I didn’t answer.

“Trust me,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “There are a lot easier ways to serve my community than dealing with you.”

Hmmph. Young Republicans have weird senses of humor.

“As a personal favor,” he said. “Please let me drive you home.”

All right, then. Fine.

I sighed and opened the door. “You’re the boss.” “What if your friend sees you?” he asked. “Are you willing to deal with the consequences?”

“Oh, please. I am not afraid of the Doom Squad,” I

said.

“That’s an excellent name for them,” Carter said, smiling. “Maybe we can arrange a rumble between the Young Republicans and the Doom Squad.” He shifted into drive. “So where do you live?”

I pointed down the street. “Three houses down, the one with the yellow shutters.”

He laughed. “I guess I have bad timing.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “You seemed pretty determined. I hated to disappoint you.”

He pulled into my driveway and put the car in park again.

“Wow,” he said, looking up at the house.

Our house is pretty cool, I must admit. It’s the oldest house on the block—probably the oldest one in town. It’s big and ornate, with elaborate details everywhere—not just shingles, but little scalloped pieces of wood, and not just columns holding things up, but arches connecting the columns—that kind of thing.

The oak tree in the front yard adds to the effect. It’s enormous and gnarled; it hangs over the house like an overprotective boyfriend. It’s lush and vivid in the summer, tangled and bare in the winter. In the fall it turns from green to red to yellow to brown so fast you hardly have time to notice, but right now it was one-third yellow, one-third brown, and one-third bare.

My sister actually flipped out the day we moved in, eight years ago. She thought our parents had somehow bought the haunted house from Disneyland and transplanted it to Surrey. She spent the whole day screaming. Mom even thought there might be something in the air that was causing her physical pain. But no, as is always the case with Kasey, it was purely mental.

Trying to appease Kasey’s fear, my parents repainted the house’s exterior with a sunny yellow-and-white color scheme, but it didn’t really cut down on the overall spooky look. We get huge crowds at Halloween.

Sadly for me, the coolness is diminished by the fact that my family lives here.

“Home sweet home,” I said.

“It’s where the heart is,” Carter said, craning his neck to see out the top of the windshield. “This is quite a house.”

I bent down to pick up my bag off the floor. “Yes, it is.” “It’s kind of a mess,” he said.

I dropped my bag and bumped the back of my head on the glove compartment. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, it’s really a jumble of architectural techniques.” He pointed to the bay window. “That window is Gothic, and the shingle detailing is all Queen Anne, which kind of go together, but the columns on the front porch are neoclassical, which is just plain…wrong.”

Silence.

“Really?” I said coolly. But to be honest, inside I was kind of “lights and sirens.”

I narrowed my eyes and shot him a glare, just so he wouldn’t suspect anything.

“Yeah, I mean, whoever built this house just kind of picked random elements from all of those styles.” He squinted up at the top of the house. “And don’t get me started on the mansard roof. That’s pure Second Empire.”

I stared at him.

“My mom’s an architect,” he said, shrugging.

I slumped back in my seat. I really, really, really hate to admit it, but I was sort-of-kind-of-maybe the tiniest bit intrigued. It wasn’t often you met kids my age with an appreciation for architecture.

“I’m Carter Blume, by the way,” he said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Oh.” He sat in confused silence for a few seconds. “Can I ask you a very serious question?” “I’d rather you didn’t,” I said.

He stared straight into my eyes. “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” Wait, what? “Wait, what?”

“It’s a classic icebreaker.” “If I were an animal…?”

He faked a sigh and checked an imaginary watch. “Your inability to answer the question doesn’t bode well for—”

“I refuse to answer that,” I said. “On the grounds that it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever been asked.”

He stared at me, frowning. “I hear your subconscious saying monkey.”

“Right,” I said. “Monkey.”

“Are you mad at me for knocking you over with the door today?”

“Yeah, I’m furious,” I said in a monotone, rolling my eyes.

He faked a grimace. “I need to be more careful. Do you—”

“My turn,” I said. “Are you really a Young Republican?” “Would that matter?”

I thought about it for a second. “I don’t know.” “Well, I’m not. I’m not in any political party. I speak for myself.”

Interesting answer. And suddenly the car felt like it was a hundred degrees, and I would have liked maybe three more bucket seats between us.

“I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for the lift.”

“Your shutters are goldenrod, not yellow,” he replied. “See you tomorrow?”

“I doubt it!” I said, but I could feel my lips betray me with a hint of a smile. I ducked my head and turned away.

The front walk felt like marshmallows beneath my feet as I tried to get to the porch, knowing he was watching every self-conscious step I took. When I reached the stoop, I turned back to look at him. He took his eyes off the roof and looked at me.

“It’s a mess,” he called, “but I kind of like it.”

Then he honked and waved and drove off.

I walked through the front door feeling a little dizzy. I stopped in the foyer and looked around.

Architectural jumble. Well, maybe he had a point. The entryway was even more ornate than the outside of the house—the wide stairway spilling out only a few feet from the front door, the high ceiling with crisscrossing arches, and wood-paneled walls with intricately carved details, like cherubic faces and squirrels and birds and sprays of flowers. It looked like a fairy tale had exploded all over the walls.

Straight ahead was the hall that led back to the living room. To the right was the kitchen, and just past that, the dining room. To my left was a sitting room that nobody ever sat in.

What did Carter know, anyway? I went up the long, straight staircase to the dark hall of bedrooms.

Mine was the first one on the left. I went inside and flopped onto the bed, my eyes sweeping the plaster molding for signs of architectural failure.

I had to stop thinking about Carter Blume.

Part of me wanted to develop the pictures from the previous night, but my eyelids started to feel like they were being pulled shut. I gave up and closed them, the delicious promise of a nap settling over me like a blanket.

I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I heard my sister’s voice.

“Now, Arabella,” she said. “Don’t be a pig. You have to share.”

A pause.

“I know it fits you perfectly, but she’s new and she doesn’t have anything to wear. Think what she’s been through. Don’t you care about her feelings?”

Another pause. I pressed my hands against my head.

“But what if we have company again? You know Sar—”

I couldn’t take it. I reached up and thumped on the wall with my fist.

A minute later there was a tiny tap-tap-tap on my door, and Kasey popped her head into the room.

“I didn’t know you were home,” she said. Her eyes were wide.

I traced the outline of the bump on my forehead. “Why are you talking to your dolls, Kasey?”

“I’m not,” she protested.

“You know you’re thirteen, right?”

“That’s not what I was doing!”

“It’s just a little crazy, that’s all.”

“I am not crazy, Alexis! You’re so rude!” She slammed my door and stomped back to her room.

I tried to go back to sleep, but I felt a little bad. So I got up and knocked on Kasey’s door.