Let's keep going! Chapter 2! Thanks for reviewing, meangirl8.

My homework was scattered on the floor. Gathered, I may not be the neatest girl in the world, but I never tossed my homework on the floor and left it scattered. Well, I didn't scatter it. And today, I knew I'd left it on my desk. And I know it wasn't on the floor when I went up to get changed.

Brutus, my cat, sat there in the midst of my homework. "Brutus, were you on my desk?" I demanded.

The orange cat looked up at me, then zoomed under my bed. Weird. The cat wasn't scared of anything. In fact, he freaked out most of the kids in the neighbourhood. He scratched everyone except me.

It looked like it was only the open window that had blown the papers off the desk. I went to close it, when I realized something.

Wait.

Since when was the window open? I'd left it closed. And I'm pretty sure it was closed when I changed my jeans.

"What's up?" I turned around. Roxanne was in my doorway. "Whatcha staring at, Sam?" Roxanne's the only person who calls me Sam, and the only one who can get away with it. Just like I'm the only one who can call her Roxy.

"Nothing, Roxy." I said. "Just wondering who opened this window. The wind scattered all my stuff."

Roxanne shrugged. "It was probably your mom. Who cares, anyway?"

"But it's been closed all day." I protested. "I was up here twenty minutes ago, and the window was closed then. I would have noticed if the wind was blowing in."

I manged to get Brutus out of my room after that. "I don't know why, but he seems scared of something in here. Weird, huh? It's almost scary to see a cat like Brutus be freaked out."

Roxanne shrugged. "You want to know what's really scary, Sam? Your brother. I passed him in the den on my way up, and he was tracing himself. On cardboard. Weirdo."

"It's part of his science project, I think." I told her. "About judging how fast the humourless tattletale scientifically known as Simon Jacobs grows."

Roxanne giggled. "Yeah, and you wanna know what else is scary? Your turtle speed at track practice today!"

I mentioned that me and Roxanne – we compete a lot. Track is the thing we're most competitive about, and today, she beat my time. I knew she was going to bring it up over and over until I beat her.

"You know why you won." I said, my tone clipped. "It was because I decided to cut you a break. I let you win."

Roxanne folded her arms. "Yeah, right, Sam, like I believe that. You're just a sad excuse for a track star."

"And you're a sad excuse for a friend if you say stuff like that." I retorted. "Besides that, it's true. I let you win...you know, so you'd be more confident for the school Olympics."

Roxanne's face was going pink, and then scarlet. A sure sign that she's getting angry. Roxanne gets mad so easily that we've broken friends tons of times. We always make up, though. I mean, sometimes she can be so mean I wonder why I ever hang out with her. But sometimes she's so funny and original, I couldn't imagine my life without a friend like her.

We were on the track team for the inter-school athletics, ie: what we call the mini-Olympics. Last year, we did the same, but we lost because I stumbled and didn't get up fast enough.

"You know you lost because you weren't as fast as me, Sammy." Roxanne snapped. Whoa, time to back off. She only calls me Sammy when she's mad – otherwise it's Sam. She doesn't like to be the same as everyone else. "And you better work hard to get better. If you end up being as klutzy as you were last year, I will kill you."

I sighed. "Can we get started on our math homework? You know, the reason you're here?"

"Wait, there was something else I wanted to talk about." Roxanne said. "Remember our English project?"

Ms Starkling, our teacher, paired everyone up for the term to do a project in something. I had loads of ideas, but Roxanne shot them all down, calling them babyish and stupid. She hadn't had any ideas at all, though. When I said that, she swore she'd come up with an awesome idea. And here it was.

"Why don't we do a report on true-to-life haunted houses?" she suggested. "I know a haunted house near the woods. We should study it and find out about the legends in it. It's a deserted place, too, so we could go in an investigate."

I stared at her. "Seriously?"

"Seriously." Roxanne insisted. "I can find the ghosts and talk to them, and you can film us."

"But ghosts can't be caught on film!" I protested. "You know that. The ghosts we see in films are CGI versions. Real ghosts don't come up, same as vampires aren't supposed to."

Roxanne gave a sigh. "Sam, you're just being lazy. You want to talk to the ghosts." she accused. "You're just mad cause I already claimed that job, but it's my idea, so I get to choose who does what."

"I'm not!" I protested. I was being truthful when I said ghosts didn't come up. But still, a part of me was jealous of Roxanne getting to do the talking.

Just a little part, though.

"I bet we'll win an award when we find the ghost. Ms Starkling will think it's the best project ever! And-" Roxanne broke off as we heard a groan, and a light shone into my room.

An eerie, white light.

A ghost?

Roxanne and I backed away, as the strange light reached towards us.

I know, it's shorter, but I'm following the framework of the book. This was how the second chapter happened. Thanks for reading! Now, could you review?