The other thing was that, for tourist reasons, I guess, they had set up these spotlights to shine on certain parts of the building, like the dome – it was all lit up – and the front of the church, with its huge arched entranceway. The back of the building, where I pulled up, was pretty dark. Which suited me fine actually. I hid the bike behind a dumpster, leaving the helmet dangling from one of the handles, and went up to a window. The Mission was built like a bizillion years ago, back when they didn’t have air conditioning or central heating, so to keep cool in summer and warm in winter, people built their houses really thick. That meant that all the windows in the Mission were set back about a foot into the adobe, with another foot sticking out into the room behind them.

I climbed up on to one of these built-in window seats, looking around first to make sure no one saw me. But there wasn’t anybody around except a couple of raccoons who were rooting around the dumpster for some of the lunch leftovers. Then I cupped my hands over my face, to cut out the light of the moon, and peered inside.

It was Mr Walden’s classroom. With the moonlight flooding into it, I could see his handwriting on the chalkboard, and the big poster of Bob Dylan, his favourite poet, on the wall.

It only took me a second to punch out the glass in one of the old-fashioned iron panes, reach in, and unlatch the window. The hard part about breaking a window isn’t the breaking part, or even the reaching in part. It’s getting your hand out again that always causes cuts. I had on my best ghost-busting gloves, thick black ones with rubbery stuff on the knuckles, but I’ve had my sleeve get caught before, and gotten my arm all scratched up.

That didn’t happen this time. Plus, the window opened out, instead of up, swinging forwards just enough to let a girl like me inside. Occasionally, I’ve broken in to places that turned out to have alarms – resulting in an uncomfortable ride for me in the back of a car belonging to one of New York’s finest – but the Mission hadn’t gotten that high-tech with their security system yet. In fact, their security system seemed to consist of locking the doors and windows, and hoping for the best.

Which certainly suited me fine.

Once I was inside Mr Walden’s room, I closed the window behind me. No sense alerting anybody who might happen to be manning the perimeter – as if. It was easy to manoeuvre between the desks, since the moon was so bright. And once I got the door open and stepped out into the breezeway I found I didn’t need my flashlight, either. The courtyard was flooded with light. I guess the Mission must stay open pretty late for the tourists because there were these big yellow floodlights hidden in the breezeway’s eaves, and pointed at various objects of interest: the tallest of the palm trees, the one with the biggest hibiscus bush at its base; the fountain, which was on even though the place was closed; and of course the statue of Father Serra, with one light shining on his bronze head and another on the heads of the Native American women at his feet.