CHAPTER 3
THE NEXT DAY after school, me and Dan meet outside our buildings and head to the park a few blocks from us. Our friends usually chill on the picnic tables between the track and handball courts.
Normally, we go straight there, but Dan stops me as we pass the little stone shack in the park with the Parks Department leaf logo on it.
“Stephen.” He points at the open door, then at the Parks Department workers near their truck on the other side of the park. “This has to be empty. The workers are way over there.”
“Dude.” I roll my eyes up at the sky. “Remember yesterday? Junior?”
“Stephen, c’mon. It won’t be yesterday. No Juniors are here to yell at us.”
I cut on him. “What’s up with you and doors? You Alice in Wonderland or something? Can’t we just go from A to B?”
“B for Boring? Let’s do this.”
I want to say no, but sometimes I’m like my dad. He says yes to people a lot just to make them happy or shut them up.
Dan inches toward the shack and pokes his head in. “They listen to rap.”
I peek in. The workers’ radio plays on a shelf next to some cleaning supplies. Mops and brooms stand nearby that. Workers’ uniforms are on hangers.
“Remember you said B is for Boring?” I ask. “This is that. Let’s dip.”
“No,” Dan says. “The fun is going in. C’mon. Or you’re scared?”
I thumb my bracelet’s letters: WHAT LANE? I stare at the Parks Department workers, so far-off I can pinch them between my fingers. I scan everyone else chilling outside. No one pays us mind. “A’ight, whatevs.”
Me and Dan step into the middle of the room. I’m nervous but good. He turns up the radio’s volume and gets me all jumpy.
“For real?” My eyes pop. “You want people hearing this and coming in?”
Dan pulls a uniform shirt off a hanger. “Wanna try this on?”
“Nah, bruh. You. Bump that. Hang it up. You just acting dumb now.”
Dan hangs it back up, and I lower the radio and peek outside. “The workers are still far. Let’s bounce.”
Dan follows me out. I feel a few things. My heart knocks hard and fast in my chest, but I also feel good for shutting him down. Since I was little, it’s been hard to speak up. In classes, lots of kids spoke up like no biggie, but it was hard for me.
I was that way all the way up to age nine on New Year’s, when I first learned what a New Year’s resolution is. Something you plan to do. Right there, I told myself, From now on, I’ll say what’s on my mind.
I didn’t always keep that promise, but I got better. Like just now. I kept that New Year’s resolution: I spoke my mind.
We get to the picnic benches, and our friends Christopher, Jen, and Jeremiah are there with a bunch of other kids.
Dan gets braggy as we get close. “Guess what we did. Snuck in that shack.”
Everyone looks like, Nuh-uh. Then they’re all questions.
Jen: “What’s in there?”
Christopher: “For how long?”
Jeremiah: “Swear?”
Then Dan’s cousin Chad skateboards here from nowhere. His clothes are ripped as usual. He has a rep for climbing and trespassing into places.
He obviously heard what me and Dan just did in that Parks Department shack, because he smirks at me. “What’s up, Stranger Things?” He points at my Twilight Zone T-shirt. “Did you enter another dimension? See ‘spirits’?”
Ugh. Here he goes again, calling me names and leaning on “spirits” like a dis.
I eye Dan to see if he gets it about Chad, but Dan seems clueless.
“Hey.” Chad points at an abandoned factory rising high in the distance like the Tower of Terror at Disney. “The construction company is blowing up that old building. I heard back in the day, some workers died in a fire there. You guys want to see real spirits? Go in there with me. Bet spirits—ghosts, whatever you call them—are in there.”
I think about what it must be like in there. Maybe like Ghost Hunters? Do I even want to see that stuff in real life? I get a Nah feeling, but everyone else starts fist-bumping Chad.
Jen says, “That’s kinda next-level! I’ve never snuck into an abandoned building before.” She’s cool, a tough girl who does parkour and our school’s martial arts program. I’ve held boards she’s punched in half.
Her twin brother, Jeremiah, flicks back his long rock-star-looking hair that matches Jen’s. “I bet inside’ll feel haunted. Real Halloweeny.”
“Yeah.” Chad turns to me. “A kind of haunted house. You down?”
Dang. Why’s he putting it on me?
As everyone eyes me, all I can think to say is “Yeah, I’m down.”
I think of my dad, agreeing with people to make them happy, or to shut them up. It works for my dad and it works right now.
I wish I wasn’t that little me who struggles to speak up again.