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the maze. Let’s scare the crap out of her.”
    And before I could protest, I was pulled into WEIRD WORLD —that was the sign above the maze, anyway. Glow-in-the-dark handprints were smeared down the cardboard walls, providing the only light, while fake spiders and cobwebs hung from the cardboard ceiling. With groups of other kids rushing past, giggling and screaming, it took all of ten seconds for Trish and me to get separated. Squinting in the darkness, I picked a corridor, which branched off in three directions, and headed right. Which seemed to be a really bad idea, because it was absolutely pitch-black.
    I groped my way down the walls and slowly turned a corner, patting the toe of my heels blindly on the floor to preidentify things I would like to avoid stepping in. My feet must have activated a motion sensor, because a strobe light flashed on suddenly, blinding me. I was so startled I screamed and jumped back—and what I backed up into wasn’t a wall.
    A hand clamped down over my mouth and a muscled arm pinned my elbows to my side. A fun-house mirror reflected the intermittent strobe light, briefly illuminating the person who was holding me. He looked up through a curtain of dark, wavy hair, grinning.
    It was Adrian, thank God, and not some random creeper—though I still wanted to punch him in the face for scaring me. Without Trish I felt strangely vulnerable.
    “I’m a pirate,” he explained, as if I couldn’t tell from his costume. “Apparently we kidnap people.”
    I wriggled free and punched him in the arm, then immediately wished I hadn’t because it hurt like hell.
    “You scared the crap out of me,” I said, shaking my hand to dilute the pain. “I could have stabbed you in your manly bits with my heel.”
    He rubbed his arm and glanced at my stilettos, but his mouth was quirked in a smile. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
    The smile slipped off Adrian’s face as he looked me over head to toe through the mirror, and if I didn’t know he was trying to figure out what my costume was, I might have been offended—or flattered. My emotions were sort of all over the place.
    “I’m a vampire,” I explained, since it wasn’t obvious. I hadn’t had time to order crazy colored contacts or fake pointy teeth online, and the nearest costume store was eighty miles away. The only thing that said “vampire” about me was some bright red lipstick, a lot of eyeliner, the “cape” I’d fashioned out of my mother’s old quilt, and the skintight black dress I’d made myself a year ago (also, coincidentally, for prom, and also now way too small in the chest region, since those had popped out of nowhere a few months back). With my sewing machine broken and no time to plan, it was the best I could pull together in less than a week. Well, that was a lie—I probably could have made something crazy out of tissue paper and Popsicle sticks, but I honestly didn’t feel like putting that much effort into a party I didn’t even really want to be at in the first place. I was a party pooper.
    “So that’s your theme?” Adrian asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Vampires?”
    “We were supposed to come as mythical creatures,” I replied with a shrug. “I picked vampire.”
    Okay, so vampire had been the best match for my extremely limited clothing options, but whatever. The motion sensor for the light must have gone back into sleep mode because the strobe cut off suddenly, plunging us into darkness.
    From somewhere to my left, Adrian’s disembodied voice asked, “Why did you pick vampire?”
    I frowned, although he couldn’t see me. “Why do you care?”
    But there was no answer—he wasn’t there. I called his name again, turning in circles, but if he could hear me, he didn’t respond. I was instantly irritated. Way to abandon me in a scary-ass haunted maze.
    Grabbing blindly for the wall, I picked a direction and started wandering again until I made it to the exit where Trish was waiting for me, though not