“Lewis, you are evil,” I said. I gave him a hard shove.
He grabbed my hands and pulled me down the hall. “Check it out,” he said. “My new room. Jamie, this house is so huge, it’s like I have my own apartment. My parents will never even know we’re in here.”
“You have a dirty mind,” I said. I grinned at him. “I like that!”
Shark and Nikki laughed. Dana dropped onto the black bedspread and pulled Clark down beside her. “What’s up with the dark walls? Everything is black in here,” she said, gazing around.
Lewis smiled at me. “I was watching this cable show about famous bachelor pads,” he said. “These guys all had black walls. Totally cool, right?”
“But you need a mirror on the ceiling,” Clark said.
We all laughed.
“Get up,” Lewis told Dana and Clark. “You gotta check out the den.” He trotted down the long, carpeted hall, and we hurried to keep up with him. Everything looked so bright and clean. The house still had that new-paint smell.
“Check it out,” Lewis declared, waving us into the den. He clicked on the ceiling lights. We stared at the wide-screen TV on the wall. “It’s plasma,” he said. “We get about twenty high-def stations.”
“Awesome!” Shark exclaimed. “Just in time for March Madness. Are the basketball games in high def?”
“For sure,” Lewis said. “You guys can come over next Saturday and watch. You bring some six-packs. I’ll get sub sandwiches. My parents are going out, so we’ll have the whole house to ourselves. Par-tee!”
“Sweet!” Shark declared. He smoothed his hand over the back of the green leather couch. “Is this real imitation plastic?”
“Ha-ha.” Lewis rolled his eyes. “Sit down on it. It’s so soft, you sink in about two feet.”
Nikki and Dana raced to try out the couch.
“Whoa. Wait. You guys can’t come here next Saturday,” Clark said, waving his hands. “You’ve gotta come to my game. If we win Saturday night against Riverview, Shadyside goes to the state finals.”
My cousin Dana jumped up and slid an arm around her new boyfriend’s shoulders. “Yeah. We’ve gotta go to Clark’s game,” she said. “Go, Tigers—right? Shadyside rules!”
Shark laughed. “Can you picture Dana as a cheerleader?” He did a glum-faced, dull-voiced cheer. “Go, Tigers. Go Tigers. Whatever.” A perfect imitation of Dana.
Everyone laughed except Dana. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t sound like that. I’m totally excited we might go to the tournament. Mainly, I like to watch Clark play.”
“She likes it when Clark gets all sweaty,” Shark said.
That got a big laugh. Dana gave Shark a hard slap on the back.
I stood in the doorway, watching Lewis. It made me feel good to see him smiling and happy and excited.
Things are going so well for Lewis. One, his parents bought this enormous new house. Two, he got early acceptance at Brown. So he didn’t have to wait, biting his nails for the college acceptance letters in April.
Even I was starting to relax a little, starting to feel as if I could breathe normally again.
Senior year began so tragically for all of us. Three girls in our class died in the most horrible ways.
When school opened in September, I was still recovering from a painful accident. Late one night, Lewis and I fell. We were in the yard of the old Fear Mansion on Fear Street. We were curious about the ghosts and legends of the place. Everyone in town believed it to be a place of evil. Everyone believed the Fear family to be sorcerers, users of dark magic.
Anyway, the old mansion had just been torn down. Lewis and I shouldn’t have been there so late at night. We fell into a deep excavation hole. We were both nearly buried. We broke a lot of bones.
It took months for us to recover. Lewis and I had to repeat senior year. When school started the following September, I still had a bad limp. The nerves in my hip and legs hadn’t healed.
But I had a much worse problem, a problem I had no way of discovering. You see, the excavation where I fell had uncovered an old grave. The grave of Angelica Fear.
Angelica was said to be the most evil of all the Fears. According to the stories, she had been given an amulet—a silver, jeweled pendant with evil powers. The amulet held the secret of immortality. And before she died—a hundred years ago—Angelica swore she would come back someday.
I know it sounds totally bizarre. Totally unbelievable. But sadly, it’s all true. When I fell on Angelica’s grave, she rose up and possessed me. She took my body. And she used it to . . . to . . . murder the three girls in my class.
I don’t know why she did it.
I don’t remember any of this. I guess I’m lucky that I don’t remember it. If I did, I’d probably go stark-raving nuts.
Sometimes I think I am crazy. Sometimes I think none of it could be true. But when I see those empty seats in homeroom, I know it happened. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
My cousin, Dana Fear, came to live with me and my family in September. Her mother died, and her dad didn’t want to take care of her.
Dana told me all this. Dana explained to me about how Angelica Fear took over my body, possessed me, and used me for her evil.
I had no memory of that whole time. Dana told me how she destroyed Angelica. She shoved her into the big pottery kiln in my garage. She heard Angelica’s screams and watched her evaporate into a green gas.
Yes, Dana killed Angelica. She freed me from her evil ghost. I was me again. But it took so long to feel like me. It took so long to believe the horrifying story. And to believe that Angelica was gone for good.
But here we were. March. And things were going really well for everyone. Lewis so happy. And Dana starting to get over her father’s rejection. And finding Clark, a new guy she really likes.
For three months, I’ve been ME again. It seems that Lewis and I can finally enjoy our last months of high school and look ahead to happy times after that.
Lewis and I have been together for so long. My parents say we’re like an old married couple. They say we even fight like an old married couple.
I don’t think that’s true.
In fact, things have been so strange, sometimes I’m not even sure I know Lewis that well. Sure, we see each other every day. And we still care about each other a lot. And I enjoy holding him, being with him.
But . . . there are many things we don’t talk about. So many things we can’t talk about.
So much pain and horror to cover up, I guess.
Sometimes I feel there’s like a wall between us. And I wonder what he’s thinking about.
Does he think about me being possessed by a hundred-year-old ghost? Does that gross him out? Does he think I’m a murderer?
Besides Dana, Lewis is the only one who knows my secret. The only one who knows the truth.
He has been very kind and very caring since . . . since it all happened. But . . . something has changed between us. It’s hard to describe. I just feel a distance I didn’t feel before.
A wall.
But maybe that is all in my mind. Lately, I’ve had a bad habit of thinking too much, trying to analyze things that don’t need analyzing.
Lewis is happier these days. We all are.
He showed off his high-def TV. Then he suggested we all go to the late show at the Fear Street Acres Cineplex. It seemed like a good idea.
I had no way of knowing that halfway through the movie, the horror would return for me.