No one had ever seen twins hate each other so much!

  One day, Timmy and Tammy were walking home. Like every day, they fought. Tammy started it. She picked. She poked. She prodded. She was always so very cruel, for she was so very, very jealous. And that jealousy, oh, that jealousy!

  It was so great, it made her eyes turn green!

  Timmy couldn’t take it anymore. He was tired of his sister’s diatribe. When a big car came running down the road, Timmy turned and shoved her straight into the traffic. Crunch! Tammy was crushed under the wheels of the car… But all did not end well for Timmy.

  The driver tried to avoid Tammy. Crunch! The second wheel ran over her leg—not that it mattered, as her head had already been squished into jelly.

  Still, in the driver’s attempt to avoid Tammy, he veered off of the road and straight into Timmy. Crunch! He ran over both the brother and the sister, and they died the same way that they were born. On the same day, only minutes apart, acting nothing like the other.

  Twin dolls, huh?

  Well, there were tons of dolls in that house. Maybe that’s what I would do when I got back home. I would go on a hunt for the Timmy and Tammy dolls. The book didn’t tell me what they looked like, but my bet was that they would be wearing an angel costume and a devil costume.

  Or something like that.

  With no way to stay out there any longer, I stood up, put the book back into my bag, got a drink of warm water from the fountain, and started the walk back home. It must have been my turn to finally have a stroke of luck, because when I got there, my note on the fridge had been replaced with a different note.

  It was much longer than mine and written in cursive that was so tight and neat it was hard to read.

  Quinn

  We’ve gone into town to pick up some groceries. There is lunch in the fridge, just place the container in the oven and heat it for fifteen minutes. We will talk when I get back.

  Grandma

  So, they both went out.

  That was weird. I didn’t think that I had ever been left in the house on my own before. I wondered, maybe childishly, if this could have had anything to do with my meltdown last night. Grandma was old. She had already raised a kid and a half. She probably just didn’t want to deal with me, anymore than I wanted to deal with her.

  One more person who only wanted me to be around them when I acted like the Quinn they had pictured in their head.

  That thought made bitterness well up in my chest and tickle at the back of my throat. Well, there was no way I was going to spend all day crying over it. If they didn’t want to be around me, I’d just make sure I was around them as little as possible.

  So, never.

  Because I had school, and art, and—and I would figure it out!

  Feeling angry, I threw my lunch into the oven and then turned to go get washed up. I was already sweaty and wishing for another shower; or like Sally, a swim in the ocean. That had always been a great way to spend a hot day back in Maryland.

  I gave a heavy sigh, closed my eyes, and tried to pretend that I was already heading out to Ocean City for a soft-shelled-crab sandwich, a day in the water, and with my dad at my side.

  Tears pricked at my eyes.

  I went down stairs and got the leftover lasagna, no salt, out of the oven, threw it on a plate, and had a truly, utterly, and completely miserable lunch.

  And that’s just how the whole weekend went. I don’t know if I was just good at avoiding Grandma, or if she was trying to avoid me too, but I actually didn’t see her at all until Monday morning, when I darted into the dining room, snatched up a piece of burned toast, and darted back out, all the while muttering about needing to get to school early.

  “Quinn,” Gramps called.

  I pretended not to hear him and slammed the door shut.

  It wasn’t his fault, not really. I just didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be around them, or go to school, or do anything of the sort. I just wanted to read Grandpappy's book, and draw.

  At a Loss

  Eventually, I had to go back to school, and that sucked. I didn’t want to have to deal with Trevor. The fact that we had to sit next to each other in Illustration class was pretty much the worst thing ever. I was kind of expecting him to say something to me about it when I dropped into my seat at his left, but stupid Trevor didn’t even glance at me.

  My throat tightened as I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He didn’t look back. I watched him, his pencil scratching over the paper, the shape of his characters forming. But he didn’t watch me.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with Trevor. I liked him. Or at least, I really wanted to like him. But it seemed like every time we started to get close, something like the party would happen, and then I would have to try and figure out if he liked me or just the idea of me—or my house, I guess.

  And who was I, even? These days, I wasn’t totally sure. I wasn’t just the girl who liked to draw anymore. I was also the girl who liked to kill. I was the girl who liked to hold a knife, who liked to watch blood drip, drip, drip onto the pavement.

  I was the girl who liked a lot of things, and most of them weren’t okay.

  A flush crept down the back of my neck. Maybe he was right not to like me… But the thought still made me angry. I never told him I was some sweet little good girl. He just looked at me and decided that for himself, all on his own. And that’s not my fault, now is it? I didn’t tell him any of that.

  And at the party… He didn’t try to make the other kids stop talking about my house—or my dad. He couldn’t, because he didn’t actually know anything about me either. All he knew was that I lived in the haunted Hoggwaller Manor. That was it.

  I swallowed hard, closing my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t keep thinking about that during class, or it was going to make me cry again. I had to focus on the project at hand, and I did so by crafting out a pretty circus performer, and then drawing her in a splattered, broken-limbed mess on the ground.

  Oops, she had slipped from the high wire, just the same way that Harry did in my Grandpappy's story.

  I licked at my teeth. I added a star to Ghost Girl. She was covered in them now—glittering blue freckles that raced up and down her arms and over the backs of her hands, out onto the tips of her fingers. She was the star everyone was watching; the star that no one could look away from but no one could see, either.

  That’s what I felt like.

  No one could stop staring at me, but they didn’t actually know me, either. They didn’t even want to.

  It was the worst art day I’d had in a while. The moment that Mr. Carp dismissed us from the room, I slammed my laptop down, jumped to my feet, and hightailed it right out of there, not bothering to even stop and wait to hear about the assignment.

  I would get it some other time.

  Out into the hallway, out to my locker, out to the next class; and the class after that, and the class after that, and the class after that. The school day seemed to blend together and no matter how hard I tried to focus, it just wouldn’t unblend, and wouldn’t get any better.

  The fact that I had only gotten to spend a little bit of time in the dream world this past full moon didn’t help, either. It felt like there was an itch in my veins and I couldn’t reach it. Like even my bones were humming with anticipation over when I would make the next kill.

  That sensation bled into everything else that I was feeling. It was almost like my heart just didn’t know how to feel all of it; like there were so many strong emotions inside, it couldn’t even begin to parse them.

  Finally though, the last class of the day came about, and it wasn’t really a class. I got to go and see Mr. Blumshire again. I had only been in his class about three times at that point, and the guy was totally weird.

  As I approached the door to his room, I couldn’t help but think about the way Molly had reacted when I told her his name. That couldn’t have been right though. There was no way that this ancient old guy had anything to do with my dream world.

  Still, there was a feeling of almost trepidation when I lifted up my hand and knocked on the door.

  Mr. Blumshire’s voice rattled from within, “Come in, dear heart. I’ve been expecting you.”

  And in I went.

  The classroom looked the same as it always did. Mr. Blumshire had me sit down at his desk. I opened up my bag to pull out the computer, then paused, and pulled out Grandpappy's book instead.

  “I found this at home,” I told him. “I think that my great-grandfather must have written it. Or my great-great-grandfather. Something like that.”

  I showed him the book. He reached for it immediately—almost hungerly.

  Gramps' words came back to me: be careful with it, he made me promise.

  I made Mr. Blumshire promise to do the same, to which his head bobbed and he swallowed hard. “Of course, dear heart. Always.”

  He took the book almost reverently, like it was made of crown jewels and not just some leather and paper. I appreciated that, and gave him a small smile in return.

  “I’ve been reading through it the last couple of days. I thought that it was… I’m not sure. It seemed special.”

  “Oh, yes, yes it is. Old books, they’re always special. They’re a mark of the times. Proof that history happened. That someone lived, that they existed. And this one, I can tell that this one is even more special than some of the others,” said Mr. Blumshire.

  He leaned his hip against the edge of the desk, carefully turning page after page. His eyes darted over then neat, looping writing.

  “Some of them aren’t great,” I told him, thinking about the tale of the twins, Timmy and Tammy, “but some of them are totally gross, too. And, uh, there’s this one in there about a little girl that paints. That one was really good.”

  Tabitha’s story.

  She was scared.

  And I wasn’t scared. But I thought that maybe I could understand being scared. It was a little bit like being lonely, and I totally understood being lonely.

  I kept talking, “I haven’t finished reading the whole thing yet, but I just—I don’t know. This is stupid, sorry. I don’t even know why I showed you.”

  I reached for it, but Mr. Blumshire easily held it out of reach. “Nonsense.”

  “Nonsense?”

  “There’s nothing stupid about this book. It’s a work of art. Even the ones that are—lackluster. You can tell, can’t you? The man who wrote it, he put his entire soul into this piece.”

  “I don’t know much about Grandpappy,” I admitted. “Just that he wrote this book. And he helped raise my grandfather, too. So he must have been a pretty good guy.” A pause. “These are really dark stories. There’s one where a boy eats people.”

  “Do you think dark stories make a person bad, Ms. Hoggwaller?” Mr. Blumshire carefully sat the book down on top of the desk. He fetched himself a chair from one of the student’s desks, then pulled it over and pressed it to the side of the main desk.

  When he sat down, his knees jutted up sharply to either side. He was too tall for the kids' chair. It made him look a bit like a frog.

  He sat his cane between his legs, curled both hands around the mouse topper, and leaned forward, bracing himself on it. His gaze was sharp, but it was also curious.

  “No,” I said, after a moment of thought. “But other people do.”

  “What do the thoughts of other people matter to you?” Mr. Blumshire questioned. “Are they the ones living your life? Do they feel what you feel, see what you see?”

  He didn’t pause.

  Instead, he carried on, “No! No they don’t! They are mere spectators! When you watch a movie, can you know a character’s heart before the end? No, you cannot! There are lies, there are deceptions, and there are layers, dear heart, there are always going to be more layers and secrets than meet the eyes.”

  “I suppose—”

  “No suppose!” He slammed his cane down on the tile floor, hard. The crack echoed through the empty room. “There is no guessing! There is only knowing! Your heart is the biggest secret you have, but it is also the most important truth. You know what is at the base of your heart.”

  “What if you don’t know?” I asked, my lower lip wobbling. “What if you can’t tell if you’re good or bad, and everyone thinks something different of you?”

  “Miss Hoggwaller,” said Mr. Blumshire. “When you think of your greatest sin, what is it?”

  “I—don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I stayed quiet.

  He leaned forward. “Not what others would view as your worst crime against humanity. But the one that you view as the worst.”

  I didn’t have to think about it. I already knew. My worst crime had nothing to do with killing people in a dream world, or screaming at Grandma, or failing my tests, or breaking May’s nose. Just thinking about it made me quake.

  When I answered the teacher, my voice was so soft, it was almost like a feather—so quiet, it was hard to hear. “The day my dad died. He dropped me off at school, and he said ‘I love you, Quinn.’”

  I love you, Quinn, smiling, looking at me through the rolled-down car window. But it was Friday, and I was late, and in a hurry.

  I had a test.

  I was embarrassed.

  There were twenty-hundred reasons why I just turned and went into the school, but none of them were good enough.

  “I didn’t say it back,” I admitted. “I just waved at him, and went inside. An— and I never got to see him again. I never got to say it back. I should have. He was—he was just being good to me!”

  I didn’t realize that a tear had rolled down my cheek until Mr. Blumshire was reaching over and swiping it away with his thumb. Then he plucked a tissue from the box on his desk and offered it to me, not with a flourish, but with a limp wrist.

  I took it from him and blotted at my eyes. “Sorry.”

  Mr. Blumshire ignored my apology and said to me, simply, “That is not the sin of a bad person.” He reached out and placed his hand on the top of the book, fingers curling almost lovingly around it. “And this is not the workings of a monster. These are simply stories, Quinn. And stories, well, they are what we imagine, not what we are.”

  I managed to stop crying quickly enough—thank God—and then was able to show him the updates that I had made to the world I was building, and the story I was building. Once I had finished going over it all with him, he nodded and let me pack up.

  It wasn’t until I was actively getting ready to the leave the room that he caught me, quite literally, by the crook of the arm. “Miss Hoggwaller. I would like to make a suggestion, albeit one that you may not be thrilled with.”

  “Okay?” that sounded mega ominous but… Even though he was really bizarre, I kind of had grown to like Mr. Blumshire. He got me in a way that no one else did, and the fact he didn’t make a big deal out of my crying jag was major points in his favor.

  “That book you brought in.”

  “The one Grandpappy wrote?”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded. “What about it?”

  Mr. Blumshire said, “I think that you might be able to do something with it.”

  A frown curled across my features. My backpack was slung over both shoulders. I reached up, wrapping my fingers beneath the strap and tugging at it slightly. “Like what? Use the characters?”

  Molly might have been drawn into my story, but I had been super careful about avoiding Tabitha and Harry. They hadn’t appeared in a single one of my illustrations, and I sort of wanted to keep it that way.

  I guessed that it wouldn’t be super bad if I used George, or the twins, or Sally but… Still, something about that felt a little weird. Like I was watching someone change through their window.

  “Almost,” said Mr. Blumshire. “I think that you should try considering the story that you’re making a sequel of sorts. The ghost that haunts the house, doesn’t she put their souls into dolls?”

  “Yeah, she does.”

  “Perhaps she isn’t the first to have done this. Perhaps there are dolls in that house with souls already in them.” His phrasing made me shudder.

  Yeah, there certainly were dolls with souls in them sitting around already.

  Mr. Blumshire continued, “It’s just something to consider. It might help you, it might give you some ideas.”

  “Okay, yeah. I’ll finish the book and keep that in mind while I read it,” I told him, though even I wasn’t sure how much of a lie it was. Mostly, I was just tired and ready for the school day to be over.

  Thankfully, Mr. Blumshire’s lessons were late, which meant that the only people around when I left his class were the guys practicing for band and for the big play at the end of the semester. I was able to make my escape from the school without running into anyone else.

  I wasn’t nearly that lucky the next day.

  Though I did a brilliant job at avoiding Trevor throughout the day, my good-luck streak fell apart, as it often did, when I stepped out into the late afternoon Texas sun.

  Alice was standing down at the sidewalk. Trevor was next to her.

  Trevor touched her hair, the same way he touched my stars. It felt like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over my head. Forget about the heat; this sudden coldness was even worse. The anger swelled up inside of me like a wave, but my knees had locked up.

  If I went over there right now, I was going to hurt Alice. I was going to hurt her bad, like I did May, or maybe even worse than that. I had never hated a single person more in my whole life—except for the faceless stranger that had set my house on fire and set the worst day—week, month, year, singular moment—of my life into play.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Trevor was smiling, and Alice was laughing. The bus pulled up, and Alice was one of the first students to get on it. My knees finally unlocked and carried me over to where Trevor was standing with great haste.

  “Hey,” I spat out, unable to make the word nice. The sight of him touching Alice’s hair like that made my skin crawl. She was mean! She was awful! How could Trevor want anything to do with her?