Something in his eyes breaks, like he finally realizes how rude he’s been. “It’s not that,” said Trevor. “Look, I’m not just here for the house!”

  “Yeah? Then why don’t you actually want to do something? Why is the basement the only thing—” It clicked with me.

  Flick. The light bulb went off.

  “You just wanted to get down there because of the story,” I said. My gaze fell onto the bobby pin. My stomach twisted into a tight knot. I could feel it pulling into a harder twist with each second that ticked past. “You were one of the kids that tried to break in last Halloween, weren’t you?”

  “No,” he answered, a little too immediately. “They were from the next grade up!”

  “Why do you have that, then?” I snatched the bobby pin out of his hand, forgetting that Gramps was sleeping. My voice raised up an octave. “What even is this, Trevor?”

  He stared at me, wide-eyed. “I just—look, Quinn, everyone’s talking about it! I get that you’re new here, but this house has been a thing since—since before I was born! Everyone is always going on about the girl that got murdered here. I just wanted to see where it happened.”

  My heart broke. Snap. Just like that.

  I dropped my hands down to my sides. The bobby pin slipped out of my fingers and landed on the floor.

  Trevor continued, unfazed, “I was just going to snap a few pictures down there, and then I would be done with it. Come on, I already told everyone that I was going to get them today. The whole school is going to think that I chickened out if I show up without them tomorrow.”

  I swallowed, hard. “You need to go.”

  Trevor’s frown deepened. He bent down, picking up the bobby pin. “It’ll take three minutes, tops.”

  “Get out,” I commanded. When he didn’t move right away, I lashed out and shoved him. My hands slammed into his shoulders. “GET OUT!” I yelled so loud my throat hurt. So loud that it definitely woke up Gramps.

  Trevor turned and raced for the front door. He shoved it open and vanished outside. He didn’t close it behind him. I could hear his shoes slamming down against the porch, and then nothing.

  Gramps didn’t come out though. I stood there, panting. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I didn’t remember when I actually started to cry. Reaching up, I rubbed at them with one hand.

  The back door opened. Grandma called in, “Quinn, what’s wrong? I could hear you all the way outside!”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “I’m—I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

  “Quinn?” Great. She was coming in.

  I didn’t want her to see me crying, so I turned and ran for my bedroom instead.

  The Star

  The moment I pulled my bedroom door shut, the waterworks seriously kicked in full force. I sobbed so hard it made my shoulders shake, laying there on the bed with my face pressed into the pillow. The pale yellow case around it became speckled dark with expanding splotches of dampness.

  I cried until my chest hurt. I cried until my eyes burned. I cried until there were no more tears left to cry. I knew full well my reaction was over-the-top emotional… But with everything going on with my dad’s death—and after—this was just the last straw,

  Grandma came and knocked on the door. “Quinn, didn’t you hear the bell?”

  Yeah. She rang a bell at dinner time, to summon me to the table. Like a dog.

  “Sorry,” I told her, voice croaking.

  “Oh my,” she said from the other side of the closed door. “You sound awful!”

  “I think I’m sick,” I lied lamely. “My friend already went home. I don’t think I can eat tonight.”

  “I’ll put your plate in the fridge, in case you’re feeling better later,” she offered. “You come let me know if I can get you anything, alright?”

  “I will,” I promised her, then waited for her footsteps to fade away. Soon as I was certain that she wasn’t standing out there anymore, I pried myself away from the mattress, slunk into the hall, and slid into the bathroom. I felt like I had turned into a giant slug.

  If I cried a single salty drop more, my cheeks were going to start sloughing off. But at the same time, I was so miserable that my spine had seemingly turned into Jello and I couldn’t straighten myself up.

  I flipped on the faucet. The pipes groaned and bubbled as they spat out water. A few air pockets had to be worked out before the water ran the way it was supposed to. I shoved my hands under the stream, letting the icy cold shock me out of my misery.

  Then, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and bent forward to splash it up onto my face. The cold shocked the last of the tears away from my gaze. I breathed out hard, doing it twice more before I was able to stop crying.

  I lifted up my head—and froze in place.

  The clown doll from the basement. It was sitting on the little wicker table right behind me, nestled in among all of the porcelain figures. A lump formed in my throat. That thing…it hadn’t been here before. I carefully turned around, water droplets still running down the curves of my cheek.

  The clown doll was staring straight at me.

  It had a white porcelain face and white porcelain hands, with a bright red dot on its nose and silly clown makeup surrounding pure black eyes. His yellow cone hat was pressed down over a mess of bright-blue curls, and his onesie was red on one side and green on the other, with big white ruffs around the collar and the end of both sleeves.

  I stepped closer. “Hello?”

  Okay, I’m losing my mind.

  As soon as the word left my mouth, I felt stupid. Of course the clown wasn’t going to speak to me. Grandma was just up here on the second floor. She probably put the doll in here.

  I just…didn’t know why.

  It was an old-person thing, maybe. Something to do to pass the time. Like the old-fashioned Elves on the Shelves. They were just as creepy! Well, okay. So the moving clown doll was way worse than that.

  Whatever, forever. Right?

  “Right,” I said the word out loud, that it would make me feel at least a little bit better. The exhale that chased after it was a trembling quake. Trying to convince myself that I wasn’t afraid of a stupid clown doll, I marched straight over to the table, reached out, and picked the clown up.

  A shiver ran down my spine. The hands were porcelain but the body and the limbs were all made of fabric and stuffing. The arms hung over the curve of my hands at the side. The doll stared up at me. Even though the expression hadn’t changed, I got the distinct impression that it had not liked being picked up like that.

  “Doesn’t matter what you like,” I told it. “We can both be unhappy today.”

  I sat the doll back down. It stared at me. I was halfway out of the room when I realized that if I left the clown there, it was going to still be there when I came back in at midnight to go pee. The thought of having to look that thing in the eyes in the middle of the night was too much for me.

  “I’ll put you back in the morning,” I promised the clown, snatching it up a second time and then shoving it under the bathroom sink. The doors clicked shut, hiding it from sight. “That’s much better.”

  This time, I really did make it back to my bedroom. Soon as I got there, I grabbed my laptop, threw it and my tablet on the bed, changed into pajamas, and threw myself down onto the bed too. If I wanted to stop crying, then I needed to distract myself.

  I brought up some of the progress shots from my art project for school, but very quickly found myself with a new page open, sketching out the base for a new, very familiar figure.

  The tears were there again, but this time they weren’t just devastated. They were also angry. Who did Trevor think he was, pulling something like this? I thought we were friends! I thought he actually understood my project, that he liked me…just for me.

  But I was wrong.

  He just wanted to try and get into the basement, because of that stupid ghost story.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks again. I didn’t stop drawing. Slowly, the picture of Trevor came into view. Messy hair. Bright eyes. A killer smile. He was wearing the school uniform, because it was literally the only thing I’d ever seen him in. I switched the colors though.

  A black- and red-plaid shirt and red pants. No emblem for the school on the polo, either.

  As soon as he was done, I started on another figure, and then a third. Alice and May this time, with their stupid prissy haircuts and their prim and proper everything. I did a few different figures of them, just so that I could get a feeling for how to make them consistent, and then I started to put them into pages.

  Quick, mock sketches first. But the longer the night wore on, the more details I added; black and white, then finessed lines, then splashes of color in shades of bright blue and yellow. I used an artificial watercolor brush to do the background pieces, something that really added to the whimsical kind of vibe.

  I knew that my villain would kill them by the end of the comic. I knew that they would meet a grizzly end in the very house that they were breaking into. And I knew that my girl, she needed more. A second star on the back of one hand, a third one on the side of her neck. Two more on her cheeks. Some on her arm.

  She had been alone for a long time, this ghost girl. She had been trying to get company for ages. And with each attempt, she gained another star.

  The clown doll lay on the floor in one picture, next to the couch. A sheet had been thrown over it. Fake Trevor stood next to it. There were dialogue bubbles, but I didn’t fill them in. this wasn’t about making them talk, making them likable. This was about—

  I didn’t know.

  It was about drawing until I had finally, finally stopped crying. And then it was about taking my computer to the old printer in the study downstairs. The room was big and clearly hadn’t been used since before Gramps retired. He used to be a banker, so this had been his space.

  There was an old bookshelf on one end of the room. Two shelves held books. The third shelf held dolls. A big oil painting hung on the wall behind the desk, depicting what I thought might have been London from above. And then there was the desk itself, which was a hugely imposing mass with an ancient printer and fax machine combination on one end, and a brass light on the other.

  I clicked the light on and sat the computer down on the desk, then set about the long, arduous task of getting the computer connected to the printer. Exhaustion tugged at my eyelids now, but something had compelled me. I had to get these pages printed off before I could go to sleep.

  I had to make them more…real.

  As soon as the printer started to hum and spit out the pictures, the exhaustion kicked into overdrive. I folded my arms over the desk and rested my head on them. My eyes closed, just for a moment. When I woke up, it was hours later. My neck hurt.

  My whole body ached. It felt like I had been hit by a truck!

  Or…fallen asleep hunkered over an old desk.

  Groaning, I sat up the rest of the way. A piece of paper had been spat out by the printer and had gotten stuck to my cheek, held there by the ink that had still been wet the night before. I reached up and pulled it away, feeling the sting as the paper disconnected from my flesh.

  I dropped it onto the desk. It was a picture of Ghost Girl, floating at the top of the staircase, wearing a tattered purple dress, with the stars on her skin and a knife in one hand. The knife was heavy and long, with old blood stains clinging to the metal.

  I loved it. The ink was rich and bright, all save for the place that had been stuck to my face. The ink there had been tarnished and pulled away.

  This picture was going to need to be redone…but that was fine. Whatever, forever. There were plenty of other images that had turned out great, having printed off while I slept. I made sure to collect all of them and carted them back to my room. For the time being, I just sat them on the edge of the dresser.

  When I got back home, I would hang them up on the walls.

  I got dressed quickly and then rushed to the bathroom to do up my hair—only to find myself doing a double take when I passed the mirror behind the sink. I stepped over to the sink, curling one hand against the ridge of the counter surrounding it and reaching up with the other, prodding the tips of my fingers against the soft curve of my cheek.

  A dark imprint has been left there, from the paper sticking to my face. It was the shape of a star. The little bit of ink seemed to cling to the curve of my cheek. I reached up and scratched at it with one hand, but the bright blue still remained.

  I scratched at it harder, trying to make the dye flake off beneath the curve of my nail… But that didn’t do anything.

  “Alright, that’s… Wow. That’s kind of cool looking, actually.” I leaned closer to the window. I was appreciating my design for Ghost Girl in a whole new way now, and a small smile tugged at my lips.

  Honestly? I looked like a disaster. My eyes were bloodshot and my face was puffy from spending so much time crying last night, and my hair looked a bit like the mouse from my bedroom had been trying to make a nest in it.

  But that star… It changed things.

  It felt like it changed something in me.

  Regretfully, there was no way I could go to school with that on my face. The moment Mr. Carp saw it, he would send me off to see the academy psychiatrist or something like that. Then they would call my grandparents, and my grandparents would call my social worker, and it would turn into a whole mess.

  “That sucks.” I sighed but flipped on the water, lathered my hands up with milk-and-honey-scented soap (a favorite among the old folks) and started to scrub at my face. A splash of water and—the star was still there.

  My brows pinched down, lips pursing. I tried it again, scrubbing at it longer this time. But the water and soap didn’t do anything to the star. The color didn’t even fade a tiny bit.

  “That must have been some serious printer ink. I guess…because it was old?” I tried to tell my reflection, thinking about that old saying—they sure don’t make things like they used to!

  They sure didn’t make ink like this anymore.

  Okay. New solution. I ducked back into my bedroom for a few moments, rooting through my suitcase and coming up with the seldom-used blemish coverup. Soon as I was back in front of the bathroom mirror, I popped it open and started to cake it on.

  One layer of coverup.

  I did my hair while it dried.

  Two layers of coverup.

  The blue was still faintly visible.

  Three layers of coverup.

  It no longer looked like I was sporting the murder star from my horror comic. Alright. That was a good thing.

  Right before I left the bathroom, I bent down and pulled open the cabinets under the sink so I could return the creepy clown doll to its rightful place on the wicker table.

  It was gone.

  A shiver ran down my spine. “Grandma must’ve already found it.”

  That had to be it. She realized it wasn’t on the table last night, found it under the sink, and put it somewhere else in the house. So why did that totally reasonable explanation feel wrong? Why did it feel like there was literally no way Grandma would have found the clown under here?

  I gave a heavy exhale and ran my hand through my pink curls, nervously. Teeth caught on my lower lip, worrying at the glossy flesh. I could taste the highly artificial strawberry flavor of my gloss. My reflection stared back at me, and the worry in my own eyes was impossible to miss.

  “No sense… No sense getting freaked out over it,” I told my reflection. “If Grandma’s mad about me moving the doll, she’ll tell me.”

  With that, I turned and hurried from the bathroom.

  Not having my backpack was proving to be a real pain. I had managed to find an old patchwork sewing bag in one of the spare rooms of the manor to shove my books into, but the laptop was too long. I could barely jam my tablet into the thing!

  So I had to sling the gaudy old bag over my shoulder and then carry the laptop.

  Breakfast was ready by the time I made it down the stairs. Runny eggs. Soft toast. Greasy sausage. Sometimes, they made runny eggs, soft toast, and limp bacon instead. It was all pretty bad. This morning, the thought of trying to stuff any of that down made my stomach churn.

  “I’m just going to take my toast and run,” I told them, snatching a piece of toast from my plate.

  Grandma frowned at me. “After you missed dinner?”

  “I just still don’t feel great.” I put one hand on my stomach, pretending I’d been down sick with the stomach flu or something last night, instead of crying my eyes out because the one friend I had made in this stupid town turned out to be a huge jack-in-the-box.

  “Do you need to go to the doctor?” Gramps asked.

  Shaking my head, I took a step back. “Nah, it’s okay. The toast should settle, and if I don’t feel good later, I’ll check in with the academy nurse.”

  Grandma wagged a finger. “Dr. Brown would do better than a school nurse.”

  “It’s a really fancy school,” I promised her. “The nurse is great.” I had never seen the nurse. “I’ll be fine.”

  My sneaker squeaked when I turned on my heel. I almost made it to the door when Gramps said, “Wait, wait. If you aren’t feeling good, you don’t need to be out walking in this heat. I’ll drive you.”

  My stomach sank. I could practically hear May and Alice going on about my grandfather dropping me off at school. I gave him a weak smile. “It’s fine. The fresh air will do me good.”

  Gramps’ expression fell. “Are you sure?” He fished a glistening new key out of his pocket and held it up. “I was going to give you this when we got there but… If you really want to walk.”

  “I do.” I nodded firmly. “I really, really want to walk.”

  Gramps looked sad. It made me feel kind of like a jerk. I did my best to catch the key when he tossed it at me, but sports weren’t really my thing. I fumbled it and the key clacked onto the floor with a metallic clank.

  “Sorry, champ,” said Gramps. “I thought you would have caught that for sure.”