance. I leapt as far back as I could, throwing my hands up over my face as I did. Through my hands I saw her rush at me, flying with inhuman speed. She was only inches form my face when I heard a loud crack! A flash of white hot light burned my eyes. I closed my eyes tight, waiting for whatever power had caused that noise to finish me off. When it didn't, I very slowly opened my eyes. I was still staring at the ground in front of me, trying to work my way up to looking in the direction I knew Samantha would be, when I noticed something. Less than an inch in front of my sneakers was a thick line of salt.
Chapter 38

The line of salt might have been smudged a bit, but it was still very much intact. Samantha screeched and howled, unable to reach me but still with plenty of energy left to try. I just stood there, watching dumbly. Mindy and Derek were each several feet away from me, and I didn't know what to do. All I could do was watch in terror as Samantha tried her best to grab me.

I looked back at my friends, trying to silently convince either one of them to come help me. I looked over at Derek and saw him give a sharp, quick nod to Mindy. Then, without warning, Mindy grabbed the blue and gold bottles and jumped straight into the salt circle, heading directly for the lamp. I watched in horror, convinced that Samantha would make short work of her, but Samantha was too busy trying to tear me apart to notice that someone else was actually in range.

I looked through Samantha's shoulder and watched as Mindy poured liquid from the blue bottle onto her hands. She quickly made some strange marks on the ground around the lamp. Samantha shrieked and hurled herself towards me with even more force – as if somehow I'd done something to her. Her renewed energy pulled my attention away from Mindy and back to her. Even though I knew the salt line was keeping me safe, I was still pretty scared. I wasn't sure if there was a way she could break through it, and I hoped Mindy would finish whatever she was doing before I'd have a chance to find out. Samantha's face contorted with rage and she started hurling insults at me all over again. Mindy took the gold bottle and poured the contents onto her hands. She touched the lamp, but I couldn't tell what she was doing. Samantha was taking up a lot of my attention at the moment.

As soon as she was done, Mindy grabbed her things and rushed back out of the circle. The result of whatever she'd done was almost instantaneous. A bright white light shot straight out of the lamp and up into the sky. I watched as the light spread outward like a tidal wave towards the edges of the circle. The light was so bright, even Samantha had to finally take notice of something other than me. She turned around, watching as the light came towards her. It happened so fast, she barely even had time to move. The white light swelled to the edge of the salt border, filling up the entire area. As it touched the salt, the light turned various shades of red and purple. After a few seconds of just hanging there, the light receded back to a two foot radius around the lamp, taking Samantha along with it.

I stared in disbelief; the column was so thick and so bright I couldn't see through it even to where the lamp stood. I'd expected it to fade out all the way, but it just stayed there, surrounding the lamp. Like it was waiting for something. I started to slowly walk around the perimeter of the salt circle, never taking my eyes off the column of light. I was staring so hard that I almost bumped straight into Mindy.

"I'll be right back." she said to me.

"What? Where are you going?" I asked. How could she possibly leave at a time like this?

"She's my responsibility." Mindy told me, nodding over to the light. She hopped over the salt line and walked towards the light in the center of the circle. Without another word, she disappeared into the light, leaving me and Derek alone in the parking lot.
Chapter 39

"Well, that was pretty crazy." Derek said. We were still standing in the dark, staring at the light in the center of the circle.

"You're telling me." I replied. "I wonder what happened to Mindy."

"Oh, she's taking Samantha to... wherever it is they go."

I wanted to ask how he knew, but I was too worn out to bother. It seemed like forever, but I'm sure it was only a few minutes until Mindy came back. She stepped out of the light and walked over towards us. As soon as she was clear, the column of light collapsed, leaving the three of us in the dark with nothing but a beaten up old lamp and a badly smudged salt line.

"Thanks for helping." Mindy told me.

"No problem." I said. "I didn't really do much though."

"Sure you did. You were a distraction so that Derek could set the oil and water up and I could get close enough to actually use them."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I wasn't quite sure how I felt about being nothing but a distraction, but I _did_ know I would have at least liked to have been told.

"Derek and I talked about it this afternoon. We didn't tell you because there wasn't enough time. It's not like we could just take you aside and explain it real quick – not with her following you around all the time."

I didn't say anything for a minute. I was still annoyed at them for leaving me to face Samantha's wrath by myself. But as much as I didn't like it, I could see what she was saying.

"I'm glad we got her." I said finally.

I looked out towards the lamp. The flame had gone dark when the light that took Samantha faded away, and it was kind of hard to see in the darkness. It looked so harmless that I was having a hard time believing it was the same lamp that had rested ominously on my desk for almost seven months.

"Do you want to smash it?" Derek asked, interrupting my thoughts.

I looked at Mindy. As if she'd read my mind, she told me, "It's not dangerous anymore. And Samantha won't be coming back. Ever. But if you want to destroy it..." she made a sweeping gesture with her hand. "Be my guest."

I looked back at the lamp, sitting there peacefully, looking almost innocent. It twinkled dully, but for the most part, the life had gone out of it. I wished that I'd never found it. I walked up to the lamp and kicked it as hard as I could, my foot connecting solidly with its base. The glass separated from the bottom and the two pieces went flying through the air. The base landed with a clatter. The glass shattered to pieces as it hit the ground some twenty feet away.
Chapter 40

It had been hard to get to sleep after the showdown with Samantha, and I'd ended up sitting in my bed with the light on, looking at my desk. Even with the ugly black scorch marks across it, it'd never looked so good as it did now that the lamp was off it.

I was tired the next day in school, but it was so worth it. When I saw Derek, I could tell he'd slept about as good as I did. He had bags under his eyes, and he was supporting his head with his arm.

"So how'd it feel to go home a free man?" Derek asked me.

"It was so great. I couldn't even believe it was real." I told him.

"I'll bet. I can't imagine being in contact with Samantha that much for that long."

"It didn't start out so bad. But yeah, it got pretty intense at the end."

"Good thing you don't have to worry about it anymore." Mindy said, sitting down. Of course, she looked like she'd gone right home and slept like a baby.

"Yeah." I said.

"And the people in charge were very happy to have her. So thank you both." she told us.

"So, I have just one question. Why did Samantha haunt an old oil lamp anyway?" Derek asked Mindy. He'd asked me before, but I'd never been able to answer. Hopefully Mindy could shed some light on that.

"Usually when a ghost is attached to an object like that it's because it has some special significance to them." she said.

"That makes sense. She told me it was the last thing she saw." I said.

"So it was in Milner's house then?" Derek asked, raising his eyebrows.

That made me pause. I knew Samantha had died at in Milner's pool. But before that, she'd been up in a tree, staring through his window. The lamp must have been sitting in his room; it was the only way she could have possibly seen it.

"It must have been." I said slowly. "So how did it end up in a back alley buried in a pile of junk?"

"Oh..." Derek said, turning pale.

"What?" I demanded.

"After Samantha died, there was a fire at Milner's house. I didn't really think it was important because Samantha was gone – for the most part, all the weirdness had already stopped. We all just thought it was a coincidence."

"So you think that she caused that fire, too?"

"It certainly fits with her personality." Mindy spoke up.

"But why would she set a fire there? Milner was the only person she ever seemed to actually like." I pointed out.

"She might not have meant to. It's possible she was visiting him and something upset her. If she was newly dead, she probably didn't have the control over the lamp yet."

"Even if it _was_ an accident, if my lamp caught fire, I'd give it away too." Derek said. "Especially after all those fire scares."

"Definitely." I agreed. I wondered how many other people had tried that lamp out and met the ghost who haunted it. I wondered if they'd been scared as badly as me. I shrugged; at least no one would ever have to worry about her again.
Chapter 41

It had been a month since my after-class talk with Mr. Guerra when I walked into history with my new ten page paper in hand. I'd decided to go back to my original idea of writing about ancient China. I didn't really have enough books to write about the Roman Empire, and at this point I wasn't sure if what I knew about the Roman Empire was true or if it was just stuff that Samantha had made up anyway.

As soon as class was over, I headed up to Mr. Guerra's desk. He seemed surprised for a second, as if he'd almost forgotten I still had a paper due. The expression quickly passed as I handed him what I'd written. He thumbed through it, skimming quickly to get an overview.

"Very good, James." he told me.

"Thanks for letting me redo my paper." I said. And I wasn't just trying to suck up before he graded it either. I knew I hadn't put much effort into my first paper, and it had obviously shown. I was actually pretty lucky he'd given me the option of redoing it. If he hadn't, there was a good chance I'd fail the whole course, and I knew my mom would kill me if that ever happened.

As confident as I was in my last paper, I was even more sure about this one. This time, I hadn't just taken someone else's word about what the civilization was like – I'd actually done the research and I _knew_ everything was true. And two weeks later, when I finally got the paper back, the B+ I'd gotten made me feel happier than I ever would have thought possible.

I was still feeling pretty good about that paper when I rounded the corner coming out of the gym and came face to face with Milner. I'd seen him around a couple of times since the thing with Samantha had ended, of course; the school wasn't _that_ big. But this was the first time I'd really felt like talking to him. Maybe it was the relief of never having to look Samantha in the face again, or in knowing I wouldn't have to worry about telling her every little detail about my talking to him anymore. Maybe it was the look on his face as he sat alone on the bench across from the empty cafeteria. Whatever it was, I found myself walking over to him. He looked up, a weary smile on his face.

"Hey," I said when I got close enough.

"Hey."

"I wanted to apologize to you for that whole thing between us at the beginning of the year."

He stared at me for a second before responding.

"What thing?" he asked.

I felt a little bad for reminding him, but at the same time I was having a hard time believing he didn't know what I was talking about. Oh well, I thought. It was too late to back out now.

"About Samantha?" I asked, hoping to jog his memory. "I just wanted to let you know that I didn't mean anything by it. Someone had just told me to ask you, and I just... I didn't know. I'm sorry." I stood there for a moment while he chewed it over in silence. I felt like a complete jerk for reminding him yet again of his old stalker. Realizing that I only seemed to make the situation worse when I tried to talk to him, I started to leave. Before I'd even taken a step, a hand reached out and grabbed my shoulder. I turned around to see Milner had gotten up off the bench and was now standing next to me.

"It's ok." He smiled at me, and I actually started to feel like it maybe it was alright.

"Thanks." I told him.

"You weren't here last year, so how could you know?"

"But still... " I started.

"And it's not like you had a whole lot of people around here talking to you. Even if you heard the name, you had no way of knowing how the school felt about her."

He had a point. If any of them had been willing to actually talk to me, none of this would have happened. Six months ago, I would have been mad. I would have thought they weren't talking to me because of their experiences with Samantha and that it wasn't fair; just because we'd both moved to the same school didn't mean I'd act the same as her. But after this whole ordeal, I couldn't say I blamed them. I could see why they were so suspicious of others, especially Karen's group. And as annoyed as I was, I knew they weren't the only ones to blame.

"It was partially my fault too. I didn't exactly try my hardest to make friends." _Except with Karen_ , I added silently. And of course, hers would be the one group that would probably never accept new members.

It was funny; even after all these months, hearing Eric apologize made me kind of happy. "At least I know it wasn't personal." I told him.

"Of course not." he told me. "So, I know it's a little late for basketball, but if you want, baseball's starting up soon. I seem to remember you being pretty good at hitting a ball."
Chapter 42

By the time the last day of school finally came, I had to admit I was more than ready for it. The whole year had been one crazy adventure that I hoped I'd never have to repeat. It was funny, but once Samantha was finally gone forever, something about the school seemed to change. I didn't know if she really had a hold on the whole place, or if it was just the weight being lifted from my chest, but it seemed like people around me finally started opening up. I'd ended up on the baseball team after all, and I'd finally made friends with Milner, Karen, and the rest of their crowd.

But on the day of the ceremony, the only people I felt like standing next to were Derek and Mindy. We'd been through so much together, and I knew that no matter what happened in the future, they were two friends I'd have for the rest of my life – they'd be there no matter what I did or where I went next.

......

