Haint Misbehavin'

Read Haint Misbehavin' Storyline:

            Puberty hit me hard and weird. While most girls can only complain about cramps and bloating when they get their first period, I, hypersensitive Heather Tildy, got an added feature. A ghost. I’m the middle child and already damaged. I didn’t need to fly my freak flag higher. Until that fateful day, the only person in our family who was weirder than me was my mom’s sister Geneva, an artist whose constant companion was—you guessed it—a ghost. Yeah, it’s genetic.             So here I was having just turned fourteen, expecting a summer of Japanese beetle removal from row after row of scuppernong vines in the backyard (courtesy of my wannabe vintner dad), an occasional afternoon helping Mom with the craft classes she teaches (don’t get me started on her stupid message t-shirts), and the almost daily pleasure of watching Drew Blanton wield his lifeguard whistle at the neighborhood pool. He’s going to be a junior at Pecan Hills High this fall, and he has these icy blue eyes with long lashes. My objective was to get him to ask me out—or to at least remember my name.             The very day my period arrived (at last!), a ghost, or haint as we sometimes refer to them in the South, appeared in the grapevines and just about made me pee in my pants. Our house and yard sit on land that used to be part of a family farm. Even though I’d had an imaginary friend named Amy when I was little, I didn’t connect her to the apparition who called herself Amy and told me that she used to live here. Once I got over the initial shock, I realized they were one and the same. She claimed she was looking for fun, (okay, more like whined for me to play with her, like I’m some kind of spectral babysitter), but I suspected there was more to her hanging around the backyard. Not that I cared all that much about her at the moment. I was more fixated on how interacting with a ghost was going to change my life. I knew it wouldn’t be for the better.