And then I begin to type.

Once I’ve got my letter all set, I dig my bike out of the garage. It’s been a hot minute since I used this thing because the chain on Oscar’s bike broke last year and he hasn’t gotten a new one yet, so we walk just about everywhere our parents won’t drive us. Valentine is easy enough to get around. The downtown is just one single square where the newspaper, city hall, and a few other random shops, like Bill’s Boots & Cobbler, By Design Florals, and The Jerky Emporium, which sells nothing but—you guessed it—jerky, all surround a bronze Cupid statue next to a big sign that says “Welcome to Valentine, the Heart of Texas.” Mom says the Cupid statue was bought by some rich oil investor as kind of a joke, but that the town takes it very seriously.

To get to downtown, I have to cross six blocks and Ancestors’ Park, which was the town’s first graveyard, but so much of it was destroyed during a tornado that it’s hard to tell where it starts and ends. Honestly, Valentine should be on America’s Most Haunted, if you ask me. Cliff VanWarren would find plenty of stories to tell in this place.

As I pedal down my driveway to embark on my journey, the tassels on my handlebars feel childish, and I can’t believe I ever even wore this helmet with a unicorn horn sticking out the front, but I did, and now I am again.

“Let’s ride,” I say to myself as I take a wide turn out of my driveway and pedal toward downtown.

Passing the park, I stand up on my pedals and move as fast as I can. “Not haunted, not haunted, not haunted, not haunted, not haunted.” Above me a bird squawks. “A little haunted, a little haunted, a little haunted, a little haunted.”

The paper is located just off the main square, in between the civic center and the library. I hadn’t really thought about how I might get in, especially since the place is already closed. This is ridiculous. What was I even thinking? Maybe this is like Mrs. Young said and this is the kind of mistake I’ll have to learn from instead of fix.

I turn my bike around, but as I do, I spot a light spilling out into the alleyway. Walking my bike down the alleyway, I find a side door left open. Maybe there’s hope yet! After ditching my bike behind the dumpster, I duck my head inside to find the janitor, a tall, bearded guy who looks a whole heck of a lot like Hagrid from Harry Potter. If I weren’t here on a mission, I might ask him to say You’re a wizard, Sweet Pea! to me.

Heavy metal music crackles through his earphones as he deep lunges like he’s rocking out live in concert while he slides the vacuum across the floor. With his back turned to me, I tiptoe around him. When he moves in one direction, I do the opposite.