I find him in the crowd, talking with some redheaded girl I’veseen around school. When he sees me, he grins and waves.
Cooper leads me over to a box full of glow sticks, and after cracking two pink bracelets and a green necklace, he puts them on me, keeping his eyes fixed on the light-up jewelry. He cracks a yellow necklace and puts it on himself, then hands me a neon-blue bracelet to put on him. I’m not even sure he notices when his finger sweeps over the inside of my wrist, but my heart stutters at the subtle contact. I stick the end of the glow stick into the plastic connector piece and hope he doesn’t notice how being this close to him makes my hands tremble.
What is wrong with me?
“Okay, everyone!” our senior class president, Kayla McIntire, shouts over everyone. Cooper hands me a mini flashlight from another box, and the crowd grows silent as we all give Kayla our attention. “Welcome to the tenth annual senior-class Ghost in the Graveyard night! In just a minute I will draw a name from this hat,” she says, pointing to a literal top hat being held by our class treasurer. “Every single senior’s name is in it. If I draw someone who isn’t here, we’ll go to the next person. If your name is drawn, you’re the ghost, which means your job is to hide from everyone else. The boundaries have been marked—if you come to yellow caution tape, do not cross it, or you’ll be out of bounds. Those not chosen as the ghost will stay here at home base and count, one o’clock, two o’clock, and so on until midnight. At that point you’ll all spread out and try to find the ghost.
“If you see the ghost, you shout, ‘Ghost in the graveyard!’ Then everyone has to run back here before getting tagged by the ghost.As you can see,” she says, pointing to the trees lining the clearing, “home base is clearly marked with glow sticks around the tree trunks so you can find it. If anyone is tagged, they become the new ghost. Anyone have any questions?”
Everyone looks around at one another, but no questions are asked.
“Okay, then. Let’s do this,” Kayla says.
Anticipation swells among the crowd as she sticks her hand into the hat and mixes the names around. She snatches one up and unfolds the small piece of paper.
“Cooper Barnett!” she reads. “You here, Coop?”
He turns to me. “You going to be okay on your own?”
“Yeah, of course.” I nod at Jake across the circle of seniors. “I can always just hang with Jake.”
He glances at his friend. “Right.” Then he puts his hand up. “I’m here,” he announces. Some people whoop and whisper excitedly.
“Come on up!” Kayla says, dropping the piece of paper back into the hat.
Before heading over to Kayla, he leans in close, his breath tickling my ear. “I know how much you hate to lose, so let’s see if you can find me before anyone else.”
Then he’s off to take on his title as Ghost.
“Challenge accepted,” I call after him.
He grins at me over his shoulder. “Good luck.”
Leaving his glow sticks behind, Cooper makes his way deeper into the woods while I hang back with my classmates and count to midnight. I decide not to stay with Jake because I actually wantto find Cooper, and I know Jake will be loud and make everything a joke.
Because he really is like an excitable puppy.
But as soon as we disperse, I’m having regrets. A twig snaps to my right. I swing my flashlight in the direction of the sound just as something makes a swooshing noise to my left. These woods are terrifying. How am I supposed to know if the sounds I’m hearing are seniors or animals?
As I wander aimlessly, wondering if I’ll be able to find my way back to home base despite it being marked with glow sticks, I consider whether Cooper would have any sort of strategy right now. He definitely wouldn’t have climbed a tree because of his fear of heights. But if he’s on the ground, where would he think no one would look?
I scan the woods. Where would I go if I were him?
I turn left, trekking back to the tree line, where yellow caution tape runs along the perimeter. For the next ten minutes, I hike through the silence, searching for big piles of leaves that could be a camouflaged body or a hollowed-out tree he could hide in if he were brave enough. Completely alone in the dark, I fight the urge to be loud in order to scare off any creatures of the night.
Since the goal is to spot the ghost before he can tag me, hopefully I can get eyes on Cooper before he sees m—
I freeze as somebody dashes across the path in front of me. Somebody not wearing glow sticks. Beneath the moonlit sky, in the space between scraggly bare branches, I make out the angles of his face. An outline ingrained in my brain.
“Ghost in the graveyard!” I call as loudly as I can just before Cooper lunges at me. I scream and turn to run. I make it three steps before his strong arm wraps around my waist, pulling me close and lifting me off the ground as he spins.
I laugh, and he sets me down in front of a tree. “How’d you find me so fast, cheater?”
I lift my chin as I face him. “I didn’t cheat. But I’m not revealing my secrets.”
He steps closer. “There isn’t a single other person around. I need to know how you thought to come over here,” he says, gesturing at where we’re standing—where the front and side perimeter tape meet. “Did you sneak away from the group and follow me when you were supposed to be counting?”
“That would be cheating.”
