The House. It stood all by itself in the middle of the forest, isolated and strange, like some wild thing. This is where we go now, that is, Mark, Tricia, Vance, and I -- to escape from the pressures of high school, to vent, mess around, get high. A place more like home than most of us can speak to, despite its crumbling foundation and graffiti-littered walls. When my friend Mark's parents kicked him out for the second time, he stayed in our "living room," right next to the smashed piano, its keys bent and broken. Mark says late at night he could almost hear the melody of some made-up piece reverberating from the ruined instrument. 

"Molly, do you believe in ghosts?" Mark asked me one evening. It was just the two of us, hanging out at the House, like old times, before the advent of Tricia and Vance. I sat cross-legged on the piano while Mark, sitting on someone's old broken lawn chair, stared intently at the ouija board propped up on a pillow in the middle of our living room.

I considered his question. "No," I said at last. "Don't be silly, Mark." Mark did not look up to the sound of my voice, but the ouija board moved, as if by magic.