CHAPTER ONE
Ghosts were always getting Annabelle Croft in trouble. Not the kind that landed her in the principal’s office, but the annoying kind.
Glares. Cold shoulders. Silence so loud it made her wish for a fire drill. Their dead energy clung to her, like skunk spray, repelling the living. It didn’t bother her that her classmates disliked her. She didn’t care about things like friends. In a way, the dead energy was a great defense at keeping the living away.
But it was still annoying.
The part she couldn’t dismiss quite so easily was their words. There was no barrier for that except her earbuds and some music, which she could only use between classes. And besides, their words still managed to make their way to her ears.
“She scares me,” her classmates would whisper, always when they thought she couldn’t hear. Or maybe they just didn’t care.
“There’s something off about her,” one would say, moving away as if her affliction were contagious.
“She gives me bad vibes,” came another.
Yeah. She blamed the ghosts.
The halls of Hawk’s Mill High School buzzed as lockers slammed and students surged toward their first-period classes. Annabelle kept her head down as she headed toward chemistry, staring at the scuffed tiles and weaving through the crowd, her wet shoes squelching with every step. She got caught in the rain on her walk to school and the puddles had been unavoidable.
A growl of frustration escaped her.
Two girls by her locker glanced her way, exchanged a look, and leaned in close before walking away.
Good, she thought. Leave.
They wouldn’t understand her any more than her Aunt Penny did, always explaining away her “ghost stories” as she called them, and hanging herbs around their house. Annabelle accepted that. It felt easier if everyone thought she was strange. She was strange. Even she couldn’t deny that. Seeing ghosts was strange. Having dreams about a dark shadow in the shape of a man was strange.
Her mind turned toward the dream she’d had just last night, the same one she’d been having for the last week or so. The shadow man had been saying something. What was it? Annabelle focused inward, trying to dredge up the words. Her music thrummed in her ears, sending goose pimples throughout her body as she remembered the sound of his fiery voice, saying, “Open the door.”
“Annabelle.”
The sound seemed to slither past her earbuds and right into her head, as if coming from inside. She lurched backward away from her locker, her limbs rigid with shock.
A girl with flaming-red hair leaned against the lockers beside hers. Silent, watching. Her flannel shirt hung loosely over a faded tee. The bitter smell of smoke clung to the air around her.
A prickle crept up Annabelle’s spine.
Her face was wrong—stretched too tight across her cheekbones, her thin lips barely able to cover her teeth. Dark, cavernous circles surrounded a pair of brown eyes that were much too big for her sockets. A clue to how she’d died? Annabelle forced herself not to care about the ghost’s death scars.
“Go away,” she hissed at the ghost.
The girl tilted her head. “Aw, c’mon! You don’t mean that.” Her name was Suzie, and Annabelle wished she’d go haunt someone else. “You’re, like, the only person I’ve been able to talk to in ages, man,” Suzie whined. “Forget these jerks and hang with me. I’ve got all the good gossip in this place anyway.”
“Shut up!”
Across the hall, Daria Payne, a tall girl with a severe expression, and her friend, Claire Bolton, looked up from their phones at her. Daria let out a sharp laugh as she grabbed Claire by the elbow and started down the hallway.
Perfect.
Cursing herself, Annabelle fell into step behind the girls—ignoring the red-haired ghost trailing her—as the remaining stragglers made their way to class. The ghosts never meant to mess up her life. They just always did.
“No wonder she’s got no friends,” Daria stage-whispered, turning off to enter a classroom. “Who does she think she’s talking to? She’s such a freak.” She looked over her shoulder with one last sneer. “Get a life!”
Annabelle flipped her off without slowing down, earning a chorus of giggles and mock shock from the students already inside.
“Don’t listen to them, Annie,” Suzie said.
Annabelle jumped and dropped her books, forgetting the ghost was by her side. She scrambled to gather her things from the floor.
“Leave me alone,” she muttered, a chill rippling through her. “You’re the problem. Don’t you get that?”
Silence. Annabelle turned. Suzie had vanished.
Relief washed over her, chased quickly by irritation. Irritation at Suzie, but mostly at Daria, who also couldn’t seem to leave her alone. It was just her luck that the one person she wished the dead energy would keep away seemed immune to it. She straightened and continued down the hall, pretending she didn’t feel everyone’s eyes on her back.
The hallway thinned as she neared chemistry. Her shoes squeaked with every step, announcing her arrival far too loudly.
She slipped into the classroom right as the last bell rang.
Mr. Cooney, a lanky, dark-skinned man, shot her a warning glance as he pulled the door closed behind her. “Cutting it close, Ms. Croft.”
She slid into her seat without comment.
The door opened again.
In walked Will Monroe, tousled golden-blond hair damp from the rain, that too-perfect smile flickering briefly in her direction before vanishing as he turned to face Mr. Cooney’s glare.
Annabelle rolled her eyes, as usual, as he pretended he was happy they were partners. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. But that’s not what really bugged her. It was that he was possibly the cutest boy in school. Even she couldn’t deny that. His annoyingly blue eyes and stupid-cute smile had almost every girl in school drooling, and made Annabelle the target of many snide looks for her coveted position as his lab partner. It wasn’t just his looks, though. He also had a way of making anyone feel at ease in his presence, even Annabelle. Which, of course, annoyed the hell out of her.
She tried to resist, but her guard slipped a bit when he was around. He also seemed immune to the ghost’s dead energy. Maybe Daria was contagious?
He smiled again, strained this time, as he neared their table. It made her insides twist. Not in a good way. Something was off. Which was ridiculous. Will Monroe was never “off.” He turned in his homework, won baseball games, and was all polite popularity, doing exactly what everyone expected of him.
“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Monroe,” Mr. Cooney said dryly. “I hope we weren’t interrupting anything important.”
Chuckles rippled through the classroom. Mr. Cooney shared her antipathy for the popular crowd, though she didn’t think his obvious dislike of Will was warranted. He had always been courteous to adults.
“Sorry,” he replied, already sliding into his seat beside Annabelle.
“If our district-mandated class period is inconvenient for you, maybe we could ask the district to change—”
“I get it,” Will cut in, his cool bravado evaporating entirely. “Won’t happen again.”
Annabelle raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t like Will. Always calm. Never upset. Never wanting to be the center of attention, unlike his obnoxious baseball buddies, who loved flaunting their social status. He was really quite dull, if she was being honest. At least that’s what she told herself.
She braced for Mr. Cooney’s reaction. And judging by the stillness around her, so did everyone else. Tension rolled off Will as he turned from Annabelle and stared out the window at the still-bleak morning sky, his jaw clenched tight.
Instead, Mr. Cooney resumed class with a lecture on states of matter. Annabelle opened her notebook, but her attention kept drifting. When he dropped a packet on their table, Annabelle pushed it toward Will, and he wrote their names at the top. Not a star student by any means, she had a better handle on chemistry and always took the lead, a fact Will never protested. Facing him, it was clear he wasn’t his usual easygoing self. She forced a neutral expression onto her face as she pulled out her textbook and began searching for the answer to question one.
“Rough morning?” Will said after a few moments, nodding toward something beneath their table.
She looked down. A small puddle had formed beneath her feet.
“Pretty sure I’m cursed.”
“Why would you say that?” His eyes grew wide.
“Oh, um.” She’d meant it as a joke, not expecting him to take her seriously. “I mean, it feels that way, I guess. I dunno.”
His brows knitted, mouth tilting as if an apology was stuck somewhere behind his teeth.
“What?” she snapped. “It’s not like you pushed me into the puddle. Quit looking at me like that.”
Eyes down, they worked on their packet for a while. Will wrote down whatever Annabelle looked up in the textbook. Near the end of the period, she let her curiosity get the best of her.
“So, what was that about earlier?”
Will’s eyes betrayed him as they darted to Mr. Cooney’s desk. His lips parted, but no words came out. Finally, he turned toward her again.
“Can I trust you?” His eyes scanned the room as if afraid of being overheard.
She shrugged, curious where this was going. She should’ve said no. She should’ve reminded him they were lab partners, not friends. But the way he looked at her, it felt like a hook between her ribs. “I guess.”
“I…can’t explain it. The last few days…” He paused, jaw clenching. “Something’s…been happening. It’s the eclipse…The blood moon…”
She raised an eyebrow, half-expecting him to crack a smile. But his face was dead serious.
“You mean the total lunar eclipse Mr. Cooney told us about last week?”
He looked almost…scared? “It’s not normal…” He froze.
Silence bloomed as she stared at him, waiting for him to reboot.
“No need to pause for effect.” She hoped she sounded less annoyed than she felt.
He looked away.
“Forget it.” He slid the textbook in front of him. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
His words struck a raw chord in her. She reached out against her better judgment and placed a hand on his forearm. The worry etched across his face stirred something inside her. His attention flickered to her hand, then back to her.
She was going to regret this, but she said it anyway. “Try me.”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
Annabelle was about to tell him that she’d been having dreams that were giving her cryptic commands. Her stomach tightened as the crackling voice whispered back to her from last night, the dream that had jolted her awake, soaked in sweat: Open the door.
She shook her head.
No. It was only a nightmare. Wasn’t it?
“Look, I have some experience with people not believing you when you try to tell them something crazy. So, again…try me.”
As soon as the last syllable left her mouth, the bell rang. Will shrugged an apology as he slid off his seat and rushed to the exit, leaving his stuff behind. She scooped up his book and folder, along with their unfinished packet, and hurried after him.
By the time she reached the hallway, it was packed full of students heading toward their next class. He was gone.
As she shuffled along with the rest of the crowd, a sense of relief washed over her. She’d dodged a friend-shaped bullet. Self-inflicted, but oh well.
Then again…she was still curious about what strange thing had happened to boring, normal Will Monroe. And for the briefest second, she wondered if his behavior and her dream were just…a coincidence—or something more.
Curious what happens next?
The story continues this fall—but only with your help.
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Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll join me for the rest of Annabelle and Will’s story.