Chapter 18
By eleven, I’m in bed with the lights off.
I’ve been lying there for a while, trying to fall asleep, when my phone pings with a text. It’s from Ben.
BEN:
Hey
ME:
Hiiii
What’s up?
It takes a second for him to type his next message.
BEN:
Any interest in going to that haunted mansion with me in Old Saybrook tomorrow night? It looks fun
I don’t respond right away. Instead, I switch over to text Evie.
ME:
Is there a group of ppl going to the haunted mansion thing in Old Saybrook tomorrow? Does Eddie know anything about this?
Ben just asked me to go with him
Thankfully, she’s still awake, because she texts me right back.
EVIE:
Hold on, let me check
A few minutes later, she texts again.
EVIE:
Eddie hasn’t heard of anything. I think he just invited u. Like a dateeee
I go back into my texts with Ben. Dots appear as if he’s typing, but then they disappear. I wonder if he’s nervous. I like
the idea that I might be making him nervous. I text him back.
ME:
I’d love to
BEN:
Pick u up at 6?
The next morning, I take Carson and Ellie to the Pawlooza for a couple of hours. They quickly get obsessed with a beagle mix puppy, which makes me worry that bringing them here was a huge mistake.
“We’ll call you Sparkle,” Carson tells the delighted puppy, who is falling over his paws to try to lick her face.
“Butterfly Sparkle,” Ellie amends.
Eventually I’m able to lure them away from Butterfly Sparkle with the promise of free donuts and Halloween-themed arts and
crafts. I let them each have two cups of hot apple cider with caramel whipped cream, and Carson passes out from the sugar
crash on the short drive home. When I drop them off, the girls make me show Natalie a bunch of pictures of the puppy and I
mouth I’m so sorry. Even after they go inside and shut the door, I can hear their begging.
“He’s all I want for Christmas!” Carson sobs.
“Puppies are a lot of work, Car. And Christmas is still two months away. He might be adopted by then,” Natalie says, which
only makes Carson sob harder.
I spend the rest of the day finishing my homework for the weekend and editing the videos from the shelter. I spend more time
on the videos than I should, but I want them to be perfect. Martina has texted me three times today, asking when they’ll be
ready to post.
Soon! I keep texting back.
By four, I’m done with all the videos, except the one with Angel. I want time to get ready and choose an outfit, so I figure I’ll finish it after I get back from the haunted house with Ben and then post the videos to the shelter’s social media first thing tomorrow.
Evie coaches me on my outfit. We land on jeans, a black sleeveless sweater over a white T-shirt, and a pair of vintage loafers
I steal from Mom’s closet. I do a high ponytail with the front pieces out and gold hoop earrings, plus some eyeliner.
“Perfect,” Evie announces, when I show her the final look.
When the doorbell rings, I’m more nervous than I thought I would be.
“I’ll get it!” I yell, hurrying toward the stairs.
Down in the foyer, Mom is on her way to the door. I told her I was going out with a friend, but when she sees me, she stops.
“Oh! You look so cute.”
“Thanks. I’ll get the door.”
To my annoyance, Mom lingers there.
“Hey,” Ben says, when I open the door. “You look great.”
“So do you,” I say.
He’s so freshly showered that I can smell his shampoo. He’s dressed preppy, in a button-down shirt that’s tucked in, with
a belt and everything. I guess that’s what you get with a squash-playing Connecticut boy who’s on his way to Brown University.
When he notices that Mom is standing there, too, he steps inside with his hand out.
“Hi, Ms. Hopper. I’m Ben. Ben Wilson. It’s nice to meet you.”
Mom is taken by him, I can tell. She’s always loved direct eye contact and a handshake, and grumbles about it whenever we have friends—or in Nicky’s case, girlfriends—over who don’t introduce themselves like that. It’s like she expects all teenagers to act like little businesspeople.
“You two have fun,” she says after a few minutes of excruciating chitchat. She smiles at me in a knowing—and extremely annoying—way.
“Drive safe. Seat belts.”
“Yes, I know,” I say. “Bye.”
Ben drives an Audi, and it’s so clean inside I wouldn’t be surprised if he told me it came straight from the dealership. The
black leather seats look like you could eat off them. Not that it looks like Ben eats in his car, but still.
Once he plugs in our destination, which is a bit of a drive, he asks, “Anything in particular you want to listen to?”
“No. I’m easy.”
Ben looks over at me with a grin. “Oh yeah?”
“An easy listener,” I correct him.
“I love an easy listener,” he says innocently, and puts on a Spotify playlist.
I’m a little wooden for the first twenty minutes, but gradually, thanks to how easygoing Ben is, I relax.
Ben tells me about his recruiting visit to Brown last month, which is when he got his official offer, and about his family.
His parents are divorced, so we’ve got that in common, and he lives with his mom and stepdad.
He has two little sisters who are in middle school and are both obsessed with gymnastics.
I ask him a lot of questions. He’s good at spinning facts about himself and his life into bite-sized, entertaining stories.
Old Saybrook is on the coast, and the haunted house is taking place at a Victorian mansion, on a street overlooking the ocean.
When we get out of the car, the breeze off the water is colder than I was expecting, and I shiver.
“You gonna be good in that?” Ben asks, nodding at my outfit.
“I think so,” I say, although I’m already rubbing my arms.
He goes into his trunk and grabs a jacket, then comes over and drapes it around me. “That work?”
This close to him, I can smell both his minty breath and his woodsy shampoo. “Yeah. Thanks.”
As we wait in line to go in, I turn to Ben. “There’s one small thing I forgot to mention.”
“What’s that?”
“I absolutely hate being scared.”
He laughs. “Oh, then this was a perfect suggestion on my part. Great.”
The tickets were fifty dollars each, which I didn’t know until they scanned the barcode on Ben’s phone. This only makes me
more nervous. For fifty dollars a pop, you’re paying for as many realistic jump scares as you can get.
When we step into the first room it takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Once they do, I can see we’re in an old-fashioned sitting room with peeling floral wallpaper that is absolutely jam-packed with shelves of creepy dolls, all staring directly at us.
“No, no,” I say. “No, thank you.”
“Aw, don’t worry. They’re starting us out easy. They’re just—”
I’m assuming he was about to say dolls when one of them, a larger doll, pops up off the sofa and lunges toward us.
Both Ben and I scream and hurry into the next room.
We go through a butcher’s room attached to an abandoned meat locker, a haunted nursery, and a bedroom where an active possession
and exorcism is taking place. Every time we enter a new room, I bury my head in Ben’s shoulder. Eventually he puts an arm
around me, to help direct me, so I can keep my eyes closed.
After about forty-five minutes of my cortisol spiking uncontrollably, we go out through the back of the house, where the wide
green lawn that overlooks the ocean has been set up as a graveyard.
“I think it’s over,” Ben says, just as someone reaches out from a grave and grabs my ankle. I scream again.
When we find an empty bench, finally away from the gore and terror, I throw myself on it, feeling all limp and noodly.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t have any bones anymore,” I tell him.
“Sorry,” Ben says. He puts his arm around the back of the bench, so it’s sort of around me, too. “Did you have a little bit
of fun, though? Just a tiny bit?”
“No,” I say, and we both laugh.
Ben slides even closer, so that our legs are touching.
“Hey,” he says. I look over at him, and then he kisses me.
It takes me by surprise. It’s nice, just as nice as the first time we kissed, over the summer. When we pull away, we smile
at each other.
I know I should just let the moment be what it is, but I don’t.
“So are you and Chelsea . . .” I trail off.
Ben is looking at me so intently I have to look away. “We’re broken up, if that’s what you mean. Officially.”
“And unofficially?”
“That, too.”
“I thought I heard . . .” I trail off again, waiting to see what he’s going to say.
He shrugs. “We stopped. I like someone else.”
He means me—he has to. The idea that Ben cut things off with Chelsea for me, of me and Ben maybe becoming a thing, is thrilling. But it also feels bigger than what I’ve got time for right now. Maybe when Luke is gone, I’ll have the space
I need to focus on this for real.
“I like someone, too,” I tell him. “I’m just not ready to make it anything more than that yet.”
“Okay, Hopper.” He smiles at me. “Whatever you want.”