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outside today, you little vampire? Get some sun. Maybe I’ll teach you some moves on my board.”
    “Yay!” She jumped up and ran out of the kitchen.
    “Not… yet,” Tanner said, as her heard her run up the stairs.
    Not exactly the Saturday he had planned, but she did have a way of bringing him back to reality.
     
    Bonnie had lost interest in the skateboard ten minutes in and had decided that her Barbie dolls wanted to skateboard. She sat on the sidewalk with ten Barbies on Tanner’s board, giving them rides back and forth.
    Tanner sat on the front porch, half watching Bonnie and half gazing up at Poppi’s window. He thought maybe Poppi would walk outside or wave to him from her window.  He even daydreamed about her crossing the street and sitting down to talk to him. He knew staring and trying to will it to happen wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He had to stop being such a chicken and walk over to her house. 
    But what Julia had said about Poppi’s grandmother being a witch kept creeping into his mind. Their house was probably the hotspot of the neighborhood on Halloween.
    “Tanner… Tanner… Tanner… Tanner…”
    “What Bonnie? What?”
    “Play with me.”
    “Not right now. I’m busy.”
    “Please… pl-plu pleeeeese…”
    “Why don’t we take a walk and go meet our neighbor.”
    “Okay,” she said and smiled.
    Tanner got up and dusted the dirt off of Bonnie’s knees. “Now I want you to be good. No whining and no asking stupid questions.”
    Bonnie nodded and jumped up and down.
    Tanner took a breath. He knew he couldn’t spaz-out now. Not unless he wanted to hear Bonnie complaining about it for the rest of the day. He took Bonnie’s hand, and they walked across the street to Poppi’s house.
    The house seemed even creepier in the daytime, and he knew it wasn’t his imagination because Bonnie had eased close to him. He patted Bonnie on the shoulder to let her know that everything was all right.
    “I want to go home,” Bonnie whispered anyway.
    “It’s just a house,” he told her and himself. “A pretty girl lives here. Don’t you want to meet her?”
    Her face lit up. “And play with her?”
    “No.”
    Her face drooped again.
    “She’s not a little girl. She’s my age.”
    They stood at the door. Tanner tried to muster up the nerve to knock when he noticed Bonnie touching something… the doorbell! “Stop,” he said and moved her hand away. He had no idea how many times she had pushed it. And he had no way of knowing if it even worked. He guessed he would wait a couple of minutes, and if no one answered he would knock.
    They waited.
    “Can we go home?” Bonnie whined.
    He knocked.
    They waited.
    “I guess they’re not home,” he said, but then he heard rattling like locks being unlatched. Bonnie looked at him with her mouth opened into a huge excited smile. His heart pounded. What was he going to say?
    The door crept open. “Hello?” An eye stared at them for a second above a chain that showed through the crack in the door, before closing again. Bonnie’s eyebrows were drawn in and her lips puckered. Tanner shrugged his shoulders, ready to walk away when he heard the door opening again. This time it opened all the way. 
    Even though Tanner didn’t really know what to expect, the words Julia had said came to mind: “She’s a witch,” because she did look like an actual Halloween witch, minus the hat and broom. The long, stringy, gray hair, the long nose, the wrinkled up, haggard skin, and the ratty old clothes all screamed witch. He wanted to grab Bonnie and run. Instead, he nudged her behind him. She didn’t resist.      
    “May I help you?” the lady said in a witchy voice.
    “Um… yeah, I mean… I’m here to see Poppi?”
    The old woman’s mouth gaped open, and her tongue played with the inside of her bottom lip. She finally said, “How do you know my granddaughter?”
    His mind raced. Of course, how would he know her name? He didn’t want to