Free A Face in Every Window by Han Nolan

cabin in the woods for his place, chose a large square room right next to Mam and Pap's.
    My room had a slanting ceiling with a stone chimney sticking up through the center of it, dividing my sleeping area from my work area. Mrs. Levi had left behind two desks and three bookshelves. I got rid of the wobbliest desk and kept the other and the three shelves. I had plenty of books, my microscope, which Pap didn't break after all, a globe on a stand, my chess set, a rock collection, a small Indian arrowhead and artifact collection, and a bunch of medals and certificates I had won in school. I had parts of old science fair projects collected in a box and a topographical map of the creek and our old neighborhood that I taped to the wall. I fixed it so one side of my room looked just like a library, dark and hidden from view when I sat on my bed on the other side.
    The house was the kind of place I figured would have secret passages, and although I had outgrown all the Hardy Boys stuff years earlier, I couldn't help but look around in closets and behind pieces of furniture, knocking on walls for a secret door.
    I came backing out of one of the closets downstairs, one with built-in shelves that had the smell of a used fireplace in it, when I heard someone else knocking.
    I decided it was Larry making fun of me and I called out to him. He came to the top of the stairs and yelled down to me, "What did you say?"
    I stood at the bottom of the steps, about to answer him, then I heard the knock again.
    Larry hung over the banister. "Go see who's at the door."
    I saluted him and went to the door and opened it.
    Bobbi Polanski stood before me on the porch, with one arm still in the sling and the other holding a grocery bag full of clothes.
    "I lied," she said, setting her bag down.
    "Huh?"
    "When I said I wanted us to part friends. I did have an ulterior motive. I'm moving in."
    "Huh?" I said again.
    Larry trotted down the stairs and opened the door wider.
    "Bobbi? Are you okay?"
    "Sure," she said, brushing past me and stepping into the house.
    "Just come on in, why don't you," I said.
    "Thanks. Get my sack, will you, JP?"
    I left it on the porch and kept the door open.
    Bobbi took a few more steps in and looked around at the living and dining rooms, neither one with any furniture in it yet, and then walked to the stairs and craned her neck to see up the stairwell. She had on a pair of low-cut jeans and a T-shirt that hovered just above her belly button. She sank her hand into her back pocket, turned around, and walked back toward us. She had a firm, square-shouldered, narrow-hipped body, and her walk was more of a stride, heavy on the heels. I'd always had the feeling that she'd make a great prison warden.
    Bobbi looked at Larry. "Six bedrooms, right?"
    "Yeah, uh, three unoccupied."
    She looked at us both and grinned. "Nice place." She nodded. "Yeah, I think I'll like it here just fine."
    "Not if I can help it, Polanski," I said. "What makes you think you can just shove your way into my house, anyway?"
    Bobbi took her hand out of her pocket and set it on her hip. "I don't recall the newspapers saying your name was on the winning essay. Seems to me they said a Mrs. Erin O'Brien won this house."
    I gripped the doorknob and wished it were her neck "Nobody here likes you, Polanski, so why don't you just pick up your little shopping bag and get out."
    Before Bobbi could snarl out her next retort, Larry's van rattled and quivered into the driveway and Mam and Pap hopped out.
    "I got a job!" Pap called out. "I got a job. My first real-time job!" He looked up at me. "Going to the center is a job, isn't it, JP?"
    I looked at Mam, but Mam wouldn't meet my eyes. She knew I'd be upset about Pap taking classes with her. Grandma Mary didn't want Pap taking those horticultural therapy classes down at the center where Mam taught, even if they were meant for people like Pap.
    "He'd pick up nasty habits being around all those other brain-damaged people,"