It seemed kind of wacky to me, some kid spending all his time in a dark library basement looking at microfiche, when a block or two away was this beautiful beach. But hey, to each his own, right?

‘Cool,’ was all I said, however.

Now I could see that Doc’s little crush on me was threatening to get blown all out of proportion. First I’d willingly volunteered to abide in a room rumoured to be haunted, and then I’d gone and saved Bryce Martinson’s life. What was I going to do next? Run a three-minute mile?

‘Look,’ I said, as Sleepy struggled with the ignition, which apparently had a tendency not to work on the first try. ‘I just did what any of you would have done if you’d been standing nearby.’

‘Brad was standing nearby,’ Doc said, ‘and he didn’t do anything.’

Dopey said, ‘Jesus Christ, I didn’t see the stupid beam, OK? If I’d seen it, I’d have pushed him out of the way, too. Christ!’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t see it. You were probably too busy looking at Kelly Prescott.’

This earned Doc a hard slug on the arm. ‘Shuddup, David,’ Dopey said. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

‘All of you shut up,’ Sleepy said with uncharacteristic grumpiness. ‘I’ll never get this damned car started if you all don’t keep distracting me. Brad, stop hitting David, David stop yelling in my ear, and Suze, if you don’t move your big head out of the mirror I’ll never be able to see where the hell we’re going. Damn, I can’t wait till I get that Camaro!’

The phone call came after dinner. My mother had to scream up the stairs at me because I had my head phones on. Even though it was only the first day of the new semester, I had a lot of homework to do, especially in geometry. We’d only been on Chapter Seven back in my old school. The Mission Academy sophomores were already on Chapter Twelve. I knew I was pretty much dead meat if I didn’t start trying to catch up.

When I came downstairs to pick up the phone, my mom was already so mad at me for making her scream – she has to watch her vocal chords for her job and everything – that she wouldn’t tell me who it was. I picked up the receiver and went, ‘Hello?’

There was a pause, and then Father Dominic’s voice came on. ‘Hello? Susannah? Is that you? Look, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I’ve been giving this some thought and I really think – yes, I really do think we need to do something right away. I can’t stop thinking about what might have happened to poor Bryce if you hadn’t been there.’

I looked over my shoulder. Dopey was playing Cool-boarders – with his dad, the only person in the house who let him win – my mom was working on her computer, Sleepy was out subbing for some pizza deliverer who’d called in sick, and Doc was sitting at the dining-room table working on a science project that wasn’t due until April.