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 Before you start reading the rest of this post, I decided to do a little circular writing with Liz and Erin.  We're each contributing a chapter a week to this story, and we'll see where it goes (I've also suggested some illustrations, since they're both artists as well).  Also, Liz and Erin, I didn't mean to leave it like a cliff-hanger at the end there, but it felt like a good spot to stop.  I'm interested to see where they take this. Happy reading!

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                 Penny was kicking stones as she trudged down the sidewalk.  One more day down, and only…she didn’t know how many days were left until summer break. Probably something like two hundred.  It was only October.  So, two months until Christmas break, she reassured herself.  Funny how that didn’t make her feel better.

                “Wait up,” she heard behind her.  She’d heard the voice several times since she’d left school, but in keeping with her façade as a loner, she had ignored it.  But now, the closer she came to her empty, silent house, the less she actually felt like being on her own.  She slowed to a stop and turned to face a red-faced Tina, glasses askew and hair beginning to frizz around her face.

                “I was chasing you for the last three blocks,” she said breathing heavily.  She almost immediately thrust out a hand, an envelope flapping in the afternoon breeze.

                “I forgot to give this to you at school,” she said, waving it in Penny’s face until she took it. Penny looked at the bright pink paper suspiciously, opening it without saying anything.  Inside was a pink and purple card with a sparkling unicorn in one corner.

                “It’s your birthday?”

                “Next week,” Tina said with a bright smile.  “My mom mailed out the invitations last week, but we didn’t have your address yet, since you just moved here, and she doesn’t know your aunt.  And she thought it would be easier if I just gave it to you in person.  But then I totally forgot, and when I got in the car she was like, ‘Did you give Penny your birthday party invite?’  And I totally freaked and jumped out of the car. I only live a few blocks away from you so she said I could walk home after I gave it to you. Unless you want to hang out. Then I just need to call her.”

                This flurry of conversation made Penny’s head spin, but instead of being rude, which had recently become her go-to, Penny shrugged.  She looked at the invitation again, wondering if there was a nice, polite way to turn it down.  She had seen the girls Tina had invited, and Penny would rather have been trampled by horses than spend any more time with them then she was required.

                “My aunt isn’t home,” she said, thinking that would probably nullify any kind of opportunity to hang out, but Tina shrugged. “You can come to my house, then.  Would your aunt mind?”  Penny found her dark attitude slowly lifting, and she shook her head, “No. She doesn’t care.”  Too true, Penny thought.  Her aunt was a fantastic person, but she seemed to think that being twelve and being twenty were pretty much the same thing.  She worked second shift at a gas station, so they almost never saw each other.  There were no home-cooked meals, no bedtimes, no rules at all.  She had never realized how terrible it would feel to have no rules until she had moved in with her aunt.  Most of the time, instead of feeling free, she felt adrift. As she listened to Tina chitter beside her about her birthday party, and her parent’s being “too strict” because she had wanted to invite boys this year, but they wouldn’t let her, Penny felt a deep ache in her chest. She ignored it and tried to seem like she was listening to the party plans.  

                When Tina had said she didn’t live far from her house, she had made a drastic miscalculation, at least in Penny’s opinion.  Irving was not a big town, but it was big enough.  Tina and Penny may have been in the same school district, but they lived on completely opposite sides of the district.  They exited Penny’s modest but rundown neighborhood, crossed a busy street, and instantly seemed to enter a different world.  While Penny lived in a crowded, dilapidated apartment building, Tina lived in the oldest neighborhood in town, an area filled with fancy, enormous, old mansions, whose properties seemed to encompass entire blocks in places. She was impressed, feeling a stab of jealousy ripple through her chest as they passed one house that looked like a castle. But just beyond was a dilapidated, probably abandoned house, its roof collapsing into the house in places, its lawn deeply overgrown.  A sign on the gate stated, “Do Not Enter” in bright red letters.  It even seemed to be bathed in dark, cold shadows despite the bright autumn sunlight.

                “Does anyone even live in there?” she asked, feeling the air grow chilly as the sun passed behind a cloud.

                “Ssh!” Tina said hurrying away from the shadow of the house.  Penny followed her, a little shocked that super practical seeming Tina was acting skittish.

                “That place is totally haunted,” Tina said, glancing over her shoulder.

                “No way,” Penny scoffed. “There are no such things as ghosts.”

                “I would usually agree with you, but…that place is still totally haunted,” Tina said.  Penny put her hands on her hips and wouldn’t go any further, determined to prove something, though if she was going to be honest, she didn’t really know what that might be.

                “Come on,” Tina pleaded, “I hate this place.  Ever since my brother told me people were murdered there, I don’t even like walking past it. And he says there’s a cemetery in the backyard. Ugh!” Tina shivered.  Unfortunately, these tidbits only peaked Penny’s curiosity.

                “Let’s just look.  Really quick.  Come on,” Penny goaded her friend, who was shaking her head vigorously. “No one will even know.  There’s no one around at all.”  Penny heard herself, and was a little disgusted with her wheedling voice, but she was determined now.  More determined than she had ever been, she realized.  For some reason, going into this forbidden place seemed like the only thing that mattered.

                After several long seconds of Tina shaking her head and whimpering, Penny made the decision for her, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the gate.  The old metal was mangled, like it had been hit by several different cars, and with very little effort, Penny was able to sneak beneath the chains holding it closed, and pulled Tina through after despite her pleading.  She saw Tina shiver as the air grew chilly, but she was grinning, excited.  She could feel her adrenaline pumping through her whole body.

                “Come on,” she whispered.

                She didn’t know what she hoped to find.  She had never been inside an abandoned house before, and all of her normal instincts were screaming at her to stay away, that it wasn’t safe.  She wasn’t worried about ghosts – she didn’t believe in ghosts – but the floor could collapse, or the roof could cave in.  They could die.  She almost immediately ran for the house.

                The closer she got, the bigger and more ominous the house became.  She felt the cool fall air slither through the seams in her jacket, and she suppressed a shiver, her total focus on the house in front of her.  The windows were covered with boards, and the front door was locked with chains.  How much more perfect could this place be?  She turned back to see where Tina had ended up. She was huddled nearby, arms wrapped around herself, a worried expression on her face.

                “That porch looks like it’s going to collapse under you,” she called as Penny paced in front of the door.  She glanced down and realized Tina was probably right.  She hurried down the steps to the stone walkway where Tina waited.

                “There’s got to be a side door or something,” Penny thought out loud, grabbing Tina’s hand again as she hurried over to the side of the house.  The walls of the house were nearly obscured by overgrown bushes and ivy that had run amok over the stone.  She left Tina in the grass and began inspecting the side of the house for a door.  She made her way slowly down the side of the house, toward the back yard, feeling along the stone until she felt wood beneath her fingers.

                “Tina! I found a door,” She called.

                “I hope you know that going through that door would be a felony,” a voice nearby said as Penny felt around for a handle.  She instantly froze.  A moment later, a tall dark-haired boy stepped out from behind the bushes, hands in his pockets, a cold, emotionless expression on his face as he surveyed Penny, who instantly felt like a cockroach.

                “Eric! What are you doing here?” Tina asked, running up to them, her face a little white from being caught, though her eyes were sparkling.  Penny was instantly thrown back two weeks to her first day at Redding Middle School, when in her second class of the day, one of the girls behind her muttered, “She smells like she hasn’t taken a shower in a month.”  The other kids had laughed at this, and the barrage had begun.  They had mocked her clothes, her hair, and even her aunt, who they all seemed to know for some reason – small towns.  They knew she was poor; they knew she was an orphan.  And it had all been a joke.  And this guy, Eric, had laughed along with them. She had realized that he was some kind of little prince that commanded the crowd that had singled her out.  He could have stopped them – she had seen him do it at other times – but he hadn’t stopped them for her.  Her aunt had said to ride it out. They would get tired of bullying her eventually.  And though Penny knew she was probably right, seeing him in that moment brought back that pit in her stomach, that ache in her eyes that seemed to blind her to reason, and the rush she had been feeling from her little bit of rule breaking made her feel reckless.

                “It’s only a felony if I get caught,” she hissed, and without looking at him again, she swung the door open and stepped into the damp, cold, dark.