No one could blame Karim for running away from home now that new, creepy, possibly cannibalistic neighbors had moved in next door. And I was willing to do my part by allowing him to stay at my house for a while, just on a wait-and-see-if-his-parents-mysteriously-disappear basis, despite the fact that my dad and brother, Dylan, did not like the Houston Astros, my mother was indifferent to baseball in general, and my sister, Evie, did not like Karim at all.12
But that’s what friends do, right?
Secretly I was hoping Karim’s parents would tell him no, that he could not stay over at my house, because Karim would undoubtedly have to ask permission, and in doing so would come up with some monstrous lie about why it was that he wanted to stay with me for an indefinite period of time. Besides, I always felt bad having friends sleep over because of how I constantly had to keep a window or door, or sometimes both of them, open, on account of my extreme claustrophobia.
So after breakfast with my dad, and after we’d listened to Karim as he made up horrendous lies about the plots of Slaughterhouse-Five,13 After Many a Summer Dies the Swan,14 and Animal Farm,15 I changed out of my Princess Snugglewarm pajamas and into my regular-Texas-kid shorts and T-shirt, and we stole away to get Bahar, who, at fourteen, was far braver and more sensible than we were, so we could spy on the new neighbors, and maybe catch a glimpse of the ghost of Little Charlie—or whoever that was in Karim’s picture—up in the narrow and creepy third-floor window of the haunted Purdy House.
The three of us hid in the shade at the edge of the woods between my house and Karim’s, where we watched all morning as the men in the blue coveralls with WORMACK embroidered across their shoulders went back and forth, back and forth, carrying lamps and boxes, and then two-manning the sofas and mattresses, in and out, from the trailer of the moving van to the front doors of the Purdy House.
And we never saw anyone else—not the two people who’d been standing on the porch in Karim’s picture, and not the pale, shadowy boy up in the window.
“Let me see your picture again,” said Bahar, who was always sensible and scientific.
She fiddled with Karim’s phone for a while and then handed it back to him.
Bahar said, “There’s definitely people waiting on the porch there. And that does look like a little kid standing in the window, which is really creepy. Or it could be just a reflection in the glass or something.”
“It can’t be a reflection,” Karim said. “It was just before sunrise. There was nothing to reflect off of; there was nothing to reflect from.”
“Maybe this is like one of those television shows where ghost researchers stay inside a haunted house for a few days recording things and measuring EVPs and stuff,” I said.
Bahar immediately dismissed my theory, saying, “They never bring furniture with them on those shows.”
And Karim said, “What’s an EVP?”
“Electronic voice phenomenon,” I said.
Karim held up his hand in a Halt gesture. “I don’t want to hear anything else about that now, Sam.”
“What do we even know about the Purdy House?” Bahar said.
“It’s haunted,” I said.
“Little Charlie ate his parents,” Karim added.
“Oh. I heard his parents ate him,” I said.
“Well, someone got eaten in there. That’s got to cause ghosts and disturbances and EVPs and stuff,” Karim said.
“See? I bet this is all a bunch of gossipy nonsense,” Bahar said.
Gossipy or not, I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Purdy House, and I knew Karim was firmly on my side with that—no matter who had gotten eaten.
“Well, there’s only one good way to find out the truth,” Bahar said.
“I’m sure there are a lot of ways, but I don’t really want to find any of it out,” I said.
And Karim confirmed what I’d been thinking. “Neither do I,” he said.
“Research,” Bahar said.
Karim said, “It’s summer. We’re not allowed to use our brains. It could damage them, Bahar.”
I wanted to agree with him, but I had a few novels sitting on the desk in my room that argued otherwise. “I’m allowed. I have to read three books in the next two weeks.”
And Karim said, “I already told you what they’re about, Sam.”
“Gee. Um, thanks, Karim.”
“I think we need to go to the library,” Bahar said.
And I added, “Even if Karim’s already read every book in there.”
12. Evie doesn’t like Karim because she says he has a screechy voice, which is true.
13. Slaughterhouse-Five, according to Karim, was about a gang of Agriculture Department meat inspectors who dreamed of performing as an a cappella boy band on America’s Got Talent.
14. Karim said After Many a Summer Dies the Swan was where Princess Snugglewarm first appeared, as the victim of an egotistical swan who is a cyberbully—and, by the way, he said, the title spoils everything.
15. He called Animal Farm an unlikely kind of feel-good rom-com about a vegan who wins a vacation to visit a working cattle ranch in Wyoming and goes on to become a national barbecue champion.