Sam's house was huge.

Coraline stood outside, staring up dumbfounded, for nearly a minute before she rang the bell, trying to decide if maybe it was actually a duplex or divided up into apartments, like the Pink Palace had been. But it looked much too new for that. Finally, she decided that the only way she was ever going to find out was to go in, and marched up the steps.

She hesitated a moment longer before ringing the bell, wondering if this was really such a great idea. But then, why would they have invited her if they didn't really want her there?

She pushed thoughts of Carrie out of her mind and leaned on the bell. It jangled cheerfully, and only seconds later the door swung open. Sam poked her head around the door, smiled, and said, "Oh, hi, Coraline. Come on in!"

"You didn't really want to invite me, did you?" Coraline asked, knowing what the answer would be.

Sam's smile stretched a little wider, starting to look a little more like a grimace, and she said through clenched teeth, "Why would you think that?" When Coraline didn't look impressed in the slightest, though, she dropped the grimace with a sigh. "It's that obvious, huh?"

"Kind of," Coraline admitted. "I mean, usually if you actually want to hang out with someone, you don't come up with every excuse in the book not to hang out with them. I mean, really. Gorilla watching?"

Sam looked quickly left, then right, as if searching for a way out. "You know, we actually were watching the purpleback gorilla. It was Danny's make-up project for biology, and -" She noticed the glare Coraline was giving her, and sighed heavily. "Look, it's not that we don't like you," she began, but Coraline cut her off.

"I have ears, you know." She crossed her arms deliberately. "And it's not like I can't hear what people are saying about me. I know I'm at the bottom of the heap here. And if you guys don't want to get brought down by association -" She stopped, because Sam looked like she was choking on something. "Are you okay?"

"Who, me?" Sam gasped. "Fine. Fine. I'm fine." And before Coraline could say anything more, she burst out laughing. "Seriously? You're worried about people thinking we're uncool because we hang out with you?"

"Um…yes?" Coraline wasn't quite sure what was happening, but she suspected that whatever the joke was, it was at her expense. "Look, I'm not stupid, I know the jocks and cheerleaders are running this grade and they've decided they don't like me for some reason and – look, this is really not that funny!" She was aware that she was probably getting a little too upset about something that, in the long run, didn't really matter, but Sam was nearly crying with laughter and it was really starting to get under Coraline's skin. It didn't seem like Sam was taking her seriously at all.

"Sorry," Sam finally managed, once she'd finished her laughing spell. "Just…wow, you really haven't been here long. I keep forgetting."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Coraline asked, genuinely confused and just a little ticked off.

"Just that you chose to hang out with the three people who have the least reason to worry about their social standing being affected by being around you." Sam smirked. "Not that I particularly care, but…we're about one step up from band geeks and the kids who play tabletop roleplaying games at lunch. You don't have to worry about dragging us down from our lofty position as the social royalty of Casper High."

Coraline opened her mouth to say something, then realised she didn't have anything to say besides, possibly, a string of unintelligible questions, and shut her mouth again.

"Hey, you could have picked worse friends than the Goth girl, the techno-geek, and the kid whose parents hunt ghosts," Sam offered. "You could be hanging out with Paulina right now." She made a face, and then sighed. "Like Danny's doing."

"No, I wouldn't, she – wait, what?" Coraline's brain caught up with her ears, and she had to quickly backpedal. "He's what?"

Sam just nodded.

Coraline was aware that she probably looked completely silly making exaggerated hand gestures to illustrate her confusion, but she didn't stop. "Danny? And Paulina? And – and – what? How?"

"What, you didn't know? He blew us off to go to Dash's party." Sam scoffed disdainfully. "He's only been bragging about it for pretty much the whole week."

Coraline picked her jaw up from where it had fallen, and put it carefully back into place. "Actually, no. He didn't say anything to me." She bit her bottom lip, frowning angrily. "Not that he ever does."

Sam pulled the door open a little wider, stepping out of the way as she did so. "You should come in."

…

"And this," Sam announced, swinging the door open with a theatrical flourish, "is my room." She stood by the door, beaming, as Coraline stepped inside.

"Wow," Coraline said, looking around. "I did not know this much velvet existed in the world." She spun slowly around in a circle, taking everything in. "Or this much purple paint. How cool are your parents, that they let you do all this?"

Sam smirked proudly. "They didn't."

Coraline turned to look at her. "Wait, they didn't let you -"

"Nope." Sam shook her head. "Actually, they hired an interior decorator to 'fix' it a while ago. I came home and there were floral prints everywhere." She said the words floral prints as if they tasted bad.

"I'm guessing that the makeover didn't last very long," Coraline surmised, as she wandered over towards the bed.

"Nah, I had it right back to normal by that night." Sam smiled lovingly at the dark-purple walls, illuminated only by flickering candlelight. "Besides, they have the entire house to decorate however they want to. This room is mine."

"Yeah, I really -" Something caught Coraline's eye, and she stopped mid-sentence, paralyzed completely. Oh, not here, not now…

"What is that?" she asked Sam carefully, trying hard to sound casual as she pointed to the offending item.

Sam looked over to see what Coraline was talking about. "Oh, yeah! Isn't she so creepy?" she asked lovingly, picking up the tiny ragdoll version of herself. Coraline recoiled as Sam held the thing out in front of her, before collecting herself and giving it an angry glare. The doll's black button eyes stared back expressionlessly.

"Creepy is definitely the right way to describe that," Coraline agreed, scrutinizing the doll. It was even wearing tiny black felt combat boots. "Where did you get it?"

Sam, thankfully, removed the thing from Coraline's face. "Siouxsie was in a box of my grandma's old things. Pretty weird how much she looks like me, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Coraline echoed dully. "Weird." Listen, this is going to sound totally crazy, but you haven't noticed any funny doors that lead to nowhere or oddly musical mice appearing in the middle of the night lately, have you? She shook herself mentally. Sam would never believe her, and would probably think she was off her head. But she had to do something, or –

She was torn out of her thoughts by the sound of the doorbell. Sam tossed the doll back onto her bed. "That's either pizza or Tucker. You coming?"

Coraline gave the doll one last uneasy glance. It stared passively back at her, and she couldn't keep a small shiver from running down her back.

…

"Tucker, if you want to watch a scene over and over again, you could at least say something."

Coraline yawned. The chop-socky action movie they'd finally settled on had been entertaining for the first few minutes, but after nearly an hour it was starting to get tiring. Unoccupied, her thoughts drifted back to the doll, upstairs, sitting as innocuously as a ticking time bomb in Sam's room. She had to admit, Sam seemed like the perfect target for her attentions. Rich parents who just didn't understand her or bother to try, strongly curious and with a well-developed sense of adventure, slightly twisted sensibilities that would just love something as horrifyingly morbid as stitching buttons to her eyes...

But what didn't make sense was why here, and why now. Coraline was sure it wasn't a coincidence that, just as she moved into a new town, one of her new friends (if that was even the word) was targeted. And she knew that there was no way to tell anyone without sounding truly crazy. She was on her own, without even the cat to back her up, and something told Coraline that that was exactly how she had planned it.

Coraline smiled inwardly as she came to a decision. So she wanted to play games, then? Fine. Then Coraline would play her game. But she had better be prepared to lose.

"Do rich people's remotes usually do that?"

...

Coraline's mother looked up from her laptop as her daughter walked past the living room. "Hey, you're home early."

Coraline paused with her foot on the first stair. "The sleepover was called on account of ghost."

Her mother smirked. "Really, now. You went over there to watch scary movies and now you're home early because everyone's scared of a ghost? Next time, maybe you should stick to romantic comedies."

As soon as her mother turned back to her laptop screen, Coraline stuck her tongue out at her and continued on up the stairs.