"Hey, Jeff!" I yelled. "Help me with dinner! Mom'11 be home soon."

No answer.

"Jeff!" I yelled upstairs.

Still no answer.

Maybe he was in the barn.

I went out the back door, ran across the yard, and shouted into the barn. "JEFF!"

Thunk. What was that?

I stood still and listened. I could hear little rustlings. Far away, thunder rumbled.

I shivered. I love our old house and the barn, but sometimes they give me the creeps. They were built in 1795, and there's just something spooky about a place that's been around that long. So many people have lived here. . . . Some of them have probably died here, too. Right in the house or the barn.

"Jeff?" I said again, but this time almost in a whisper.

"BOO!" A figure leaped into view in the haymow.

"Aughhhh!" I shrieked. "Jeff, you scared me to death!"

He climbed down the ladder to the ground. "Well, you scared me. You come screaming in here like some kind of I don't know what. You made me fall off the rope in the haymow."

"Oh, was that thud you?"

"Yeah. What'd you think it was — a ghost?"

"Course not," I replied, sorry he'd put the idea in my head. "Come on. We have to make dinner."

Jeff and I fixed a salad with cottage cheese, pineapple, peaches, and coconut topping, and heated up a vegetable casserole Mom had made over the weekend. Then we brewed some herbal tea. Kristy kids us, but Mom and Jeff and I really like health food. We ate health food in California, and I think that's something about us that won't change, no matter how long we live on the East Coast.

"Boy, it's hot," I said, pulling my long hair away from my sweaty neck.

"I know," replied Jeff. "Sticky. Let's eat outside, okay? I could set the picnic table."

"Good idea," I said. I handed him plates, napkins, forks, and glasses, and he went outside.

I stood in our old-fashioned kitchen and stirred the tea. Then I poured it into a pitcher and added ice.