Free The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan

with. In other words, we all knew that if we wanted an A on this assignment, we had to pick some religious belief and show why it was superstitious.
    This presented a problem for Rick Donnelly. Rick, as I said, was willing to say just about anything to get good grades so he could go to a really good college. But Rick and I went to the same church and neither of us felt we’d ever heard anything superstitious there. In fact, the stuff we’d learned there had been really helpful in just living ordinary life. So he didn’t want to attack his own religion. And it seemed kind of impolite to attack somebody else’s. So he didn’t really feel right about this assignment at all. It really bothered him.
    We talked about it in the cafeteria at lunch at our table with Josh and Miler.
    “Look,” I said, “there are plenty of superstitions. Black cats. Friday the thirteenth. Write about one of those. That’s what I’m going to do.”
    “You know that’s not what he’s looking for,” said Rick gloomily. He was a tall guy, one of the tallest in the school. His big face was the color of chocolate. It usually looked a lot more cheerful. “I mean, it’s all right for you, Charlie. You argue with Sherman all the time, and you don’t care when he gives you lower marks.”
    He was wrong about that. I did care. I cared a lot. But I wasn’t going to lie just to get Sherman to give me better grades.
    We were all silent for a while. Then I had an idea.
    “Hey, you know what would be so cool?” I said. “What if we went and spent a whole night in the McKenzie mansion?”
    “What?” said Rick.
    “Yeah, yeah,” I said, getting more enthusiastic as I thought about it. “We spend the night there and prove there are no ghosts, that it’s not haunted. We prove that’s just a local superstition.”
    Josh Lerner cleared his throat. Josh looked like the geek he was: short and kind of slump-shouldered with curly hair and big, thick glasses and a quick, nervous smile. Josh could be kind of a dork at times, but somehow you couldn’t help liking him anyway.
    “You know, Charlie, that’s a very creative thought,” he said. “And it raises an interesting question: Are you out of your ever-loving mind?”
    I laughed. “Why shouldn’t we? We just take some sleeping bags and camp out for the night and go home and write a report about it. We could take pictures and make recordings and everything and do a whole presentation. The thing is, it would be so cool that Sherman would have to give us an A. He’d have to—or he’d have to explain why.”
    “He would,” murmured Rick, nodding to himself. “I mean, it would just be that cool.”
    “It would be cool,” said Josh, “but you’re leaving something out.”
    “What?”
    “The part where we get so terrified we have heart attacks and die.”
    “I could see where that would cut into the coolness factor,” said Miler Miles. Miler was a small, thin guy with short blond hair over a long face. You only had to look at him to know he was going to be some big corporate muck-a-muck when he grew up.
    “Why should we be terrified?” I said. “We’d all be together. We’d have flashlights, cell phones . . .”
    “Garlic, silver bullets, wooden stakes,” Miler added.
    “I think I’m having a heart attack already,” said Josh. “Really. I’m serious. I can feel it.”
    As Josh gripped his chest with a worried look in his eyes, Rick nodded. “I’d do it,” he said quietly.
    “Sure,” said Miler with a shrug. “I’d do it too.”
    “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” said Josh. “I can’t spend the night in the Ghost Mansion. I have a nervous condition.”
    I looked at him. “What nervous condition?”
    “I’m nervous about spending the night in the Ghost Mansion.”
    I laughed again. “Well, you don’t have to do it then. You’re not even in Sherman’s class.”
    “Oh, right. I’m gonna let you guys go and me stay home—like that’d ever happen.”